Academic publishing isn't invented yet

If someone tries to identify the best practice method in academic publishing he will recognize that the subject is highly controversial. The reason is not, that each journal and each university has a different opinion but the major problem is, that so called academic publishing is invisible. Invisible means, that there is no history of publishing available which can be described and reproduced. The missing data from the past can be observed if the annual papers who get published are counted https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php

In the year 1996, all the countries in the world have created less than 1 mio new papers. The United states holds the record with 350k and the other countries have each under 100k. Nearly all the papers in the 1996 were published in the printed form by larger publishing houses. This statistics doesn't describes a culture of publishing something, but a culture of doing the opposite. Let us make a thought experiment. Suppose we are take a look back into the year 1996 and try to read one of the published academic papers. How can we do so? One option would be to visit a university library. If we are going to a library in Europe, in China or in southamerica, the chance is high, that even the largest library in a country has only subscribed to local journals written in the local language which is not English. That means, in a Italian university of the year 1996 there was no Internet access, but all what the reader can expect are some journals in the archive written in Italian. Even if the user is asking for fulltext access to advanced research he won't be able to read such papers. It's also not possible to create new content.

According to the URL, the total academic output of Italy in the year 1996 over all disciplines was only 40k papers for all subjects. That means, if the user is interested in reading the latest research of this topic, he will get from the Liberian a list of 2 journals and with a bit luck, these journals are available in the library. They will fit on single desk and it can be read in one afternoon. The problem is not to describe the workflow of reading and writing academic information in the year 1996, but the problem is, that in this time no such thing like academic content was available. That means, there was an absence of excellence.

In the year 2018 the situation has increased a lot. Today, there is the internet. If we are repeating the thought experiment and travel to a library, the user gets access to online repositories from worldwide publishers. He is able to read worldwide information which are provided as paywalled and open content as well. In the year 2018 the worldwide paper production was around 3 million documents, which is much higher than in 1996 but it can't called academic publishing, because very similar to the past, most information are not written yet. Publishing a paper has a low priority. It is something done by publishing house and no standard workflow is available. What most professors are doing is not to create and upload new information but they are doing nothing. Most academics didn't have written a paper in the last year, and if they have done so it wasn't uploaded to the internet because of different reasons.

The reason why it's hard to define academic publishing is because it wasn't invented yet. What we have seen in the year 1996 was publishing with printed journals with a low amount of documents. And what is available in the year 2018 is a complete different publishing mode which can't be extrapolated into the future. The only thing what is sure is, that in ten years from today, academic publishing will work different from today. Inventions like fulltext search, a reputation management or peer review wasn't invented yet. That means, the subject can't be descibed by looking backward but it has to be invented for future needs. Some ideas who future academic publishing will look like are available today. A combination of a preprint server, fulltext search engine, reputation management and grounding in physical locations like universities make sense. The open problem is how to combine all these stakeholders and make the system open as possible.

One option in approaching the topic from a conservative standpoint is to ignore future needs and claim, that the publication system of the year 1996 was working great. Under this assumption it make sense to focus on a few printed journals which are publishing less than 1 million papers per year with a well working quality control. The future academic publishing system will look the same like in the 1990s before the internet was invented. Which means, that no content at all is created and the world has no access to the information. The question is, if such an idea make sense for the internet generation as well? The main advantage of the 1990s publishing model is, that it helps to reduce complexity. Instead of trying to improve something and invent lots of new workflows, everything remains stable.

The assumption is, that the domain of science is walking slowly forward and there is no need to increase the paper count. Important papers are written in the printed format and they are located physically to a library. The total amount of researchers in a country is small, and if they want to explain something to the public, they can invite the local newspaper into the researchlab which can write about something discovered recently. The newspaper acts as a buffer between the scientists and the public and what most of scientists are doing is to proof that everything is at the right place.

The unanswered question is, what is the role of science and technology in the world? Does a modern society needs a progress at all? Is there a need for increasing the amount of scientists and does it make sense to publish 3 mio paper a year?

During the decades the role of a library has changed. The importance has grown and today, the world has a higher demand for academic information than in the past. 50 years ago, the term library was referencing to book shelf which consists of 40-100 books mostly with fictional content, novels and poems. Today, a library is equal to a scientific library and sometimes, it's equal to an online library which provides fulltext access to the latest research papers. The definition what a library is, has become more quality oriented. Today, a bookshelf with 40 fictional books can't be called a library, but it's a joke. The reason is, that the value of these books is low, and doesn't fit to basic needs. 50 years ago, such a bookshelf was equal to a library used by educated people. The reason was, that in the past it was rare to have access to books at all. And reading fictional books is better than reading no information at all.

Libraries

Knowledge production is working as an asymmetric system: one side accumulates all the wisdom, why the other side doesn't have access. Before the internet age, libraries were the hub of academic knowledge. They are providing books to a small amount of people. Reading the books makes the people educated.

There are two sorts of libraries available: general libraries which are accumulating as much information as possible. They are collecting different languages, fictional and non-fictional books from all sort of topics. Building such libraries in the 1990s was very expensive, because lots of storage space was needed. The more interesting sort of libraries are specialized libraries which are dedicated to a single topic and collect indepth information about a subject. Special libraries are the perfect choice for academic purposes. They are able to overcome the limitation of the printed book format.

A typical example is a music library. Even if all the information is based on printed information such a lbrary would provide in the 1990s an indepth knowledge about the topic. Or let me explain the situation from the other point of view. General libraries in the 1990s were available but they are ignored by academics. Even if a general library has a large amount of ressources, it failed to provide indepth information about a subject. That means, the needs of researchers doesn't fit to what a general library has to offer.

special libraries

The most surprising information about special libraries is, that even before the internet age, they were perceived as powerful institutions. They are working similar to normal libraries with printed material. That means, books and journals are stored in bookshelfs, and if somebody likes to read it, he has to visit the library. What makes special libraries useful is, that in a single building all the information is stored. The researcher has a concrete question about a specialized subject and the library will help him.

That means, it was possible to do advanced research and find out something new without using the Internet. Even today, special libraries are very important for academics, because they have all the information in a single place and they are providing fulltext information. A nice thought experiment is to digitize a special libraries. Such a project has not the attempt to convert millions of books into digital information but only a few from a limited domain.