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Charleston Library Conference

Collaborating the Support the Research Community, The Next Chapter

Kumsal Bayazit Elsevier

Cris Ferguson Murray State University

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Kumsal Bayazit and Cris Ferguson, "Collaborating the Support the Research Community, The Next Chapter" (2019). Proceedings of the Charleston Library Conference. http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284317189

This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. Collaboratng to Support the Research Community: The Next Chapter

Kumsal Bayazit, CEO, Elsevier Cris Ferguson, Assistant Dean of Libraries / Associate Professor, Murray State University

The following is a lightly edited transcript of a of research, to tackle the grand challenges that our live presentaton given at the 2019 Charleston society faces, and to evolve our services for a beter Conference. Video of the session is available at future. htps://youtu.be/MF3yDj-I9Mw . With that in mind, I would like to cover the follow- Cris Ferguson: Good morning, everyone. It is my ing today: frst, I want to share my observatons pleasure to introduce today’s plenary speaker. about the dynamic world of research afer being in Kumsal Bayazit was appointed chief executve ofcer my role for almost nine months. Research across of Elsevier in February 2019. She has held multple all disciplines has driven remarkable progress for positons with RELX since 2004, most recently as society and we all aspire it to keep doing so. Second, the regional president, Europe, Middle East, and I’d like to share what I learned from listening to the Africa at Reed Exhibitons. Before joining Reed diverse perspectves of many research stakeholders Exhibitons in 2016, Kumsal was RELX’s chief strategy that I’ve met while traveling around the world. At ofcer responsible for driving strategic initatves, tmes I have been inspired and at tmes I have been technology, strategy, and portolio management. surprised. It’s clear that there are serious issues and Prior to that, she served in several operatonal and I see today as an opportunity to start addressing strategic roles with LEXIS‐ NEXIS. Kumsal also chairs them. To do that efectvely we need to be able to the technology forum at RELX and is a nonexecutve converse openly and to confront elephants that may director at LSL Property Services, PLC. Prior to joining be in the room. By doing so I hope we can move RELX Group in 2004, Kumsal spent several years at beyond the past, build trust, and work for a beter, Bain and Company at their New York, Los Angeles, frictonless future. And third, I look forward to the Johannesburg, and Sydney ofces. Kumsal earned an future. I am full of optmism about the opportunites MBA from Harvard Business School and is a gradu- to support research communites. I don’t pretend to ate of the University of California at Berkeley where have all the answers to complex issues in the world she received a bachelor’s degree in economics with of research, nor do I underestmate the size and the honors. So, please join me in welcoming Kumsal scope of the challenges before us. However, I am Bayazit to the Charleston Conference stage. optmistc because so many people that I’ve met are smart, dedicated, and strongly commited to Kumsal Bayazit: Thank you. Good morning, every- the shared mission of advancing societal progress one, and thank you for having me here today. I have through quality research. That commitment includes been looking forward to my trip to Charleston. I had all publishers and it certainly includes Elsevier. heard wonderful things about the spirit of Charles- ton, and I got to witness that over the last couple of To kick of, let me refect on the tremendous prog- days. It was very kind of the organizers to invite me tress tha research and innovaton have enabled as I know it was not a popular decision with every- across the world. Since 1800, life expectancy at birth body and I genuinely appreciate being here today. has increased from 31 to 72 years. The proporton of global populaton living in extreme poverty has I believe in making progress by building bridges, decreased from 85% to 9% and literacy among adults fnding common ground, and fnding linkages. I has also increased from 10% to 86%. Over the last grew up in Istanbul, a city that bridges the east and two decades, the number of people infected with the west, and as a child I crossed that bridge that HIV every year has halved. Access to electricity has connects two contnents every day as I lived on the increased from 72% to 85%, and the rate of vacci- Asian side but my school was on the European side. naton among children has increased fourfold from I’m familiar with the complexity of building bridges 22% to 88%. And to add another example that’s and welcomed the opportunity to do so at Elsevier. close to my heart, from 1970 to 2016 the percent- My hope and ambiton for Elsevier is to work con- age of women in the U.S. workforce moved from structvely with all the stakeholders in the ecosystem 36% to 47% and the percentage of women in STEM

