Research Excellence and other research outputs David Groenewegen, Director, Research Infrastructure

About me  Librarian  Currently responsible for repositories, data management, some bits of open access  Previously Director of Australian National Data Service  Before that ran ARROW (institutional repository) and ARCHER (data management software) projects  Before that, digital resources purchasing etc at Monash September 2014Research Excellence and other research outputs2

Journals are very expensive  Average price increases 5% p.a.  m/2014/04/publishing/st eps-down-the- evolutionary-road- periodicals-price- survey-2014/ m/2014/04/publishing/st eps-down-the- evolutionary-road- periodicals-price- survey-2014/ September 2014Research Excellence and other research outputs3

Publisher make lots of money September 2014Research Excellence and other research outputs4 Reed Elsevier 2013 profit: GBP826m, 39% margin

Basis of this  The existing system where: –researchers write papers they give to publishers for free or even pay the publishers –researchers review the papers and edit the journals for free –Institutions buy the journals from the publishers September 2014Research Excellence and other research outputs5

Why does this persist?  Invisibility of prices  Assessment, ranking and promotion exercises  Value of the brand September 2014Research Excellence and other research outputs6

Are high impact factor journals better? 2011 study “RETRACTED SCIENCE AND THE RETRACTION INDEX” showed higher impact factor titles were more likely to retract articles than others. September 2014Research Excellence and other research outputs7

Some resistance, but… September 2014Research Excellence and other research outputs8

Resistance is weak  One Go8 Library recently tried to cancel Science when their sub rate was doubled in mid contract  Despite initial VC support this was overturned within 3 weeks  Researcher protests that “a serious research university MUST have Science”  Science, like all journals, is not immune to problemsimmune to problems September 2014Research Excellence and other research outputs9

Should impact factors be part of assessment?  Do not use journal- based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions. September 2014Research Excellence and other research outputs10

Open Access  “Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder.” –  Institutional, government and funder mandates –NHMRC and ARC both have OA policies –Around 300 of these300 of these –Some quite substantial efforts around the worldaround the world –National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Wellcome Trust: “cautiously and discreetly cracking down on researchers who do not make their papers publicly available”cautiously and discreetly cracking down on researchers who do not make their papers publicly available  However “appears to inflict little or no damage on the leading subscription publishers”appears to inflict little or no damage on the leading subscription publishers September 2014Research Excellence and other research outputs11

Make data available  Validates research and publications  Re-use is possible, which improves research efficiency  Facilitates collaboration: data is easier to share with others  Increased research impact: –Increased citation of articles if data is supplied –Future potential to highlight how many times data has been cited/re-used –Heather A. Piwowar ​, Todd J. Vision, Data reuse and the open data citation advantage, PeerJData reuse and the open data citation advantage September 2014Research Excellence and other research outputs12

What can researchers do? Remember: 1.You keep these titles alive 2.Your research money is being spent on them 3.You use them to judge each other 4.You have the capacity to avoid the mistakes of the past with data September 2014Research Excellence and other research outputs13

DISCUSSION September 2014Research Excellence and other research outputs14