Publishing during pandemic: Innovation, collaboration, and change

The future is bright for those who embrace change.

Since the last editorial for Learned Publishing, a lot has changed. At the time of writing for the April issue, the UK was watching the global spread of COVID‐19 but was not yet in lockdown. Since then, a large part of the world has been shut down, and most regions are now starting to slowly return to a new normal. The effect of both the virus and the responses to the virus have dramatically affected lives and livelihoods.

The effect on scholarly publishing and research has been dramatic, although it is likely that we will feel further effects in the next year or two as the fallout of the economic hiatus emerges. In the meantime, looking back at how the industry has responded during the past few months can help to plan for the future. As we emerge from lockdown, it will be increasingly important to evaluate our role within research communication, the value we add, and our resilience in the face of massive disruption.

SO HOW DID WE DO?

Following the call from the Wellcome Trust back in January, many (if not most) publishers responded positively by making relevant content available for researchers. Subscription publishers, such as Springer Nature, made all articles related to COVID‐19 free to view. Others, like Emerald, made funds available to cover the APCs of topical articles which their open access journals chose to publish. EDP sciences and Berghahn Journals made all their content freely available – not just articles relating to the pandemic but their entire portfolios (where they had permission) in order to support researchers working from home without on‐campus access to their institutional holdings. In China, the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) provided free access to COVID‐19 resources, including research papers that had English abstracts.

Cross‐publisher initiatives were also a positive outcome in the recent months. For example, with the agreement of several publishers, ReadCube launched a programme to facilitate free access to research on COVID‐19 for researchers, journalists, health workers, and others. Upon registration users can gain access to publications from various publishers, including Springer Nature, JAMA, and Wiley.

And many other organizations also provided support where they could, for example, Kudos provided free access to its premium service, Kudos Pro, which received over 5,000 sign‐ups. Publishing platforms also had to deal with variable workloads, such as HighWire reporting a sevenfold surge in the use of its systems (largely driven by the hosting of MedRxiv and BioRxiv, with some articles receiving over 4 million page views). For many organizations, this meant meeting unprecedented demand alongside staff needing to work remotely while maintaining contact with colleagues and systems.

And meetings? We mustn't forget the disruption to the global events industry, which has had to close for the duration: O'Reilly announced in March that it was closing its events business, and Informa announced dramatic cuts in order to survive the cancellation of all events. In my experience, publishers are a chatty lot, and the numerous conference cancellations, from the London Book Fair to the SSP and ALPSP annual meetings, have been hugely disappointing for everyone. However, with online meetings becoming the norm, several meetings (e.g. The Redux and European Association of Science Editors [EASE] conferences, as well as the ALPSP conference) have been transformed into virtual events. These may have the beneficial effect of increasing inclusivity and attracting people for whom attending the physical equivalents were not possible. It is hugely encouraging to see that the Frankfurt Book Fair is determined to run this year, albeit with a mixed menu of virtual and actual events.

THE PROBLEMS WITH OFF‐SITE (AND NON‐COVID) ACCESS

Making COVID‐related content freely available answered the Wellcome request, but off‐site access to other (paid‐for) content remained a problem for some institutions. There were calls from library associations to make all content more readily accessible, reporting problems in enabling access. For example, the Coalition of Library Consortia asked publishers to increase inter‐library loan allowances, to remove simultaneous user limits, and to introduce better methods for off‐campus authentication. The Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) put a call out to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) asking them to issue Intellectual Property Law guidelines that will ensure that libraries can provide access while their physical libraries remain closed.

In the UK, Jisc and several other organizations issued a call for publishers to make content available and remove barriers to concurrent use and restricting off‐site access. They sent the call to both ALPSP and the Publishers Association, and ALPSP was quick to formally endorse their request and promote to members.

These problems were anticipated by the publishing licensing agencies, some of which issued extended licences with the permission of their participating publishers. In the USA, the Copyright Clearance Center announced the Education Continuity License, which was put into effect at the end of March and will last until August 2020. It extends usage rights for education establishments that have already taken out an educational licence to allow for off‐site access and some additional digitization. In the UK, the Copyright Licensing Agency adjusted the schools and higher education licences to allow for more copying of content until 31st July 2020.

THE NEED FOR SPEED

The time to make acceptance decisions and publish has been reducing over the past 20 years; however, there has been understandable pressure to fast‐track articles on the pandemic, and several initiatives have been implemented that respond to this. One interesting initiative was the coalescing of several publishers who have agreed to share reviews with the aim of reducing the time when an article is rejected and resubmitted elsewhere. The statement (published on the OASPA website, OASPA, 2020) also endorsed open science and increased sharing of data. One of the publishers, Hindawi, announced that, as part of this initiative, it is now working with PLOS and the Royal Society to forward articles to them (e.g. registered reports) if it believes they would be better handled by these other publishers (Greaves, 2020).

