science publishing


With 50 Million Users, Is Academia.edu Speeding Up Science?

Today we follow up with Richard Price, the founder and CEO of the most popular social sharing site for the academic sector, Academia.edu. When we talked to Richard almost five years ago, the site had 1.5 million users, mostly academics sharing their own papers so that their peers had access without any paywalls. Today the site boasts over 50 million users and serves as a laboratory for the future of academic publishing.

It’s not hard to understand the site's phenomenal growth. Weathering the hit back by Elsevier and other prestige publishing houses, Academia.edu has been able to open up access to millions of scholarly papers which otherwise would not have been accessible. And the papers are not only available to academics. Anyone can get an account for free. Richard recently found a farmer from Sub-Saharan Africa downloading a paper on water conservation.

In addition, many users now choose to publish on the site rather than with an established journal. An emeritus professor at Berkeley told Richard this:

“If I publish in a journal, it takes two years to come out and seventeen people read the paper. If I upload to Academia, I get 100 views in the first week."

It's a success story in terms of uptake by the scholarly sector, but what does this success mean to Richard and the company, and to its users and the future of publishing?

So far revenue sources are limited. Experiments with a premium service have had mixed results with users pushing back and arguing that "open access to scholarship should be a human right, not a business model." How will the site, which requires huge infrastructure, sustain itself?

Richard said before that the site could speed up science. Has it?

Join us behind the scenes with the mastermind of Academia.edu.

Flint Whistleblower Says Today's Science Is to Blame for Its Own Lack of Public Trust

Marc Edwards is telling a different story than the one most of us have been reading and hearing lately. But then he’s used to it.

Marc was the engineer from Virginia Tech who was called one day in September, 2015, by a resident of Flint, Michigan. A Ms Lee Ann Walters wanted Marc to check out her water. When Marc and his team got to Flint they uncovered super high levels of lead in the potable water, with over 100,000 people exposed to high lead levels and 12,000 people with lead poisoning. You know the rest.

But you may not know that a very similar story to Flint played out in the nation’s capital in 2003. A Washington DC water crisis led to a hearing in which Congress found that the CDC had released “scientifically indefensible” reports on the water.

Marc Edwards exposed those reports and lost a contract with the EPA over it.

Aghast at the world of academic science which he says is "gamed by a system of quantitative incentives" and at government agencies who often overlook the truth, Marc now takes aim at the whole system of science. Last year he co-authored a report Academic Research in the 21st Century: Maintaining Scientific Integrity in a Climate of Perverse Incentives and Hypercompetition. The report warns of a tipping point where science “itself becomes inherently corrupt and public trust is lost, risking a new dark age."

The integrity of science has been a major theme here on the program, so while Marc is not a biomedical researcher, his experience in exposing bad science resonates within our own life science community.

In line after quotable line (“The idea of science as a public good is getting lost. In science our product is truth, and our brand is trust. The greatest proportion of truth seekers are not going into science as opposed to other human endeavors."), Marc fillets today’s scientists in government and academia, arguing that the system of science is skewed towards quantitative markers rather than quality: the pressure to publish more papers each year, citations, how much funding, etc.

Marc thinks things have gone so wrong that the war on science today (and yes, he does think there is a war on science), is more the fault of the scientists than any political movement. Somewhat with irony, but more with sadness, he says:

“The Flint water crisis was so bad it restored my faith in politicians. I mean that’s how screwed up it was. The politicians behaved themselves really well. The people who have been indicted are the scientists and engineers."

Gene and Tonic: The Decline of Pseudoscience, An Atheist for President, and What to Do with a Sexist Reviewer

The New Republic argued in a pice entitled, "The Decline of Pseudoscience," this week that now that the so called "natural" living industry has gone mainstream, "it's days are numbered."  Surely Oprah's dumping of Dr. Oz backs this up.   But other events this week show a different story.  Matt Herper at Forbes tracked down the makers of a brain enhancement supplement who were forging articles to promote their snake oil.  And have you read up on the new Republlican presidential candidates?  One of them, a neurosurgeon, says the human brain is "too complex for anyone but God."

And finally, as a follow-up to the scandal last week, we've come up with suggestions for handling a sexist reviewer.  

Join us for another episode of Gene and Tonic, our wrap on the week's news.

 



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