How Academic Science Gave Its Soul to the Publishing Industry

SCIENCE, THE ENDLESS FRONTIER AT 75 MARK W. NEFF How Academic Science Gave Its Soul to the Publishing Industry Self-governance of science was supposed to mean freedom of inquiry, but it also ended up serving the business model of scientific publishers while undermining the goals of science policy. merica’s globally preeminent university secure social and economic benefits in the postwar period, research enterprise is constructed on two including more and better paying jobs, more productive bedrock principles of self-governance. The first agriculture, and innovative industrial products desired by Ais autonomy: academic scientists should be left free to consumers, “the flow of scientific knowledge must be both determine their own research agendas. The second is continuous and substantial.” To achieve this knowledge internal accountability: the quality of academic science flow he felt that the government should provide generous is best assessed by academic scientists. The commitment funding for the scientific community, as it had during the to scientific self-governance carries with it a policy war. requirement as well: support for research will mostly But counter to the coordinated wartime R&D effort have to come from the federal government; companies he had headed, Bush insisted that scientists must be will never make the necessary investments in undirected allowed to work “on subjects of their own choice, in the research because they cannot capture the economic manner dictated by their curiosity for the exploration of benefits for themselves. the unknown.” Such curiosity-driven basic science would The origin story of how this arrangement came about yield essential but unpredictable benefits at unknowable is a familiar one. During World War II, civilian scientists points downstream, he argued, and was an essential and engineers developed pivotal innovations that prerequisite for solving social problems. The quality of a contributed to the allied victory. Their work was funded, proposed research project could not therefore be judged by overseen, and coordinated by the US Office of Scientific its potential benefits to society—those were unforeseeable. Research and Development, directed by Vannevar Bush, Scientists would judge scientific merit according to their formerly the president of the Carnegie Institution for own internal criteria. Science and dean of engineering at the Massachusetts The influence of Bush’s argument for scientific self- Institute of Technology. Closely administered for governance would be difficult to overstate. Science, the relevance in advancing the war effort, wartime research Endless Frontier ultimately served as the justification and and development activities were managed in a manner model for the creation of the National Science Foundation antithetical to contemporary ideals of scientific self- as a new science funding agency within the federal governance. Following the war, Bush made a pitch in his government, with federal funds distributed by technical now famous report Science, The Endless Frontier that to experts to technical experts in a process designed to be WINTER 2020 35 academic publishing largely insulated from political influence. And the National community willfully cedes a significant degree of that Science Foundation has served as a model for other US self-governance to a small number of scientific publishing science agencies, and internationally for countries looking to companies that are fundamentally responsive to the interests build their own scientific capacity. of corporate shareholders, not to the societies that fund and How can scientists’ dependence on taxpayer dollars are promised the benefits of research. coexist with the no-strings-attached bedrock principles of academic research? Self-governance combined with Measuring Mexican science unpredictable, yet inevitable, societal benefit from research To help make visible the dangers of linking scientific self- relieved scientists of the obligation of having their work governance to publication and citation statistics, I start judged by the policy-makers and taxpayers who funded by stepping outside the American context to examine the it. Yet the performance of scientists would still have to be experience of scientists in Mexico. Mexico provides a natural assessed. Their publications represented a contribution to experiment in the policies of researcher evaluation because, the pool of knowledge that would eventually yield benefit, unlike in the United States where there is substantial inter- and a citation in the scientific literature demonstrated that and even intra-institutional variation, it has adopted a single other scientists were making use of that contribution. The national policy for research assessment. currencies of publication counts, citation counts, and journal By standard scientific metrics, Mexican science has impact factors (a metric based on citation counts) came to be come into its own in the past few decades. In the early the way that scientists competed with one another for jobs 1980s Mexico produced few if any articles in journals and funding within the broader scientific community, the listed by WoS; today Mexican scientists in some disciplines way they were assessed for professional advancement within are averaging a publication per year in that database, a universities, as well as the way they articulated their value to particularly notable feat given the comparatively limited outside audiences. These numbers are now widely accepted government support for science. Whereas Mexican proxies for scientific productivity, quality, and impact, scientists formerly had to go abroad to complete their and they are compiled by authoritative sources to facilitate doctorates, students today can get their training in Mexico evaluation processes. The Web of Science (WoS) suite of with internationally recognized mentors. Mexico now products, to which any serious institution has subscription has substantial in-house scientific talent and the capacity access, calculates an impact factor for every journal worth to keep building on that success. By standard scientific considering, and tallies citations to each published paper metrics, continued success is limited only by lack of adequate from others within its database. These metrics appear funding. unambiguous and seem to capture key assessment criteria Mexico’s scientific ascent constitutes a remarkable in simple numbers; they are therefore appealing to scientists achievement by countless talented and dedicated scientists, who seek to remove bias from the self-governance process. guided by policies focused on quantitative metrics of Though mechanically objective, the limits of publication science: publication counts, citation counts, and journal and citation measures for assessing scientific quality and impact factor. But this success also serves as a cautionary impact are increasingly well understood. The number of tale. By codifying standard notions of scientific quality in papers a scientist has published says little or nothing about its national science policies, Mexico also steered research the importance or even quality of those papers. Papers are away from nationally-relevant topics and placed systematic cited for many reasons (including because they are notably barriers between Mexican scientists and potential users of bad). A journal’s impact factor says nothing about how much science in that country. any individual article has been cited; a small proportion of Mexico’s increased presence in WoS-listed journals is articles in high-impact journals tend to account for most of the result of science policies developed to protect and retain the citations. Nonetheless, publication metrics remain an that nation’s scientific workforce during a time of economic influential element of scientific self-governance. turmoil. Rampant inflation in the early 1980s created a But here I will focus on another, little-recognized reason crisis for Mexican science. Scientists could not afford to to rethink current reliance on publication and citation live on their salaries, and many had to take on additional statistics in scientific self-governance: it actually gives the jobs to make ends meet or flee to other nations where they publication industry significant yet invisible influence over could secure adequate salaries. Mexico’s science policy- science policy. The foundational premise behind scientific makers responded by creating the Sistema Nacional de self-governance is that the scientific enterprise works best— Investigadores (SNI; the National System of Researchers) to and makes its maximum possible contribution to society— identify and reward—and thus retain—the country’s most when isolated from external influences. In accepting productive scientists. Researchers with adequate productivity publication metrics as defined by corporate interests as and training are granted SNI levels I, II, or III, or emeritus the lodestar for judging science, however, the scientific status, and are paid substantial nontaxable annual salary 36 ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY academic publishing bonuses commensurate with their SNI level. Depending not pose these linguistic and financial access barriers, on the cost of living in a given region, these salary bonuses but publishing in them does not yield rewards under SNI. today constitute essential supplements to the standardized Mexico’s National Council for Science and Technology base pay rate, and many research institutions reinforce SNI (CONACYT),

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