Because of the delay in obtaining peer reviewed publication, there has been a tremendous growth in preprints reporting coronavirus research over the past 6 months – according to Kent Anderson, the number of preprints is now up to 26,000 (The Geyser enewsletter, 3 June). Being aware of the delays, several journals responded to the crisis by fast‐tracking articles through to publication (see Horbach, 2020). In order to help speed articles through the process, eLife announced several changes to the editorial processes. Of particular interest was the decision to curtail requests for additional experiments to improve the research. They presented their arguments for this change in an editorial in the journal (Eisen, Akhmanova, Behrens, & Weigel, 2020). The pressure for speed and the associated concerns about undermining quality judgements has been met with some concern, and EASE responded with a statement about the importance of editorial quality (EASE, 2020), which was also reiterated in The Lancet (The Lancet, 2020).

The fear is that the need for speed may reduce the quality control checks and, in the longer term, increase the number of errata and retractions. For example, both the New England Journal of Medicine retracted articles which were revealed to be based on unsubstantiated data (RetractionWatch, 2020a). And RetractionWatch currently list 20 retractions related to the virus (RetractionWatch, 2020b).

Problems in journals is of concern, but a greater worry is the potential for incorrect information being promoted in preprints. For example, bioRxiv have added a banner warning to remind users that the preprints are preliminary and have not been peer reviewed. The validation of preprints has been an issue of interest for some time, and the initiatives announced last year by EMBO and eLife were put into action this year – most recently, the offer from eLife to review preprints in any relevant area, not just COVID‐19 research (see eLife, 2020). However, the majority of preprints will not remain unreviewed, and it is likely that 25% of them will never be published – and therefore, only the un‐reviewed version will remain (Anderson, 2020). In an attempt to provide a layer of quality control, PreReview recently launched OutbreakScience as a platform on which researchers can request reviews of their own preprints and also read reviews of other preprints. However, the uptake of it appears quite low, indicating that the problem is unlikely to be resolved soon.

PROBLEMS – AND OPPORTUNITIES – ON THE HORIZON

While the above examples of proactive, collaborative, and generous responses have been a tribute to the research ecosystem, the future remains uncertain (as it has always been). Unfortunately, problems caused by the pandemic are not going to disappear along with the virus. And new crises are always just around the corner, which require publishers to undertake planning in order to anticipate other types of emergencies – financial, economic, sociocultural, technological, and so on.

In the editorial environment, the way that papers are handled and the ability to ensure quality while providing speed has always been a problem but may now receive greater focus. The question of how to deal with an influx of articles while maintaining quality validation, alongside an accommodation of preprints into the publishing infrastructure, is one that needs addressing with some urgency. If preprints are here to stay, how can we protect and ensure the quality of the scientific record, or are we undermining both the need for journals and their influence on the future of science?

Available funding to support both the existing models and allow for development and improvement sits uncomfortably alongside the call for more open science. While publishers continue to report healthy turnovers, there is anticipation that the next couple of years will be more challenging. For example, Wiley recently issued a revised financial warning, although it indicated that that reduced revenues are expected to be recouped later in the year. However, in anticipation of substantial library budget cuts, several publishers have frozen their 2020 subscription prices (e.g. Wiley, Berghahn journals, Project MUSE).

Within the researcher community, there are other concerns. Alongside a fear of a reduction in grant funding, it has been reported that there are fewer women working on COVID‐19 studies than men and that the effects of lockdown have disproportionately disadvantaged women across the disciplines (Flaherty, 2020). So, will there be steps to ensure that their participation in research is strengthened in the future? And what will the future of scholarly communication look like? Nature has recently issued a series of editorials questioning the future of research and anticipates that preprints and expectations about publication speed are here to stay (Callaway, 2020).

THE PRINTED FUTURE

An immediate fallout of the lockdown was the risk of delivering printed copies, and many publishers announced either cancellation or printing delays. For example, SAGE, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis all cancelled printed copies, although these have now started to be reinstated. Liverpool University Press took a more nuanced decision to continue with personal print copies (including those to society members) but to cancel those going into institutions that could be closed to deliveries.

Looking forward, it will be interesting to see if there are long‐term implications for the printed copy. For the libraries that have tentatively started opening, the need for avoiding contamination has resulted in either sterilizing all printed items after use (which has the potential of damaging the printed paper) or delaying further access for a ‘quarantine’ period after handling – for example, 3 days is recommended by the French library associations (Communiqué Interassociatif: Recommandations pour un Déconfinement Progressif des Bibliothèques, 2020).

There may be resistance to using printed items among library patrons, both in the short and longer terms, and this may increase the move to digital formats. For the present, however, Open Athens reported that library downloads in the past few months show that not all libraries are set up for a fully digital environment. Download increases in some libraries were ‘exponential’, whereas others reported a dramatic decline in use. The differences indicate variable stages of digital delivery, with some libraries well positioned to provide digital access both on‐site and off‐site, some others rising to the challenge of introducing new systems but others being unable to accommodate a move to digital, off‐site, access requirements.

THE FUTURE?

It is likely that we will feel the effect of the financial and practical outcomes of this pandemic for several years. However, it has provided the opportunity for increased collaboration, innovation, and the embracing of a ‘new normal’. Scholarly research is not going away, neither is the need for publication. The value‐added services that publishers provide may need to be better articulated (as required in the recent price transparency frameworks issued by cOAlition S). There will be a need to reconsider and evaluate the value that we add to scholarly communication and to better express what we do and why. Resilience is a key word for these uncertain times, which is why we are theming the January 2021 issue on this topic. The future is bright for those who can embrace change and demonstrate value.

Biography

P. Smart