Some Internet age trends in scientific publication

I belong to a generation of researchers who are just about old enough to remember the early days of the Internet, before the Web made its full impact felt on the way the world goes about doing scientific research. When I was a Ph.D. student on research attachment at the University of Portsmouth in the UK over a decade ago, my first paper was submitted to the International Journal of Energy Research the old-fashioned way — via “snail mail.” And this was not because I was under the supervision of an old-school professor (which I was); back then, the ubiquitous electronic portals now used by major publishers for manuscript submission simply didn’t exist yet.

In this article, I will discuss some trends I’ve noticed since the late 1990s which may well be attributable to the Internet age. I hope that these insights will help less experienced Filipino researchers, especially graduate students or freshly minted Ph.D.s, navigate their way through their careers more effectively. There is one caveat for the reader: these are observations based on my own experience in my field, and may thus not hold absolutely true for all disciplines. Some of the more noticeable trends are:

• Increasing internationalization of research. It would be an exaggeration to say that the Internet has leveled the scientific playing field, because clearly the scientific superpowers of today are still in the developed world (for example, according to a report published in the October 2012 issue of Scientific American, the US still leads the world in key metrics such as publications, patents, S&T Ph.D.s and R&D spending). Scientific collaboration by researchers from different countries often still requires face-to-face meetings and physical shipment of samples. However, it is also clear that the Internet, by facilitating the almost real-time flow of data and ideas, has made it possible to do things that were unheard of just one generation ago. This is especially true when the nature of the work is highly computational or theoretical. For example, in my case I have had nearly a decade’s worth of collaboration with Mahmoud El-Halwagi of Texas A&M University, which has led to several articles, one edited book published in 2012, and a second edited book in the works, without ever having met him in person! It’s a cliché, but it’s also true, that the Internet has made the world a smaller place.

• Rapid dissemination of results. By and large, electronic submission systems have reduced the time it takes for manuscripts to be peer-reviewed. In the case of some well-managed journals that I frequent, I am able to consistently get feedback within two to three months of submission. In addition, electronic submission can be done for free, while in the old days you would have to pay postage fees for sending multiple copies of your manuscript to the editor. Nevertheless, the human factor still plays a big role, and I have had recent experiences with unreasonable delays due to the negligence of editors and/or reviewers. Once an article is accepted, most major publishers are often able to make the “in press” version of the manuscript available to subscribers, within days or weeks of acceptance. Thus, scientific papers are de facto published many months, or even years, before they come out in print. This generally means more potential for citations as well.

• The failure (to date) of open access. It may be premature to declare this right now, but there are clear signs that, in many disciplines, open access journals have failed to gain credibility and parity with their more traditional counterparts. This is certainly true in the fields I work in — energy, environmental and chemical engineering. The problem has been exacerbated by the emergence of “predatory” pseudo-journals, many of which supposedly publish material of dubious quality, provided the authors pay a prescribed publication fee (for more on this topic, I refer the interested reader to http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/). This trend has poisoned the well and has clearly set back open access journals among serious researchers. On the other hand, legitimate publishers now offer the option to authors to have their work available for free download (thereby potentially increasing exposure and citation potential), in exchange for substantial publication fees (typically six figures in Philippine pesos).

• Confusion about manuscript lengths. It seems to me that short communications (also known as technical notes, letters, etc.) have fallen into disfavor in recent years. Such brief papers have traditionally been a means of ensuring rapid dissemination of preliminary results which, while not being comprehensive enough to develop into a full article, have sufficiently compelling implications to be published. My own experience is that short communications are pretty risky (my own personal success rate with them being significantly lower than that with full articles). It seems a lot of the confusion arises from reviewer’s expectations, since I have often encountered comments along the lines of “the manuscript is too brief for clarity” even when these already push the prescribed page limits of the journal. This leads me to believe that short communications are slowly becoming something of a lost art. Speaking of page limits, I have noticed that many journals are starting to impose serious restrictions on manuscript length as well; this is clearly in an effort to cut production costs. In many cases, publishers offer the option of hosting supplementary electronic files containing the finer details of scientific results. On the other hand, I have also found that editors are all too often willing to bend (or break) their own rules regarding manuscript length!

• Easy access to performance metrics. The Internet has also made it possible to track various quantitative measures of “importance” virtually on a real-time basis. This can be done easily for journals (e.g., using Impact Factors which are updated every year), for individuals (e.g., publication and citation counts, h-indices), for institutions (same metrics as for individuals) and even for entire countries. For example, the reader can easily check via http://www.scimagojr.com that the Philippines produced 1,350 Scopus-listed publications in 2011 (as compared to 18,875 for Malaysia; 9,760 for Thailand; 2,741 for Indonesia; 2,130 for Vietnam; and 14,511 for that tiny city-sate of five million people known as Singapore).

These are the five key global trends that come to my mind. There may be more that I have missed out, which we can discuss in future Star Science articles, or additional ones that the more astute readers can point out to me. Meanwhile, I hope these points provide useful insights and tips to Filipino researchers — clearly, we need to become more productive and more competitive. These are trends we need to understand because there’s a lot of catching up to do.

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Raymond R. Tan is a full professor of chemical engineering, university fellow and current vice chancellor of research and innovation at De La Salle University, Manila. His main area of research is process systems engineering (PSE), specifically on process integration techniques for the design of sustainable technological systems. He received his BS and MS in chemical engineering and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from De La Salle University. He is the author of more than 80 published and forthcoming articles in various journals in the fields of chemical, environmental and energy engineering; Scopus lists him as having more than 100 publications, with an h-index of 23. He is member of the editorial board of the journal Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy and is co-editor of the book Recent Advances in Sustainable Process Design and Optimization. He is also the recipient of multiple awards from the Philippine National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) and the National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP). E-mail him at [email protected].