What Do I Want from the Publisher of the Future?

When I took on the role of Editor-inChief of this open-access journal, I began, for the first time, to think about scholarly communication beyond submitting my papers and getting them published. This thinking led to previous Perspectives [1–3], all of which shared an underlying theme— there are many opportunities to achieve better dissemination and comprehension of our science, and as producers of that output I believe authors have a responsibility to see it used in the best possible way. No need to take my word regarding the opportunities that exist to improve scholarly communication and comprehension. I recommend reading ‘‘Part 4: Scholarly Communication’’ from the free online book the Fourth Paradigm: Data Intensive Scientific Discovery [4] (http://research.microsoft. com/en-us/collaboration/fourthparadigm/), which is a tribute to the late Turing Award winner Jim Gray. Jim, and many of the authors who pay homage to his vision, have thought deeply about the subject of scholarly communication. They conclude that data and knowledge-driven computation is indeed a fourth wave, as computation has impacted science to the point where every aspect of it is touched by computation (hence the name eScience), including dissemination and comprehension. These visionaries recognize that we are at a tipping point at which scholarly communication will change from a traditional print-oriented medium (albeit an online version of the print journal) to something else. That something else begins to transform today’s research article as we realize the power of the medium, establish new forms of knowledge discovery, and measure the impact of scholarly contributions in new ways. For all that vision, these luminaries do not address the question that I have been pondering, and which I would like to raise here. Assuming all this innovation takes place, what will the publisher of the future look like, and as a contributor and consumer of a publisher’s services in this new era, what do I want from the publisher of the future? Recently, at gatherings of publishers where I have been invited to speak, I have been trying to pose and then answer this question. Unfortunately, I fear that what I propose appears so radical as to be greeted with either blank stares or looks of get real. Let me try here to do a better job at stating what I want from my publisher in the future. Many of you are undoubtedly thinking that just accepting your papers will be enough, but bear with me. Presumably, publishing will continue in the life sciences (unless we go over completely to an ArXiv.org or similar model where articles are simply deposited without peer review and impact measured by how much they are accessed), and if so, will continue to be overseen by the publishers we, as scientists, work with today. A few new and innovative publishers like the Public Library of Science (PLoS) will continue to emerge as business models and practices change, but existing publishers will probably adapt in this new era. I anticipate similarities to earlier phases of the Internet revolution. Amazon.com emerged as a new and major online-only shopping entity, but Sears, Wal-Mart, Harrods, etc., while being slower in adopting the new medium, did eventually successfully support online shopping and a range of new services. By comparison, a few innovators have had some impact on scholarly communication, but traditional science, technology, and medical (STM) publishers will continue to dominate the conservative and relatively slow-moving market. These pioneering publishers are now experimenting with interactive PDFs, ‘‘articles of the future,’’ semantic tagging, data integration with research articles, incorporating rich media (video and podcasts), and so on. Most likely, at some point these innovations will become mainstream through increased introduction by traditional publishers, but then what? Stated another way, if we finally move away from the traditional PDF to something more dynamic that integrates data, rich media, and includes interactive access, what do I as a scientist want from publishers at that point? To answer this question, let us start with where we are today. As authors, we put an enormous amount of effort into producing a publishable manuscript. At some point we pass it over to the publisher without a second thought. Subsequently, we will put a large amount of effort into a revision or rebuttal letter, but again, there is no thought on what will happen to our work after it has been accepted beyond the date it will be published and appear in PubMed. There is an enormous amount of trust in our publisher that our creations will be handled in the best possible way and, when published, that they will be disseminated to all who want to read our work. Open access introduced a hairline fracture in this trust with some scientists realizing that perhaps their work was not being as widely accessed as possible. Nevertheless, most scientists still do not think seriously about limited access and signing away the copyright. After all our efforts at producing a paper, very few of us have asked the question, is journal x presenting my work in a way that maximizes the understanding of what has been done, providing the means to ensure maximum reproducibility of what has been done, and maximizing the outreach of my work? I would suggest that now is the time not to just toss the paper over a high barrier to the journal and forget about it, but to break down the barrier and have a new form of interaction and dialog with a publisher who is prepared to embrace a changing publishing model and can answer the question in a satisfactory manner. In other words, we have an interaction with the publisher that does not begin when the scientific process ends, but begins at the beginning of the scientific process itself. Perhaps you are beginning to see why I get so many blank stares when I raise this issue with scientists (producers and consum-