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Reaching a Universal Speed Together / A Whole New World: Scholarship Under Fire
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Reaching a Universal Speed Together / A Whole New World: Scholarship Under Fire
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Segment:0 .
MARY BETH BARILLA: Welcome, everyone, and thank you for attending SSP's Fifth Annual New Directions Seminar. We are very pleased that you can join us today. My name is Mary Beth Barilla, and I'm the Program Director for the Society for Scholarly Publishing. First and foremost, I want to thank the organizers of today's seminar.
MARY BETH BARILLA: These are our education committee volunteers. Sophie Reisz, Alexa Colella, Vanessa Fairhurst, Sylvia Hunter, Ben Mudrak, John Shaw, Heather Staines, and Simone Taylor. They've put together a great program. And I'm confident that you'll gain some important takeaways from our speakers over the next few days. And I mustn't forget, thanks also to the SSP staff for their support for this event.
MARY BETH BARILLA: We want to thank our sponsors for this event as well. And they are Access Innovations, Atypon, Cadmore Media, eJournalPress, Impact Journals, Jack Farrell & Associates, Silverchair, Straive, and Taylor & Francis F1000. We are grateful for your support. For those of you who may not already be members of SSP, I want to share a little bit of information.
MARY BETH BARILLA: We are a membership organization focused on connecting professionals in our industry to the people information and professional development resources they need to succeed in Scholarly Publishing. We offer a variety of resources, such as The Scholarly Kitchen blog, our weekly member newsletter, remember, the SSP Member Exchange, and access to the journal, Learned Publishing.
MARY BETH BARILLA: Membership also gives you access to programs like SSP's mentorship program. If you are interested in learning more about becoming an SSP member, I encourage you to check out our website at sspnet.org or take a look at the Pathable Conference site. We also have some information there. Some housekeeping items.
MARY BETH BARILLA: We do have live support available during the seminar. If you need any assistance, you'll see on the upper right of the Pathable screen, there's a Support tab and then a menu where you can select live support and you'll be connected with someone who can help you. If all else fails, you can also email us at info@sspnet.org. Closed captions have been enabled for all sessions.
MARY BETH BARILLA: Please use the CC button on your toolbar there in Zoom to activate these. This meeting is being recorded, and the recordings will be available on Pathable following the end of the seminar. And after today's sessions, we have a virtual social event planned to be held on our platform REMO. There will be informal discussions on various publishing issues as well as time for just networking and saying hi to people.
MARY BETH BARILLA: We encourage you to join us using the link you'll find in your agenda in Pathable. And finally, our goal is to have an interactive and engaging event. So please don't be shy. Our hashtag for this meeting is sspND2021. You have the Q&A box in Zoom to direct questions at the panelists.
MARY BETH BARILLA: You also can use the Zoom Chat feature to speak to all of the attendees that are here in the room with you. The theme of this year's New Direction Seminar is How to Move Fast and Not Break Things, Balancing High-Speed Outputs at the Risk of Slamming on the Brakes. To kick us off, I would now like to introduce Sophie Raise, member of the SSP Education Committee and for the third-year leader of the New Directions Working Group.
MARY BETH BARILLA: Over to you, Sophie.
SOPHIE REISZ: Thank you, Mary Beth. Hello, everyone. I'm Sophie Reisz, Vice President and Executive Editor at Mary Ann Lieber, Inc. Publishers and proud lead of the 2021 SSP New Directions Seminar in Scholarly Publishing. To echo the comments of Mary Beth, I'd like to personally thank the New Direction seminar committee members, including Vanessa Fairhurst, Simone Taylor, John Shaw, Alexa Colella, Sylvia Hunter, Heather Staines, and Ben Mudrak.
SOPHIE REISZ: Together, this wonderful team has worked tremendously hard over the past few months to present this captivating virtual seminar. This year's New Direction seminar is focused around the theme of how to move fast and not break things, balancing high-speed outputs at the risk of slamming on the brakes. The panel discussions throughout the seminar take a deep dive into the breakneck speed at which our industry is currently transitioning, transforming, and evolving while also recognizing and highlighting the limits and possible uncomfortable consequences of moving too quickly.
SOPHIE REISZ: To kick things off, I'd like to introduce our opening connote session, titled A Whole New World, Scholarship Under Fire. This session is unlike any other session we've had presented at the New Direction seminars and is the perfect topic to highlight the essential conversations taking place in the world of Scholarly Publishing around the globe. 2020 was an eye-opening, unrelenting experiment and exploring new directions in our personal and professional lives.
SOPHIE REISZ: Even now as we move further into 2021 and beyond, we are considering what these changes and experience might mean as we continue to collectively power forward. We adjust to this new world-- As we adjust to this new world, our industry bears a new level of responsibility as scholarship, scientific research, and advances in new scientific technologies, especially with respect to vaccinations fall under a high-resolution microscope.
SOPHIE REISZ: Some might even say that scientific research and scholarship are under fire. As citizen scientists and global citizens alike, emerge to voice their advocacy, opinions, and concerns about public health, public security, climate change, and our collective responsibilities to each other as individuals of a greater global network. This session is the start of the conversation. It will focus specifically on the emerging responsibilities we now have as academic publishers, as researchers, librarians, and citizens, to uphold the rigor and impact of the advancements that have the greatest potential for positive influence in our lives and around the globe.
SOPHIE REISZ: And now I'd like to introduce the moderator of our first session, Dr. Chhavi Chauhan. Chhavi works as the Director for Scientific Outreach at the American Society for Investigative Pathology, and is the Director of the Continuing Medical Education Program at the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. She is a biomedical researcher and expert scholarly communicator and a sought-after mentor in the fields of scientific research, scholarly publishing, and AI Ethics.
SOPHIE REISZ: And she's a advocate, especially for women in minorities. A renowned international speaker and a strong advocate for equitable and accessible health care, Chhavi sits at the intersection of scientific research, scholarly communications, and AI Ethics, and health care. And with that, I will hand things over to Chhavi to kick us off.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Thank you so much, Sophie. That was such a warm introduction. I appreciate it. Before we kick off today's keynote discussion, I do want to echo Mary Beth and Sophie sentiments. And I would personally like to thank Vanessa Fairhurst. She is the brainchild behind putting together today's discussion. And let me now introduce you to today's speaker. I see a lot of folks are putting in their names and where they are from.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And I think that's a great way to get the engagement going. I'm Chhavi Chauhan from North Carolina. Our two panelists are Rachel Martin and Toby Green. Rachel Martin is the Global Director of Sustainability at Elsevier where she's driving transformational change in the priority areas of sustainability with a focus on climate change. In 2020, her efforts resulted in the launch of the Elsevier report, The Power of Data to Advance the SDGs.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Since joining Elsevier in 2010, she has held various communications positions with a focus on policy and advocacy. Additionally, she has worked as a strategic communication advisor on industry initiatives, such as CHORUS, CLOCKKS, and the Accessible Books Consortium. Rachel is also a part of the team that launched the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Publishers Compact, and represents Elsevier on several industry sustainability committees.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Good afternoon, Rachel, how are you?
RACHEL MARTIN: Hi. Hi, everyone. Very pleased and an absolute honor to be here today.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Could you please let us know where you're speaking from today?
RACHEL MARTIN: So I'm speaking from my garden in Amsterdam. So still remote and still slightly in the afternoon sun.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Wonderful, wonderful. Our next panelist is Toby Green. Toby is a co-founder of Coherent Digital, an enterprise taming hard-to-find content and making it useful for researchers, professionals, folks in academics, and students. Toby has over 35 years of experience in scholarly, policy, and professional publishing with several deliverables with OECD Publishing, Elsevier Science, Pergamon Press, and Academic Press.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: He's a pioneer of freemium open access publishing and has a long track record of innovation in digital solutions. He's a regular speaker at publishing and librarian events in Europe and North America. He currently serves as an expert advisor to the open research community, and previously has been a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing Board and Chair and Council Member of ALPSP.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Good afternoon, Toby, how are you?
TOBY GREEN: I'm very well. Thank you very much. I'm speaking to you from Paris, in Paris at the moment, where in fact the sun has come out, which is very nice.
RACHEL MARTIN: Uh-huh, wonderful, wonderful. This is going to be so great. I do want to kick off this discussion today with the Sanskrit phrase, vasudhaiva kutumbakam-- the whole world is my home. And we cannot but appreciate this phrase under the current pandemic setting when the whole world and every human is dealing with similar challenges. Like Sophie mentioned, may be challenges with testing capacities, vaccination status, treatment regimens, possible therapies, managing worklife balance while working in different time zones, and personal loss.
RACHEL MARTIN: And of course, on top of all this, we have been and continue to deal with the devastating climate change. The whole world is indeed my home. When I sit in my home office and attend global virtual conferences, information as well as misinformation has been coming to our doorsteps and to our bed sides, on our electronic devices, from the corners of the world, we barely knew about.
RACHEL MARTIN: The world we live in got positively affected when we suspended all travel for work and pleasure to drop the emission levels and decrease our carbon footprint by working remotely. And the wildlife took a moment to explore the world as their home. In this truly one world setting, it is our responsibility to contain the viral spread of this information, to own responsibility in spreading valuable information from obscure sources to enable positive change to make a societal impact.
RACHEL MARTIN: I know it is not a trivial task and we have unprecedented amount of information coming our way every second, every minute. Let me start this discussion with checking in with all of you first. Do you think we're suffering from an infodemic? Can we please launch the poll for the attendees first? Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN: We'll just wait a few minutes. Looks like we have close to 100 attendees. They might take a moment to send their answers in. And if we have a majority of folks answered, then perhaps we can close the poll.
RACHEL MARTIN: Oh my goodness, 93% of you answered that you're suffering from an infodemic. I am not surprised. But I want to ask the other 7%, how are they managing to stay safe? [LAUGHS] But my question to the panelists today is, what can publishers do to tackle the infodemic? Toby, would you like to go first?
TOBY GREEN: OK. Well, I would actually be in the minority there. I don't think we are in infodemic. If you understand actually what the word means, it's a portmanteau word that combines information with epidemic. And an epidemic, of course, is something that is far reaching, so like a disease. And therefore, you have to have information that is far reaching.
TOBY GREEN: And if you think about scholarly publishing, I don't think one could argue that the content that we publish is far reaching because it tends not to actually go very far. If you look at download data, if you look at-- certainly if you compare how successful we are as publishers compared to the people who put out misinformation, our information doesn't go nearly as wide and nearly as far as misinformation.
TOBY GREEN: Are we suffering infodemic, or perhaps in terms of misinformation always suffering an infodemic in terms of trusted information? No, I don't think we are. I don't think trusted information goes nearly far enough. So I would be in that minority group.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: It's good to know we do have a panelist who represents the minority group. And I am getting a few comments from our attendees as well. And, Sylvia is mentioning perhaps that we are in a misinfodemic or a disinfodemic. What are your thoughts, Rachel?
RACHEL MARTIN: I think maybe from a publisher's perspective, where I interpret an infodemic about knowledge expansion. And I think we can't deny that that's been evolving at such an extraordinary pace. And the fact is that it was an unprecedented exposure globally in response to the pandemic. And I mean, studies and figures show that across all journals, across all subjects, there were increases in submissions last year. And I can give you a little bit of data to give you some context.
