Thank you Dr Ahed,

we all share the same pain. we should do something about it.

Current publication system must be revised and re-built on new bases. All systems in the world have been changed except the publication system.  As you said dear Ahmad that all this can be done and maintained through this platform (RG), because of the power of collecting such a large number of researchers.

The situation is very pathetic. This can only be possible if ''researchers of all nations (decide to) unite'' in order to break away from the chain publishers have for  a long time put on their necks. Journal editors, those who are renown in each discipline should lead this freedom fight.

Dear Ahmad, you have a great proposal. Much difficulties may arise in realizing it, but I believe that the realization of the proposal is worth trying.

Anice discussion on this problem you can found in Peter Krautzberger blog:

http://boolesrings.org/krautzberger/2012/11/11/the-forum-of-mathematics-blessing-or-curse/

Fully agree and endorse this great courageous initiative. Let's publish, not even think of perishing! Let's stop predatory practice - be it open or closed, paper or electronic.

Lots of people in the publication industry will loose their jobs in this liberating process, but they will be creative enough to create new ones, e.g. joining and supporting us out of genuine solidarity (no free riders please). We will need a lot of supporters, hands and brains, because there is much in the current process which is still worth to take up and optimize in the new model of publication ARP.

University administration will be quite upset by the very idea of ARP, because it deprives them - so it might seem to them - from an easy instrument of pseuso-quality-management (counting pubs and cits in selected journals, cf. critical voices in the field of scientometrics). How do we convince them to align with us, because it is good for them, too?

Many questions, many challenges, many ideas .... hopefully leading to many EUREKA's! Let's go for it and tell our sincere colleagues. Time has come for it now. This initiative proves it.

Freedom of Thought for all Researchers and Scholars!

P.S.: Of course we may learn from not few colleagues outside RG who have worried about and struggled with current publications practices. The basic problem is that most if not all younger scientists believe that those publication practices are required and that no alternatives exist. Once they happen to hear about alternatives, it may already be too late for them ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Gedanken_sind_frei

thanks Ahed good point we should take care of our universities, thanks @Emeka I share the same hope and fears.

@ Paul Hubert Vossen thanks for your enthusiastic, this is the soul  we need.

@Tatsuo thanks for encouraging.

@Costas thanks for the information 

@Mahfuz thnks for support

@Andrew thanks for support and clarifications

@Marcel yes I did published Novel info at RG, we will creat new jobs too.

added to my previous posting:

P.S.: Of course we may learn from not few colleagues outside RG who have worried about and struggled with current publications practices. The basic problem is that most if not all younger scientists believe that those publication practices are required and that no alternatives exist. Once they happen to hear about alternatives, it may already be too late for them ...

with our big army  (hopefully) of researchers  the quality and speed of the publication process will be much higher than ever, because instead of sending the article to 3 or 4 reviewers who are busy doing other things and/or who are not onto the contribution of the paper, our ARP has All researchers ready for reviewing, each research check online submissions and choose to review what ever he/she thinks it fit them, and because of that, and since they choose by their own desire and interest, they will do it faster and more accurate. in addition, a large number of reviews will be made for a single paper, this allows more justice in the final decision and young researchers will then get reasonable comments to help them improve their work, instead of non-related comments that they are receiving from  current publication systems.

My friend Paul Hubert Vossen 

Those young researchers are our students, we know how to direct them to the right way.

Thanks for the excellent idea about recruiting more researcher from elsewhere. 

as you said before our new army will produce many Eurekas

Please share this idea with your peers on RG (your followers and people you follow) and elsewhere. But don't be fooled - there have been some similar approaches worldwide, even here on RG. I agree on having a huge pool of potential with RG.

How to make it happen? It is important to start with something that can show benefits from this approach in short time. RG Projects are not available anymore as it seems. Do we have to gather elsewhere?

Dear Dr. Ahmad, Dear All,

This is a brave suggestion for starting the one thousand miles journey. Many of us know that there is currently a big business which reaps huge profits from academic scholars who are really cornered & tied by regulations which serve the big business. I am sure that this suggestion will be met by fierce resistance in the short run but I think that the suggestion will overcome all the obstacles & will win in the long run provided that it is supported by a large number of scholars & university managements.

I think you agree with me that the existing systems of research & publication contain too much fallacy. Had there been truth in what are claimed, then man would have reached Pluto, cured all the diseases, and moved very close to Eutopia.

