1. Problems with publishing Several texts in the literature list is connected to publishing – Shekman: “luxury journals” – Nosek, Spies and Motyl: “scientific utopia” – Bohannon: “who’s afraid of peer review” – The economist: Unreliable research The texts identifies many problems –and some dilemmas

2. Characterization of the problem Bar for publication is set too high Favors novelty results which leads to high rate of false positives. Negative results seldom get published Retraction of false positives are very rare Publishing becomes the goal, not good science Bar for publication is set too low Journals accept erroneous papers to get publishing fee Publishing becomes no longer a guarantee of sound scientific methods Publication of deliberately false and misleading papers become a possibility

3. Different perspectives Scientists, or authors perspective Editors, or journals perspective Reviewers perspective Funders perspective Readers perspective

4. Authors perspective Schekman: Luxury journals distort science by introducing false quality measures Bohannon (Science): OA journals corrupt the peer review system by publishing substandard work The Economist: Funding providers have too strong emphasis on publishing, rather than on quality

5. Authors perspective What choice does the author have? – Focus on “news”, or “genuine” science – Publish in prestige journals, or lower impact journals – Hunt funding, or progress of science? Is there an ethical problem? – The funders provide the incentives. Should they? – Is it ethically just to ignore these incentives and follow other rules (e.g. progress of science)?

6. Editor’s perspective What choice does the editor have? “Luxury journals” – Focus on science with provocative, eye-cathing or ”sexy” subjects – Publish to stimulate subscriptions (and ads) rather than science Open-access journals – Anything which is “generally publishable” – Publish to generate income (from authors)

7. Editors perspective Is there an ethical problem? – Not everything found in Nature should be in Nature (sub-standards) – Reproducablity vs. “eye candy” – The journals focus on making money rather than promoting science – Not everything in open-access journals should be published (sub-standards)