RACHEL MARTIN: So at Elsevier, in 2020, we published 556,000 papers, published peer reviewed articles. And that's a 90% increase than 10 years ago, mere 10 years ago. So 2010, we were doing 90% less. And what I thought was really interesting is that the Journal of American Medical Association, they indicated in the first six months of the pandemic, they received 11,000 manuscripts.
RACHEL MARTIN: That's a 275% increase compared to 2019. And that's just a huge, huge pain, both on our systems, our workflows, our processes. And it's apt to think about that in terms of our thinking here about how do you move fast but not break things. And so I think, for me, the infodemic is really; more about the challenge of finding relevant research because it just makes it much harder.
RACHEL MARTIN: It's harder to stay up to date in the field. It's harder to rely on. It's harder to know what you can rely on and what you can't, so the whole misinformation piece. And it's harder to tie together that interdisciplinary thinking. That's going to be so crucial when we start looking through the biggest issues that we're facing from society.
RACHEL MARTIN: How do you live longer, healthier lives? How do you address climate change? How do you make society more equitable? How do you have food and water security? And those require such a different way of looking at all of this data and making sure that we're connecting that greater-- in a different way to having impact on society. So I think we have all of this data, I'm really passionate about how do you make it apply, how do we get this to actually work, and to move the needle on these big societal challenges.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Very well said, Rachel. Toby mentioned about trust, right, and credibility, and you brought the facts to that there has been a significant, a tremendous increase in the amount of content that we have been seeing as scholarly publishers. And 90% increase of 556,000 articles, that is no gimmick, right? And then in the next session, folks are going to talk about preprints.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And that's another thing that is not new. It's been coming, but I guess during COVID, we all embraced the preprints as well. So there is a lot of content. There is a lot of peer reviewed content, and there's a lot of non-peer reviewed content. And the sources vary, right? There is a question about building trust when we are disseminating this content.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Rachel, I wouldn't even put you on spot by asking how many of these manuscripts were either retrieved or corrected or correction issued afterward. And I think that would still be perhaps emerging data. But these days, whenever I look at any content, I question about the credibility of the content. So I do want to launch a poll for our attendees before we go into the next segment of our discussion.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Can we-- Oh, wonderful. The question is, during the last couple of years, have you come across scholarly content with questionable credibility? I am so excited to hear the results. Oh, it looks like poll is not coming across to all the attendees.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: I got a comment in the chat.
MARY BETH BARILLA: OK, let me restart it and see if that--
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: OK, thank you.
MARY BETH BARILLA: Sure.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Well, let's just give it one more minute.
MARY BETH BARILLA: We do have 75 responses. So you might have to navigate to see if there's another window open. There you go.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: OK. So do we have the responses too? OK, 86% of our attendees say that they have seen content with questionable credibility. 14% say they have not. So my question to you, Rachel, is, what can we do in the scholarly community to improve trust in research when we are moving so fast and so much content is coming out?
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And some of it has to be processed in a very fast manner. So what can we do to improve trust in research?
RACHEL MARTIN: So it's a great question. And I'd like to maybe take a step back because I do think the COVID pandemic didn't really give us a lot of bright sparks. But one of which is that, in the latest research conducted by 3M, on science attitudes by the public, they found that there was a shift in terms of trust in science. So in North America, and the same findings happened in the UK and in Germany, we saw a decrease for the first time in three years in the statement, I am skeptical of science.
RACHEL MARTIN: So to put that into context with those in North America, that was around 40% pre-pandemic, and it's about 32% during the pandemic. Now that might not be too much, but that's a decrease. That hasn't happened in three-years' time. I do think that this idea of trust in science has really been put to the forefront. We've mentioned preprints. And what I found, and I'll tell you a little story which I think might-- you might resonate for those in the audience, is that often I go to a barbecue or my hairdresser or I'm on the tram and somebody asked me what I do, and I say I do academic publishing, they look at me and they say, is that books?
RACHEL MARTIN: Or is that magazines? We have no idea what we do. And I think what's really interesting about this pandemic is that on the front page, six months into the COVID pandemic, we had an article in the New York Times that said, well, the latest study published in a preprint. And it was this caveat that we were increasing the scientific literacy of the general public.
RACHEL MARTIN: So often we might be so insular in what we're thinking that actually we need the public to not only access, understand but to also figure out the critical questions. I have no problems in somebody looking at the latest study on a preprint server or in a published research and saying, hang on a second, was that a representative sample? Hang on a second, did they consider gender?
RACHEL MARTIN: Hang on a second, was that ethnic minority was represented? And those are great questions. That's great dialogue. And so I'm actually positive that trust in science here can really move the needle. Now when we apply this to climate change, the next biggest challenge we might be facing, we have the idea that science has the consensus, right?
RACHEL MARTIN: We know what's happening. We know the science says it. And actually, what we need is the public not only to trust the science, but then to start thinking through changing their attitude or behavior. And so I find that what we can do to improve trust in science is to start thinking through collective narratives, advocate for science literacy, and think through those collective narratives because we need to be able to marry up the hard sciences with social sciences to get people to change behavior.
RACHEL MARTIN: And so we have this idea. I'm definitely agreeing with Toby, is that we need to expand our idea of our traditional audiences. It's not just academic communities. It's not communities in different fields. It's the society. It's decision makers. It's communities.
RACHEL MARTIN: It's business leaders. It's science advisors. And how do we do that collectively? And I think there's something there that we can all start to really think about. And I think climate change is a great topic to really catalyze us to think through some really creative ideas.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Yeah, wonderful, wonderful, Rachael. And just going with the theme of one world-- your comment about collective narrative really resonates with me. And then we think about science, we are usually focusing just on major realms of science, but you know I like the idea of marrying science with other streams as well because scholarly publishing community needs to represent all streams of arts and humanities, which often tend to take a backseat.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: I know, Toby, you have some very different unique views. And I'm sure our audience cannot wait to hear them. So what are your thoughts, Toby?
TOBY GREEN: Well, I mean-- I agree with a lot of what's been said. But it's really changing. I have a nephew who doesn't think is a good idea to be vaccinated. And I've been debating with him about this. And he keeps on pulling one off-scientific papers that show maybe some slightly-- some sort of balancing the efficacy of vaccines maybe against natural immunity, whatever.
TOBY GREEN: And he grabs these single edge cases and builds a whole narrative around it. And even if I sort of stack up 100 cases that completely shows that this is an edge case, he still doesn't want to hear. And I think that this is a really big, big challenge, is that, yes, the science, increasingly the scientific papers are available. But I don't think many people are educated on the scientific process.
TOBY GREEN: And to understand that it's scientific by itself is simply a grain of sand. And it isn't a revelation. It's just one of hundreds of thousands of articles that are coming out. And therefore you can't really draw a conclusion until you've read many articles. You can't base it just on one. And I think there is this-- I'm slightly worried that people just grab one fact and they cling to it to support their view.
TOBY GREEN: But when it comes to trust-- when I think about trust, I think about brands. I mean people trust brands. And in our world, the blue ribbon brands include the Lancet, the Nature, and Cell, and Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, and so on. But the brands also extend to individuals and to their institutions. So Harvard is also a brand.
TOBY GREEN: Oxford is a brand. So major institutions, in my world, brands would be the World Bank, or the OECD, or Chatham House, or Brookings. These are major institutions that put out research. And yet, there's one really interesting contrast between what goes on in mainstream academic publishing and what goes on in the policy publishing world. In the policy publishing world, the World Bank, the OECD, Chatham House, and Brookings take responsibility for what they publish.
TOBY GREEN: In the academic publishing world, Harvard, and Oxford, and other universities do not. They actually delegate that responsibility to the journals. So they actually are not part of the building the credibility and trust for the research that their employees and their staff have put out. And I find this very interesting as to why do these major institutions who could add so much to the idea of trust and so much credibility lend their brands to the credibility, except they step back.
TOBY GREEN: And I find it really odd that they step back. And they leave it to the journals. And there are so few journals that actually have a public trust because their brands are known. I mean how many people know that Tetrahedron is one of the leading journals in organic chemistry. I mean, I think the only people who know that were people who worked at Elsevier or who actually published an organic chemistry.
TOBY GREEN: But no one else knows that, because there is a hierarchy of journals. We in this world understand that. The public don't. For them, it's just a paper. And if it comes from a journal, it must be good. Well, no, that's not true. There are a lot of really, really dodgy journals out there.
TOBY GREEN: We know that. But what I find is the voice that's missing is the voice of the research institutions, because they're just absent from this debate, which I find is really bizarre. And I think it's really time that they stepped up and started to actually take responsibility for what their staff would have, which they don't.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: So I want to hold-- I want you to hold on to that thought, Toby, right, because you talked about branding, right, and the journals standing behind the content versus the institutions. And you're talking about these smaller research institutes which may be churning out great content. But they have limited visibility because they are not that brand that can be trusted. So what are some of the things that can be done.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And I know you've been at the forefront of leading technology in bringing content from obscure sources, making it more mainstream. So what are some of the things that can be done to provide this great information into the hands of the masses?
TOBY GREEN: Well, to go to the broader public, you certainly don't want to take them a journal article. It's so dry. It's so structured. It's so rigid. It's not a means of communication. I mean, if we go back to the concept of infodemic and the idea of content going viral, well, what goes viral? Videos go viral. Tweets go viral.
TOBY GREEN: Blog posts go viral. It's content that's packaged in a way that's much more accessible and much more-- Yeah, they're much more impactful. And as publishers, we don't really get involved in that. We manage the process of publishing the journal or the book, but we don't get involved in really helping to recast that knowledge into a parental format that actually works well in the web 2.0 world.
TOBY GREEN: Now NGOs are much better skilled at that. They are putting out their information in much more interactive ways. They're much more skilled in using social media to get their messages across. And I think there are a lot of lessons that come out of the NGO world that could be learned in the academic world in terms of looking at ways that one can communicate and get really interesting findings across in a way that is going to reach a broader audience.
TOBY GREEN:
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Yeah, yeah. I do want to take this one comment that came from Rebecca through chat. And I want to direct this to you, Rachel. And I agree with this. Actually institutions are entirely-- I mean, to a lot of extent, responsible for credibility. Compliance officers get involved all the time. So from a publisher's journal perspective versus an institutional perspective, what do you think of this comment, Rachel?
CHHAVI CHAUHAN:
RACHEL MARTIN: I think the intersectional where I think publishers and institutions could really work on is around open science. So this is the concept that you've got open access and you've got open access publishing, and we're all very familiar with that. But open science is really where it's going to move towards. And we need to start thinking through that because open science is also more than just open data. Data is going to be something that reproducibility fuels trust, because you have to be able to reproduce the science.
RACHEL MARTIN: If you can't, then you can't trust the science. And so open data is a crucial bit. But what's interesting, and I can give you a great example, is the Netherlands' example. Elsevier and the Netherlands have got an open science agreement. And we're exploring some ideas around it, right? So what pilots? What services?
RACHEL MARTIN: What could we bring together that's going to increase the transparency? But I think most are looked through how do you connect science to society. What is it that platform? Could it be and it might well be greater tracking across retractions. If you've got to think-- if it's a preprint and then it's a journal, and then you put it on another website afterwards, you have to be able to track all of that all the way through, right, when you do it.
