Modern Sisyphus - are scientist's smart to publish in academic journals today?

The publishing of academic work is a tightly controlled process, with critical review taking months and sometimes years of work that needs to stand the test of "experts" believing in your work for it to reach print. This is to ensure quality to avoid that bad, or even misleading work, do not get the quality stamp "scientific" and "peer reviewed". The idea is good, but is it fair under current day standards and is it even abused?

Historically

Testing your experiments against the criticism of your equals is an old concept that dates back before the time of natural scientists. In the age of alchemists and early time of the natural scientists it was simply to dangerous to openly speak of your ideas and theories without putting your life and limbs at stake in Europe. So, the ideas and results was coded or secretly sent between trusted individuals within the same field for commenting or simply sharing the progresses. One such network that included historical figures such as Sir Cheney Culpeper, Benjamin Worsley, and Rober Boyle that were possibly members of the Invisible College.

When the work of national philosophers were vindicated by people in power in the 17^th century discussing theories and results became more public accepted. Actually, in the early days of science the researcher had to perform the experiment in front of a live audience, trying to convince them – the predecessor of today's scientific presentation. Eventually the written form went public and commonly the universities provided the press.

Up into our time the published articles has been taken on by a large and increasing number of publishers. Some mastodons almost monopolizing whole sectors and others grass roots and independent publishers. Today publishing is associated with costs for the journal due to staff and printing costs, but it may have gone a bit out of hand.

Exploitation of researchers in publishing

A scientist today can rarely avoid frequent invitations to review articles, publishing in new journals (often for a fee), share their knowledge in book chapters (often for a fee), not to mention a horde of new conferences inviting your to give a presentation (but often for the fee of attending). It is hard to see this as short of exploitation.

This is probably a “natural” development of how we build our academic sector today. Scientists work for free, or pays, to share the most recent advances to the world. The more people you want to reach with the new knowledge – the more expensive it is (such as making your article Open Access in most journals).

For comparison, consider a journalist. Journalists are seen by many scientists as counter productive to progress since the information they provide to the public often is distorted and misleading making the increasing of knowledge so much harder. The journalist has a much wider audience and the journalist get paid to publish! This puts the voice of scientists at a clear disadvantage since damage control within their field is work that is pro bono.

Just, to highlight the main differences, consider the following generalized financial differences...

General perspective on costs and salary in publishing
	Journalist	Scientist
Writer is measured on how much is published and by the popularity of the published paper?	Yes	Yes
Writer is paid to write?	Yes	No
Writer is paid to review?	Yes	Rarely
Costs can be associated with publishing for writer?	No	Yes
If made available for free the writer pays for it?	No	Yes
If made available for free or published in larger quantities the writer is paid more due to extended use of creative material?	Yes	No

... in short the researcher can suck waxed fruit!

In addition there is a long row of similar things about content, such as integrity, thoroughness of background research, spelling and language, speculation on material presented etc. that are very different depending on whether a scientist or journalist is to publish their material (sadly enough).

Looking at this kind of set-up it is difficult to publish an article without getting a bitter taste in the mouth. One do not feel very clever doing so unless you have a huge sense of Utopia (like me). Actually, it is scary how easy it is to earn fair money for your efforts by taking on a journalist-hat and write a science-sounding article (qualified or not) for a pet magazine or the like.

Good journals do exist

One of my favourite journals is Vet Med Zoot. It is free to publish in. It is journal controlled by an university. It has an impact factor (important to bosses of researchers). It has a good editorial board. It is Open Access. Down side is that MedLine has not listed it yet and it is thus not searchable by researchers only using this tool. But, the journal is close to what the original idea of a publication was supposed to be. More of that please!

Doctor of Philosophy - Wanted: Philosophical King

After listening to the Danish radio program Agenda's questioning Europa's democracy and transformation into technocracies I felt there was cause for reflection on one of the institutions most eagerly morphing to become reflections of the government - the university.



Or, as the Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves would put it (for the Estonian readers):

Vaid optimaalsus ja efektiivsus ei saa olla eesmärgiks. Olemise mõte ja ideed pole aga arvepidamises. Ma tõesti soovin, et dialoog Eesti Ühiskonnas ei algaks ega lõpeks maksejõulisuse argumentidega. Palju olulisem on meie elujõulisus.

