Join us for a day of interesting discussions of these important trends and how they impact the work of young scientists!
Date: Wednesday 30 September
Time: 09:30–15:30
Venue: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm
The seminar is free. Lunch and refreshements are included.
Registration (mandatory) is now closed as the seminar is full.
Twitter hashtag: #pubnperish
The seminar will be filmed and documented by a science writer.
Speakers
Bruce Alberts
Former Editor in Chief at Science, former President of the National Academy of Sciences, USA
Tony Hyman
Research Group Leader and Director, The Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG)
Arne Johansson
Professor in Mechanics, Vice President, the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
Catriona MacCallum
Senior Advocacy Manager PLOS, and Consulting Editor at PLOS ONE
Tommy Ohlsson
Professor in Theoretical Physics at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
Brandon Stell
Research Associate, CNRS, Co-Team Leader, Laboratoire de Physiologie Cérébrale
Université Paris Descartes
Preliminary programme
09.30 Coffee
10.00 Welcome!
10.10 How can a nation support excellence in scientific research and teaching?
Bruce Alberts
11.00 Publication assessment and university governance
Arne Johansson
11.30 Encouraging innovation through peer review and evaluation
Tony Hyman
12.00 Lunch
12.45 Scientific Communication on Trial
Catriona MacCallum
13.15 Open Access Publishing with arXiv
Tommy Ohlsson
13.45 Coffee
14.15 Introducing PubPeer
Brandon Stell
14.45 Panel discussion
15.30 End
Background
This year marks the 350th anniversary of the longest running scientific journal: The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (London). Already at its inception, it had the fundamental functions usually associated with scientific publishing such as registration of submission and publication dates, peer review, and means for dissemination and archiving. Today scientific publishing is more important than ever, with the number of journals rapidly growing, and the perceived success of a scientist to an increasing degree defined by scientific publications, with particular pressure to publish in so-called high-impact journals. In parallel these trends appear to put in question the value of the traditional scientific peer review, both in the publication process where newsworthiness, impact and potential for citations may trump scientific rigor, and in evaluation for tenured positions, where bibliometric indices and impact assessment tools risk reducing a young scientist’s work to a number.
Seminar
At the seminar we will discuss the rapidly changing scientific publishing landscape and its implications. How does the increasing number of journals and the increasing focus on journal impact change how science is carried out and how young scientist choose their topics and plan their research? What is the impact of entirely open and non-reviewed pre-publication online archives – are they promising new solutions to effective dissemination and open science, or of little value to young scientists when evaluations put a premium on journal impact? Is the pre-publication peer review model faltering under the increasing volume of peer review and the shrinking time and effort available for peer review? Can post-publication peer review offer a more sustainable solution? Are universities over-relying on bibliometric tools when assessing the value of their tenured researchers and when hiring new researchers?
Registration is closed
Registration is now closed as the seminar is full. Thank you for your interest in the Publish and perish seminar!