Changing the culture of scientific publishing from within: Ten Years Later

This post summarises my twitter thread of 28 October announcing our new Registered Reports policy at Cortex.

 

10 years ago, almost to the day, we received Elsevier’s approval to launch Registered Reports at the journal Cortex. Cortex became one of the core founding journals for the initiative, which has now been taken up by over 300 journals and review platforms.

 

 

The “1.0” model of RRs is journal-based. You choose your journal (such as Cortex), submit to it, and if Stage 1 and Stage 2 review are positive, you publish in that journal. 

 

This journal-based approach has many limitations, which I summarise in this talk and the slide below. So last year, in a move to create a free, open & community-controlled review platform for RRs that is independent of journals & publishers, we launched the Peer Community in Registered Reports (PCI RR) a child of the larger Peer Community In initiative.

 

 

 

PCI RR is RRs 2.0. It conducts peer review of RR preprints, after which authors can choose (if they wish) to immediately publish their recommended Stage 2 RR in any eligible PCI RR-friendly journal without further review.

 

Cortex was one of our 15 inaugural PCI RR-friendly journals (of 29 today & rising). From the day we launched PCI RR in 2021, authors wanting to publish in Cortex could either submit directly to Cortex or to PCI RR. An acceptance at PCI RR would be honoured at Cortex.

 

 

Today, Cortex becomes the first journal to go one step further and close its direct submission track for RRs in favour of PCI RR. You can read the full policy here.

 

From today, authors intending to publish their RR in Cortex should submit only to PCI RR where their manuscript will be evaluated by trained recommenders (several of whom are Cortex editors) and the same academic community as it would at Cortex.

Following a positive Stage 2 recommendation, if Cortex is judged by PCI RR to be an eligible journal for the submission, then authors who want to publish in Cortex can simply submit their recommended Stage 2 preprint to the journal where it will be accepted immediately.

 

The direct submission track for RRs at Cortex will be available only for revisions of ongoing Stage 1 submissions, Cortex special issues, and rare individual papers justified on a case-by-case basis.

 

Back in 2012, I named my public pitch for RRs at Cortex (rather hopefully!) “Changing the culture of scientific publishing from within”. At the time I wasn’t sure how this would crystallize, but I believe the step we are taking today is a reflection of that goal.

 

RRs began life at Cortex embedded within the infrastructure of a major publisher. This was a vital incubation that normalised them and helped spread them to hundreds of other journals. Now, having matured within that space, I believe it is time for RRs to leave publishers behind.

 

As authors this doesn’t mean you can’t still publish your recommended RRs in a journal. You can. We have 29 & rising PCI RR-friendly journals and many PCI RR-interested journals. Journals remain part of our academic landscape. But RRs don’t need to be managed by publishers.

 

This is a critical evolution not only for RRs but for peer-reviewed research more generally. At PCI RR we have complete freedom to innovate the format solely in our (your) interests, not balanced against some company's profit margin, share price, or other goals.

 

That freedom has enabled us to create reforms such as Scheduled Review and Programmatic RRs, alongside open review and zero fees for all. And as a clearing house for RRs, we are in a position to normalise practices and raise field-wide standards.

 

Most importantly – and this is the crunchy part  – publishers have long justified their massive profits and APCs, in large part, on the basis of the “added valued” they offer by managing peer review. But the value of peer review was never theirs to add.

 

We, the community, are most of the editors and all of the reviewers. Peer review is us and ours. We have been deceived into accepting that this value is owned by others, and that we must pay for the privilege of accessing it.

 

By reclaiming peer review, we guarantee a future in which publishers must add genuine value to survive in our world, playing by our rules. That’s why, from today, there is no longer a standard direct track for RRs at Cortex. I hope other journal editors will considering doing the same.

 

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See here for more details on the new Cortex RR policy and here for further info about PCI RR. Big thanks to the many people who continue to support RRs as authors, reviewers, editors, recommenders, policymakers, critics and advocates.