Philosopher king wanted
The radio program starts wisely with Plato's "The State" - the philosophical work on what an ideal government should be. According to Plato governing should not fall in the hands of democracy (which he found the least suited form) and not to be governed by soldiers or craftsmen. His reason was that these rulers would be to narrow minded. Or in other words too technocratic and too obsessed on fitting everything into the narrow field of world view they had mastered. Thus being incapable of the most important skills a ruler needs: reason and wisdom. The ruler should have a learned and flexible mind and with an Utopian vision (an ideal). Or in other words: a philosopher king.

Plato put it in these words:

Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race. (Republic 473c-d)

Technocracy and the strangulation of innovation
The philosophers interviewed in the radio program Agenda were highlighting that we currently stand at a tipping point where democracy is turning into a paper shuffling technocracy. In some countries, such as Italy, this is currently a last resort to a dire crisis.
The victory march of the technocratic approach is inevitably resulting in the strangulation of innovative thoughts, the rejection of responsibility, and a system that is turning on itself. This is shown very well in the bewilderment of governments that puzzled and desperately are trying to give adrenalin boosts to the national innovation (assuming this is their life boat) and getting nowhere fast.

Though Plato's ideas probably are not applicable today where the systems currently are so complex that no one man can get the full overview, there are many good points to pull out from his early warning and the cards we have been dealt today.


The philosophy void of present day
Today philosophy is something most would think of as a specialization choice - even by most who have a degree saying "Doctor of Philosophy" like myself. But from the time of Plato up to present time, philosophers keep repeating that everybody should be capable of philosophy. Our kids should be spoon fed this skill in kinder garden!

For those who think philosophy ranks lower than mathematics, reading, and music skills, here is a reminder:
Philosophy is the study of problems connected with our foundation as human beings such as: existence, knowledge, mind, language, and values.
How can you choose what is a good research project, the direction of a university, or how to explain what is right to your children if the skill (philosophy) is never taught, or at best considered a past time curiosity?

When the degree of Ph.D. came into existence the existing possible curriculum at that time still allowed a student to know a broad range of subjects - including philosophy. Today the title remains, but if the vision extend past the listed target keywords of funding even the best innovative ideas may not be understood. Such researchers may have to look for a different job.

Self-reflection
I miss the visibility of philosophy and vision in leadership today. Everybody should be able to define "what is value?" or "what is knowledge?" before they get a position in a university - not least a Ph.D! And at the same time the leaders could re-evaluate the real cost-benefit of educating people to become highly independent and abstract thinkers in the pursuit of breaking the bonds of the possible and then force them to spend the majority of the the time filling forms correctly.  

Image: CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY

Industry Interest in Science or Science Interest in Industry?

Birute Miskiniene from the Lithuanian Ministry of Education and Research spoke to me and a group of university heads and education coordinators of the Baltic States yesterday (BOVA University). We were there to comment on the future strategy of collaboration of higher education between the Baltic States.
Miskiniene spoke about the future and the policy of education in Lithuania. She highlighted in bold and repeated over and over again was that universities and scientists had to be find a connection to the industry in every way (teaching, research, Ph.D.-students...)! The retorics was no longer a polite encouragement, but for once a specific political finger on the sore spot.

We see that everywhere now - it is being forced down on the education. But when listening to this (there was no oppotunity of asking questions) the feeling of dispair turned to optimism when I turned things on their head. I will explain.

The case in a nutshell:
Politicians and industry point of view.
They want bangs for their bucks! They thus think the best strategy is to combine academic work with industry in a total makeover of the academic world. The responsebility is put on the academic world as an obligation to feed the industry with useful products and tailored students for positions in the industry. I would say the logic makes sense practically a long way, if the academic world only produced engineers (and engineers are very useful people I think).

