I've been woefully behind in promoting this (and Dave Hone has taken the lead in hosting it this year - thank you, Dave!), but it is time to get on with the 2011 Paleo Project Challenge. Got a nagging little project that just requires a few days of concentrated effort to finish? Quit the excuses, and just get it done! That's the whole point of this. Whether it's research, artwork, a curation project, or whatever, anything is fair game.
Dave Hone has more over at Archosaur Musings. Mike Taylor and Matt Wedel have blogged about their own contribution. What will yours be?
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Hello, Spinops!
In case you haven't yet noticed, there's a new horned dinosaur in town: Spinops sternbergorum, yet another example of the ceratopsians' incredible evolutionary radiation.
Spinops sternbergorum, as envisioned by Dmitry Bogdanov
Spinops sternbergorum, as envisioned by Dmitry BogdanovThis animal has special significance for me, because it is the first new dinosaur for which I have been senior author. In a lot of ways, that's a childhood dream coming true!
Best of all, it was a lot of fun to work with some respected colleagues. Michael Ryan (ceratopsian expert extraordinaire) and I enjoyed bouncing ideas off of each other (even if we haven't yet reached a consensus on epiparietal homology, as acknowledged in the paper), and Mark Loewen added another ceratopsian voice to the mix. Darren Tanke offered his historical perspective (particularly important for this specimen, which was found in 1916), and Dennis Braman's expertise in palynology was absolutely invaluable. All of us owe a huge debt to Paul Barret's efforts at the Natural History Museum (London), where the type material is held, as well as for his cladistic wizardry. Last but certainly not least, Mark Graham did a bang-up job with preparing the fossil. When I first saw the holotype parietal, it was upside down and embedded in plaster. Mark took this and made it beautiful!
The art was contributed by several different folks. Phil Hurst took some exceptionally high-quality photographs, and Lukas Panzarin rendered the bones with his usual finesse. Our first life restoration of Spinops was undertaken by Dmitry Bogdanov, and it deservedly has been shown widely in the press.
Speaking of art, our representation of Spinops is conservative. We don't know what the frill looked like to the outside of the big spikes, so it is quite possible that there were more than what illustrated. So to the paleoartists out there: make it as spiky as you want! Anything is possible (until we find more fossils that tell us otherwise).
The specimens of Spinops have a long and interesting history, which has been detailed elsewhere. So, I encourage you to check out Brian Switek's write-up at Dinosaur Tracking, an excellent story by John Mangels in Cleveland's Plain Dealer, a story in The Telegraph, the NHM's press page, the Cleveland Museum's press page, or my own museum's web site.
If you're looking for something completely different, check out The Gawker's take on Spinops. It's snarky and quite funny. Many folks have taken some offense at it, but I'm positively delighted to be featured amongst the celebrity gossip - the story is decidedly tongue-in-cheek!
Finally, if you're really interested in digging deeper, check out the original paper, published in Acta Palaeontologia Polonica. It's open access and free to read by anyone!
Citation: Farke, A. A., M. J. Ryan, P. M. Barrett, D. H. Tanke, D. R. Braman, M. A. Loewen, and M. R. Graham. 2011. A new centrosaurine from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, Canada, and the evolution of parietal ornamentation in horned dinosaurs. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 56(4):691-702. doi:10.4202/app.2010.0121 [link to the original paper]
Best of all, it was a lot of fun to work with some respected colleagues. Michael Ryan (ceratopsian expert extraordinaire) and I enjoyed bouncing ideas off of each other (even if we haven't yet reached a consensus on epiparietal homology, as acknowledged in the paper), and Mark Loewen added another ceratopsian voice to the mix. Darren Tanke offered his historical perspective (particularly important for this specimen, which was found in 1916), and Dennis Braman's expertise in palynology was absolutely invaluable. All of us owe a huge debt to Paul Barret's efforts at the Natural History Museum (London), where the type material is held, as well as for his cladistic wizardry. Last but certainly not least, Mark Graham did a bang-up job with preparing the fossil. When I first saw the holotype parietal, it was upside down and embedded in plaster. Mark took this and made it beautiful!
The art was contributed by several different folks. Phil Hurst took some exceptionally high-quality photographs, and Lukas Panzarin rendered the bones with his usual finesse. Our first life restoration of Spinops was undertaken by Dmitry Bogdanov, and it deservedly has been shown widely in the press.
Speaking of art, our representation of Spinops is conservative. We don't know what the frill looked like to the outside of the big spikes, so it is quite possible that there were more than what illustrated. So to the paleoartists out there: make it as spiky as you want! Anything is possible (until we find more fossils that tell us otherwise).