RACHEL MARTIN: So we've got our nuts and bolts under the car linkage and preservation, curation of a knowledge base. And that's going to definitely continue to be there. And I think we're talking about things we don't want to break. We don't want to break that. Where we can really, really focus on is thinking through to Toby's great point. There's other audiences out there and we can do a lot better at trying to figure out what that is.
RACHEL MARTIN: Now I would pose a question back in that we've been communicating research, abstract, methods, results, conclusion for, let's say, in centuries of this format. What we're not really great at is getting researchers to tell compelling stories to figure out we're not just communicating with your colleague next to you. I can say a great example from Elsevier. We love the use of abbreviations.
RACHEL MARTIN: If you can [INAUDIBLE] words that comes out, you're in the club. And I think scientists tend to have this idea that they will write something. It's very complicated. It's very hard to digest. And we're not actually stimulating or incentivizing them to think through how do you make that communication far more palatable to people outside, as any comms professional will tell you that you should write as though you're talking to your 90-year-old grandmother.
RACHEL MARTIN: We also have to think through what that might mean. Now there are challenges there-- language, different fields. It's not going to be something that's so easy. But if we want to be able to speed up, if we want to be able to make impact rich, build credibility in [INAUDIBLE] we need scientists to really start thinking through how they connect to society. And I think that connection needs to be stronger and it needs to really think through about that communication fundamental skills that we're building.
RACHEL MARTIN: And that happens right at a bachelor level, of course, just before you do your PhD and [CLAPS] done, and then you can go and write your articles forevermore. I mean this has to be something part of education. And I think what was really interesting, I read something about a knowledge about the infodemic to go back to the first question. If that's expanding at these exponential rates, what does that mean for education?
RACHEL MARTIN: How do you learn and apply that as well? And so we have to think through those two connections. It's not just about publishing PDFs. Unfortunately, that's not what it's about. We don't want to acquire loads of content and data and all the rest of it. That's all very useful. But if it doesn't solve our grand challenges, it doesn't solve climate change or produce a vaccine up to 12 months, then we're not really progressing society.
RACHEL MARTIN: And that's ultimately what our purpose is.
TOBY GREEN: Yeah. I mean, the OECD, we had these arguments the whole time internally about how to publish. And it seemed to be a choice. Do we publish the classic OECD report, which is basically like a scientific paper but longer, or do we publish something new which is going to go to a broader audience? So I kept on saying, guys, we have to do both because you can't publish the lighter piece without the science behind it, because otherwise it's got no foundation.
TOBY GREEN: You actually have to do both. And the trouble with doing both is, therefore, it's actually more effort. And it needs different skills. You cannot expect a scientist to be a communicator. Some can do both. But in my experience, very few actually are any good at communication. They're really good at science.
TOBY GREEN: That's why they're scientists. And they're really good at writing those really dry reports, because that's their world. Well, let them do that. Let them write in their acronyms and their code for their community by all means, but then needs to go through a translation process with the communicator who can take that and then build the fantastic little website or the visualization or whatever is required to get that message across.
TOBY GREEN: And this is the challenge, is you actually need to do both. It's not one or the other. And there are a few examples. I mean, I can see some examples of organizations are able to do this. But it's expensive because you actually have to then invest on the communications side, but not at the expense of the research side. And also to go to your point about the open science and certainly open data, data is a devil to publish in a way that's great to communicate.
TOBY GREEN: I mean you can put the file out there and people can download the numbers, or whatever. That's fine. But to put an interface on data to make it accessible to the broader public is really challenging. I mean, at OECD, we built the better life index, which is a tool. It's an interactive tool that anyone can use to try and see how countries do in terms of the quality of life and the quantity of life.
TOBY GREEN: And it was an absolute better to build to actually make, to translate the data into an interface that the public could use. It's really hard to do that. But it is possible. I mean there's something I came across just recently that the Migration Policy Institute has got a really nice interface showing migration flows.
TOBY GREEN: And it's something that actually a member of the public could use and get to this idea of really what the flows are from migrants and asylum seekers and so on globally.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Both, Rachel, you and Toby make excellent, fantastic points. And a lot of our audience are chiming in the chat and they support your views. There are some other comments coming up, which I do want to tie up for the rest of our discussion in the rest of our discussion. Let me read this comment from Bill. He says Toby's point really resonates with me. It reminds me of a client of mine, a research organization who when I asked, who the primary audience for the research was, expecting them to say researchers, they said policymakers first, the public second, and researchers third.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Let me read one more comment which we may want to take in during the course of our discussion. It's from Angela. This is all fine to encourage better science communication, and while journals can help. This is not a core function of a journal. Journals are for communicating scholarly content to other scholars, not the public. I know our panelists will have a lot to say about that.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: But just to keep us on track, and I know we're a little pressed for time and we have a lot to cover, I do want to talk about three things that shown through your discussion. So I came across or captured the word accessibility, accessibility of content for different diverse audiences. And we do have a comment that the content is only for scholars and perhaps you can address that in your comments. I did hear about the relevance, right, and the impact.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Toby did talk about a nephew who was hanging on to one piece of evidence that he had to make his decisions. And there's a plethora of content that's coming out to perhaps support another viewpoint. So when we think about accessibility, relevance, and impact, what can we be doing, or how can we bring about greater societal impact?
TOBY GREEN: Rachel--
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Toby, would you like to go? OK.
TOBY GREEN: Well, picking up on Bill's point about the policymaker and then going to the public, I mean I have a fair amount of experience. Thanks to work at OECD about how you can reach a policymaker. And depending on how far up the tree you want to go, in terms of policymaking, because if you really want to get to the executive, you want to get to the ministers and the prime ministers, the best way is face to face.
TOBY GREEN: The last thing you want to do is build a website. These people don't go on the web. The best thing to do is to get some high-level person to actually give them the report. They're not going to read the report, but they'll give it to one of their staff who will read the report and will condense the findings for that minister or prime minister. That is the most effective way of reaching the very top.
TOBY GREEN: You've got to go through-- either you go directly to them or you've got to go through their research teams. There is no other way. Or, of course, you go through the media because they do pay attention to the media. That's another way you can reach the very, very top. But really the absolute best way is face to face. At the OECD, we kept the printed publications alive really for one very, very good reason.
TOBY GREEN: The Secretary General could then give it to a minister when he met them. You cannot give digital files to someone. You can give a print object to somebody. And that was still probably the most effective way of doing it. Now as for the general public, then there are two channels-- media and social media. And you've got to get to the influencers. You've got to find the people who really reach the public that you're after.
TOBY GREEN: I'll tell you a little story here. The OECD put out a report on Brexit before the 2016 Referendum in the UK. So the OECD put together a typical report and came down basically advising the UK public to vote remain. And the report was launched with the minister in the UK, [INAUDIBLE] over. There was the usual song and dance. Journals were present.
TOBY GREEN: It got COVID in the newspapers. And then everyone came home and thought it was a great success. We then did a deep-dive analysis to see whether this report had had any impact whatsoever into either both the remain or the leave community. And the result was zero. It had no impact at all outside of what I would call the little Guardian reading bubble. It had absolutely zero impact on the leave side in particular.
TOBY GREEN: But there was only one journalist in the UK who could actually speak to both the leave and remain communities. Things are so split. There's only one journalist. And we didn't know that at the time and we did not get that report to that one journalist. So this effort to communicate whatever we did was a total flop in terms of actually reaching the public.
TOBY GREEN: And it just showed that the normal way of doing things wasn't relevant for that particular. But what you need to do is really get under the covers of who is influencing those communities and find a way to channel your message out troopers through this community. So you've got to find influencers. Then there could be mainstream journalist, or they could be social media influencers.
TOBY GREEN: But that's what you got to find. And it's tough.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: What do you think, Rachel, before I say anything further?
RACHEL MARTIN: I think I'd probably take-- I agree with Toby's views there. I mean, I think I'm probably thinking a little bit more abstract. So when you talk about societal impact or who journals are supposed to be communicating to, there's a lot of nuance there as well. And I think one of the things to think through is that science and research has this culture of freedom of academic thinking, right?
RACHEL MARTIN: If you particularly like atoms in the sky, you want to research it because it's atoms in the sky, not because it's going to have a societal impact in 12 to 15 years on SDG number 13. You don't really have that link. We're not really linking that. And it's an idea that there is this tension between mission-driven research and the idea of this scientific freedom of thought.
RACHEL MARTIN: And I think fundamentally that is what's at the crux here. Because what we've seen with COVID is that you want to have societal impact, we had to figure out a way to get out of the COVID pandemic. We all put it together. We all got there. And fundamental to that was the idea of open science and open innovation, right? I mean it was in the UNESCO report.
RACHEL MARTIN: People got it. What I think is really interesting about societal impact and what I would encourage everybody in the audience to really think about is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, 17 massively ambitious goals deadline 2030. And these include climate change. They include health. They include food and water security.
RACHEL MARTIN: And I think having that as a way to think through an agenda of a planet that's going to exist now and in the future is incredibly powerful. And I don't think journals are passive in this. We're not a service by which some research comes through. We can actually be-- I think, catalysts of change is a great description for here. Because if you think about social inequality, Elsevier did a little bit of study late last year when we launched the SDG report where we looked at, for example, gender across research mapped to all 17 SDGs.
RACHEL MARTIN: And what we found was apart from SDG number five, which surprisingly is around gender equality, it was lacking in all of the SDG. Now if you think about climate action, SDG number 13, it was 0.4% of the research was related to gender. Now that's really hard. If you think about the people who are a key driver in climate change, it's women and the idea of our role there.
RACHEL MARTIN: And I think there's this kind of idea of making sure that we have an idea of what is right research. The SDG framework, is that something else? What research is the right research? And then I think the next question is, are we incentivizing that? We love a good ranking. I mean we do love a good ranking. Is that the right way of doing it?
RACHEL MARTIN: But I also hear. When I talk to influencial people, researchers, universities, they're all telling me that, oh my God, you know, I had to write something for the IPCC report that goes to feed into the climate conference. They don't get recognized for it. They did a science literacy course for some university perhaps in the developing country. They don't get recognition for that.
RACHEL MARTIN: That's not tied into a h-index or publication output. And so we have to start thinking through how collectively, and that's why I love open science so much, is that you are looking at bringing librarians, authors, journals together to really think through what we could do. What levers can we push and what levers can they push, because collectively, we're going to be able to do it. And I think that for me is really how I think about societal impact.
RACHEL MARTIN: Science is going to do it. But if I'm going to be completely frank, we know climate change. We have 40 years worth of data and progress hasn't worked. So for some of these issues, and social inequalities, was really high on the agenda in 2020. Again, the connections weren't there. So to Toby's point, is that looking through working with World Bank?
RACHEL MARTIN: Is that working with these NGOs? Is it working on that? I think it's the time to really start thinking through what that would mean. And what does that mean for our panels and our output.
TOBY GREEN: Well, just on a search on Policy Commons, which is the projects I'm working on at the moment, I've just put in gender in Africa. 66,000 reports inside Policy Commons on gender in Africa. So maybe the research is there, is just not in the journals because doesn't--
RACHEL MARTIN: --research done on [INAUDIBLE]..