26 Plenary Copyright of this contributon remains in the name of the author(s) htps://doi.org/10.5703/1288284317189 improved from 7% to 25%, and now, unfortunately, Research leaders, primarily heads of universites and you can see that there’s been stagnaton since the research insttutes, they need to make choices about 1980s. So, while great progress has been made, we where their insttuton is going to compete so that are not where we need to be in terms of gender they can atract top researchers, collaborators, and representaton in research. These massive societal funding both to build facilites and conduct high‐ advancements were made possible through the cre- impact research. aton, sharing, and applicaton of new knowledge by the global research community. I think we should all Researchers, and I’ve listened to many of them, feel proud of the progress and our contributons and they are highly motvated to solve problems that will it gives me optmism and inspiraton when I see how beneft society and they are working extremely hard much progress has been made. to win funding, to atract talent, and to fnd inter- natonal, interdisciplinary, and commercial collab- Now, there’s a new set of grand challenges that orators. Regardless of discipline, researchers stress the research community is addressing. The need to the importance and intensity of data, which need to address global warming, to stop the polluton of our be both accessible and reusable. They are seeking oceans, to ensure food and water security, to help help to document their methods, protocols, and people live longer and healthier lives, and to reduce data management plans to ensure that their work is social inequalites while also driving economic reproducible, a key issue that’s close to the hearts of growth. What inspires me is the potental to collab- many. And as research becomes more interdisciplin- orate on the next chapter of societal advancements ary, researchers want help to understand adjacent that will come from the creaton and applicaton of felds and to stay on top of the latest developments new knowledge. in areas that they may be less familiar with. For example, I met a very inspiring leading climate Turning now to my second secton, what I’ve learned change researcher who developed the planetary from listening to the diverse perspectves of many boundaries framework. He works with economists research stakeholders. Since joining Elsevier, I trav- and legal scholars and social science policy-related eled around the world to hear from all our customers researchers who evaluate potental interventons and our stakeholders in this remarkable intercon- such as carbon taxes, polluton controls, and legis- nected and global research community. I’ve sought laton. And I heard many stories about the benefts to understand its challenges and what we can do to of connectng the dots across disciplines that ofen help enable the next century of progress. I would like happens through serendipity. I met a leading oncolo- to share with you my takeaways from these conversa- gist who was doing gene sequencing to fnd paterns tons with diferent stakeholder groups before spend- in random occurrences and he was completely stuck ing most of my tme refectng on discussions with the in his research untl through serendipity he ran into librarians who consttute most of today’s audience. a colleague from the astronomy department at a cocktail party at his university. As they got to talking Let’s start with governments and funders. They about his research, his astronomy colleague said, want to protect the $500 billion that they spend “That’s kind of all I do now in astronomy. Can I take on research and development annually and keep a look at your data sets?” And it was his colleague growing that spending in line with the GDP at around from astronomy that actually helped him crack the 3% to 4% per year. That’s because they have seen code on fnding paterns in what seemed to be ran- the return of this investment historically and see dom occurrences. great potental to advance society and drive eco- nomic growth by addressing grand challenges. Grand In turning to my focus today, I’ve had the pleasure challenges are interdisciplinary and global, so they of meetng with many librarians. While you con- are focused on fnding new funding mechanisms that tnue your critcal role as guardians of the quality of go beyond disciplinary and natonal borders. They knowledge and knowledge disseminaton, the way also have to make choices about where to put their you do this is also evolving and very much focused limited funding in placing bets across high‐ potental on delivering the mission of your insttutons. You’re areas like artfcial intelligence or sustainable power enabling beter data management and reproducibil- generaton, and fnally they would like to be able to ity. For example, you help researchers discover, man- demonstrate the impact of research on society more age, preserve, and disseminate data according to clearly so that citzens support R&D as an efectve fair data principles. You are helping researchers and use of their tax dollars. insttutonal leaders preserve and showcase their

