Dear All thank you very much for your responses about publishing evolution biology. There were 136 respondents! (and four later ones not incorporated yet). 1 from Argentina, 4 Australia, 2 Belgium, 9 Canada, 1 Colombia, 2 Finland, 3 France 6 Germany, 1 Greece, 10 International or unknown, 1 India, 1 Italy, 1 Japan, 1 New Zealand, 4 Netherlands, 1 Norway, 2 Portugal, 3 South Africa, 1 Spain, 4 Sweden, 8 Switzerland, 17 United Kingdom, 51 USA, 1 Venezuela. I posed the questions to help inform the debate that the Society for the Study of Evolution and its journal EVOLUTION is having about the fairest and best way to publish evolutionary biology, but the opinions and information I summarize here do not necessary reflect the views of the SSE. Please read this with some generosity – it is far from perfect and is not rigorous in data collection, analysis or presentation. But I think there are some interesting messages here about what people think about publishing, and how this differs among regions. Interestingly, there are strongly dichotomous opinions among people who would like the same outcomes as each other. COMMENTS MADE ABOUT MODE OF PUBLISHING / ACCESSIBILITY PAGE CHARGES & WAIVERS Interesting dichotomy: ON ONE HAND…. 13 people (x) said they oppose page charges on principle 14 x Poorly funded people/countries can’t afford page charges, page charges are the first thing to go when funds are tight / after end of grant after retirement Numerous people said waivers for page charges when people can’t afford them are a good thing. That said, many people don’t ask for waivers, but many do and all but only ~ 6% are granted. BUT ON THE OTHER HAND… 11x approve of open access publishing because of its fairness to poorly-funded people, but they usually entail high page charges. Several also pointed out that many Non-profit / Society journals / Open Access tend to have higher page charges for good reasons that have fair outcomes for access, and so favour these journals. So open access and cheap journals are great for equalizing access to READING science, but they entail page charges, sowill work best to make PUBLISHING accessible to everyone if there is a near-perfect waiver system for people who cannot afford page charges. This assumes that publishing has to be paid for somewhere, and presumably a good way to help is to reduce the cost of publishing. ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING COMMENTS 3x Should go entirely electronic. Various suggestions for improved features (bibliographic software interface, colour, cheapness, print format, speed). EDITORIAL ISSUES 5x Double-blind reviewing should be used The journal Evolution should be faster - but 2x said the journal has done well in increasing speed Paul’s comment: handling times have been coming down consistently for the last 5 years, and are ~ 20% faster than in 2000. New processes will make them faster still. But it will take a while for people to realize how strong the improvement has been. 10x Evolution has high quality articles / scientific standards 2x Should accept LaTeX CONTENT of journals in the field We need more journals in evolutionary biology There should be an applied evolution journal We need a ‘low-end’ evolutionary biology journal SOME SUMMARIES of responses to questions Q1. If you have to pay page charges to publish in a good journal (typically in the order of USD60 per page), how much of a disincentive relative to other factors is this to submit to that journal? Several common responses: - free-access supporters: there is no disincentive because paying to publish means free/cheap access for poorly-funded scientists - it’s-unethical-to-charge-to-publish-science supporters: total disincentive - will not submit papers to journals with page charges on principle - journal quality is very important, and if high enough, will pay page charges - depends on level of funding. Scientists from poorly-funded countries and many graduate students (etc) elsewhere avoid page charges There were strong regional differences in opinions about page charges. North Americans, Scandinavians and Swiss responded similarly to each other (page charges no issue ~55%, some issue ~30%, big issue ~ 15%) - while UK & continental Europe were less kindly-disposed to page charges (page charges no issue ~35%, some issue ~20%, big issue ~ 45%) - while Australasia, S America, S Africa and India were reasonably consistent in almost the opposite response: (page charges no issue ~15%, some issue ~25%, big issue ~ 60%) Q2. Have you ever decided to not submit to a particular journal on the basis that you would incur page charges, and if so, how often (eg rarely, usually etc)? Common answers: -Never -Avoid if at all possible within limits of publishing in good, relevant journal -Will certainly choose a no-charge journal over equivalent one that charges - forced to avoid early in career, or if from poor country Regional patterns of response were very similar to those for Q1. Many people made a distinction between when they were a grad student and later on in their careers, but this dichotomy was much less marked in the regions that were less in favour of page charges anyway. Nearly one quarter of respondents routinely do not submit to journals where they would have to pay page charges. (Notice this is not necessarily the same thing as journals that have page charges, because there may be member free pages / discounts, and waiver systems. However, many people do not make this distinction - they just avoid journals with page charges). Q3. Have you ever requested a waiver of page charges from any journal? Was it granted? Common answers: - Never - Always - As grad student - in the case of EVOLUTION not needed because get free pages as SSE member. 58% /68 Yes, 49 No (rest N/A). Of 68Yes, 4 not granted, and 4 partial. = 6% not granted, 6% partially granted Q4. Are you aware that the Society for the Study of Evolution has low-cost membership fees, and that one of the benefits of membership is an allowance of 12 fee-free pages per year if your work is published in EVOLUTION? Q5. Are you a member of the Society for the Study of Evolution? A question of most interest can be answered by combining Qs4&5 is: what proportion of members know about the free pages? Of 92 members or ex-members that answered Q4 and Q5: 22 (24%) did not know about free page charges. Table 3. Membership / non-membership of SSE USA & Canada 84% of 51 Switzerland & 73% of 11 Scandinavia United Kingdom 59% of 10 Other Europe: 43% of 10 Australasia 36% of 5 S. America S. Africa India Q6. Have you published in EVOLUTION? How often? I was looking for data on how many people publish sufficient papers in EVOLUTION that it could be an issue to run out of free pages. Only a very few would run in to the problem, and they seem to be well-funded and don’t care about page charges anyway. Q7. What is the country/region from which your research funding comes? This was to allow (1) assessment of scope of the survey, and (2) categorization for regional differences in responses. Q8. Do your national funding bodies mostly allow application for publication charges? Answers: Regional differences (North America 'yes', plenty of rest of the world 'no', with some exceptions in Europe) But many people said that it is sufficiently hard to get funding for evolution research that it doesn’t really matter if publications are officially allowable on grant applications – one doesn’t get enough money anyway, and publication charges are more dispensible than other expenditure. Q9. Do you have any other comments on the subject of publication of evolutionary biology? This was an open question to promote feedback. Evoldir members are thanked for their responses, which have been forwarded (unattributed, ie anonymously) to assist in making a decision about how to move forward with the publication of EVOLUTION. -- Dr Paul Sunnucks Senior Lecturer in Zoology Molecular Ecology Research Group and Australian Centre for Biodiversity: Analysis, Policy & Management School of Biological Sciences Monash University, Melbourne Clayton Campus 3800 Victoria Australia ph + 61 3 9905 9593 fax + 61 3 9905 5613 email paul.sunnucks@sci.monash.edu.au webpage: http://www.biolsci.monash.edu.au/staff/sunnucks.html Paul Sunnucks