TOBY GREEN: Because it's being published by the NGOs. So there's something that-- when I started this project on Policy Commons, I mean I've been absolutely amazed by how much research is being put out by NGOs. And this research does not end up in the journals, or in books. It's in this completely other world. And it is vast. And I'm just staggered. I mean every day I'm finding more resources, more institutions, putting out research on all sorts of issues, on inequalities, on climate, on gender.
TOBY GREEN: I mean it's never ending. And this content is out there. But you can't find it because it's poorly published, because to your point earlier about the underpinnings underneath the car, they don't use [? DIYs. ?] They don't understand metadata. They don't understand XML. They don't understand any of the sub-standards that we would expect to find in mainstream publishing.
TOBY GREEN: But they are putting out really great research. But it's really, really hard to find, which is why we launched Policy Commons, to try and fix this problem and to try and make this content find [INAUDIBLE] stable and so on. But there is a huge amount out there. And I stumbled across the Resolution Foundation, they've just launched a project called the Economy 2030 Inquiry.
TOBY GREEN: This is looking at post-Brexit in UK. And they're launching it. And what's really interesting is the people on this inquiry, most of them are linked to an academic institution. And yet all of the findings will be published in report form on the Resolution Foundation's website. And I bet not a single piece of that research will end up in an academic journal.
TOBY GREEN: And it's going to be really interesting piece of research, much more applied and probably will have a greater impact in political circles in the UK than if it was published in the journal.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Toby, what I'm hearing is a dichotomy in how we are making this information accessible. I want to say traditional journals, following the traditional pattern, are publishing peer reviewed research, which does have its own impact. And I love the fact being the science nerd, what Rachel said, when she said the scientific freedom of thought, which I clearly exercised as a young grad student and doing postdoc, and mission-driven research which as a mom of a five-year-old, that's what I want to focus on, right?
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: There is content, which is going to make huge impact, but people are oblivious about this content. So in the scholarly publishing industry, how could we marry or merge the two so that all content is equitable. It's not going to happen, but all content, or good content, is accessible. So what are some of the steps we could take?
TOBY GREEN: A huge, huge question. I mean what publishers do today, they do a really good job at capturing and organizing and structuring the content so that it is stable, it is findable, it can be mined, and so on. Publishers do a really, really good job there. So in terms of-- I mean there are paywalls which can get in the way, which may be over time we have an access.
TOBY GREEN: So I don't know. I'm sort of a bit of a open-access skeptic in terms of whether open access will actually get rid of paywalls. But in terms of the underpinnings of what the scholarly publishing world does, it does a really good job of capturing and stabilizing that content for the long run.
TOBY GREEN: I don't see scholarly publishers involved in finding larger audiences. That's not what they do. They don't really have the skills to do that. They haven't really got the teams. Some of them do it a bit. Some of them have press offices normally around their big journals. But broadly speaking, they don't go much further than that.
TOBY GREEN: Now whether scholarly publishers should set up communications' arms to support their authors-- as I was saying earlier about creating other types of content and support their authors to create that other type of content, that would be a real sort of innovation if a scholarly publisher was to start doing that.
RACHEL MARTIN: I'm aware of it in the institution level. There are some, they call them policy groups where they're looking at digesting the information that they publish at the institutional level to policymakers and to create those narratives, which will be compelling. But I think we also have to be a little bit realistic. I mean, you alluded to it, Toby, and I totally agree, that you can have the scientific evidence, but that's not what policy and politics is about.
RACHEL MARTIN: Some of these things are going to be uncomfortable for an elected politician to advocate in some respects. And we need to think through what that means. And so I do think crucial to all of this is really around science literacy, science advocacy advocating for scientific thinking because what we did have-- particularly I think previous administrations in pretty much all the countries is sort of that divorcing from scientific fact or to manipulate it in a way that would make sense for there to be re-elected.
RACHEL MARTIN: I think there's some great organizations, I think this is one of them, looking at knowledge brokerage to think through what that is. And out of the European Commission level, I know that the Joint Research Council do a lot in terms of taking and sifting the journal output and really putting it together and marrying it off with the processes in the European Parliament. But there are, I think, some great examples of where we've had policymakers with researchers, institutions, and industry come together and to really have that dialogue and to align on priorities.
RACHEL MARTIN: And it comes back to that fundamental point. Do you do the mission? Or do you do the free thinking? Because if we're doing the mission around renewable energies or the [INAUDIBLE] pressing issues that we think, we can make that amazing progress. That seems to work quite well. It's just really interesting to see what will happen moving forward and towards the 2030 deadline that everyone's putting into place for the UN agenda.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Yeah, I agree and, Rachel, I think it is an ambitious goal and 2030 timeline almost seems imminent to me. So there is definitely a need to change the world. You both talked about making some changes in which we can make information more accessible, or make it relevant, or bring certain other sources to the forefront. In the last 15 minutes that we have, I do want to pose this question to our attendees.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And we can continue the discussion. If you could please launch the poll. Have you recently felt the need to change the world? And I know this is just a yes or no question, but I welcome your thoughts, comments, suggestions in the chat, and any questions you may have for our expert panelists today. And in the meantime, I would like all of you to think about which one thing could you do differently next week to have a positive influence on the world?
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Do we have the results for the poll? [LAUGHS] 88% of folks felt the need to change the world. 13% are very happy with the world they are in. And I hope they continue enjoying their bliss. So, yes, I'm-- OK, Vanessa's saying in so many ways. OK. So anything that you want to say, Rachel and Toby, something that you would do differently next week to make a positive impact, change the world for better?
CHHAVI CHAUHAN:
RACHEL MARTIN: I can make a plug here. I do think if you're inspired by society's challenges, as publishers you can easily sign up to be SDG Publishers Compact, and I know Vanessa put the link in the chat. But it really is a way to align and to think through collectively as an industry, as a sector, how we might be really contributing to that grand challenges, something that I think purpose-driven organizations like us really care about.
RACHEL MARTIN: You could change the world next week by signing up.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Toby?
TOBY GREEN: At the moment, I'd say, when you're working in a startup, pretty much that's what you do and you didn't do much else. We're trying to [INAUDIBLE]. We're trying to find a way at low cost to capture content that is valuable but isn't yet managed in a meaningful way. And we're trying to make it safe so it doesn't disappear. I mean, link rot is a huge problem on the websites of NGOs.
TOBY GREEN: And NGOs themselves can disappear. Their funding dries up. Their websites get dark. Their content just evaporates. The mission that we set ourselves is to try and capture this content, organizes in a way that the people can find it but also to make it safe so that if the organization does disappear or link breaks, then we've got a copy of the content.
TOBY GREEN: That's really what we're trying to do. I believe it's going to help improve things, because there's so much really great content, really interesting research that otherwise is lost. And therefore as we all know, the research, you stand on the shoulders of giants, well, these are giants that have disappeared. And so we're trying to make sure that these organizations and their content remains available into the future.
TOBY GREEN: That's what we're trying to do. Within a subset of that is that we're really interested in trying to find content, particularly in Africa. There's a lot of fantastic content in Africa that just does not get airtime outside of Africa. And so we've got two projects running in Africa, one in partly within Policy Commons where we're pulling content from African NGOs, making it available.
TOBY GREEN: We have another project that we're just starting with archives in Africa, to try and support this content and stop this content disappearing. So that's really what I'm trying to do.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: That's wonderful. I am getting a lot of response from our attendees. It's coming just to the panelists. It's coming to everyone. And I do want to read out some of the comments that were shared with all the attendees, keeping in mind that some folks may just want to share the comments with panelists alone. There is a comment from Jennifer. What a simple yet heartening question.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: I pursued elected office. I gave holy, and simultaneously received so much in return. Well, congratulations, Jennifer. And thank you so much for giving back. Vanessa is saying, I'm looking at getting more involved in UK charity called the Commitment, which helps to influence policymakers and politicians on climate change and biodiversity. So I think your message resonated, Rachel.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Vanessa also says, some of these things we have discussed are overwhelming to say the least, to think of an individual level, but to quote Margaret Mead, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Thank you for sharing that comment, Vanessa. Silvia says, I want to change the world, but I am also very tired.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And wow, there's a fine line between I'm committed and I'm overcommitted. And I think each one of us hears you, Sylvia, especially when we are working in the virtual world in different time zones. We have our speakers here from Amsterdam and from Paris giving their time, their afternoon and evening to us, to keep this discussion going. Rachel says, exactly, no one can do everything, but everyone can do something.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Becoming advocate is amazing. And Sylvia also says, you're not obligated to complete the work but neither are you permitted to desist from it. [LAUGHTER]
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Any last minute cards, Rachel and Toby, a message that you would like to convey to our attendees or stream of thought that you want to leave them with for the rest of the conference, the seminar.
RACHEL MARTIN: Me, I would just say advocate for science. Talk to your family. Talk to your friends. Tell them about the world that we exist in. It's all very complicated and sometimes it can be a little subculture of its own. Lift the lid, and talk about what's happening. And talk about scholarly publishing. And get people to understand what we're doing on a day-to-day basis.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And that could be a daunting deal, too. [LAUGHS]
TOBY GREEN: Yeah, I would echo that. As Rachel mentioned earlier, she bumps into people on the bus and explains what she does, and no one understands. I so relate to that. I mean even my parents, after years, they never understood what I did. And I think trying to explain is good. But I would also just say to those working in the industry, the industry has changed a tremendous amount in the last 30 years since I've been working at it, not least because of the internet.
TOBY GREEN: But I think one thing I would say to everybody is, look at the other digital media companies that are active on the internet and think about how they do their business, and see what lessons we can draw from them, because I think there's a little bit of groupthink in scholarly publishing as to the way that we publish online. And if you just look outside at what the media companies are doing, what startups are doing, what bloggers are doing, and I think that there are lessons for us there if only we had the courage to look.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: That's the courage to look and think outside the box to bring things into mainstream. I know we touched upon a lot of things. Some of the things that resonated with me was to make content more accessible and not to focus just on scientific research but some of the other realms that also help advance humanity. And think about mission-driven research.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And definitely I appreciate Rachel's comments on the SDGs to try to bring that message back to everyone, because we are moving fast and we do not want to break things because that's the last thing we want to do, especially when we are on a timeline of 2030, which is ambitious. But with every one's small little efforts, we are going to get there. There were some other comments that came in from our audience.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And they're specifically related to scholarly publishing landscape. Would it be OK if I communicated those comments to you and perhaps got the answers to those attendees separately.
RACHEL MARTIN: Very happy to answer any questions. I'm good.
TOBY GREEN: Yeah, absolutely.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Wonderful, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today and for an engaging discussion. And I do want to thank our audience as well, too. And we are getting a lot of support from them. And I think we had close to 100 people join in on the opening keynote. I appreciate you being here early in the morning and from different time zones. I do want to remind everyone that we will be taking a 15 minute break, but I request you all to reconvene for the 11:00 AM Eastern talk on preprints and new content.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: I know I'm going to tune in. And we deliberately didn't want to touch upon preprints because we know we have a whole dedicated session on that. So thank you once again, Rachel and Toby, for joining us today and for enlightening our world, and for sharing some really-- your passions and deep thoughts on all matter scholarly publishing related. Thanks a lot. Enjoy the rest of the conference, everyone.
TOBY GREEN: Bye.