Charleston Conference Proceedings 2019 27 intellectual outputs. For example, you’re establishing The queston is not whether open access is desirable and populatng insttutonal repositories to capture or benefcial. The queston is how to get there. My data sets, theses, dissertaton, and conference pre- takeaway from my discussions on the topic is that sentatons, and you’re helping evolve ways to assess there are many points of view. Publishers are ofen the impact of research. You are advising on the blamed for not making enough progress, which I use of metrics, data, and analytcal tools to inform think is fair, but it would also be unfair not to recog- evaluaton and tenure decisions and to help demon- nize the lack of alignment within our communites strate societal impact, which can be controversial about the best way forward, which is understand- as there are many views on how to use metrics, and able as this is a multdimensional issue that requires you’re helping to set new standards of practce like substantal problem‐ solving and acton to make the DORA principles, which in turn help drive con- progress. I’m a pragmatst and I commit to working structve behaviors in research. In delivering on this pragmatcally with libraries and other stakeholders important role, you’re also deeply concerned about to achieve shared open access goals. Part of this costs. A fundamental issue is that the library bud- means acknowledging obstacles where they exist gets have not kept pace with the 3% to 4% annual and discussing them openly and objectvely so that growth in R&D spending, which in turn drives the 4% we can fnd solutons to overcome them. If we don’t, annual growth in the volume of artcles published. In progress will contnue to be slow. I feel optmistc, fact, in North America, while the rate of knowledge given the extent of commitment to make progress, creaton has accelerated with the inventon of the and in that spirit, please allow me to share some Internet and assessing quality has become more of the obstacles that I have learned about in the burdensome, the library budgets have decreased as last nine months in my conversatons with various a percentage of overall insttutonal budgets such stakeholders. that absolute library spending has not kept pace with R&D spending. You’re also promotng, enabling open The frst obstacle is about diferences in research- access in its many forms including by funding reposi- ers’ views. Some researchers are fully commited tories and artcle publicaton charges and by creatng to open access and see it as a moral obligaton. For your own journals and university presses. Before I other researchers, however, it is not their top pri- look to the future, based on our understanding of ority. Researchers value academic freedom, including where we are, I would like to take some tme to talk the freedom to publish in the journal of their choice. about two important topics. Elsevier has found that even where we experiment with workfows to opt authors into gold open access The frst one is open access and it’s a very important and cover their publicaton costs, researchers some- topic for us all. Elsevier fully supports open access. I tmes opt out of the default setng. This challenge want to be very clear. No one can dispute the beauty should not be underestmated. We’ve all got work to and vision of freely accessible, immediately available do to get beter adopton from researchers. Publish- research content whether peer‐ reviewed, published ers and librarians can help fnd the right incentves artcles or other scholarly work. I’m a UC Berkeley and supportng frameworks to encourage adopton. alumna, so these kind of values were instlled in me as a fresh new undergraduate on campus and A second obstacle pertains to funding fows. Again, as Elsevier CEO, I am commited to working with I’m talking primarily about gold open access, which you and the rest of the global research community at scale would require research‐ intensive insttutons toward a more fully open access future. In fact, my to pay proportonally more than today even if total professional background is applying technology to system costs fall. We’ve seen this in a recent state- content to help professionals make beter decisions. ment by U15, Germany’s 15 most research‐ intensive For example, working in the part of RELX that serves universites. They are strongly commited to open legal professionals, I’ve seen the powerful benefts access and support the deal negotatng team, but of analytcal services that are built on top of freely they are also clear that funding challenges need to available content such as case law, statutes, or public be addressed, which might include funders and gov- records, which is why I’m excited about the poten- ernments playing a role. tal to create value for researchers by applying text mining and artfcial intelligence technologies to the Third, we must confront the obstacle of predatory entre corpus of peer‐ reviewed content. I understand publishing. Research is widely trusted because and appreciate the role of open access in delivering artcles have been through a rigorous, independently that vision. managed peer‐ review process. Many artcles are

