Peter R. Cavanagh - ISB President

I want to start by thanking all those who responded to my initiative at the

end of 1996 to provide materials for colleagues in economically developing

countries. The response to this effort was a rich haul of journals, books,

and some equipment which council member Sandra Olney is in the process of

distributing to laboratories throughout the world. This will be an ongoing

program of the Society and I urge you to keep the material flowing to

Sandra (olneys@qucdn.queensu.ca). A summary of what has been accomplished

under this initiative will appear soon on our Web page (http://www.kin.calgary.ca/isb/).

As regular readers of this column will know, it is my custom to pose a

question each three months that might cause the reader some degree of

professional introspection. My question for this quarter is "How will

academic publishing be defined and practiced in the next decade?"

This question can be answered from two different and potentially

conflicting viewpoints: publishing to disseminate knowledge and publishing

to obtain academic tenure. Ideally, there should be no tension between

these points of view but, in practice, there is an enormous gulf. As you

might expect, this issue is intimately involved with the Internet and the

current explosion of easily available information. Let me pause to point

out that I have used two words in this paragraph that should not be

considered synonyms: knowledge and information. I have a friend who avoids

the Internet with a passion because, he declares, "I don't need more

information - I need more knowledge." And herein lies the problem: in the

age of the Internet who will judge whether we as academics are contributing

to knowledge or to information? The former would certainly qualify as a

justifiable scientific endeavor (and would, therefore, be potentially

tenurable), while the latter probably would not.

Traditionally, new contributions to knowledge have been scrutinized by the

peer review system. Refereed journals are the safeguard that the

scientific community has developed to impose quality control. Although

some notable gaffes (such as physicist Alan Sokal's hoax article

"Transgressing the Boundaries - Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of

Quantum Gravity" that was accepted and published after glowing peer reviews

in the academic journal Social Text) have recently called this system into

question, most academics would grudgingly agree that they cannot

immediately suggest a better alternative. The peer review system is,

however, far from perfect.

A serious counterpoint to the relative intellectual safety of a peer

reviewed paper is that it comes at a high cost in terms of timeliness. One

only needs to review the first page of articles in any scientific journal

and compare the first submitted dates with the publication date of the

journal. Intervals of between one and three years between submission and

publication are not uncommon. These delays are almost inevitable given the

many checks and balances in the system and the fact that reviewers and

journal editors perform their tasks out of dedication to the field and

receive either no compensation or inadequate compensation.

My contention is that we have come to accept the unacceptable. How can it

be reasonable that it might take three years before you or I have the

opportunity to read about an important advance in our field? It is

reminiscent of the posthumous publication of "Der Gang des Menschen" (The

Human Gait), the last chapter of which appeared in 1904, long after Wilhelm

Braune's death and approximately 13 years after the data were collected.

So here we are in the midst of the "information age" with publication

delays that are not too far from those encountered at the end of the last

century.

In contrast, the Internet offers the possibility of instant publication.

As a researcher, I could discover new knowledge from an experiment or

model one morning and put it up on my Web site in the afternoon. A quick

note on BIOMCH-L would alert 2500 interested individuals of the presence of

this new finding and the cause of knowledge would seem to have been served

at the speed of light. While this might at first seem like the ideal

situation, a pause for thought raises some thorny issues.

First and foremost is the issue of the veracity of the findings. It is

really an expression of the noise versus knowledge question. On the

Internet, all apparent knowledge has equal face value to the casual

consumer, who then becomes the peer reviewer. This is clearly a less than

desirable situation and one which is susceptible to hoax, scientific fraud,

carelessness, genuine error, and simple incompetence.

Next, let us overlook the veracity issue and assume that the newly posted

knowledge - carefully researched, accurately formulated and presented - is

a really important advance and something that might find a place in a

premier refereed journal. Let us examine the impact of immediate Internet

publication of such a finding on the career of a young academic. At

present, any Internet publication is ethereal - temporary, sometimes

inaccessible, intangible, and subject to change or deletion. Few

department chairs in the foreseeable future are likely to give credit for

such postings as valid evidence of research competence which might form the

basis for awarding a job for life. There is simply too much uncertainty in

the medium for the message to carry substantial weight. In addition, the

issue of primacy of a publication is one which the Internet makes more

difficult to determine. How does one establish that one really had the

idea first and that this idea was not just something which was encountered

during a productive evening of academic Web surfing?

This is the kernel of the conflict between instant dissemination of new

knowledge and the present criteria for academic advancement: the best

interests of science are served by immediate dissemination but the best

interests of the investigator are served by journal publication which may

delay the appearance of the finding for several years. One strong argument

is that the guidelines for tenure are (or even the process of tenure itself

is) archaic and that this example demonstrates a major flaw in the

institution. However, for the foreseeable future, this is the system under

which we must live.

Are there solutions to the dilemma identified here? One possible scenario

is the following: Professional societies such as the ISB could provide a

site where short reports could be EMailed. The Society would also offer

intervals of paid telecommuting employment to qualified reviewers who have

time to devote to the task of instant report review. The report would be

assigned a score by two such reviewers and then posted within 48 hours of

receipt on the Electronic Journal of the ISB with the score attached.

Qualified readers (e.g. ISB members) could also assign a score which would

be updated as a running average as each reader expressed an opinion. There

would be no revisions by the author and thus no long delays in posting.

Each 14 days the Journal would be indexed and archived at a site where easy

retrieval was possible. One stipulation would be that the data must be

available for review on the author's own web site.

You may be familiar with journals such as Behavioral and Brain Sciences

which allow potential reviewers to FTP the manuscript and submit written

commentaries to which the authors respond. Unfortunately, this process -

despite its thoroughness - is only slightly more expeditious than

conventional journal publishing.

My suggestion, described above, is certainly not a carefully constructed,

researched, or benchmarked model. However, I hope that it will stimulate

debate. Some method must be found to use the power of the Internet to

exploit rapid dissemination of knowledge while satisfying the many other

scientific and academic constraints. Let me know your suggestions

(prc@psu.edu) and details of any other precedents that you may have seen.

This could lead to an altogether new and exciting venue for your research

findings and we could be breaking ground for other disciplines!

Best wishes

Peter R. Cavanagh

ISB President

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{ Peter R. Cavanagh }

{ Center for Locomotion Studies }

{ Penn State University }

{ University Park }

{ PA 16802 USA }

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{ Voice +1 814 865 1972 }

{ FAX +1 814 863 4755 }

{ Email PRC@PSU.EDU }

{ WWW http://www.celos.psu.edu }

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