This Takes the Prize — Editor of New Luxury OA Journal Boycotts Luxury Subscription Journals | The Scholarly Kitchen

"In a recent article in the Guardian entitled, 'How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science,' with a subtitle reading, 'The incentives offered by top journals distort science, just as big bonuses distort banking,' Randy Schekman, one of the editors of eLife, starts out with a plaintive and humble 'I am a scientist.' With such a demure start, it might seem surprising that the article itself devolves immediately afterwards into a piece that has inspired incredulous ridicule in emails, on Twitter, and in the comments on the article — not because the initial statement is false, but because the very next statement is laughable given the author and the context ... Why his own journal rejects about the industry average percentage of papers may require some explanation, given that it was birthed in the digital age. This is just one of many sleights of hand Schekman or his amanuensis engages in.  Schekman is either ignorant or disingenuous in castigating the incentives involved with publication as a problem for science. Surely, some incentives (like direct payments for publishing in high impact journals) can be misaligned, but these misalignments tend to occur because academic or funding bodies introduce distortions. Schekman is unwilling to blame anyone but established publishers for these and other woes, even though publication is clearly aligned with science and the public good. As economist Paula Stephan stated in my interview with her last year, publication — and the priority thereby established — is what allows a scientist to claim a work as her or his own ... The picture above has interesting incentive suggestions in it, all of which are misleading. For instance, Schekman’s work leading to the Nobel was not published in eLife. And notice how aggressively eLife is curating its own brand, both by producing the article discussed in this post as well as by splashing their Nobel-winning editor’s visage across its site. I think someone should write an article about these shameful and vain luxury publishers using incentives to entice authors in this manner.  There are numerous factual errors and intellectual slights of hand to be found in Schekman’s article, leading some on social media to wonder if Schekman actually wrote it or just signed off on an eLife press release.  For instance, Schekman blames publishers for the over-emphasis on the impact factor — the same sort of blame the authors of the DORA also erroneously assigned to publishers. Some publishers tout their impact factor to attract better authors and better papers, but the main culprits in overemphasizing the impact factor are academics themselves, related policymakers and administrators, and tenure, grant, and advancement committees. Yet Schekman is unwilling to look in the mirror here, and instead brushes the blame off on publications his journal is competing with ..."