The specimens of Spinops have a long and interesting history, which has been detailed elsewhere. So, I encourage you to check out Brian Switek's write-up at Dinosaur Tracking, an excellent story by John Mangels in Cleveland's Plain Dealer, a story in The Telegraph, the NHM's press page, the Cleveland Museum's press page, or my own museum's web site.
If you're looking for something completely different, check out The Gawker's take on Spinops. It's snarky and quite funny. Many folks have taken some offense at it, but I'm positively delighted to be featured amongst the celebrity gossip - the story is decidedly tongue-in-cheek!
Finally, if you're really interested in digging deeper, check out the original paper, published in Acta Palaeontologia Polonica. It's open access and free to read by anyone!
Citation: Farke, A. A., M. J. Ryan, P. M. Barrett, D. H. Tanke, D. R. Braman, M. A. Loewen, and M. R. Graham. 2011. A new centrosaurine from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, Canada, and the evolution of parietal ornamentation in horned dinosaurs. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 56(4):691-702. doi:10.4202/app.2010.0121 [link to the original paper]
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Should we review for any old journal?
It's no secret that academic publishers are able to cut expenses by getting free content, free review, and often free editorial expertise from the scientific community. Web hosting, copy editing, and printing costs remain, of course, so publishers cover these expenses by charging for the content - often by charging subscription and article access fees (directly or indirectly) to the very same researchers who provide their expertise for free. When some commercial publishers are generating impressive profits in spite of the bad economy, many researchers are rightfully perturbed. How should we, as a research community, respond?
Mike Taylor, writing at SV-POW! and Times Higher Education, argues that (among other strategies) scientists should refuse to review manuscripts submitted to non-open publications. To his credit, he has put his money where his mouth is (no surprise to those who know how solid Mike's character is). If done by enough people, this will surely have the desired effect of slowing down the cogs of the big non-open access journals (and making open access [OA] a more appealing alternative). But, what is the collateral damage? Is it worth it? Who would even receive the message?
I argue that, unless carefully constructed, such reviewing boycotts may never be noticed by some of the concerned parties. A typical journal editor will think "oh, Reviewer 1 refused to review. . .on to Reviewer 2." Even if the refusal to review is accompanied by a note explaining the reasoning behind the refusal, only the editor will ever see it (and potentially the publishing admins - who have little vested interest in changing the status quo).
Second, when the pool of qualified reviewers is small to begin with, this could have the consequence of letting some really bad stuff slip into publication. I've reviewed enough papers and read enough literature to know that unless I flag some manuscripts, nobody else will. (Richard has a similar sentiment in his comments at SV-POW!). Despite the schadenfreude of seeing non-OA journals become associated with increasingly substandard work, it would also mean that we're left with a mess to clean up (particularly in the case of "new" species). Profits are reported quarterly, but we have to deal with crummy taxonomy forever.
Third, the journals are not the ones hurt most directly by review boycotts; it is the authors. The journal will almost always find someone else to review the paper (with a delay as these reviewers are recruited); and if not, the manuscript will be returned for lack of qualified reviewers (with a delay as the paper is prepared for submission elsewhere). Rightly or wrongly, publications are a primary currency of academia. If getting that publication delayed means my friend or colleague doesn't get a job, or a grant, or tenure, I have hurt them, not just the profits of the journal.
There are some constructive alternatives, fortunately - given a choice, I would say #2 and #3 have the most utility and best balance intended and unintended consequences.
1) Refuse to review the paper, but fully explain why in a letter submitted directly and separately to the editor, journal, and authors. This way everyone gets the message - not just a select few.
2) Review the paper, but include a message with the review (perhaps both in the review text and in a direct letter to the authors) on the shame of the work being locked behind a paywall. Make the authors think twice about whether or not the intended audience will ever see the paper.
3) Submit your own work to open access journals, cite work in open access journals, and encourage your colleagues to do the same.
I sympathize with the sentiment that we academics shouldn't be propping up the questionable practices of some publishers, but we also need to avoid shooting ourselves (and our colleagues) in the foot as a result.
Update: Mike Taylor has posted a response to this post at SV-POW!
Mike Taylor, writing at SV-POW! and Times Higher Education, argues that (among other strategies) scientists should refuse to review manuscripts submitted to non-open publications. To his credit, he has put his money where his mouth is (no surprise to those who know how solid Mike's character is). If done by enough people, this will surely have the desired effect of slowing down the cogs of the big non-open access journals (and making open access [OA] a more appealing alternative). But, what is the collateral damage? Is it worth it? Who would even receive the message?