RACHEL MARTIN: Thank you, guys. Thank you so much. Bye.
Segment:0 .
MARY BETH BARILLA: Welcome, everyone, and thank you for attending SSP's Fifth Annual New Directions Seminar. We are very pleased that you can join us today. My name is Mary Beth Barilla, and I'm the Program Director for the Society for Scholarly Publishing. First and foremost, I want to thank the organizers of today's seminar.
MARY BETH BARILLA: These are our education committee volunteers. Sophie Reisz, Alexa Colella, Vanessa Fairhurst, Sylvia Hunter, Ben Mudrak, John Shaw, Heather Staines, and Simone Taylor. They've put together a great program. And I'm confident that you'll gain some important takeaways from our speakers over the next few days. And I mustn't forget, thanks also to the SSP staff for their support for this event.
MARY BETH BARILLA: We want to thank our sponsors for this event as well. And they are Access Innovations, Atypon, Cadmore Media, eJournalPress, Impact Journals, Jack Farrell & Associates, Silverchair, Straive, and Taylor & Francis F1000. We are grateful for your support. For those of you who may not already be members of SSP, I want to share a little bit of information.
MARY BETH BARILLA: We are a membership organization focused on connecting professionals in our industry to the people information and professional development resources they need to succeed in Scholarly Publishing. We offer a variety of resources, such as The Scholarly Kitchen blog, our weekly member newsletter, remember, the SSP Member Exchange, and access to the journal, Learned Publishing.
MARY BETH BARILLA: Membership also gives you access to programs like SSP's mentorship program. If you are interested in learning more about becoming an SSP member, I encourage you to check out our website at sspnet.org or take a look at the Pathable Conference site. We also have some information there. Some housekeeping items.
MARY BETH BARILLA: We do have live support available during the seminar. If you need any assistance, you'll see on the upper right of the Pathable screen, there's a Support tab and then a menu where you can select live support and you'll be connected with someone who can help you. If all else fails, you can also email us at info@sspnet.org. Closed captions have been enabled for all sessions.
MARY BETH BARILLA: Please use the CC button on your toolbar there in Zoom to activate these. This meeting is being recorded, and the recordings will be available on Pathable following the end of the seminar. And after today's sessions, we have a virtual social event planned to be held on our platform REMO. There will be informal discussions on various publishing issues as well as time for just networking and saying hi to people.
MARY BETH BARILLA: We encourage you to join us using the link you'll find in your agenda in Pathable. And finally, our goal is to have an interactive and engaging event. So please don't be shy. Our hashtag for this meeting is sspND2021. You have the Q&A box in Zoom to direct questions at the panelists.
MARY BETH BARILLA: You also can use the Zoom Chat feature to speak to all of the attendees that are here in the room with you. The theme of this year's New Direction Seminar is How to Move Fast and Not Break Things, Balancing High-Speed Outputs at the Risk of Slamming on the Brakes. To kick us off, I would now like to introduce Sophie Raise, member of the SSP Education Committee and for the third-year leader of the New Directions Working Group.
MARY BETH BARILLA: Over to you, Sophie.
SOPHIE REISZ: Thank you, Mary Beth. Hello, everyone. I'm Sophie Reisz, Vice President and Executive Editor at Mary Ann Lieber, Inc. Publishers and proud lead of the 2021 SSP New Directions Seminar in Scholarly Publishing. To echo the comments of Mary Beth, I'd like to personally thank the New Direction seminar committee members, including Vanessa Fairhurst, Simone Taylor, John Shaw, Alexa Colella, Sylvia Hunter, Heather Staines, and Ben Mudrak.
SOPHIE REISZ: Together, this wonderful team has worked tremendously hard over the past few months to present this captivating virtual seminar. This year's New Direction seminar is focused around the theme of how to move fast and not break things, balancing high-speed outputs at the risk of slamming on the brakes. The panel discussions throughout the seminar take a deep dive into the breakneck speed at which our industry is currently transitioning, transforming, and evolving while also recognizing and highlighting the limits and possible uncomfortable consequences of moving too quickly.
SOPHIE REISZ: To kick things off, I'd like to introduce our opening connote session, titled A Whole New World, Scholarship Under Fire. This session is unlike any other session we've had presented at the New Direction seminars and is the perfect topic to highlight the essential conversations taking place in the world of Scholarly Publishing around the globe. 2020 was an eye-opening, unrelenting experiment and exploring new directions in our personal and professional lives.
SOPHIE REISZ: Even now as we move further into 2021 and beyond, we are considering what these changes and experience might mean as we continue to collectively power forward. We adjust to this new world-- As we adjust to this new world, our industry bears a new level of responsibility as scholarship, scientific research, and advances in new scientific technologies, especially with respect to vaccinations fall under a high-resolution microscope.
SOPHIE REISZ: Some might even say that scientific research and scholarship are under fire. As citizen scientists and global citizens alike, emerge to voice their advocacy, opinions, and concerns about public health, public security, climate change, and our collective responsibilities to each other as individuals of a greater global network. This session is the start of the conversation. It will focus specifically on the emerging responsibilities we now have as academic publishers, as researchers, librarians, and citizens, to uphold the rigor and impact of the advancements that have the greatest potential for positive influence in our lives and around the globe.
SOPHIE REISZ: And now I'd like to introduce the moderator of our first session, Dr. Chhavi Chauhan. Chhavi works as the Director for Scientific Outreach at the American Society for Investigative Pathology, and is the Director of the Continuing Medical Education Program at the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. She is a biomedical researcher and expert scholarly communicator and a sought-after mentor in the fields of scientific research, scholarly publishing, and AI Ethics.
SOPHIE REISZ: And she's a advocate, especially for women in minorities. A renowned international speaker and a strong advocate for equitable and accessible health care, Chhavi sits at the intersection of scientific research, scholarly communications, and AI Ethics, and health care. And with that, I will hand things over to Chhavi to kick us off.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Thank you so much, Sophie. That was such a warm introduction. I appreciate it. Before we kick off today's keynote discussion, I do want to echo Mary Beth and Sophie sentiments. And I would personally like to thank Vanessa Fairhurst. She is the brainchild behind putting together today's discussion. And let me now introduce you to today's speaker. I see a lot of folks are putting in their names and where they are from.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And I think that's a great way to get the engagement going. I'm Chhavi Chauhan from North Carolina. Our two panelists are Rachel Martin and Toby Green. Rachel Martin is the Global Director of Sustainability at Elsevier where she's driving transformational change in the priority areas of sustainability with a focus on climate change. In 2020, her efforts resulted in the launch of the Elsevier report, The Power of Data to Advance the SDGs.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Since joining Elsevier in 2010, she has held various communications positions with a focus on policy and advocacy. Additionally, she has worked as a strategic communication advisor on industry initiatives, such as CHORUS, CLOCKKS, and the Accessible Books Consortium. Rachel is also a part of the team that launched the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Publishers Compact, and represents Elsevier on several industry sustainability committees.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Good afternoon, Rachel, how are you?
RACHEL MARTIN: Hi. Hi, everyone. Very pleased and an absolute honor to be here today.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Could you please let us know where you're speaking from today?
RACHEL MARTIN: So I'm speaking from my garden in Amsterdam. So still remote and still slightly in the afternoon sun.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Wonderful, wonderful. Our next panelist is Toby Green. Toby is a co-founder of Coherent Digital, an enterprise taming hard-to-find content and making it useful for researchers, professionals, folks in academics, and students. Toby has over 35 years of experience in scholarly, policy, and professional publishing with several deliverables with OECD Publishing, Elsevier Science, Pergamon Press, and Academic Press.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: He's a pioneer of freemium open access publishing and has a long track record of innovation in digital solutions. He's a regular speaker at publishing and librarian events in Europe and North America. He currently serves as an expert advisor to the open research community, and previously has been a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing Board and Chair and Council Member of ALPSP.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Good afternoon, Toby, how are you?
TOBY GREEN: I'm very well. Thank you very much. I'm speaking to you from Paris, in Paris at the moment, where in fact the sun has come out, which is very nice.
RACHEL MARTIN: Uh-huh, wonderful, wonderful. This is going to be so great. I do want to kick off this discussion today with the Sanskrit phrase, vasudhaiva kutumbakam-- the whole world is my home. And we cannot but appreciate this phrase under the current pandemic setting when the whole world and every human is dealing with similar challenges. Like Sophie mentioned, may be challenges with testing capacities, vaccination status, treatment regimens, possible therapies, managing worklife balance while working in different time zones, and personal loss.
RACHEL MARTIN: And of course, on top of all this, we have been and continue to deal with the devastating climate change. The whole world is indeed my home. When I sit in my home office and attend global virtual conferences, information as well as misinformation has been coming to our doorsteps and to our bed sides, on our electronic devices, from the corners of the world, we barely knew about.
RACHEL MARTIN: The world we live in got positively affected when we suspended all travel for work and pleasure to drop the emission levels and decrease our carbon footprint by working remotely. And the wildlife took a moment to explore the world as their home. In this truly one world setting, it is our responsibility to contain the viral spread of this information, to own responsibility in spreading valuable information from obscure sources to enable positive change to make a societal impact.
RACHEL MARTIN: I know it is not a trivial task and we have unprecedented amount of information coming our way every second, every minute. Let me start this discussion with checking in with all of you first. Do you think we're suffering from an infodemic? Can we please launch the poll for the attendees first? Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN: We'll just wait a few minutes. Looks like we have close to 100 attendees. They might take a moment to send their answers in. And if we have a majority of folks answered, then perhaps we can close the poll.
RACHEL MARTIN: Oh my goodness, 93% of you answered that you're suffering from an infodemic. I am not surprised. But I want to ask the other 7%, how are they managing to stay safe? [LAUGHS] But my question to the panelists today is, what can publishers do to tackle the infodemic? Toby, would you like to go first?
TOBY GREEN: OK. Well, I would actually be in the minority there. I don't think we are in infodemic. If you understand actually what the word means, it's a portmanteau word that combines information with epidemic. And an epidemic, of course, is something that is far reaching, so like a disease. And therefore, you have to have information that is far reaching.
TOBY GREEN: And if you think about scholarly publishing, I don't think one could argue that the content that we publish is far reaching because it tends not to actually go very far. If you look at download data, if you look at-- certainly if you compare how successful we are as publishers compared to the people who put out misinformation, our information doesn't go nearly as wide and nearly as far as misinformation.
TOBY GREEN: Are we suffering infodemic, or perhaps in terms of misinformation always suffering an infodemic in terms of trusted information? No, I don't think we are. I don't think trusted information goes nearly far enough. So I would be in that minority group.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: It's good to know we do have a panelist who represents the minority group. And I am getting a few comments from our attendees as well. And, Sylvia is mentioning perhaps that we are in a misinfodemic or a disinfodemic. What are your thoughts, Rachel?
RACHEL MARTIN: I think maybe from a publisher's perspective, where I interpret an infodemic about knowledge expansion. And I think we can't deny that that's been evolving at such an extraordinary pace. And the fact is that it was an unprecedented exposure globally in response to the pandemic. And I mean, studies and figures show that across all journals, across all subjects, there were increases in submissions last year. And I can give you a little bit of data to give you some context.
