Biomedical publishing: Past historic, present continuous, future conditional

Abstract

Academic journals have been publishing the results of biomedical research for more than 350 years. Reviewing their history reveals that the ways in which journals vet submissions have changed over time, culminating in the relatively recent appearance of the current peer-review process. Journal brand and Impact Factor have meanwhile become quality proxies that are widely used to filter articles and evaluate scientists in a hypercompetitive prestige economy. The Web created the potential for a more decoupled publishing system in which articles are initially disseminated by preprint servers and then undergo evaluation elsewhere. To build this future, we must first understand the roles journals currently play and consider what types of content screening and review are necessary and for which papers. A new, open ecosystem involving preprint servers, journals, independent content-vetting initiatives, and curation services could provide more multidimensional signals for papers and avoid the current conflation of trust, quality, and impact. Academia should strive to avoid the alternative scenario, however, in which stratified publisher silos lock in submissions and simply perpetuate this conflation.

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“…Moreover, our editors, who are all practicing scientists themselves, appreciate that we perform a key service to authors by conducting peer-review, independent of a decision to publish. Indeed, this fits with an emerging idea that, with broadening acceptance of posting preprints, the rapid dissemination of information in the form of preprint publication can be decoupled from the evaluation of the work by peer-review and editorial curation ( Sever, 2023 ).…”

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“…Addressing this problem will take time. It calls for a fair, ideally non-prot, academic publishing system [215] as well as revisiting reward structures in academia [216].…”

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“…In an Essay, Richard Sever takes us on a well-researched journey through the past, present, and possible futures of scientific publishing [ 5 ]. Grounded in the reality of the current publishing landscape and infrastructure, Richard outlines potential future scenarios for the dissemination of research findings that take full advantage of the digital age and are “…centered on making new findings available as soon as possible to spur further research and speed up its translation to actionable tools and knowledge that benefits society.”…”

“…In an Essay, Richard Sever takes us on a well-researched journey through the past, present, and possible futures of scientific publishing [5]. Grounded in the reality of the current publishing landscape and infrastructure, Richard outlines potential future scenarios for the dissemination of research findings that take full advantage of the digital age and are ".…”