Dear Michael Brückner

thank you very much for proposing to share this idea by everyone who is interested, I think this is exactly what we need right now, to spread the project, if each shared this idea with their followers and friends outside RG, we will get a domino effect  by then.

Dear Dr. Nizar Matar

Thank you for your support and interest, indeed there is a large number of fallacy research, published in very high reputable journals, because they are based and abide by their business models. this kind of research mislead young researchers and destroy science, ARP will fight this fenomenum, how? thanks to the large number (hopefully) of reviewers, if one made a mistake, the others may not..

P.S. for more information about false research in science you may refer the work of Fausto Galetto at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fausto_Galetto/contributions?ev=brs_act

Dear Ahmad,

To my mind , the most shocking is that with our system, the human knowledge is not at disposure of all, and not accessible to all because of money and differences between the life level of countries in the world.

Results of research, like art, culture is the property of all humans and their heritage.

It is as shoking for me as the researchers or industrialists  who want to patent our genes, because they made discoveries  in genetics. Always because of the money generated by some discoveries. Genome is the sole property of humans, all humans.

But the paradox is that main money given for research is provided by these same industrialists (private funds) who are able to perform research tansfer to current use.

"a snake bitting itself its tale".

But we have to fight for a changing in the system.

Also are right Ahed's words: we have to change also the system of researcher evaluation,  based in many countries on publications in high IF journal, with the calculation of their H-index (IF of the review and citation of his/her papers). But I have already said that in other topics.

Regards

Didier 

It is encouraging to read these comments. Of course our research should be made freely available. I am disturbed to see research carried out with public funds sold by private companies. This is already changing, thanks to web sites like ResearchGate and Academia.edu, where people without institutional, paid access to scientific publications may download texts, or at least contact the author for requesting a private e-mailing of a published work. Your proposal sounds like a great idea, Ahmad, and could be developed into an important project, with a lot of work and careful planning.

Ahed, I share your concern about institutional pressures to publish in high-impact journals, often managed by private companies. For the most part I do not send my work to such journals. The few times I have, I was sorry, because the reviewers were obviously not experts in the subjects I was discussing, and I could not make the changes they were insisting on without ruining the papers. ResearchGate has the advantage of permitting me to share work published at the regional and national levels that would otherwise not get much international attention.

The existing culture of publication perhaps is one of the many systems of society that fail to serve its scientific purpose and society at large but  we simply live with it with out trying to change it.  The system is old, non-inclusive, abusive and club-like that store knowledge in locks and make it accessible only to people of wealth. Even authors are not permitted to use their results from these journals unless they pay for it.

There was a similar thread sometime ago in which I said, if people are willing to offer their hard labored products free to companies like Walmart in order their products to only be packed and displayed, but the companies' sole purpose is to make profit, then the people may be not thinking right.

Similarly why scientists and learnt people send their works to such companies in order their works to be posted on their storage facilities - journals, inaccessible to almost all who have no money while these companies make profits by selling works of others is a little discomforting. It is a good beginning to start a debate about it and forward  such a good proposal on RG.

In traditional journal the reviewing is done prior to publication.  Why not having a system allowing automatic acceptance and with reviewing being done on a voluntary basis after first publication and where different revisions would be done.  Prestigious traditional journals are prestigious because the reviewers are top scientists guarantying a top quality.  If a publication is publish in ARP then the scientist could tries to convince  many prestigious scientists to review his/her publication which would increase a score of prestige associate with each publication and so quality would not be sacrificed.  Papers would never be rejected but poor quality papers would never get a high prestigious score which only the paper generating a high consensus on the part of the scientific community would receive.  And so unknown scientist whose publications would rise in prestige would automatically rise in prestige even though they may not even have a job into an university and be part of the old boy club.  Why not having research money for prestigious researchers , those that proove themself, but live in a poor country where funding is insufficient. 

Ahed wrote, "Another point is the university system which places pressure on researchers to publish in certain journals. the importance of research itself is not evaluated, and the all importance is for the journal itself. this policy has to be reconsidered."

While the former is important fact at some institutions, most of the decision as to which journals are to be considered most important have come from the fields of study themselves.  For example in Political Science, APSA,

http://www.apsanet.org/

is the agency/organization in America which has had the most sway.  In short, targeting universities can only be done directly by targeting  those institutions which set or create the value system, which any university may adopt. 

