Dutch coverage
I’ve just been told about some quite extensive coverage of PLoS and PLoS ONE in the Dutch newspaper “de Volkskrant“. The piece is called “Iedereen mag de expert tegenspreken“. Since I can sort of remember what I said when I was interviewed I can work out those parts of the piece but the rest defeats me. But I know the readers of this blog are better linguists than me so I’ll give you a flavour of it.
The article starts out:
Gratis, multimediaal, interactief: de wetenschappelijke bladen beginnen verdacht veel op kranten te lijken. Met de lancering van het nieuwe online wetenschapspodium PLoS – ONE eind deze maand krijgt de academische gemeenschap zelfs gelegenheid via openbare discussiefora wetenschappelijke artikelen vrijelijk te bediscussiëren. Meer macht aan de lezers
En, zoals dat ook in de krantenwereld gebeurt, kijken de uitgevers van gevestigde bladen met argusogen toe. ‘Heel interessant’, zegt David Tempest van Elsevier Science, de Nederlandse uitgever van belangrijke wetenschappelijke tijdschriften als Cell en Neuron. ‘Ik ben alleen erg benieuwd hoe de wetenschappers gaan reageren.’
There are some quotations from me about peer review,
‘We dachten: laten we het hele proces van wetenschappelijke communicatie heruitvinden’, zegt hoofdredacteur Chris Surridge. ‘Tijdschriften werken soms als eeuwen op dezelfde manier. Internet heeft veel minder beperkingen in volume, en het heeft de kans van interactie met het publiek. Wikipedia is een klassiek voorbeeld.’
and also comments from Huib Mansvelder, a member of the Editorial Board who is based in Amsterdam:
Huib Mansvelder, hersenonderzoeker aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam en een van de tweehonderd aangezochte juryleden van de editorial board, heeft tot dusver drie artikelen beoordeeld. ‘We letten alleen op technische aspecten, maar evengoed ben je er een dagdeel mee bezig. Die tijd heb je nodig voordat je echt begrijpt waar de valkuilen zitten. Ik vraag ook nog twee andere onderzoekers om commentaar, want ik ben zelf nooit in alle details thuis.’
Dat laatste doet niet iedereen. Daarin zit volgens Mansvelder het risico van PLoS-ONE. ‘Wanneer er te veel halfbakken artikelen op de site komen, zullen goede wetenschappers snel afhaken. Die hebben wel wat beters te doen dan onzin te gaan verbeteren.’
There are also coments from Emilie Marcus of Cell and Linda Miller of Nature.
Hoofdredacteur Emilie Marcus klinkt teleurgesteld. ‘Wetenschappers vinden open debat heel belangrijk, zeiden ze allemaal vooraf aan het experiment. Maar niemand heeft een bijdrage geleverd.’
Het Britse Nature deed deze zomer een nog revolutionairder experiment. Het blad stuurde ingezonden artikelen niet alleen naar experts voor de traditionele beoordeling, maar plaatste ze, na toestemming van de auteurs, ook op het web voor een zogeheten open peer review. De vraag was waar de scherpste jury zit.
Het experiment eindigde 5 oktober. Op 72 artikelen waren in vier maanden in totaal 95 reacties binnengekomen, zegt de Amerikaanse executive editor Linda Miller van Nature . Op 32 artikelen is niet gereageerd, op twaalf kwamen drie of meer opmerkingen. Vergeleken met een beetje discussie op het internet wel heel weinig, erkent Miller. ‘Maar wetenschap is natuurlijk minder emotioneel.’
The piece sums up like this:
Chris Surridge van PLoS – ONE blijft toch hoopvol. ‘Wij hebben een vrij informeel systeem om opmerkingen te maken. Vergelijk het met de optie ‘wijzigingen bijhouden’ in Word. We hopen dat dat uitnodigt tot een snelle krabbel.’
Wie die krabbel mogen zetten? Net als op andere internetfora: iedereen. Wel zal een moderator optreden tegen onbehoorlijk gedrag. En wie vaak een goede bijdrage levert, krijgt net als op Ebay of Amazon een hoger geloofwaardigheidsgetal dan de relschoppers.
Volgens Linda MiIler kan dat op termijn ook een soort beloning opleveren. ‘Stel dat het belangrijk wordt dat je op je cv aangeeft hoe hoog je reputatie-cijfer als reviewer op internet is. Dan heb je er zelf tenminste ook wat aan.’
I hope these extracts give an accurate representation of the piece. You can read the whole article on the newspaper’s website, but I’m afraid that it isn’t free access.
Below is a translation of Chris’s article. Not being a native Dutch speaker, I have enlisted the help of my colleague, Marielle van Deemter. We take no responsibility for any mis-translations 🙂 But we would like to say that we feel the article comes across as very negative.
______________
Everybody can speak against the experts.