Academics point of view
Academics want to do science! Science is not product engineering! It is discovery! It is partly intuitive and spring from the freedom of pursuing ideas and understanding in depth! Bold risky ideas - test - fail/succeed. At best, science is a discipline guided by moral and ethics - and this often does not harmonize with dancing to the pipe of industry. The forced model makes it more difficult to pursue basic understanding of say the intestinal system of an animal, because they can only get money for drug design and testing by collaboration with the industry. The intellectual property rights is another tragedy of this shotgun marriage that further paralyze important information from benefiting people on a wider scale.   

But why is it scientists and the university has to chase industrial collaborators and funds? Why not the other way around?

The more I thought about this the crazier this seemed. I will here boldly claim that:

It is the industry and politicians lack of imagination and will to seek opportunities that stops them from taking advantage of basic research already being done - and there for the taking!

What am I talking about? Example:
Let us say I make a basic study of the most basic form of epidemiology: estimating how common a virus is in a population. Let us say I find it in 20% of the population where it cause illness in a modest 0.2% of the population. Especially children and immunocompromised people would be in danger. What could industry and politicians do with that knowledge if the really wished to make use of it?

• Diagnostic Laboratories - development of accurate methods to detect the disease and sell the diagnostics
• Doctors - Possibility to detect disease, avoid some deaths and reduce the days people have to be sick
• Population - More people diagnosed, treated, surviving, and prevented from infections = more working people.
• Politics - Showing awareness to health of the population. Meeting future international demands before they arrive (lowering costs for fast implementation).
• Food industry - If the food is transmitted by food, and they connect to voluntary control programs, or see the need to begin them (with government perhaps) to be able to safely export products that can transmit the disease. 
• Medical industry - higher sale of products for treatment of disease. New markets.
• Tourism - Documentation of a disease decline or raise is important to what people will eat or trust in the country. Avoiding getting a bad reputation for being a disease hub on the map by being proactive and giving accurate advice.
• Journalism - Misinterpretation of scientific information and misguiding the public (sorry, I really think these people do a lot of harm) - or perhaps in the future it may be possible: to educate the public soberly about relevant preventive measures.
• Insurance companies - Who are in the risk group? Does it influence work performance, death, personal risks?
• Schools and nurseries - how to prevent spread and detect symptoms before an outbreak.  
• Lawyers - well they are basically everywhere from rights, safety regulations, politics regulations, contracts etc.
• and so on...

Any of these examples of groups that could and would benefit from just looking into what universities are actually doing already in the name of science only requires a phone call from the group to the scientist saying: "Hey, we can use what you wrote in your article what would it cost to explore/present/write on aspect X?"
 
In my head, industry is there to know how ideas are sell-able and have to be pro-active. Scientists should (continue) to test ideas and concentrate on expanding their insight in depth in areas that would otherwise remain uncharted. Not the other way around.

Voting with a Green Frog - Renewable Energy in Estonia

Estonian Energy has launched a very interesting new initiative in the pursuit of being more green named Green Energy (Roheline Energia). Though the terms and conditions mainly is protection of the trademark (a green frog, thus the illustration) the actual idea is very good! 

This is the deal: You choose to buy electricity from Eesti Energia at a slightly higher price (example: heating package: 10.86 EUR/kwh daytime and 6.83 EUR/kwh night time Green Energy versus standard 9.92 EUR/kwh daytime and 5.79 EUR/kwh night time for the same package, 1st November 2011). For the 9-15% extra on the bill Eesti Energia obligate itself to provide this amount of energy to your household using renewable energy sources (not including the trick of including firewood in that equation):

4. ORGANISATION OF GREEN ENERGY SALES
4.1 The Seller sells to the Buyer Green Energy, which is electricity generated in the Republic of Estonia from wind and hydro energy. Where the local generation capacity fluctuates or changes the Seller may sell renewable energy from other sources or generated in other countries as Green Energy

4.2 If the sales of Green Energy exceed the volumes of wind and hydro energy generated and purchased, the Seller shall not sign any new Green Energy contracts until additional wind and hydro energy sources become available.

OK, so a company is (finally) making renewable energy and selling it - so what?

The great thing is that you, the consumer, can choose! Basically you get the chance to vote with your electrical bill how important this is to you (if you can afford it). To me this is a door opened by Eesti Energia to see what people want and sell it. Clever!