I argue that, unless carefully constructed, such reviewing boycotts may never be noticed by some of the concerned parties. A typical journal editor will think "oh, Reviewer 1 refused to review. . .on to Reviewer 2." Even if the refusal to review is accompanied by a note explaining the reasoning behind the refusal, only the editor will ever see it (and potentially the publishing admins - who have little vested interest in changing the status quo).
Second, when the pool of qualified reviewers is small to begin with, this could have the consequence of letting some really bad stuff slip into publication. I've reviewed enough papers and read enough literature to know that unless I flag some manuscripts, nobody else will. (Richard has a similar sentiment in his comments at SV-POW!). Despite the schadenfreude of seeing non-OA journals become associated with increasingly substandard work, it would also mean that we're left with a mess to clean up (particularly in the case of "new" species). Profits are reported quarterly, but we have to deal with crummy taxonomy forever.
Third, the journals are not the ones hurt most directly by review boycotts; it is the authors. The journal will almost always find someone else to review the paper (with a delay as these reviewers are recruited); and if not, the manuscript will be returned for lack of qualified reviewers (with a delay as the paper is prepared for submission elsewhere). Rightly or wrongly, publications are a primary currency of academia. If getting that publication delayed means my friend or colleague doesn't get a job, or a grant, or tenure, I have hurt them, not just the profits of the journal.
There are some constructive alternatives, fortunately - given a choice, I would say #2 and #3 have the most utility and best balance intended and unintended consequences.
1) Refuse to review the paper, but fully explain why in a letter submitted directly and separately to the editor, journal, and authors. This way everyone gets the message - not just a select few.
2) Review the paper, but include a message with the review (perhaps both in the review text and in a direct letter to the authors) on the shame of the work being locked behind a paywall. Make the authors think twice about whether or not the intended audience will ever see the paper.
3) Submit your own work to open access journals, cite work in open access journals, and encourage your colleagues to do the same.
I sympathize with the sentiment that we academics shouldn't be propping up the questionable practices of some publishers, but we also need to avoid shooting ourselves (and our colleagues) in the foot as a result.
Update: Mike Taylor has posted a response to this post at SV-POW!
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Paleontology Journals - Cheers and Jeers
In my previous post, I introduced a compilation of data concerning various journals relevant to paleontologists. The data, which are freely available in Google Spreadsheet, Excel and HTML form, detail costs to readers, costs to authors, and more. In this post, I want to outline my personal opinions on the journals that I surveyed. Which have good policies for authors and readers, and which need some work? The answers may surprise you; they certainly surprised me. Some of the best-known journals in the field are not necessarily the best for those who need to use them.
A disclaimer: The opinions presented here are my own and do not represent any organization with which I am associated. Any critical comments are directed at the publishing practices of the journals, not the quality of the science or the efforts of the volunteer editors, authors, and reviewers. If I have made an error in compiling a journal information, I will happily correct it upon notification and verification. I have published in, and in some cases will continue to publish in, some of the journals of which I am critical. Although I personally would like to publish only in open access, non-profit journals, the realities of a career in science make that difficult at times.
Cheers to:
**I would also note that by "readers", I am referring to all possible readers, not just those with society memberships or at institutions with well-stocked electronic libraries.
So Now What?
Vote with your manuscript submissions. Submit only to journals whose policies benefit you. Encourage journals with non-friendly policies to change them. Although it may be tough to change strictly for-profit journals, we may be able to make a difference with society publications. Speak up. Blog about it. Talk to your colleagues. Ask the hard questions of the people who make the decisions. Make a noise at the annual meetings. Let's even the publishing playing field!
Update: Heinrich Mallison posted a nice response to the selection of Palaeontologia Electronica as one of the "best all-around journals" for paleontology, over at their official blog.
What are your thoughts? Weigh in with your own nominations for best/worst, or any additional opinions, in the comment section!
A disclaimer: The opinions presented here are my own and do not represent any organization with which I am associated. Any critical comments are directed at the publishing practices of the journals, not the quality of the science or the efforts of the volunteer editors, authors, and reviewers. If I have made an error in compiling a journal information, I will happily correct it upon notification and verification. I have published in, and in some cases will continue to publish in, some of the journals of which I am critical. Although I personally would like to publish only in open access, non-profit journals, the realities of a career in science make that difficult at times.