Free, multi media, interactive: scientific journals are starting to look suspiciously like newspapers. With the launch of the new online ‘scientific podium’ PloS ONE at the end of this month the scientific community gets a forum to discuss scientific articles publicly. More power to the readers!
And, like what happens in the newspaper world, the publishers of established journals are looking on with ‘Argus eyes’. “Very interesting†says David Tempest from Elsevier Science, the Dutch publisher of the important scientific journals Cell and Neuron. “I am just very curious to see how scientists will react.â€
“We thought: let’s reinvent the whole process of scientific communication,†says Chief Editor Chris Surridge. “Journals sometimes work the same way for centuries. The internet has a lot fewer restrictions in volume and has the opportunity for interaction with the audience. Wikipedia is a classic example. â€
Huib Mansvelder, a neuroscientist from the Free University in Amsterdam and one of two hundred reviewers of the editorial board, have until now reviewed three articles. “We only judge technical aspects, but even that keeps you very busy for half the day. You need that amount of time to find the pitfalls (in each paper). I also ask two other researchers to comment on papers, as I am myself never completely familiar with the details.â€
But not all reviewers do that. According to Mansvelder therein lies the risk of PloS ONE. When to many half-baked articles appear on the website, then good scientists will quickly distance themselves. They have better things to do with their time than improving somebody else’s non-sense.
Chief Editor of Cell, Emilie Marcus, sounds disappointed. “Scientists find debate very important, at least they said that before the experiment (PloS ONE?). But nobody has contributed (to the debate?). (TV: I am not sure what is meant here.)
The British journal Nature did a revolutionary experiment over the summer. The journal didn’t just send articles to experts for traditional review, but also placed them, with permission from the authors, on their website for open peer review. The question was: was web-based review more critical than conventional review. (TV: I am not sure if this is a good translation of the last line.)
The experiment ended on October 5. In four months, there were 95 reactions to 72 articles, says American executive editor of Nature, Linda Miller. 32 articles received no responses at all, and there were three or more responses to 12 articles. Miller acknowledges that this is a lot less than the usual internet discussion. “But science is naturally less emotional.â€
Chris Surridge of PloS ONE remains hopeful. “We have a free, informal system to post remarks. Something like the ‘track changes’ option in Word. We hope this invites people to make quick annotations (literally ‘scribbles’).â€
Who can make annotations? Just as with other internet forums: everybody. A moderator will keep the process civil. And those who consistently make useful contributions will get scored more highly on a credibility meter than ‘rioters’, just like on Ebay or Amazon.
According to Linda Miller that could yield benefits in the long term. “Suppose that it becomes important that you put your internet credibility number on your CV. Then at least you have gained something.â€
Tony and Marielle,
Thank you so much for doing this. I’m now wishing that I had posted more of the piece. I’m sure I never said ‘scribbles’ though.
Chris
Dear Chris,
I’ve already posted two questions on another blog article (without really looking at the original poster).
Let me repeat them here and add another one:
1. What mechanisms do you intend to put in place to prevent (or rather reduce, probably) the social mechanisms rendering similar online communities (such as YouTube or MySpace) more of a popularity contest, rather than an exercise in impact and quality assessment?
In other words, how do you plan to prevent/reduce the “snow-ball effect” from biasing PLoS ONE?
e.g.: Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market
2. Do you expect the other PLoS journals to eventually cease to exist and morph into the giant science database PLoS ONE will become, if it takes off the way we all hope? Or is the current plan to definitely prevent that from happening? I mean, thinking it all the way to the end, PLoS ONE would be all you need – no other publication mechanisms necessary.
3. Given the low participation in Nature’s experiment, this may be a little paranoid, but how useful are completely free comments? There are many examples, but one that keeps coming up in our discussions among colleagues is the ambitious high-school kid who asks all these questions for his science-fair project. With Nature being very “obscure” for the general public, low rates of participation may not be too surprising. In case PLoS ONE really takes off, is mentioned in the general news media and generates sufficient traffic, the development of a “fan-base” is not too unlikely. The articles will come up on standard web-searches and the comment function is right there.
My own humble website is triggering (thankfully, very little) creationist comments, so the question is not completely out of the realm of the possible.
Hi Björn,
Good questions. Each one of them really could do with half an hour or more to answer properly but I’m afraid that with the imminent launch I haven’t got time to do much other than give you very quick thoughts.
Postings to PLoS ONE that transgress these get removed and anyone frequently posting inappropriately gets banned. I’m hoping that this will go some way to ensuring the civilised discourse that we all want. We will also be introducing rating of commentators to allow users to get some reward for useful contributions.
I’m sorry these answers aren’t very specific. No one has tried anything on the scale of PLoS ONE in scientific publishing before so it is really difficult to define ways to tackle problems that we do not know for certain will arise.
Now I must get back to the pre-launch testing.
Chris