28 Plenary rejected. For example, Elsevier journals receive and fnding ways collectvely to overcome them. about 1.8 million submissions every year and yet Above all, this requires trust, and this brings me to we publish only a quarter of those. With gold open what has surprised me. access, if a publisher accepts an artcle they get paid, and if they reject it, they do not. An unintended I knew coming into this role that Elsevier had repu- consequence of gold open access has been the rise tatonal challenges. But, in the last nine months the of predatory publishers that unscrupulously accept thing that surprised me most pertains to trust. As submissions to get paid. We must make overt the the CEO of Elsevier, I have had strikingly diferent serious risk of replicatng the issues that fake news experiences with diferent customers. Sometmes has wreaked on society, which could cause real harm afer entering a room, I almost get hugs from our as well as undermine today’s high levels of trust in customers. I met senior research leaders who are science. Elsevier will contnue to be a leading pub- very proud of their work with our journals. I met lisher of open access artcles. customers who compliment us as being synonymous with quality, who appreciate high‐ quality standards As we talk to research stakeholders around the and building trust in research. I met early career world, we fnd that approaches vary widely to over- researchers who are grateful for the way we rejected coming these obstacles and to achieve open access their artcles and constructvely helped them move objectves. Some opt for gold open access whereas forward, and I have met insttutonal leaders who others for green open access, that is, manuscript appreciate the insights from our analytcs in their postng in repositories. There are also countries and strategic decision‐ making, and librarians who have insttutons that indicate that open access is not graciously worked in partnership with us through a priority for them at this point in their evoluton, the years. I’ve been complimented on the dedica- even though they acknowledge the importance of ton of our people to researchers and research. On its mission and benefts. Elsevier’s approach is to other occasions, however, when I walk into the room work closely with those that we serve to help them the room is silent and sometmes I even get hostle achieve their goals, as they defne them, wherever stares. While lack of trust is not universal, it feels possible and sustainable. very important to me to address so I would like to spend tme on it here. Since I’ve joined Elsevier, we’ve announced many pilot deals, each with very diferent constructs such As I’ve tried to understand the reasons, I’ve heard a as in Norway, Hungary, France, and Poland. Each one lot about pricing, for example, that our journals had is diferent because what each customer has asked double‐ digit price increases in the 1980s and 1990s for has been diferent and their startng points and and that we stll account for the largest porton of circumstances are also diferent. Our goal is to meet most libraries’ content budgets. I’ve heard that our customers’ objectves, to understand what works, pricing is not regarded as transparent and that we and to learn what is viable on a longer‐ term and are perceived to oppose open access or to be co- larger‐ scale basis, and so long as we have permission optng it, and we are accused of double dipping and from our customers, we will share the results of are critcized for being a for‐ proft company with high what we’re learning to help inform ways forward and margins. I highlight these points because I work hard we will contnue to provide open access publishing to put myself in the shoes of our customers who are through the overwhelming majority of our journal frustrated, and to see the world from their vantage portolio and launch pure gold OA journals. The point. Only if we do this can we support our custom- instances where we have found a way forward far ers efectvely. At the same tme, I would also like outweigh the instances where we haven’t yet, even to give you the view from our vantage point, and of though the later gets far more media atenton. We course you can choose to disagree with my perspec- at Elsevier are very commited to contnue having tve, but my hope is that through beter mutual open and constructve dialogues to fnd paths for- understanding we can rebuild trust and move con- ward and we should not underestmate the work and structvely forward from the past. the tme required to build these deals and paths. I acknowledge that we have made missteps in the To sum up on open access, we fully support it in past. Elsevier did increase prices in the double digits its multple forms. To achieve it we need to work in the 1980s and 1990s. Many libraries had to cancel together. That means acknowledging issues where journals as a result and there are stll raw emo- they exist, being able to talk ratonally about them, tons about this. In 2002 we explicitly commited to