I think these initiatives could and should spread to other sectors too - give the consumer a choice. If the balance tilt in favor of the majority demanding Green Energy (or other trademarks) then the politicians might one day even put on the needed penalties on polluting energy sources and reverse the funding picture presented above.

Reinventing Science - From Journals to Open Science

Michael Nielsen gives a very nice historical overview on the culture of sharing scientific information at his TED presentation in Waterloo.

As also stated here in the blog, the scientist are generally not rewarded by sharing their information openly. This seems to be a main inhibitor for data and ideas reaching their full potential. The systems financing scientists are simply not geared to welcome sharing discoveries openly. Scientists "jobs" are basically to mass produce articles in quantity as it is a demand in many universities - not to let their ideas have sex with others and advance knowledge faster. This is also turned by the Scientific American in an article from October.

One of my favorite references on the failure of the reward system is Daniel Pinks summarizing of 50 years of research on the subject. And the result is deafening: rewards impair the cognitive abilities! Or, a carrot on a stick makes you dumber. 

Nielsen excel in his talk by making a sucker punch to the sceptics when describing how one of the greatest human monuments, The Human Genome Project. This effort would have been an absolute failure had the idea of Open Science not eventually been forced upon the researchers by grant providers. Researchers were simply too busy "doing science" (publishing) to have time to upload genome sequences. These sequences now uploaded and publicly accessible are feeding hundreds of new science projects just by existing.

It takes bravery, especially by young scientists, to openly embrace and promote Open Science (flattered). But we have to if we are to change the rewarding system of scientists so the scientific community (an others) can benefit openly by the research.

And to those who have not read the previous posts on Open Science I answer "no" in advance to the inevitable referring to journals as already embodying Open Science. Peer reviewed journals are not "open" even when offering the "Open Access" option! Open Access is restricted by people having enough finances to publish for everybody to access the publication. And rarely data sets follow a publication. 

Lots of work to be done!

Michael Nielsen on Open Science and his book on the subject Reinventing Science:

Open Scource Teaching Platforms - The Post-Gutenberg Era

Since my university joined the "University of Life"-wave it has kind of been in the cards that the language of teaching should be English and open to a wider group of international students. Higher education has since been continuously forced to find new sources of income to replace budget cuts. This it is difficult without compromising the integrity. Or as the engineer joke goes: "You can get the job done fast, cheap, and well done - but you can only choose two of the options!" This principle however evades quite a few management systems - and I suspect there could be a moral loophole to sort of get all 3 (such as thinning down the integrity).

One quite obvious movement towards meeting these budget cuts is that universities and even students put their heads and resources together across the borders to create the tools that are too heavy to design alone. The especially true for small universities like my own. Creating free teaching materials seems to be an powerful way of meeting both lecturers, students, and the universities limited resources.

Before I continue I wish to share a small anecdote from reality related to what I wrote previously: "Change must come through the barrel of a gun!" - when push comes to shove, the creative mind kicks in.
A female acquaintance working in the military as a programmer was invited to play a war game with the officers some years ago. She was put in charge of a country and set to handle the simulated conflicts. The officers were unaware that she was a very experienced role-player and played to win - with a twist. Before she won the war game she was presented with the dilemma: "Your motorized transports have stopped their progress due to unforeseen technical complications caused by weather conditions in the enemy territory." To this she answered her adviser: "My Brother, shoot one of the engineers and tell the rest they got one hour to solve the problem, or the next one will be shot. Continue to do so until the problem is solved! Live Magnolia, home of peace and harmony!"   
The will to survive is a hard point to argue with, regardless if it is your desire to breathe or your accumulated academic efforts.

So, what have people come up with to solve the designing of teaching materials in collaboration and openly accessible to students?

One well known platform is the Wikibooks, which I briefly mentioned previously. One critiqued element of this platform is that anyone can edit it. This can be considered a problem if you wish to ensure a specific integrity of the material - or there are specific points where the scientific community is polarized about ("creation" just to take an obvious one). Another problem is the static book-form of the material. The linear setup of a normal book is replicated in the Wikibooks. This can be a problem if you want to pick-and-choose elements for your specific course.

Recently I found the Connexions website through a presentation by Richard Baraniuk. This platform seems a bit more advanced for university teachings. It is also open-source and the material is creative commons. Students can read online or order books that are published on demand (thus 1/5 of the normal price of an education book). Writers can add material as modules which allow flexibility when teachers are putting together text material particularly for your course. And best of all, you can create a so called "lens" that fits your institution for quality control. The lens is a predefined peer-review process of people and institutions that checks the content of the material.

A final observation is that if we are to meet students where they learn today, not even reading is sufficient alone. Visualisation is imperative especially to children and especially now when we have a generation accustomed to have high density information taken visually.
Visual Learning Systems (AKA Kahn Academy) has taken this full step. Making the module based step by step learning from the lowest grades to high school/college. This is unfortunately a commercial platform so only the financially privileged can use it. Other sporadic initiatives are springing up globally, but still fairly unorganized. In Estonia, Chemicum is already working similar concepts in chemistry on its own (thanks Tõiv), but we need a way to build it in a modular form on an open platform. Frankly this is where the universities should be already -  an open source visual learning platform!

I think creating and using online education material, for free, is a necessary step for higher education. Also to attract students to the university. Educated mentors will still be needed. They need to free their hands from paper shuffling and do what they should do with the students - learn!
I love holding and reading books as the next geek, but in reality the era of books being the only source is already past. As written before this is also needed if we really wish to lift education in developing countries. This is the fastest and cheapest way to get the knowledge there!

Now I just hope our university will choose one, and just one, platform. Have spine to force it into action, educate its staff to use it and stick with it!   


Richard Baraniuk on open-source learning:

Where is the passion (in science and education)?

I recently had the pleasure to speak with one of my old course mates from university. He took the path of a high profiled career, working in several countries and continents under top-researchers in cutting edge micro-biology. I took a path of a different country too, but settled with a very modest income, work on my own a lot of the time, but with huge freedom to persue interesting subjects with relevance.


It was thus surprising to hear from him that he felt that his work was, indeed cutting edge and just what politicians and industry are singing about, but dull and unsatisfactory on the personal level due to the hollow feeling of: yes, this was interesting, but probably no living thing improved their life from those millions invested. I have been left with that question in my head too when reading high profiled articles: "OK, scientific approach, but so what?" But hearing the same coming from the horses mouth is interesting. Often I felt a bit off the track myself because my research often feels very low tech when I try to solve a practical problem or fill a large gap in the basic knowledge. I feel like I am slowing myself down since the top dogs scream for so called "cutting edge" research. As if complexity or more expensive studies per default makes better results.

I can not myself understand why I need to build a skyscraper with a hovercraft when the foundation is obviously missing and requires a shovel.

My friend and I began a discussion of how come it is that so few of us (molecular biologists) actually become researchers (only 5 to my knowledge of our group of our year.) What was it that made us want to become researchers?
It was not a specific course we could conclude. It was not because there was particular interested supervisors for our 2 year research project in the M.Sc. program. It was not the prospects of finding a dictated Ph.d.-project or an interesting job (those were bleak.) But it was our sense of "we can make a difference" and passionate teachers - THAT made a difference! Or in short just "passion!"

It seems so obvious but I was a bit surprised anyhow.

It is about individuals caring about what they do, and do it. 

It is because it is not what is in the universities or what is valued among research most places. No wonder the industry or society as a whole do not get problem solving academics if they are demotivated and basically looking for something else to do when they are finally through the university.

So, perhaps it is not very useful to measure in (number of) articles published, pages read, the skill to take written exams, and number of passed students per year. Perhaps students finding and trying to solve projects they care about within the frame of their education with motivated and flexible teachers would get different results.

Just an idea.  


I am at the point where I teach a bit.  Perhaps I can help breaking the cycle a bit by being an interested supervisor inspiring the next generation feeling they can make a difference. Gotta try!

One major funding agency that seems to have understood the above is Welcome Trust (UK) who states:

We believe passionately that breakthroughs emerge when the most talented researchers are given the resources and freedom they need to pursue their goals.

 In addition to funding people rather than projects they fully and openly support Open Access and data sharing of research as a policy! 

Bravo.

(I leave you with Black Eyed Peas similar question of do you practice what you teach: "Where is the Love?")