On Thursday 13th of February we hosted our very first Google Hangout on Air.
eLife Editor-in-Chief, Randy Schekman, was joined by inventor Jack Andraka and eLife editor, Professor Jody Culham in an online conversation moderated by journalist Akshat Rathi.
Each participant brought his or her own, unique, view of the world of scientific publishing. Jody pointed out that from a researcher’s perspective a lot of time and energy is often wasted in the publication process, making it important that publishers continue to adapt and better their processes in order to make publication easier for authors.
Jack highlighted the importance of open access publishing to those outside academic institutions, particularly high school students whose schools cannot afford to pay costly journal subscriptions.
This sentiment was echoed by Akshat, who added that, as a journalist, he often wanted to gain access to scientific papers in order to give a full and contextual account of a science story he was covering. However, pay walls often hindered this research.
The discussion came to a close as all three participants were asked to sum up what they saw as the ideal future for science publishing.
Randy felt “that there is a shakedown coming” in the field of publishing and outlined his hope that more journals would sign up to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment in order to try and break the mistaken dependence on journal Impact Factors.
Jody predicted that “in 10 years open access will be the norm” and that it will be “increasingly rare to see subscription model journals, that are going to be harder and harder to sustain as library budgets come under increasing pressure.”
Whilst Jack summed up with his hope that in the future “high school kids and younger scientists in general could have discounted or free access to journal articles”. He predicted that this would show a commitment to investing in the younger generation’s interest in science, an issue that he sees to be critical.
Watch a recording of the whole discussion.
See a Storify of the twitter hashtag accompanying the event.
