BulliedIntoBadScience

We are postdocs and a reader in the humanities and sciences at the University of Cambridge. We are concerned about the desperate need for publishing reform to increase transparency, reproducibility, timeliness, and academic rigour of the production and dissemination of scholarly outputs (see Young et al. 2016, Smaldino & McElreath 2016).

We have identified actions that institutions and managers can take to better support ECRs (below). These actions are crucial for our success because we are eager to publish openly and at places that keep profits inside academia in accordance with many modern online publication venues (Logan 2017). However, ECRs are often pressured into publishing against their ethics through threats that we would not get a job/grant unless we publish in particular journals (Carter et al. 2014, Who is going to make change happen?, Kent 2016; usually these journals are older and more familiar, have a print version, a high impact factor, and are not 100% open access). These out of date practices and ideas hinder ECRs rather than help us: evidence shows that publishing open access results in increased citations, media attention, and job/funding opportunities (McKiernan et al. 2016). Open dissemination of all research outputs is also a fundamental principle on which ECRs rely to fight the ongoing reproducibility crisis in science and thus improve the quality of their research.

To support ECRs in this changing publishing landscape, we encourage funders, universities, departments, and politicians to take the following actions (below) and to announce these actions in public statements. We consider these actions essential for enabling ECRs to do and disseminate our research as we intend it, in an open, modern, and rigorous way. We feel that failure to adequately support ECRs, which are a vulnerable group, will prevent us from delivering outstanding academic outputs and becoming the academic leaders of the future, and thus decrease our nation’s reputation for world-leading research.

If you, too, have felt pressured into taking professional actions that are against your ethics, please mark which actions you agree with and join our effort to change academic culture. We will send letters that include the number of ECRs who signed each action (and their names and affiliations, plus some anonymised anecdotes about ECR experiences) to relevant institutions, focusing on UK politicians, universities, and funders, and to the press to generate publicity. Our aim is to instigate institutions into taking actions that are relevant to us to improve academic culture for ECRs. You can stay updated with the progress of this effort and view the letters with the actions and signatories at BulliedIntoBadScience.org. The actions and their signatories will be available for reference by others who wish to create change in academic culture beyond the UK.

Action points

We urge institutions and individuals to better support ECRs by taking these actions:

1. Sign the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) as an independent university/institution/individual (following the example of Imperial and UCL), indicating that you will: a) “Be explicit about the criteria used to reach hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions, clearly highlighting, especially for early-stage investigators, that the scientific content of a paper is much more important than publication metrics or the identity of the journal in which it was published; and b) For the purposes of research assessment, consider the value and impact of all research outputs (including datasets and software) in addition to research publications, and consider a broad range of impact measures including qualitative indicators of research impact, such as influence on policy and practice” (http://www.ascb.org/dora/). These concerns about access to data should not be narrowly construed as concerning the ‘hard sciences’. The increasing reliance on the analysis of digital information in the humanities and the arts means that such issues matter across academia. As digital humanities become more widespread, access to open data and publications become more crucial. ECRs will benefit more than other career stages from DORA being signed because there is more pressure to publish in journals with high impact factors earlier in their career.
2. Positively value a commitment to open research and publishing practices that keep profits inside academia when considering candidates for positions and promotions (in alignment with DORA).
3. Endorse immediate open publishing, favouring publications in journals that are 100% open access (see https://doaj.org for a list of high-quality 100% open access journals), which are more beneficial to universities and researchers because: (1) they avoid being overcharged by hybrid open access journals (Shamash 2016, Pinfield et al. 2015, Solomon & Björk 2016, Kingsley 2016), (2) researchers retain the copyright to their work (University of Michigan Research Guide), and (3) ECRs benefit from wider dissemination of their research, resulting in more citations (McKiernan et al. 2016). This action helps institutions implement the UK Concordat on Research Integrity.
4. Endorse posting of preprints in recognised preprint servers to avoid publishing delays that are detrimental to ECR career progress (http://asapbio.org; recognising that some disciplines will be restricted from doing so). This is particularly timely as funders, such as the MRC and the Wellcome Trust, now accept preprints in grant proposals (http://asapbio.org/funder-policies). This action helps institutions implement the UK Concordat on Research Integrity.
5. Endorse, support and promote the open publication of data and other scientific outputs such as software, which is inherent to modern scientific practice and results in an increase in citations for each open product (McKiernan et al. 2016). This action helps institutions implement the UK Concordat on Open Research Data.
6. Educate researchers about publishing practices via public statements, mandatory courses, and inductions that cover: open research/data/access, mandates, hidden costs of traditional publishing (e.g., publishing delays, page charges and color figure charges in addition to article processing charges), and how to protect ECRs against exploitative publishing practices (e.g., avoiding hybrid open access protects ECRs from being overcharged [Shamash 2016, Pinfield et al. 2015, Solomon & Björk 2016, Kingsley 2016]). This action helps institutions implement the UK Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and the UK Concordat on Research Integrity.
7. Increase transparency by reporting to the public how much institutions pay for research to be published (i.e., journal subscriptions and article processing charges) to raise awareness about the significant drain on public funding. This will help researchers decide where to invest their future publishing efforts, especially because research funding is decreasing. This action helps institutions implement the UK Concordat on Research Integrity.
8. Make all postdocs voting members of their institutions. This will ensure that institutions increase diversity and stay connected to the changing needs of this underrepresented group that tends to be more connected to modern publishing practices. Increasing the diversity of career stages in decision making processes will result in higher group performance, particularly where innovation is concerned (Roberge & van Dick 2010). This advances two Athena SWAN Charter points (five and nine; because, for example, most female researchers at the University of Cambridge are ECRs [University of Cambridge Databook 2016, p.26]) by removing obstacles faced by women at major points of career progression and by mainstreaming structural and cultural changes that advance gender equality. This will improve working conditions for researchers, which impacts research quality, and will help universities obtain or retain EC HR Excellence in Research awards. This action helps institutions implement the UK Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers.