Thank you Barry for raising the issue of incentives for authors. Let's take a closer look.
In theory, authors' ultimate goal in research in the health sciences is presumably (something like) to generate new knowledge that will benefit patients or improve public health. There is an existing incentive system in science and medicine that tries to promote this goal. The system is a complicated cluster of financial and non-financial rewards but three clear instantiations of the incentive system are university promotion committees, granting agency review committees, and award committees. I do not mention publication of papers (ie traditionally the decisions of editors) which itself is another related part of the reward system because that is where we want to intervene. Also, let's put aside the question of whether the current incentive system is optimally aligned with the ultimate goal. These groups -- university promotion committees, granting agency review committees, and award committees -- are supposed to judge "quality" which itself is a complicated construct with several different and overlapping meanings. Let's put this problem aside too. Now the question becomes how does the decision of an author to submit her work to traditional jounrals versus new forms of e-"publishing" such as self-archiving or Biomedcentral relate to these incentives? I mocked the relationship in my earlier article, "Medical journals are dead. Long live medical journals" (http://www.cma.ca/cmaj/vol-162/issue- 4/0517.htm) as follows: "University promotion and tenure committees were less enthusiastic about these changes. In the good old days they could rely on the "brand" of the journal in which an article was published to establish its merit. But some of the best "brand name" journals were running aground, and journal impact factors had converged. Therefore, tenure committees had to actually read articles and reflect on their worth. Of course, they were greatly aided in this task by the journals' detailed commentaries." For authors to be incentivized to change their behaviour and submit their articles to the new forms of e-"publishing", the incentive system needs to be modified to reward this behaviour. This is the equivalent of placing the food and water outside the cage or getting the horse to drink for those who followed the earlier metaphors on this list. Now the question becomes how to change the incentive system so authors can be rewarded for "publishing" in the new ways? I suggest there needs to be a change in policy, culture, and technical tools. Th change is policy is perhaps the easiest to accomplish. The policy of the univerity, granting agency, or award-giving body simply needs to state that the work itself, and not where it was published, should be the focus of attention of review committees in universities, granting councils, and award-giving bodies. Some already have such policies. The cultural change is much more difficult. Even if the policy says "judge the work", the people around the table still spend alot of time counting articles and looking up impact factors of the journals in which they are published. One way to change the culture is for the leader ofthe group to exmplify a different set of values. I wont elaborate on this now other than to acknowledge the challenge. Another way to change the culture is to make it easier for the committee members to do it better another way. This is where the need for technical tools comes in. The current tools of number of articles, journal brand, journal impact factor, peer reviews can be improved. If we produce better tools, we will decrease reliance on the ones we have now -- especially journal brand -- and authors can be recognized appropriately for their work submitted to the new venues for e-"publishing". In summary, i contend that a deep understanding of the incentives on authors affecting the decision of where they publish -- and some attempt to perturb the current incentive system to better align it with the ultimate goals of research in the health sciences -- is a critical challenge to those interested in the new forms of e-"publishing". I welcome critical comments on this line of argument. Thanks. Peter Singer xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Peter A. Singer, MD, MPH, FRCPC Sun Life Chair in Bioethics and Director, University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto Medical Research Council of Canada Scientist Associate Editor, Canadian Medical Association Journal e-mail: [email protected] website: http://www.utoronto.ca/jcb fax: 416-978-1911 phone: 416-978-4756 mail: 88 College St., Toronto ON Canada M5G-1L4