Cheers to:
- Journals that promote open access. Even with a delay, open access allows an increased readership (and hopefully increased citation) of articles. Although critics of OA often imply that scientific papers are just too complex for the lay public to understand, in a field like paleontology the lay public is a major consumer of our primary literature. So, cheers to journals like PLoS ONE, Palaeontologia Electronica, and Proceedings B, who practice and promote open access. Even some commercially-published journals (e.g., The Anatomical Record) deserve special mention for their OA efforts.
- Journals with reasonable download fees. Although every journal would be free and open access in an ideal world, it does cost money to run a publication. I salute those journals of various sizes and business models that keep their per-article download charges at $15 or less; this includes Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, Journal of Paleontology, Paleobiology, PNAS, and Science. Here's your next challenge, journals: lower the price to $5. I would predict that this is the tipping point in the balance between price and convenience for many readers of the paleontology literature.
- Journals that charge ridiculous fees for per-article downloads. I'm especially looking at you, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. $41 for a PDF of a one page taxonomic note?! Not even Cretaceous Research, owned and published by the oft-maligned Elsevier, charges that much ($37.95). Somehow or another, Journal of Paleontology only charges $12 per article. I realize that different journals have different goals and revenue streams, but it is absolutely unseemly that a society journal like JVP charges that much for its articles. One wonders how many potential purchases (and thus society revenue) are lost in the face of the fee.
- Journals that only allow authors to publish the pre-peer reviewed version of a manuscript. Journal of Morphology and The Anatomical Record get this dubious honor. I can understand asking authors to delay posting the unformatted manuscript or to refrain from posting the published PDF (to allow the journal to recoup some revenue), but it makes no sense to prevent entirely the authors from posting the peer-reviewed, unformatted version. Given the sometimes substantial changes introduced during peer review (which is done by volunteers, and nearly always coordinated by volunteer editors), posting of an unreviewed manuscript has too much potential for making the author as well as the journal look bad. The Journal of Morphology is a particularly egregious offender. I feel a little bad listing The Anatomical Record in this category, because they do have default OA after one year.
- Journals that lock supplementary information behind paywalls. Erecting paywalls for supplementary information may, in some cases, keep the data out of sight of legal readers. Someone who has only a paper reprint or PDF of the printed work legally obtained from the author, or a hard copy in the journal library, cannot access supplementary data. Keep in mind that most journals only minimally format the data, if at all, for publication, so there is no real value added by the publisher beyond posting it on the server. Prime offenders in this category include Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, Historical Biology, and Cretaceous Research.
- Most reader friendly. Criteria: Cost of download, time to OA. Top picks: Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, Palaeontologia Electronica, PLoS ONE, PalArch's JVP. Runners up: PNAS, Science.
- Least reader friendly. Criteria: cost of download, availability of supplementary information, availability of open access and/or author versions. Bottom picks: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Historical Biology, Cretaceous Research.
- Most author friendly. Criteria: OA fee and/or fee waiver, maintenance of author rights, impact factor. Top picks: Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, Palaeontologia Electronica. Good bets: PLoS ONE, PalArch's JVP.
- Best all-around journals: These journals balance needs of the author and reader, using the criteria above. In this case, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica and Palaeontologia Electronica are at the top of the list.
- Best Glamour Magazine: Science, by a long-shot. With the high impact factor that authors crave, and the low download fee and eventual open access that readers love, this journal has the entire package. PNAS is a very close runner-up.
**I would also note that by "readers", I am referring to all possible readers, not just those with society memberships or at institutions with well-stocked electronic libraries.
So Now What?
Vote with your manuscript submissions. Submit only to journals whose policies benefit you. Encourage journals with non-friendly policies to change them. Although it may be tough to change strictly for-profit journals, we may be able to make a difference with society publications. Speak up. Blog about it. Talk to your colleagues. Ask the hard questions of the people who make the decisions. Make a noise at the annual meetings. Let's even the publishing playing field!
Update: Heinrich Mallison posted a nice response to the selection of Palaeontologia Electronica as one of the "best all-around journals" for paleontology, over at their official blog.
What are your thoughts? Weigh in with your own nominations for best/worst, or any additional opinions, in the comment section!
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Paleontology Journals - Policies, Costs, and Accessibility
When preparing to submit a paper for publication, journal choice is critical. Numerous factors play into the decision (distribution, audience, accessibility, and cost, just to name a few), as has been outlined in wonderful detail elsewhere. As I advance in my own research career, publisher behavior has become more important to me. Does the publisher of the journal to which I am submitting my manuscript conduct its business in a manner consistent with my own personal ethics? Who will have access to my research, and how much will it cost them? This is a tough question to sort out, and in reality there are no perfect players. However, in order to make this decision just a little easier, I assembled data about a number of journals relevant to my own research program.
