Tackling overpublishing by moving to open-ended papers | Nature Materials

"Regarding the future of publishing, we suggest that its current rapid expansion should result in a phase transition, eventually offering new opportunities for research communication. A fast evolution towards data and code sharing, open-access publishing and the widespread use of preprints seems to be just the beginning. Below we outline our view on the paradigm shift in publishing that we think will benefit the scientific community. First, we can make it easy to track scientific progress and reduce overpublishing by moving to open-ended and stackable publications instead of publishing multiple papers for each research direction. For example, instead of ten papers published on one line of research, a scientist can prepare a single study where each piece (‘chapter’) can be stacked with or inserted into the previous piece. A similar approach is implemented on Github where codes can be updated and expanded; or on Jupyter where the data, analysis and text can be published on a single page (with more chapters being added as the study develops further). Importantly, Jupyter notebooks are free and do not charge for open access as most publishers do, pointing towards a possible solution for reduced publishing fees...."