Charleston Conference Proceedings 2019 29 contain price increases and since then, for nearly two take tme and will happen through our actons and decades, our price increases have been the lowest not our words. In my short tme leading the com- in the industry. Nevertheless, we do stll account for pany, what I have seen is that where we build bridges the largest share of most libraries’ content budgets. through mutual engagement, commitment, open- From our perspectve that’s because we publish ness, fexibility, and pragmatsm, we also build trust the largest share of artcles, 18%, and account for and from there we can build the future. the most citatons, 26%, as a measure of quality. I do acknowledge that it makes it more challenging So, let me now look to the future and how we hope to fund other things, especially when there are to serve the research communites. As I refect budget constraints. As for transparency, variaton in on everything I’ve said and what our shared con- spending is rooted in the transiton to the Big Deal tributon could be as we write the next chapter of and refects the diferences in the makeup of owned research, I’m excited by the prospect of partnering versus access‐ only content across insttutons. I do with the librarian community. And I have to say, acknowledge, however, that two decades afer the when we put together this slide, we have a millennial creaton of the Big Deal this seems anachronistc on the team and she didn’t recognize this image, and that in practce it creates challenges. As for which made me very sad, so I’m going to make sure open access, we fully support it in many forms, not my 8‐ and 12‐year‐ olds are very, very familiar with because we’re trying to co‐ opt it, but because we are this incredibly important music and culture. But, let trying to meet the research community’s needs. But me just take a moment to imagine. Imagine how bet- it is true we were slow to act on open access. One ter insights could be generated if researchers were thing I want to be clear about is that we do not dou- easily connected to potental collaborators in and ble dip. We have a strict no double‐ dipping policy. outside of their disciplines or if access to content and Either an artcle is paid for by the author and is freely data was seamless for researchers and machines. available or is freely available to read, or it is pub- Imagine how much energy would be freed up if the lished for free by the author and is paid to be read. fricton surrounding grant applicatons were elimi- nated. Eighty percent of grant applicatons fail today, Finally, we are a for‐ proft company but we are a which loses huge amounts of precious tme for both responsible one. I’m proud to work for Elsevier and researchers and funders. And imagine if we can con- have been with its parent company, RELX, for over tnue to support researchers so the reproducibility of 15 years. We are strongly commited to corporate research becomes a reality and not just an aspiraton social responsibility. RELX recently ranked second in supported by a research informaton system of the Standard & Poor’s ranking of 1,200 companies for its future. environmental, social, and governance performance. RELX ranked second in the Harvard Business Review Please allow me to share some of the things that we of environmental, social, and governance rankings, are tackling in collaboraton with the research com- and RELX ranked fourth in the Responsibility 100 munity to evolve toward a future vision. The frst set Index, a new sustainable development goals ranking of things are about how we contnue to evolve schol- of FTSE 100 companies. This independent recog- arly communicatons globally. Imagine no fricton in niton refects our genuine commitment to do the peer review. We will leverage technology to reduce right thing for the communites that we serve and fricton in peer review processes while maintaining for the world at large that I don’t have tme to cover high standards of trust and integrity in all that we in detail today. Those include focus support for the publish. We will contnue to work with the commu- advance of UN sustainable development goals, such nity to evolve traditons around anonymity and credit as our multple eforts to achieve gender equality in the review process. With our data science insttute in research, climate research, and supportng early partners in the U.S. and in Europe, we are deploy- career researchers in developing countries. ing machine learning to tackle plagiarism, fraud- ulent submissions, and manipulated citatons and To close out on the topic of trust, all companies have images, and we are also using artfcial intelligence supporters and critcs, as do we, but I have been to improve authors’ journals submission experiences genuinely saddened by the deep frustraton of our including how we reject artcles. critcs. I’m sorry for causing this frustraton and am fully commited to earning the trust of the research Imagine no fricton between disciplines. We’ll community by working through and solving as many answer the call for researchers to eliminate fric- of these issues as possible. I appreciate that this will ton between subject areas, supportng new areas

