I would just like to add some supporting data to your question. Pls see the link below:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner-boycott-science-journals

Would be eager to have a look at the discussion.

Dear Christian, thanks for bringing our attention to this interesting journalistic piece, which is both provoking and controversial in its claims.

But wait a minute, didn't he just write "Luxury-journal editors know this, so they accept papers that will make waves because they explore sexy subjects or make challenging claims". So perhaps the same goes for the Guardian? In order for Randy Schekman to get something published in such a top newspaper, he needs to use some of the same tricks he criticizes scientists for using ;-)

I'm not saying the piece is worthless because of this, far from it - it is important to publish thought-provoking newspaper articles.

His first concern is that scientists get thrown of their track in pursuit of getting published in the top scientific journals, because they are seeking the career benefits which may come with such publication record. I think there's absolutely some truth in this, but I think it's much more complex than he makes it out to be. For the majority of scientists, we don't conduct our research with the explicit aim of publishing in a certain journal. However, when we do stumble across some discovery which we deem so novel and of such broad interest in the scientific community, we submit it to a top journal.

Then he attacks the journal impact factor - fair enough and nothing new. The JIF has been severely criticized for a long time withing the scientific community and even by editors of the top journals such as Science (see the DORA declaration).

So where is he going with this article? It becomes clear after a while. He's advocating open access publications - and oops - he's an editor for an open access publication. He sees these as the perfect solution, no critical comments here! He writes "There is a better way, through the new breed of open-access journals that are free for anybody to read, and have no expensive subscriptions to promote. Born on the web, they can accept all papers that meet quality standards, with no artificial caps." No comments on all the predatory, bogus OA journals out there who are only in it for the horrendous publishing fees, publishing whatever crap they get their hands on, just as long as the authors pay their way to getting their paper published.

There are certainly upsides to open access, but there are also serious flaws with that system, and his inability (or unwillingness) to see that makes this Guardian piece more of a propaganda piece for OA than critical view of the current, highly flawed publication systems we scientists have to live with, both OA and non-OA.

Thanks for your input Björn. I also found advocating his own OA journal discredited the whole piece a bit and left the impression of an advertisement. The oversimplification in the article is the classical black and white approach - which often is assumed in such short articles to transmit a clear cut story. Of course this has benefits - such statements polarise and will give rise to discussions. If that´s what Schekman was trying to provoke, he succeeded ;-)

OA has been around for a few years now and I think with a bit more time they will settle in with the rest of the journals…some prestigious, some in it for the money, some solid on all levels, some to put out small stuff etc pp. and over time the research community will have it´s picture about who is who. I hope.

Another thing that I would be very interested in, is how recruitment and funding is handled in different countries. I would assume not all agencies/institutes around the world give the same priority to impact factor/prestige of journal (and I guess Nature, Cell and Science - and a few more journals will be prestigious without impact factor as well - they have been since before the impact factor was invented). From some colleagues I know that e.g. a PNAS article got them the position (at least they were told afterwards).

I have no own experience as a grant reviewer or recruiter yet. From my experience as an applicant for postdoc fellowships and junior faculty positions I cannot judge what is prioritised…the feedback, if given, is too vague.

About the impact factor itself: any single index - altmetric or what it may be now - one gets a bias in some direction. They all are not 100% accurate and fair to everyone. The "new" web based favour those that spend much time in social media - but are they better scientists? I guess only a combination of indexes and to look at an individual´s CV and to really look at the published work and put it into context of the time it was published will give a more accurate picture of a researchers "capabilities/potential"..but this takes time and time is quite precious. With the masses of applicants (60 and up for a single position) how should this be handled?

Hi Christoph, There are several discussion threads ongoing on RG, both on bibliometrics like JIF, H-index etc, as well on the pros and cons of OA publications.

If you're interested in discussions on the JIF, the DORA declaration is an important document, see e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_your_views_on_the_recently_published_San_Francisco_Declaration_of_Research_Assessment_the_so-called_DORA_document2

another thread on bibliometrics is https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_are_bibliometrics_best_used_in_the_evaluation_of_applicants_for_academic_positions

Cheers, Thrandur

Hm, either this question was tagged wrong, or not many on RG are reflecting about the things that drive science, its funding, how its appreciated in the community and beyond…lets see if retagging helped and that we can get a nice discussion about the pros and cons about prestigious journals and research projects/groups etc going :-)

Thanks Thrandur for the links!