Download - Beyond the PDF2 - Amsterdam, March 2013
Beyond the PDF: New modes of dissemination
Experiments from PLOSTheo Bloom, Editorial Director for Biology, PLOS
Amsterdam, March 2013
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Take-home / talking points / provocation
• Trying to fix a big interconnected system - it’s not easy or fast
• One change at a time brings people along• Steps are good if they’re in the right direction• Partner with others wherever it makes sense• Experiments are good: adapt to the results
3
Do some science
Write a description
Share it with the world
Read/use other people’s work
Discuss ideas
The idealised cycle of research communication
Do some science
Write a description
Do more work as requested
Read / use other people’s work
Submit it to a journal
Resubmit
Publication
Be judged bypublications
Get grants
Get promoted
Discuss ideas
Rejection. Tryanother journal
The real-life cycle is more complicated
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/321/5885/36.1.full.pdf
Do some science
Write a description
Do more work as requested
Read / use other people’s work Submit it to
a journal
Resubmit
Publication
Be judged bypublications
Get grants
Get promoted
Discuss ideas
Rejection. Tryanother journal
The real-life cycle has some big problems
Problem 2: publication venue as a measure of publication quality and/or impact
Problem 3: because of problem 2, repeat cycles at different journals; publication is delayed
Problem 4: poor links from underlying data and methods to write-up
Problem 1: Access to what you want to read and (re) use
Problem 5:
Do some science
Write a description
Do more work as requested
Read / use other people’s work Submit it to
a journal
Resubmit
Publication
Be judged bypublications
Get grants
Get promoted
Discuss ideas
Rejection. Tryanother journal
The real-life cycle has some big problems
Problem 2: publication venue as a measure of publication quality and/or impact
Problem 3: because of problem 2, repeat cycles at different journals; publication is delayed
Problem 1: Access to what you want to read and (re) use
Problem 4: poor links from underlying data and methods to write-up
All subject areas; not assessing ‘impact’
Problem 5:
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We haven’t ‘solved’ problems 1-3
• Beyond CC-BY: explore better ways to do openness (metadata, data, reusability); and accessibility
• Beyond ALMs: make altmetrics optimally useful and encourage wider adoption
• Beyond PLOS ONE: more formal experiments with peer review this year – increase openness; structure reviewer information; portable reviews?
… We have made some progress in these areas
Do some science
Write a description
Problem 4: poor links from underlying data and methods to write-up
Do some science
Write a description
Store some of the data somewhere…
Do some science
Write a narrative description that is
inextricably linked to the data and methods
Integrated collection of methods, results, data, metadata
Store all of the data somewhere useful and link to publication
Steps towards better data handling
Partnership with Dryad (www.datadryad.org)• Unstructured data ‘packages’ associated with published articles• Freely available - CC0• A unique identifier (DOI) for each package• Statistics for access• Seamless tying together of article and data
Partnership with figshare (www.figshare.org)• figshare widget displays Supporting Information files directly in the article • search, magnify, download singly or as a package
Planning in hand for ‘data papers’ (www.ploscompbiol.org)• Describes reusable dataset to support reuse• Publishes associated metadata • Ensures valuable data is actionable for reuse• Data accessible in a recognized, stable repository
What to do with ‘homeless’ data?
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Can we revolutionize speed? Problem 5:
Seeking Lessons in Swine Flu Fight
“Another problem is communication.
Officials and experts say they have learned a lot about human swine influenza. But relatively little of that information...has been reported and published. Some experts said researchers were waiting to publish in journals, which can take months or longer.”
New York Times, August 10th, 2009
Lawrence K. Altman, M.D.
PLOS Currents: Influenza - Inspiration
Authors may revise but can be published almost immediately post-review
Rapid technical and scope review
Content is peer-reviewed, citable, publicly archived, and included in PubMed
What comes out: flexible (familiar) format
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PLOS Currents as an experiment
• Swine flu epidemic faded away - then a new one started
• We said “submissions do not have to be full-length articles” – but what did we get?
• What use-cases make most sense for Currents?• Can we try harder with non-traditional article formats?
– Single findings– Negative results– Replications– Methods and protocols
• Publish all results with as little delay as possible
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Back to issue 1: Access vs. accessibility
• Readable by machines as well as people• Intelligible
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Where do people go for information?
• open review via wiki • PLoS Comput Biol article “version of record”• A high-quality Wikipedia article that can be
edited and updated
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Take-home / talking points
• Trying to fix a big interconnected system - it’s not easy or fast
• One change at a time brings people along• Steps are good if they’re in the right direction• Partner with others wherever it makes sense• Experiments are good: adapt to the results• We need to work with real people – authors,
readers – as well as with machines