Publishing Past, Present, and Future

Where do you get your scientific information? How do you select journals to read (or listen to)? How much do you trust the source? Who pays for your ability to receive that scientific content? These questions are part of a global discussion around the plan for open-access scientific publishing known as Plan S (1). As editor-in-chief of a society-sponsored journal, I became curious about the origins of scientific publishing as a prism through which to consider Plan S. In this editorial I ask, How did we get to the model of scientific publishing that we have today, and is it right for our collective future?

Unsurprisingly, the origin of scientific publishing tracks with the origin of the scientific method. In a prior editorial I talked about the chaos that existed in the 1500s, before a rigorous way of performing and reporting an experiment was devised (2). The “scientific method” provided methods for conducting research, and the results were described in letters sent to the Royal Society in England. This was followed by a visit to present them in person. Accepted scientific products were reported by the Society in its Philosophical Transactions. In this way, a scientific society provided the peer-reviewed determination of value as well as the ultimate publication of members’ work. Chaos was tamed, it would seem, until now.

The tradition of presenting a first-person account of research continues in today’s scientific meetings, including our own ENDO each year. Endocrinology, founded 102 years ago by the Endocrine Society, née the Association for the Study of Internal Secretions, is our vehicle for assessment of data, publication, and then dissemination. The eponymous journal, and the Society (that’s made up of us) provides venues (meetings and publishing units) for presentation, discussion, and review of emerging data, and the education of generations of new members. This partnership between the people that do the work and the Society we organize to create context for our work is the strength of the field that is “endocrinology.”

Let’s drill down now to the specifics of this topic, to the mechanism of publication. Endocrinology handles 1000 submissions each year and publishes 240 papers. Our processes are established to curate the best science by peer assessment, editing, and processing for consistent and broad dissemination. Although the system works fairly well, each paper costs money to publish, and that scientific content is then sold to libraries to recoup costs and to make a small margin. (The scale of the margin is directly correlated to the number of clinical eyes on the ads in the literal margins.) At the Endocrine Society, we freely provide the full run of Endocrinology to Endocrine Society members digitally at https://dbpia.nl.go.kr/endo. The public is free to read Endocrinology issues from January 1996 through the issue one year before the current issue, which is a lot! Subscribing libraries have access to all content from 1996. Moreover, some authors elect to pay for a license that ensures open access to their work from the date of its publication, an arrangement known as hybrid open access.

Endocrinology, like many other scientific journals, moved toward the model of hybrid open access years ago. So, what is now in question? Adherents to Plan S claim that even hybrid models—essentially any costs transferred from funders for publication unless in fully open-access venues—are not justified. It is oddly ironic that the term “open access” superficially claims a moral high ground: who can possibly argue with scientific content being free and available in the broadest way possible? But there is a downside to absolutism, namely that without a clear funding model to cover the legitimate costs of society publishing, “open access” will further a “rich get richer” world in science; there would be science that someone is willing to publish and other science that would languish.

Without societies, our meetings, and our journals, we would lose whole fields of study. Whatever their good intentions, the Plan S ideologues have to know that science is not open if it can’t see the light of day. In other words, would all science be equally valued in this model, or would some science not make the cut? Would we be reduced to writing letters to each other about discoveries we made and hope someone reads that letter? Rather than free for all, I think science would be in freefall. I argue that scientific societies, their meetings, and their journals are all necessary to the organized advancement of the broadest types of science. If foundations with money are able to call the shots, we will be reduced to one view of what matters—theirs. At least the Royal Society had a Curator of Experiments!

The bottom line is that it costs money to select, curate, disseminate, and maintain quality scientific content. We go to graduate school and further train as postdoctoral fellows for up to 10 years to learn how to construct scientific arguments. This stuff isn’t easy. Funders, after spending serious money to support a scientist and his or her work, will be penny wise and pound foolish if they follow Plan S policies that would alter the current homeostasis associated with scholarly engagement in scientific publishing.

This debate is not just about who pays a few thousand dollars to publish an accounting of the scientific discoveries. It is really about the future of science discovery itself. What is the future of scientific societies? Who gets to vet and approve scientific content? The answers should be ours to write, and we hope there will be quality journals left in which to publish the answers!

References and Notes

Author notes