Comments on: Cups, Buckets, Pools, and Puddles: When the Flood of Papers Won’t Abate, Which Do You Choose?

By: Liquid Journals or Lazy Journals — Can Technology Alone Make a Journal? « The Scholarly Kitchen

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 09:32:31 +0000

[...] with the most foolish of them being the dismissal of brand as a marker of quality. By allowing liquid content to pool in myriad puddles instead of being part of a clearly defined brand presence with continuity and consistency on a [...]

By: Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 22:32:56 +0000

Thanks for letting me know (and for sharing the link).

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 22:31:45 +0000

Thanks for the provocative post, Kent. You caught the eye of the American Library Association, in its e-newsletter for July 14: http://link.ixs1.net/s/ve?eli=x690872&si=x98452358&cfc=3html#publishing .

By: David Wojick

David Wojick — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:47:37 +0000

Good point Pam. I don’t have the figures in front of me, but US Federal funding for basic research, which is most of the basic funding here, has probably doubled in just 10 years or so, and continues to climb. First NIH doubled, now NSF, DOE and NIST are on track to do so.

Have the number of journal pages grown apace? If not then the average quality may well be going up, not down.

On the other hand I am not sure the researcher population has expanded with the funding. They may just be doing more expensive research. As usual the demographics are too complicated for simple generalizations. This is a sizable research question.

By: Pam Miller

Pam Miller — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:50:45 +0000

Another consideration regarding quantity is on the supply side. The amount of funding for science has grown exponentially which means the amount of research conducted has grown.

Many more research results to be published, ergo we need more pages to do so.

It is also true (as Megan says) that on-line submission has increased the ability of everyone to submit papers to any journal. Most journals find that when they shift from paper to on-line their submissions rise on average 25%.

What this all means about quality I can’t say. Can we assume that the same percentage of papers are the same quality level now as 20 years ago? If so, there are a larger number of top quality papers.

By: David Wojick

David Wojick — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:17:08 +0000

Regarding your above comment: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2010/07/08/cups-buckets-pools-and-puddles-in-the-age-of-information-abundance-where-do-filters-belong/#comment-16585

This is the first I have heard about budgets for more journals going up. But if they do then that means people want more articles and that is what they should get. If you want a market in which only the n best articles get published then you want rationing, or some other form of control, including artificial “incentives.”

By: Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 19:58:05 +0000

I try to explain why I think it’s happening. I think it’s about incentives. Authors are incentivized to publish as much and as often as they can. Publishers are incentivized to create as many journals as they can. Institutions can expand budgets more easily to buy more journals, but not as easily to pay more for the same journals. I don’t think this is all as noble as “a marketplace of ideas.” I think it’s definitely about a marketplace, though.

I think we’re lapsing into a situation in which journal publishing is becoming more about quantity than quality. There is no specific, a priori number of journals, but the incentives aren’t set up for better journals or papers, just more of them.

By: David Wojick

David Wojick — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 19:54:28 +0000

When you say “the trends are for more journals to be published rather than for high-ranking journals to be worth more” are you claiming that fewer journals is better? How many is best — one, ten?

I am also curious about your “rather than” as though competition and new journals were a bad thing. I would love to bring out a new journal and knock off a leader.

The journal market is a marketplace of ideas. Surely the number of journals is not something to be specified. If the trend is toward more journals there is probably a good reason for that, one I would rather understand than criticize.

By: Richard Sever

Richard Sever — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:54:14 +0000

Kent/David – I think we are all missing the point that, depending on your publication model, there is a huge difference between most (50-80%) and all papers (100%) being published.

If the trend is indeed to the latter and these are published under an author/funder-pays model, that potentially amounts to a massive increase in the overall cost of publication to the academic community (25%-100%).

By: Mike the Mad Biologist

Mike the Mad Biologist — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:54:13 +0000

What about the eigenfactor approach--there are ways to quantify 'second order' article citations.