“We instituted a modified open access policy”

“We instituted a modified open access policy”

Emilie Marcus (left), Editor-in-Chief and Lynne Herndon, Chief Executive Officer, of Cell Press. Emilie Marcus, Editor-in-Chief, and Lynne Herndon, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), of Cell Press, the premium life sciences imprint of the science publishers, Elsevier, were in India recently to attend a lecture series by Nobel Laureate David Baltimore arranged by TnQ Books and Journals and Cell Press. They also used their time here to visit science institutions and interact with scientists and science students with the objective of enhancing the editorial presence of Cell Press in India, and encourage more Indian scientists to publish with them. Dr. Marcus, a PhD in neuroscience, who joined Cell Press in 1998, and Ms. Herndon, who became CEO of the company in 2001, spoke to Parvathi Menon about their impressions on science research in India, and on how Indian scientists could improve their publishing visibility in international science journals. Excerpts: What are the objectives of your trip to India? Marcus: For me, from the journal’s angle, it has been to establish a dialogue with the Indian scientific community. Cell Press as a whole gets very few submissions from India and I think overall we are fairly unaware of Indian science and scientists.

A number of years ago the situation was somewhat similar with respect to Cell Press and China. I started travelling to China regularly and meeting scientists.

To run a journal at the forefront you need to know the community and we invest a lot of editorial effort in this. So for India we are really trying to model ourselves on the success we have had in establishing an editorial presence in China and making the Chinese scientific community aware of Cell and the other Cell Press journals, how to submit papers and contact editors. For me, for the journal, this is one of the major goals of our trip, and it has certainly been achieved.

Herndon: I think it is not likely that Cell Press will have an office of its own here in India, so this is a way to make our presence known with a fair amount of impact. It was important to establish that as other companies and rival journals are setting up their own offices here. You have visited Delhi and now Bangalore. You have met scientists and visited science institutions. What are your initial impressions? Marcus: Well, it is very premature for me to say at this point. The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) at every level is in my mind on par with the top ten per cent of U.S. science.

The experience at IISC was very different because I did not really have the opportunity to hear as much as I would have liked.

The overall impression I came away with there was that there was very much an issue of presentation: of how they are presenting their science to an audience, how they are selling their science and getting it across.

It is different from how U.S. scientists by and large would present their work, which is more on the question that is being asked and the process taken to ask it, as opposed to, for example “I work in x system on y protein” where there is no question. It therefore becomes hard to evaluate the significance of the work.

It is very tied into how it is presented. That would be my first premature impression, based on my very brief interactions.

The huge crowds for David Baltimore’s talks in various cities are evidence of the standing of science in India, and the serious following it has. Is this interest commensurate with the publication presence of sc ientists from India in scientific journals including the Cell Press publications? Marcus: I think the most direct determinant of the amount and quality of publication is research funding.

I don’t know the state of funding (in India). In this day and age science is a very expensive pursuit as high quality, cutting edge science is very technologically driven.

To be competitive on the international landscape is a very resource-driven equation I think.

Then there is the human resource element and intellectual capacity, for sure. But resources and education – what is good science and how to do it – are key features.

The increase in publications out of China really came with this dramatic increase in government research funding for science.

How does Cell Press view the rise of Open Access journals like the PLoS group? Herndon: Well, we instituted a modified open access policy ourselves, so that our content becomes free after 12 months.

Open Access seems to be gaining in popularity rather slowly. But I think that the start-up of the PLoS group was indeed the right thing at the right time. They took money, invested it in the right way and created some fairly good journals.

Ultimately, I think open access, if it were to become the major way the people got their literature, would put more pressure on us as publishers to deliver something additional that they cannot get from the versions that are housed with government.

Marcus: From an editorial perspective I am very opposed to an author-pays based model, whether in a newspaper or a scientific journal. If an author pays to be published it undermines the editorial independence of the journal. But doesn’t the author pay most often through institutional grants, not out of his or her pocket? Marcus: Well, from the journal’s perspective it doesn’t matter. The money can come from anywhere. In an author-pays model the more you publish, the more the journal makes. There is no incentive really to reject anything.

And I think you can see that pretty clearly now in the events that are happening in PLoS. PLoS Biology started out by having an editorial model based on a subscription-based business model, i.e., they were very selective, and the model was not financially sustainable.

Because if you have a journal with a high rejection rate you cannot sustain a model based on author’s fees. So in order to fund the editorial efforts of PloS Biology, they have had to launch PLoS One which is an online journal of now extremely low quality, minimally peer reviewed, for which authors pay 1,500 or 2,000 dollars to have their articles published.

In three months they have published 1,000 articles! The author is responsible for copy editing, pre-press and all of that.

So you end up with a lot of publications and a lot of revenue, with no real service to the scientific community.

There is a fairly widespread perception of bias against papers submitted by scientists from developing countries like India and from lesser known institutes shown by editors of leading international scientific journal s. How far is that perception true? Marcus: I don’t think it is true. I do know that it is a common perception. At least from the editorial processes of the Cell Press journals it is impossible for me to see how that kind of bias could come in. Herndon: As more people have the experience of publishing in top journals and mentor other people to also do the same, it will help to change the feeling about the system.

It seems like the feeling about the system and how it works is stronger than any evidence of bias itself.

Marcus: There was a young woman graduate student from a new lab who came up to me after my talk and was insistent on this issue of bias.

The only advice I could give her was “Don’t let that distract you. That will become a self-fulfilling prophecy — if you think there is a bias and therefore you don’t submit.

Do the best science you can do, talk to as many people as you can, and try and find out from the journals where your work is appropriate. Be realistic with yourself, lobby with the editors on why you think (your paper) is interesting and appropriate.”

Cell has a very high rejection rate. It only publishes 15 per cent of everything that gets submitted to it.

We’ve spent a lot of time and effort to set a consistent editorial standard, and work with authors to meet that standard, but we don’t have the option of lowering the bar.

Call, email the editor, and argue for a paper…David Baltimore has no problem thinking he can do that (laughs).

That is an acceptable and encouraged thing to do if you think we have missed the scientific point.

We are there and available and eager to get to know scientists better. I do think the referees, in this case the editors, are being as fair as they can and you just have to get in the game and play it.