The full data are posted on a freely-accessible Google spreadsheet, and this post explains each of the categories I recorded. Although I have a personal bias towards open access, I have attempted to present the data in the spreadsheet without commentary. Every person will have his or her own opinion about which factors matter most to him or her. In a follow-up post, I will provide my own opinions on which journals are "best". For now, please make up your own mind.
Categories
See the Data:
To view the spreadsheet, you can see the freely-available Google Spreadsheet, or an Excel spreadsheet, or this web page.
Coming up: Which journals do I think deserve applause for their policies?
The full data are posted on a freely-accessible Google spreadsheet, and this post explains each of the categories I recorded. Although I have a personal bias towards open access, I have attempted to present the data in the spreadsheet without commentary. Every person will have his or her own opinion about which factors matter most to him or her. In a follow-up post, I will provide my own opinions on which journals are "best". For now, please make up your own mind.
Categories
- Title: self explanatory
- Publisher / Distributor: This category indicates which organization distributes the journal; this may be the same as the sponsor of the journal, or the work may be contracted to an outside organization.
- Publisher Status: Is the publisher a non-profit or for-profit entity? Some non-profit organizations publish their journals with a for-profit publisher, and some journals are purely non-profit or for-profit.
- Sponsor: As alluded to above, some journals are ultimately coordinated by a scientific society. I understand that some scientific societies receive a portion of the profits from the for-profit publishers, so a journal published by a for-profit entity may not always be a net loss for scientific funding. However, I would caution that no data are available on what percentage of revenue actually reverts to societies.
- OA (Open Access) Default: Some journals automatically post all articles as open access (either immediately or with a delay; indicated as "Yes" on the spreadsheet). Others have open access options only if the authors pay an extra fee (indicated as "No" on the spreadsheet).
- Time to OA: Some OA journals (e.g., PNAS) have closed access for a set period of time (usually one year), and then automatically open the archives.
- OA Fee & OA Fee Waiver: Most journals, even those that are not entirely OA, require a fee for open access. The fee varies from free (e.g., Acta Palaeontologica Polonica) to $3,250 (Historical Biology). In some cases (e.g., PLoS ONE) a fee waiver is available. For delayed OA journals (e.g., PNAS), the fee allows immediate OA posting of the article, rather than free OA after a set amount of time.
- Download Fee: Delayed OA or non-OA journals require that non-subscribers (or those who do not have institutional access) pay a per-article charge. Within paleontology-focused journals, the cheapest is Journal of Paleontology ($12), and the most expensive are Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology and Historical Biology ($41).
- Free Supplementary Data: Increasingly, authors rely on supplementary data to publish and disseminate the measurements, cladistic tables, etc., supporting their papers. Most journals allow non-subscribers to access supplementary data; others (e.g., JVP and Cretaceous Research) require purchase of the entire article (even if the user already has obtained a legal copy as a physical reprint or PDF from the author).
- IF: The "Impact Factor", the most "standard" (if opaque) form of which is calculated by Thomson Reuters, is a measure of the extent to which the articles within a journal are cited. Although this metric is often criticized, it is still an important consideration for many authors, and is thus included here.
- Primarily Paleo?: In assembling this list, not all of the included journals are strictly paleontology-focused (e.g., Proceedings B, Nature). However, because they frequently include paleontology content, I felt it useful to include them.
- Author Rights: Publishers vary greatly in the rights that are left in the hands of the authors. Although copyright issues are certainly important (i.e., whether the copyright remains with the author, or is transferred to a commercial publisher or professional society), here I focused on what the authors are allowed to do with their own work in the context of a personal (or institutional) web page. In some cases, the authors may post the final published PDF; in others, the authors may only post the unformatted text. In the most restrictive case (as mandated by the journal Geology), authors are not allowed to post any version of the article.
See the Data:
To view the spreadsheet, you can see the freely-available Google Spreadsheet, or an Excel spreadsheet, or this web page.
Coming up: Which journals do I think deserve applause for their policies?
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
The OSP on Twitter
For the past few months, I have begun to switch much of my regular on-line communication to Twitter. Like this blog, my Twitter feed (@andyfarke) covers open access issues, recent paleontological discoveries, and the like. I am a bit of a late adopter, but have to say that I'm generally finding it quite useful. If you're not a Twitterhead, you can read the most recent posts in the blog sidebar.
Upcoming post: A survey of open access policies, OA fees, data availability, and the like for many major paleontological journals.
Upcoming post: A survey of open access policies, OA fees, data availability, and the like for many major paleontological journals.
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