Dear Ahmad, very nice proposal, in principle. Have you thought about technical issues, for example possible sources of funding for creating such a journal? But, why not, it seems democratic and fair...

it is clear that the current publication system should be reviewed. The metrics should be avoided too, each journal should catch his market business only by its marketing and sponsoring policies not on researchers and scientists prestige or papers. Reviewing process is generally based on journal's seriousness, however it shouldn't be blind. Reviewers must be listed on the reviewing panel as the editorial and the scientific boards are. Student papers and research papers should be distinguished too. Universities should encourage their internal publications (with international scientific and reviewing boards and process).

Researchers promotion should be build on a system of collaborative, educative, supervising, communicating, editing, publishing, etc... policies not on IF publication only. H index must be for journals not for researchers metrics, journals(for their marketing business) could catch the best scientific contributions and  share them to capture more citations as it is not the job of the researcher to search for people interesting by his works. Publications from poor, less developed and developing countries should be encouraged. Same metrics couldn't be attributed to poor labs and developed or prestigious labs and universities...

Dear Demetris

the business  model based on converting some of the papers to products, in industry or business or any field, with the copy rights shared by both ARP and the author. this will also solve the problem of patents.

for starting the project share holders (all researchers) will pay the share price, we are are talking about millions of researchers and millions of dollars (the price of the shares) as the firm is owned by all researchers.

the objective of this project is not to make money, it is to put science back on track.

thanks My dears Fairouz, Kevin, Louis, Dejenie and All research fellows

RG has a great power to carry on such a project, because this platform collect and group us together, so it is possible, but I can't do it alone, we need to push this project forward by sharing it first and recruit a large number of researchers who believe in it, every thing is amendable based on the desire of the majority of the researchers, it is not my project it is yours and you are the driving power, the more of us who support this project, the nearest it will be to reality ...

Dear Demetris and fellow RG researchers:

The current system of publication in leading scientific journals must be changed, and sooner the better. This is based on my long experience (summarized below) with the refereed publications in reputed journals (like JBC, BJ, Biochemistry, Gastroenterology, BBA etc.) 25 years ago compared to the present time. There has been much degradation over the years. Recently, I was trying to reintroduce my old dual topology proton-pump model in order to revive the vital P2-ATPase field (relying on 56-year old Post-Albers scheme) that grinded to a halt over a decade ago.

Among all the journals I approached during the past year, I found only the F1000 (open access journal) to be receptive to publish. However, they also cannot do anything if the peer-reviewers do not submit any comment in spite of repeated requests.    The journals where I originally published those novel data (mentioned above) denied publishing my new articles.  The only reason I could think of is that someone influential in the editorial board who is sold to PA model did not want my articles to be published. And there are many of them around. Briefly, here is the scenario.   

The whole thing started (in the early 1980’s) while studying the molecular mechanism of action and regulation of the gastric Proton-pump that I happened to discover few years ago with John Forte and Allen Ganser of UCB.  Soon we realized that the ongoing Post-Albers model (proposed in 1958) was unable to accommodate our consistently genuine data. While looking for an alternate model for Proton-pump we discovered that the single topology PA model was based on fundamental wrong assumptions. When corrected for these errors we came up with the dual topology model (BJ, 1986) which accommodated all our data resolving the existing discrepancies in the literature.  Around the same time, we purified and characterized the 80 k Da. cytosolic protein regulating (allosterically) the function of proton-pump under Ca-signaling. However, our new discoveries failed to get the needed attention since the P2-ATPase people were sold to the PA model then.

In the early 2000, I decided to jump in and try to revive the dead field which can only offer molecular nature of the Na-pump for homeostasis that is so critical for human health, especially in the area of heart diseases and brain function. Please go to my RG site to be familiar with my work.

I am so happy to be in RG.

Tushar Ray

There are many flaws in the publication system and a large number of erroneous articles are being published misleading the researchers. In most Journals, positive recommendations from just three reviewers are needed for acceptance of an article irrespective of the credentials of the reviewer. This may often lead to erroneous decisions. Suggested ARP approach through RG seems to be a good proposition whereby every article posted on RG will be open to a transparent rating mechanism based on a large number of concerned reviewers

A pioneer approach to publication philosophy has already been done with RG: you can publish your work, get a DOI and, if your works is interesting, people will view or download it. I am positive for a proposal like ARP, but I think that researchers have not enough time to work in a business like manner as shareholders. Maybe this ARP could start from old researchers, retired from universities and with big financial background, just for opening the road to the new ones: Start it and we follow...