RACHEL MARTIN: So at Elsevier, in 2020, we published 556,000 papers, published peer reviewed articles. And that's a 90% increase than 10 years ago, mere 10 years ago. So 2010, we were doing 90% less. And what I thought was really interesting is that the Journal of American Medical Association, they indicated in the first six months of the pandemic, they received 11,000 manuscripts.
RACHEL MARTIN: That's a 275% increase compared to 2019. And that's just a huge, huge pain, both on our systems, our workflows, our processes. And it's apt to think about that in terms of our thinking here about how do you move fast but not break things. And so I think, for me, the infodemic is really; more about the challenge of finding relevant research because it just makes it much harder.
RACHEL MARTIN: It's harder to stay up to date in the field. It's harder to rely on. It's harder to know what you can rely on and what you can't, so the whole misinformation piece. And it's harder to tie together that interdisciplinary thinking. That's going to be so crucial when we start looking through the biggest issues that we're facing from society.
RACHEL MARTIN: How do you live longer, healthier lives? How do you address climate change? How do you make society more equitable? How do you have food and water security? And those require such a different way of looking at all of this data and making sure that we're connecting that greater-- in a different way to having impact on society. So I think we have all of this data, I'm really passionate about how do you make it apply, how do we get this to actually work, and to move the needle on these big societal challenges.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Very well said, Rachel. Toby mentioned about trust, right, and credibility, and you brought the facts to that there has been a significant, a tremendous increase in the amount of content that we have been seeing as scholarly publishers. And 90% increase of 556,000 articles, that is no gimmick, right? And then in the next session, folks are going to talk about preprints.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And that's another thing that is not new. It's been coming, but I guess during COVID, we all embraced the preprints as well. So there is a lot of content. There is a lot of peer reviewed content, and there's a lot of non-peer reviewed content. And the sources vary, right? There is a question about building trust when we are disseminating this content.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Rachel, I wouldn't even put you on spot by asking how many of these manuscripts were either retrieved or corrected or correction issued afterward. And I think that would still be perhaps emerging data. But these days, whenever I look at any content, I question about the credibility of the content. So I do want to launch a poll for our attendees before we go into the next segment of our discussion.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Can we-- Oh, wonderful. The question is, during the last couple of years, have you come across scholarly content with questionable credibility? I am so excited to hear the results. Oh, it looks like poll is not coming across to all the attendees.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: I got a comment in the chat.
MARY BETH BARILLA: OK, let me restart it and see if that--
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: OK, thank you.
MARY BETH BARILLA: Sure.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Well, let's just give it one more minute.
MARY BETH BARILLA: We do have 75 responses. So you might have to navigate to see if there's another window open. There you go.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: OK. So do we have the responses too? OK, 86% of our attendees say that they have seen content with questionable credibility. 14% say they have not. So my question to you, Rachel, is, what can we do in the scholarly community to improve trust in research when we are moving so fast and so much content is coming out?
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And some of it has to be processed in a very fast manner. So what can we do to improve trust in research?
RACHEL MARTIN: So it's a great question. And I'd like to maybe take a step back because I do think the COVID pandemic didn't really give us a lot of bright sparks. But one of which is that, in the latest research conducted by 3M, on science attitudes by the public, they found that there was a shift in terms of trust in science. So in North America, and the same findings happened in the UK and in Germany, we saw a decrease for the first time in three years in the statement, I am skeptical of science.
RACHEL MARTIN: So to put that into context with those in North America, that was around 40% pre-pandemic, and it's about 32% during the pandemic. Now that might not be too much, but that's a decrease. That hasn't happened in three-years' time. I do think that this idea of trust in science has really been put to the forefront. We've mentioned preprints. And what I found, and I'll tell you a little story which I think might-- you might resonate for those in the audience, is that often I go to a barbecue or my hairdresser or I'm on the tram and somebody asked me what I do, and I say I do academic publishing, they look at me and they say, is that books?
RACHEL MARTIN: Or is that magazines? We have no idea what we do. And I think what's really interesting about this pandemic is that on the front page, six months into the COVID pandemic, we had an article in the New York Times that said, well, the latest study published in a preprint. And it was this caveat that we were increasing the scientific literacy of the general public.
RACHEL MARTIN: So often we might be so insular in what we're thinking that actually we need the public to not only access, understand but to also figure out the critical questions. I have no problems in somebody looking at the latest study on a preprint server or in a published research and saying, hang on a second, was that a representative sample? Hang on a second, did they consider gender?
RACHEL MARTIN: Hang on a second, was that ethnic minority was represented? And those are great questions. That's great dialogue. And so I'm actually positive that trust in science here can really move the needle. Now when we apply this to climate change, the next biggest challenge we might be facing, we have the idea that science has the consensus, right?
RACHEL MARTIN: We know what's happening. We know the science says it. And actually, what we need is the public not only to trust the science, but then to start thinking through changing their attitude or behavior. And so I find that what we can do to improve trust in science is to start thinking through collective narratives, advocate for science literacy, and think through those collective narratives because we need to be able to marry up the hard sciences with social sciences to get people to change behavior.
RACHEL MARTIN: And so we have this idea. I'm definitely agreeing with Toby, is that we need to expand our idea of our traditional audiences. It's not just academic communities. It's not communities in different fields. It's the society. It's decision makers. It's communities.
RACHEL MARTIN: It's business leaders. It's science advisors. And how do we do that collectively? And I think there's something there that we can all start to really think about. And I think climate change is a great topic to really catalyze us to think through some really creative ideas.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Yeah, wonderful, wonderful, Rachael. And just going with the theme of one world-- your comment about collective narrative really resonates with me. And then we think about science, we are usually focusing just on major realms of science, but you know I like the idea of marrying science with other streams as well because scholarly publishing community needs to represent all streams of arts and humanities, which often tend to take a backseat.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: I know, Toby, you have some very different unique views. And I'm sure our audience cannot wait to hear them. So what are your thoughts, Toby?
TOBY GREEN: Well, I mean-- I agree with a lot of what's been said. But it's really changing. I have a nephew who doesn't think is a good idea to be vaccinated. And I've been debating with him about this. And he keeps on pulling one off-scientific papers that show maybe some slightly-- some sort of balancing the efficacy of vaccines maybe against natural immunity, whatever.
TOBY GREEN: And he grabs these single edge cases and builds a whole narrative around it. And even if I sort of stack up 100 cases that completely shows that this is an edge case, he still doesn't want to hear. And I think that this is a really big, big challenge, is that, yes, the science, increasingly the scientific papers are available. But I don't think many people are educated on the scientific process.
TOBY GREEN: And to understand that it's scientific by itself is simply a grain of sand. And it isn't a revelation. It's just one of hundreds of thousands of articles that are coming out. And therefore you can't really draw a conclusion until you've read many articles. You can't base it just on one. And I think there is this-- I'm slightly worried that people just grab one fact and they cling to it to support their view.
TOBY GREEN: But when it comes to trust-- when I think about trust, I think about brands. I mean people trust brands. And in our world, the blue ribbon brands include the Lancet, the Nature, and Cell, and Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, and so on. But the brands also extend to individuals and to their institutions. So Harvard is also a brand.
TOBY GREEN: Oxford is a brand. So major institutions, in my world, brands would be the World Bank, or the OECD, or Chatham House, or Brookings. These are major institutions that put out research. And yet, there's one really interesting contrast between what goes on in mainstream academic publishing and what goes on in the policy publishing world. In the policy publishing world, the World Bank, the OECD, Chatham House, and Brookings take responsibility for what they publish.
TOBY GREEN: In the academic publishing world, Harvard, and Oxford, and other universities do not. They actually delegate that responsibility to the journals. So they actually are not part of the building the credibility and trust for the research that their employees and their staff have put out. And I find this very interesting as to why do these major institutions who could add so much to the idea of trust and so much credibility lend their brands to the credibility, except they step back.
TOBY GREEN: And I find it really odd that they step back. And they leave it to the journals. And there are so few journals that actually have a public trust because their brands are known. I mean how many people know that Tetrahedron is one of the leading journals in organic chemistry. I mean, I think the only people who know that were people who worked at Elsevier or who actually published an organic chemistry.
TOBY GREEN: But no one else knows that, because there is a hierarchy of journals. We in this world understand that. The public don't. For them, it's just a paper. And if it comes from a journal, it must be good. Well, no, that's not true. There are a lot of really, really dodgy journals out there.
TOBY GREEN: We know that. But what I find is the voice that's missing is the voice of the research institutions, because they're just absent from this debate, which I find is really bizarre. And I think it's really time that they stepped up and started to actually take responsibility for what their staff would have, which they don't.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: So I want to hold-- I want you to hold on to that thought, Toby, right, because you talked about branding, right, and the journals standing behind the content versus the institutions. And you're talking about these smaller research institutes which may be churning out great content. But they have limited visibility because they are not that brand that can be trusted. So what are some of the things that can be done.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And I know you've been at the forefront of leading technology in bringing content from obscure sources, making it more mainstream. So what are some of the things that can be done to provide this great information into the hands of the masses?
TOBY GREEN: Well, to go to the broader public, you certainly don't want to take them a journal article. It's so dry. It's so structured. It's so rigid. It's not a means of communication. I mean, if we go back to the concept of infodemic and the idea of content going viral, well, what goes viral? Videos go viral. Tweets go viral.
TOBY GREEN: Blog posts go viral. It's content that's packaged in a way that's much more accessible and much more-- Yeah, they're much more impactful. And as publishers, we don't really get involved in that. We manage the process of publishing the journal or the book, but we don't get involved in really helping to recast that knowledge into a parental format that actually works well in the web 2.0 world.
TOBY GREEN: Now NGOs are much better skilled at that. They are putting out their information in much more interactive ways. They're much more skilled in using social media to get their messages across. And I think there are a lot of lessons that come out of the NGO world that could be learned in the academic world in terms of looking at ways that one can communicate and get really interesting findings across in a way that is going to reach a broader audience.
TOBY GREEN:
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Yeah, yeah. I do want to take this one comment that came from Rebecca through chat. And I want to direct this to you, Rachel. And I agree with this. Actually institutions are entirely-- I mean, to a lot of extent, responsible for credibility. Compliance officers get involved all the time. So from a publisher's journal perspective versus an institutional perspective, what do you think of this comment, Rachel?
CHHAVI CHAUHAN:
RACHEL MARTIN: I think the intersectional where I think publishers and institutions could really work on is around open science. So this is the concept that you've got open access and you've got open access publishing, and we're all very familiar with that. But open science is really where it's going to move towards. And we need to start thinking through that because open science is also more than just open data. Data is going to be something that reproducibility fuels trust, because you have to be able to reproduce the science.
RACHEL MARTIN: If you can't, then you can't trust the science. And so open data is a crucial bit. But what's interesting, and I can give you a great example, is the Netherlands' example. Elsevier and the Netherlands have got an open science agreement. And we're exploring some ideas around it, right? So what pilots? What services?
RACHEL MARTIN: What could we bring together that's going to increase the transparency? But I think most are looked through how do you connect science to society. What is it that platform? Could it be and it might well be greater tracking across retractions. If you've got to think-- if it's a preprint and then it's a journal, and then you put it on another website afterwards, you have to be able to track all of that all the way through, right, when you do it.