30 Plenary of interdisciplinary research such as One Earth, a the community, to ensure gender is factored into journal from Cell Press about environmental grant the science. We’re also launching an advisory board challenges, and as research becomes more interdis- on inclusion and diversity with leading researchers ciplinary we will develop advanced recommendaton providing guidance for us. In all of the above, we tools to seamlessly surface relevant content from see librarians as key partners in moving to an ever adjacent felds that help researchers connect the more frictonless research informaton system. We dots across disciplines. And second, beyond our core will co‐ invest and partner with you where, in your publishing actvites, we will further develop ana- judgment, it will help us go further and faster. lytcal tools to help all stakeholders in research and health that we serve. And imagine the possibilites of partnerships. An example of co‐ investment is the Research Data Man- Imagine no fricton in resource allocaton. We will agement Librarian Academy, which we just launched. collaborate with all relevant stakeholders to support We co‐ developed it with the expert faculty librarians their R&D investment decisions and help maximize from eight academic insttutons in the Northeast as the impact of their spending on society, thereby a free, self‐ guided training program for librarians and reducing fricton in funding allocaton. For example, researchers. It aligns with our mutual objectve to this week in Ireland we are providing analytcs at support research as it becomes more data intensive. a natonal research summit of around 300 faculty We will keep building out open access infrastructures and administrators to facilitate the naton’s research like bepress’s Digital Commons to enable insttutons strategy discussion. The analysis draws from our to publish, manage, and showcase the full spectrum Topics of Prominence tool to identfy hot areas of of their research outputs beyond journal artcles. research where Ireland has distnctve capabilites. As we look to the future and to the vision of fricton- Imagine no fricton in data management. We will co‐ less research, my own personal commitments to you develop the next generaton of tools for researchers, are that we will work with all stakeholders collabora- leveraging our 70+ partnerships with academic inst- tvely, productvely, and pragmatcally, with humil- tutons around the world as we do so. As research ity, to improve the value that we deliver to you, to becomes more data intensive, we will provide tools sustain progress toward the vision of open science, that enable researchers to document automatcally which incorporates open access in its many forms as their methods, protocols, and to implement data well as open data. We will innovate in partnership management plans according to fair data princi- with the communites we serve. We will systemat- ples. And imagine easily demonstratng impact. As cally work on inclusion and diversity with a partcu- researchers increasingly need to demonstrate impact lar focus on achieving gender balance in research on society, we will move beyond publicaton and and factor gender into the science, and contnue to citaton metrics to develop new indicators, collab- contribute as a responsible corporate citzen to the oratng with the Internatonal Center for the Study communites we serve, supportng the UN sustain- of Research that we launched this summer where able development goals. experts from the community can set these stan- dards. We will look to the community to set these And in closing, I genuinely appreciate you including standards. me in your conference. Society faces tremendous challenges, the grand challenges that I have spoken And imagine inclusive and diverse research and about. It’s the global research community that is research communites. We will systematcally work going to solve these challenges, to deliver the next on improving inclusion and diversity in research with hundred years of societal benefts. I hope that we a focus on eliminatng obstacles preventng gender can move beyond the past, work together pragmat- equality. We will deploy our analytcs capabilites cally in the present so that we can partner and work to measure progress. We will address partcipaton together on the future. By doing so we can maximize issues to drive balance in our editorial board, con- our impact in helping the research community do ferences, and peer reviewers where we’ve already the work on which the future of our world depends. made really good progress but have a long way to go, Thank you very much and I’ll be very happy to take and we want to increasingly fnd ways, working with questons now. Thank you.

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