Dear Tushar and fellow researchers:

you pain is our pain, when money comes first, anything comes second at most.

we need to start the road map of our plan for change, I propose:

1- share and spread our discussions in this matter to reach a large number of fellow researcher. the largest the number the higher the effect.

2- send warning message to the current publication system to improve it self.

3- if step 2 not work, start to boycott the current publication system, by stopping publishing with them, and wait 1 month to see if this work.

4- if step 3 did not work, start to launch our project through RG preferable.

5- if the RG solution did not work, we will start our own firm. and platform.

I support the proposal. A mechanism for assessing the importance of every article, based on the readers' reponse, may be evolved.

Good to point to the problem of patents dear Ahmad. Many publications (especially the technical ones in applied science) could be put on practice 'or arranged for the purpose of the application) by any industry or business agency. As the paper's copyrights are transferred to the journal, authors and institutions automatically loose their rights from intellectual property as well their benefits from knowledge transfer to industry or business agency. If the industrial or business application could gain millions of dollars to the stakeholders of the agency or company, authors of the paper are not joined to this benefice and do not catch any dollar. So the problem is real for researchers, their institutions and their knowledge usage.

Dear Fairouz,

You have raised a good point about paper's copyrights.  When they are transferred to the journal, authors and institutions automatically loose their rights from intellectual property as well their benefits from knowledge transfer to industry or business agency.

I think this can be a good subject to discuss by all colleagues.

The old system of scientific publishing shows some aspects creaky (one of these was identified excellently by Fairouz). The new advances (full text online upon payment of a fee for printing) was born for this, then, I believe that we are all invited to be open to innovation, but at the same time to distinguish between innovation and garbage.

Yes, of course, but how can we distinguish "garbage" from serious ones, in particular  for the youngers, and when we  don't know very well the journals ?

In parallel, if you look at the prices for full text online or printing paper, it can be ie 35 euros each one, that's impossible for researchers in some countries for only one paper.

And for open acces journals (without printed editions), that's the authors who have to pay to provide  the papers foir all researchers, but with  a coast of 1500 to 3000 euros in general.

Not really a solution at the moment to my mind. 

Regards

Didier

@Didier, I fully agree with you. I wanted only to highlight that these ambiguous editorial system (enclosed payment fee) finds its origin from some dysfunctions in conventional editorial system. I should like to emphasize that not always accepted papers are really the best. And what do you say about some journals which are obliged to reject good papers only because they impact factor decreases if they increase the number of issues in order to publish all the good contributiuons they receive?

This discussion shows that all of us agree that there is a big problem with current publication system and patent system as well, which takes around five years to get patent, paying a lot of money.

There got to be something that we can do....

Yes Enzo, I agree.

All contributes to bias   the system; and as you said, especially the method  of IF and H-index calculation (underlined by Fairouz).

You said: "Decrease of their IF iwhen they increase the number of papers published", but  also the journals  which increase artificially  their IF by self-citation (and incitement  of authors to do that when they are published in their journal), which is a fraud.

That leads Reuters to exclude each year some journals of IF classification.

Regards

Didier

May be universities and research institutes should put their publications online 'after internal revisions following the universal accepted guidelines'  before submission to international journals. These institutions should be committed with high scientific editorial committees for revision quality and seriousness and should publish all theirs papers accepted or none accepted by journals with the CV of their authors, their status 'student, senior,follow...' and the contribution of each in the paper's content. I think that first this could enhance the visibility of the institution, second it could reduce predatory influence (if it exists) from journals or any industry or business company and third it could save the research at a certain percentage from  misuse. Of course this couldn't prevent certain external or internal interests to some papers and may be some predatory or cheating influence through or with internal administrative or research staffs in absence of quality management rules and top control staff

Thanks Dr Tushar, for sharing your experience .

"Uprising: Less prestigious journals publishing greater share of high-impact papers"

source: http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2014/10/uprising-less-prestigious-journals-publishing-greater-share-high-impact?utm_campaign=email-news-latest

 I think change must be done, as you side Dr.Ahmad researchers are the keystone, so they have to work together to do something against such publication system.

we support your great idea .

thanks Eman

I haven't been around for a month or so, because I could not stand the removal of our friend (Fausto) account ..

there is a similar try to ours regarding the publication process it is the DORA declaration:

http://www.ascb.org/dora/