RACHEL MARTIN: So we've got our nuts and bolts under the car linkage and preservation, curation of a knowledge base. And that's going to definitely continue to be there. And I think we're talking about things we don't want to break. We don't want to break that. Where we can really, really focus on is thinking through to Toby's great point. There's other audiences out there and we can do a lot better at trying to figure out what that is.
RACHEL MARTIN: Now I would pose a question back in that we've been communicating research, abstract, methods, results, conclusion for, let's say, in centuries of this format. What we're not really great at is getting researchers to tell compelling stories to figure out we're not just communicating with your colleague next to you. I can say a great example from Elsevier. We love the use of abbreviations.
RACHEL MARTIN: If you can [INAUDIBLE] words that comes out, you're in the club. And I think scientists tend to have this idea that they will write something. It's very complicated. It's very hard to digest. And we're not actually stimulating or incentivizing them to think through how do you make that communication far more palatable to people outside, as any comms professional will tell you that you should write as though you're talking to your 90-year-old grandmother.
RACHEL MARTIN: We also have to think through what that might mean. Now there are challenges there-- language, different fields. It's not going to be something that's so easy. But if we want to be able to speed up, if we want to be able to make impact rich, build credibility in [INAUDIBLE] we need scientists to really start thinking through how they connect to society. And I think that connection needs to be stronger and it needs to really think through about that communication fundamental skills that we're building.
RACHEL MARTIN: And that happens right at a bachelor level, of course, just before you do your PhD and [CLAPS] done, and then you can go and write your articles forevermore. I mean this has to be something part of education. And I think what was really interesting, I read something about a knowledge about the infodemic to go back to the first question. If that's expanding at these exponential rates, what does that mean for education?
RACHEL MARTIN: How do you learn and apply that as well? And so we have to think through those two connections. It's not just about publishing PDFs. Unfortunately, that's not what it's about. We don't want to acquire loads of content and data and all the rest of it. That's all very useful. But if it doesn't solve our grand challenges, it doesn't solve climate change or produce a vaccine up to 12 months, then we're not really progressing society.
RACHEL MARTIN: And that's ultimately what our purpose is.
TOBY GREEN: Yeah. I mean, the OECD, we had these arguments the whole time internally about how to publish. And it seemed to be a choice. Do we publish the classic OECD report, which is basically like a scientific paper but longer, or do we publish something new which is going to go to a broader audience? So I kept on saying, guys, we have to do both because you can't publish the lighter piece without the science behind it, because otherwise it's got no foundation.
TOBY GREEN: You actually have to do both. And the trouble with doing both is, therefore, it's actually more effort. And it needs different skills. You cannot expect a scientist to be a communicator. Some can do both. But in my experience, very few actually are any good at communication. They're really good at science.
TOBY GREEN: That's why they're scientists. And they're really good at writing those really dry reports, because that's their world. Well, let them do that. Let them write in their acronyms and their code for their community by all means, but then needs to go through a translation process with the communicator who can take that and then build the fantastic little website or the visualization or whatever is required to get that message across.
TOBY GREEN: And this is the challenge, is you actually need to do both. It's not one or the other. And there are a few examples. I mean, I can see some examples of organizations are able to do this. But it's expensive because you actually have to then invest on the communications side, but not at the expense of the research side. And also to go to your point about the open science and certainly open data, data is a devil to publish in a way that's great to communicate.
TOBY GREEN: I mean you can put the file out there and people can download the numbers, or whatever. That's fine. But to put an interface on data to make it accessible to the broader public is really challenging. I mean, at OECD, we built the better life index, which is a tool. It's an interactive tool that anyone can use to try and see how countries do in terms of the quality of life and the quantity of life.
TOBY GREEN: And it was an absolute better to build to actually make, to translate the data into an interface that the public could use. It's really hard to do that. But it is possible. I mean there's something I came across just recently that the Migration Policy Institute has got a really nice interface showing migration flows.
TOBY GREEN: And it's something that actually a member of the public could use and get to this idea of really what the flows are from migrants and asylum seekers and so on globally.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Both, Rachel, you and Toby make excellent, fantastic points. And a lot of our audience are chiming in the chat and they support your views. There are some other comments coming up, which I do want to tie up for the rest of our discussion in the rest of our discussion. Let me read this comment from Bill. He says Toby's point really resonates with me. It reminds me of a client of mine, a research organization who when I asked, who the primary audience for the research was, expecting them to say researchers, they said policymakers first, the public second, and researchers third.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Let me read one more comment which we may want to take in during the course of our discussion. It's from Angela. This is all fine to encourage better science communication, and while journals can help. This is not a core function of a journal. Journals are for communicating scholarly content to other scholars, not the public. I know our panelists will have a lot to say about that.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: But just to keep us on track, and I know we're a little pressed for time and we have a lot to cover, I do want to talk about three things that shown through your discussion. So I came across or captured the word accessibility, accessibility of content for different diverse audiences. And we do have a comment that the content is only for scholars and perhaps you can address that in your comments. I did hear about the relevance, right, and the impact.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Toby did talk about a nephew who was hanging on to one piece of evidence that he had to make his decisions. And there's a plethora of content that's coming out to perhaps support another viewpoint. So when we think about accessibility, relevance, and impact, what can we be doing, or how can we bring about greater societal impact?
TOBY GREEN: Rachel--
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Toby, would you like to go? OK.
TOBY GREEN: Well, picking up on Bill's point about the policymaker and then going to the public, I mean I have a fair amount of experience. Thanks to work at OECD about how you can reach a policymaker. And depending on how far up the tree you want to go, in terms of policymaking, because if you really want to get to the executive, you want to get to the ministers and the prime ministers, the best way is face to face.
TOBY GREEN: The last thing you want to do is build a website. These people don't go on the web. The best thing to do is to get some high-level person to actually give them the report. They're not going to read the report, but they'll give it to one of their staff who will read the report and will condense the findings for that minister or prime minister. That is the most effective way of reaching the very top.
TOBY GREEN: You've got to go through-- either you go directly to them or you've got to go through their research teams. There is no other way. Or, of course, you go through the media because they do pay attention to the media. That's another way you can reach the very, very top. But really the absolute best way is face to face. At the OECD, we kept the printed publications alive really for one very, very good reason.
TOBY GREEN: The Secretary General could then give it to a minister when he met them. You cannot give digital files to someone. You can give a print object to somebody. And that was still probably the most effective way of doing it. Now as for the general public, then there are two channels-- media and social media. And you've got to get to the influencers. You've got to find the people who really reach the public that you're after.
TOBY GREEN: I'll tell you a little story here. The OECD put out a report on Brexit before the 2016 Referendum in the UK. So the OECD put together a typical report and came down basically advising the UK public to vote remain. And the report was launched with the minister in the UK, [INAUDIBLE] over. There was the usual song and dance. Journals were present.
TOBY GREEN: It got COVID in the newspapers. And then everyone came home and thought it was a great success. We then did a deep-dive analysis to see whether this report had had any impact whatsoever into either both the remain or the leave community. And the result was zero. It had no impact at all outside of what I would call the little Guardian reading bubble. It had absolutely zero impact on the leave side in particular.
TOBY GREEN: But there was only one journalist in the UK who could actually speak to both the leave and remain communities. Things are so split. There's only one journalist. And we didn't know that at the time and we did not get that report to that one journalist. So this effort to communicate whatever we did was a total flop in terms of actually reaching the public.
TOBY GREEN: And it just showed that the normal way of doing things wasn't relevant for that particular. But what you need to do is really get under the covers of who is influencing those communities and find a way to channel your message out troopers through this community. So you've got to find influencers. Then there could be mainstream journalist, or they could be social media influencers.
TOBY GREEN: But that's what you got to find. And it's tough.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: What do you think, Rachel, before I say anything further?
RACHEL MARTIN: I think I'd probably take-- I agree with Toby's views there. I mean, I think I'm probably thinking a little bit more abstract. So when you talk about societal impact or who journals are supposed to be communicating to, there's a lot of nuance there as well. And I think one of the things to think through is that science and research has this culture of freedom of academic thinking, right?
RACHEL MARTIN: If you particularly like atoms in the sky, you want to research it because it's atoms in the sky, not because it's going to have a societal impact in 12 to 15 years on SDG number 13. You don't really have that link. We're not really linking that. And it's an idea that there is this tension between mission-driven research and the idea of this scientific freedom of thought.
RACHEL MARTIN: And I think fundamentally that is what's at the crux here. Because what we've seen with COVID is that you want to have societal impact, we had to figure out a way to get out of the COVID pandemic. We all put it together. We all got there. And fundamental to that was the idea of open science and open innovation, right? I mean it was in the UNESCO report.
RACHEL MARTIN: People got it. What I think is really interesting about societal impact and what I would encourage everybody in the audience to really think about is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, 17 massively ambitious goals deadline 2030. And these include climate change. They include health. They include food and water security.
RACHEL MARTIN: And I think having that as a way to think through an agenda of a planet that's going to exist now and in the future is incredibly powerful. And I don't think journals are passive in this. We're not a service by which some research comes through. We can actually be-- I think, catalysts of change is a great description for here. Because if you think about social inequality, Elsevier did a little bit of study late last year when we launched the SDG report where we looked at, for example, gender across research mapped to all 17 SDGs.
RACHEL MARTIN: And what we found was apart from SDG number five, which surprisingly is around gender equality, it was lacking in all of the SDG. Now if you think about climate action, SDG number 13, it was 0.4% of the research was related to gender. Now that's really hard. If you think about the people who are a key driver in climate change, it's women and the idea of our role there.
RACHEL MARTIN: And I think there's this kind of idea of making sure that we have an idea of what is right research. The SDG framework, is that something else? What research is the right research? And then I think the next question is, are we incentivizing that? We love a good ranking. I mean we do love a good ranking. Is that the right way of doing it?
RACHEL MARTIN: But I also hear. When I talk to influencial people, researchers, universities, they're all telling me that, oh my God, you know, I had to write something for the IPCC report that goes to feed into the climate conference. They don't get recognized for it. They did a science literacy course for some university perhaps in the developing country. They don't get recognition for that.
RACHEL MARTIN: That's not tied into a h-index or publication output. And so we have to start thinking through how collectively, and that's why I love open science so much, is that you are looking at bringing librarians, authors, journals together to really think through what we could do. What levers can we push and what levers can they push, because collectively, we're going to be able to do it. And I think that for me is really how I think about societal impact.
RACHEL MARTIN: Science is going to do it. But if I'm going to be completely frank, we know climate change. We have 40 years worth of data and progress hasn't worked. So for some of these issues, and social inequalities, was really high on the agenda in 2020. Again, the connections weren't there. So to Toby's point, is that looking through working with World Bank?
RACHEL MARTIN: Is that working with these NGOs? Is it working on that? I think it's the time to really start thinking through what that would mean. And what does that mean for our panels and our output.
TOBY GREEN: Well, just on a search on Policy Commons, which is the projects I'm working on at the moment, I've just put in gender in Africa. 66,000 reports inside Policy Commons on gender in Africa. So maybe the research is there, is just not in the journals because doesn't--
RACHEL MARTIN: --research done on [INAUDIBLE]..
TOBY GREEN: Because it's being published by the NGOs. So there's something that-- when I started this project on Policy Commons, I mean I've been absolutely amazed by how much research is being put out by NGOs. And this research does not end up in the journals, or in books. It's in this completely other world. And it is vast. And I'm just staggered. I mean every day I'm finding more resources, more institutions, putting out research on all sorts of issues, on inequalities, on climate, on gender.
TOBY GREEN: I mean it's never ending. And this content is out there. But you can't find it because it's poorly published, because to your point earlier about the underpinnings underneath the car, they don't use [? DIYs. ?] They don't understand metadata. They don't understand XML. They don't understand any of the sub-standards that we would expect to find in mainstream publishing.
TOBY GREEN: But they are putting out really great research. But it's really, really hard to find, which is why we launched Policy Commons, to try and fix this problem and to try and make this content find [INAUDIBLE] stable and so on. But there is a huge amount out there. And I stumbled across the Resolution Foundation, they've just launched a project called the Economy 2030 Inquiry.
TOBY GREEN: This is looking at post-Brexit in UK. And they're launching it. And what's really interesting is the people on this inquiry, most of them are linked to an academic institution. And yet all of the findings will be published in report form on the Resolution Foundation's website. And I bet not a single piece of that research will end up in an academic journal.
TOBY GREEN: And it's going to be really interesting piece of research, much more applied and probably will have a greater impact in political circles in the UK than if it was published in the journal.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Toby, what I'm hearing is a dichotomy in how we are making this information accessible. I want to say traditional journals, following the traditional pattern, are publishing peer reviewed research, which does have its own impact. And I love the fact being the science nerd, what Rachel said, when she said the scientific freedom of thought, which I clearly exercised as a young grad student and doing postdoc, and mission-driven research which as a mom of a five-year-old, that's what I want to focus on, right?
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: There is content, which is going to make huge impact, but people are oblivious about this content. So in the scholarly publishing industry, how could we marry or merge the two so that all content is equitable. It's not going to happen, but all content, or good content, is accessible. So what are some of the steps we could take?
TOBY GREEN: A huge, huge question. I mean what publishers do today, they do a really good job at capturing and organizing and structuring the content so that it is stable, it is findable, it can be mined, and so on. Publishers do a really, really good job there. So in terms of-- I mean there are paywalls which can get in the way, which may be over time we have an access.
TOBY GREEN: So I don't know. I'm sort of a bit of a open-access skeptic in terms of whether open access will actually get rid of paywalls. But in terms of the underpinnings of what the scholarly publishing world does, it does a really good job of capturing and stabilizing that content for the long run.
TOBY GREEN: I don't see scholarly publishers involved in finding larger audiences. That's not what they do. They don't really have the skills to do that. They haven't really got the teams. Some of them do it a bit. Some of them have press offices normally around their big journals. But broadly speaking, they don't go much further than that.
TOBY GREEN: Now whether scholarly publishers should set up communications' arms to support their authors-- as I was saying earlier about creating other types of content and support their authors to create that other type of content, that would be a real sort of innovation if a scholarly publisher was to start doing that.
RACHEL MARTIN: I'm aware of it in the institution level. There are some, they call them policy groups where they're looking at digesting the information that they publish at the institutional level to policymakers and to create those narratives, which will be compelling. But I think we also have to be a little bit realistic. I mean, you alluded to it, Toby, and I totally agree, that you can have the scientific evidence, but that's not what policy and politics is about.
RACHEL MARTIN: Some of these things are going to be uncomfortable for an elected politician to advocate in some respects. And we need to think through what that means. And so I do think crucial to all of this is really around science literacy, science advocacy advocating for scientific thinking because what we did have-- particularly I think previous administrations in pretty much all the countries is sort of that divorcing from scientific fact or to manipulate it in a way that would make sense for there to be re-elected.
RACHEL MARTIN: I think there's some great organizations, I think this is one of them, looking at knowledge brokerage to think through what that is. And out of the European Commission level, I know that the Joint Research Council do a lot in terms of taking and sifting the journal output and really putting it together and marrying it off with the processes in the European Parliament. But there are, I think, some great examples of where we've had policymakers with researchers, institutions, and industry come together and to really have that dialogue and to align on priorities.
RACHEL MARTIN: And it comes back to that fundamental point. Do you do the mission? Or do you do the free thinking? Because if we're doing the mission around renewable energies or the [INAUDIBLE] pressing issues that we think, we can make that amazing progress. That seems to work quite well. It's just really interesting to see what will happen moving forward and towards the 2030 deadline that everyone's putting into place for the UN agenda.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Yeah, I agree and, Rachel, I think it is an ambitious goal and 2030 timeline almost seems imminent to me. So there is definitely a need to change the world. You both talked about making some changes in which we can make information more accessible, or make it relevant, or bring certain other sources to the forefront. In the last 15 minutes that we have, I do want to pose this question to our attendees.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And we can continue the discussion. If you could please launch the poll. Have you recently felt the need to change the world? And I know this is just a yes or no question, but I welcome your thoughts, comments, suggestions in the chat, and any questions you may have for our expert panelists today. And in the meantime, I would like all of you to think about which one thing could you do differently next week to have a positive influence on the world?
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Do we have the results for the poll? [LAUGHS] 88% of folks felt the need to change the world. 13% are very happy with the world they are in. And I hope they continue enjoying their bliss. So, yes, I'm-- OK, Vanessa's saying in so many ways. OK. So anything that you want to say, Rachel and Toby, something that you would do differently next week to make a positive impact, change the world for better?
CHHAVI CHAUHAN:
RACHEL MARTIN: I can make a plug here. I do think if you're inspired by society's challenges, as publishers you can easily sign up to be SDG Publishers Compact, and I know Vanessa put the link in the chat. But it really is a way to align and to think through collectively as an industry, as a sector, how we might be really contributing to that grand challenges, something that I think purpose-driven organizations like us really care about.
RACHEL MARTIN: You could change the world next week by signing up.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Toby?
TOBY GREEN: At the moment, I'd say, when you're working in a startup, pretty much that's what you do and you didn't do much else. We're trying to [INAUDIBLE]. We're trying to find a way at low cost to capture content that is valuable but isn't yet managed in a meaningful way. And we're trying to make it safe so it doesn't disappear. I mean, link rot is a huge problem on the websites of NGOs.
TOBY GREEN: And NGOs themselves can disappear. Their funding dries up. Their websites get dark. Their content just evaporates. The mission that we set ourselves is to try and capture this content, organizes in a way that the people can find it but also to make it safe so that if the organization does disappear or link breaks, then we've got a copy of the content.
TOBY GREEN: That's really what we're trying to do. I believe it's going to help improve things, because there's so much really great content, really interesting research that otherwise is lost. And therefore as we all know, the research, you stand on the shoulders of giants, well, these are giants that have disappeared. And so we're trying to make sure that these organizations and their content remains available into the future.
TOBY GREEN: That's what we're trying to do. Within a subset of that is that we're really interested in trying to find content, particularly in Africa. There's a lot of fantastic content in Africa that just does not get airtime outside of Africa. And so we've got two projects running in Africa, one in partly within Policy Commons where we're pulling content from African NGOs, making it available.
TOBY GREEN: We have another project that we're just starting with archives in Africa, to try and support this content and stop this content disappearing. So that's really what I'm trying to do.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: That's wonderful. I am getting a lot of response from our attendees. It's coming just to the panelists. It's coming to everyone. And I do want to read out some of the comments that were shared with all the attendees, keeping in mind that some folks may just want to share the comments with panelists alone. There is a comment from Jennifer. What a simple yet heartening question.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: I pursued elected office. I gave holy, and simultaneously received so much in return. Well, congratulations, Jennifer. And thank you so much for giving back. Vanessa is saying, I'm looking at getting more involved in UK charity called the Commitment, which helps to influence policymakers and politicians on climate change and biodiversity. So I think your message resonated, Rachel.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Vanessa also says, some of these things we have discussed are overwhelming to say the least, to think of an individual level, but to quote Margaret Mead, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Thank you for sharing that comment, Vanessa. Silvia says, I want to change the world, but I am also very tired.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And wow, there's a fine line between I'm committed and I'm overcommitted. And I think each one of us hears you, Sylvia, especially when we are working in the virtual world in different time zones. We have our speakers here from Amsterdam and from Paris giving their time, their afternoon and evening to us, to keep this discussion going. Rachel says, exactly, no one can do everything, but everyone can do something.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Becoming advocate is amazing. And Sylvia also says, you're not obligated to complete the work but neither are you permitted to desist from it. [LAUGHTER]
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Any last minute cards, Rachel and Toby, a message that you would like to convey to our attendees or stream of thought that you want to leave them with for the rest of the conference, the seminar.
RACHEL MARTIN: Me, I would just say advocate for science. Talk to your family. Talk to your friends. Tell them about the world that we exist in. It's all very complicated and sometimes it can be a little subculture of its own. Lift the lid, and talk about what's happening. And talk about scholarly publishing. And get people to understand what we're doing on a day-to-day basis.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And that could be a daunting deal, too. [LAUGHS]
TOBY GREEN: Yeah, I would echo that. As Rachel mentioned earlier, she bumps into people on the bus and explains what she does, and no one understands. I so relate to that. I mean even my parents, after years, they never understood what I did. And I think trying to explain is good. But I would also just say to those working in the industry, the industry has changed a tremendous amount in the last 30 years since I've been working at it, not least because of the internet.
TOBY GREEN: But I think one thing I would say to everybody is, look at the other digital media companies that are active on the internet and think about how they do their business, and see what lessons we can draw from them, because I think there's a little bit of groupthink in scholarly publishing as to the way that we publish online. And if you just look outside at what the media companies are doing, what startups are doing, what bloggers are doing, and I think that there are lessons for us there if only we had the courage to look.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: That's the courage to look and think outside the box to bring things into mainstream. I know we touched upon a lot of things. Some of the things that resonated with me was to make content more accessible and not to focus just on scientific research but some of the other realms that also help advance humanity. And think about mission-driven research.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And definitely I appreciate Rachel's comments on the SDGs to try to bring that message back to everyone, because we are moving fast and we do not want to break things because that's the last thing we want to do, especially when we are on a timeline of 2030, which is ambitious. But with every one's small little efforts, we are going to get there. There were some other comments that came in from our audience.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: And they're specifically related to scholarly publishing landscape. Would it be OK if I communicated those comments to you and perhaps got the answers to those attendees separately.
RACHEL MARTIN: Very happy to answer any questions. I'm good.
TOBY GREEN: Yeah, absolutely.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: Wonderful, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today and for an engaging discussion. And I do want to thank our audience as well, too. And we are getting a lot of support from them. And I think we had close to 100 people join in on the opening keynote. I appreciate you being here early in the morning and from different time zones. I do want to remind everyone that we will be taking a 15 minute break, but I request you all to reconvene for the 11:00 AM Eastern talk on preprints and new content.
CHHAVI CHAUHAN: I know I'm going to tune in. And we deliberately didn't want to touch upon preprints because we know we have a whole dedicated session on that. So thank you once again, Rachel and Toby, for joining us today and for enlightening our world, and for sharing some really-- your passions and deep thoughts on all matter scholarly publishing related. Thanks a lot. Enjoy the rest of the conference, everyone.
TOBY GREEN: Bye.
RACHEL MARTIN: Thank you, guys. Thank you so much. Bye.
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