Should We License Publishers?

The proactive governance of scientific publishing is absent, by and large. Most groups, from STM to SSP to AAP to even COPE, are about convening meetings, fostering discussion, advancing orthogonal issues (diversity, mental health), or providing anodyne things like resources or networking opportunities.

Top-of-funnel approval and certification of journals has been compromised as the NLM has become so porous and misguided as to be worse than useless, indexing preprints and predatory journals while hosting content from high-volume OA publishers with shall we say “mixed” reputations stemming from questionable practices and incentives.

Reactive governance exists to some extent, from Clarivate de-indexing bad publishers or Scopus kicking out garbage. Retractions get some algae out of the pond, but very little. Years of damage can have occurred before these actions are taken, and often like with OMICS (which was once kicked out of CrossRef) there are few if any lasting constraints on activity.

But what if like cosmetologists (hairdressers and barbers), electricians, drivers, or lawyers, scientific publishers had to secure a license to publish after completing 1,000 or more hours of training, passing an exam, and paying an annual fee? What if they had to agree to a variety of tests, ethical standards, bylaws, and stipulations in order to secure this license? Agree to complete continuing education to retain it? And what if the license could be revoked?

Why are we any different?

There was a de facto licensing body for decades, MEDLINE and the NLM. This failed as the cyberlibertarians took over and corruption from SPARC and others degraded the clarity of their mission as a top-of-funnel evaluation and certification source. It’s a shame, because the people there did an excellent job when they were focused on the right priorities, like quality, rigor, and significance.

As PMC, PubMed, and MEDLINE have become a confused mess and leadership servants of Big Tech ideas, their sway went away.

There is also a history of scientific publishing living within a protective business model, one driven by community affiliation — a combination of memberships and subscriptions. That is, scientific and scholarly publishing wasn’t at risk of scaling to the point of metastasis because the business model constrained growth in a healthy way. But the Gold OA business model has thwarted content apoptosis, leading to runaway growth and tech-driven content metastasis. We need a check on this now, one that would make it clear who is publishing scientific claims in a legitimate manner vs. those who are not. Licenses would be a healthy constraint on publisher proliferation and practices.

It’s a glaring issue hampering efforts for scientific publishing to be more . . . er . . . scientifically oriented — the lack of governance. We came across this issue when Eric Topol found himself featured in a fake paper and sought some way to ensure the publisher was punished. There is no mechanism currently, not in any meaningful sense. We even let servers dishing bad unreviewed papers and conspiracy theories motor on, blending in with their surroundings easily because there are no markers of qualification beyond participation and insinuation.

Establishing something like this would at least force us to outline the parameters of what sets a qualified scientific and scholarly publisher apart.

I hear opportunity knocking for someone. After all, if STM International, SSP, AAP, or some third party were to start a publisher licensing business that had integrity and legitimacy, it could address a number of needs.

• CrossRef would be alleviated of the pressure to evaluate membership. They could require a license from this entity before approving a DOI application.
• NLM would be alleviated of the duty of evaluating content sources, or could participate in a coordinated way, so that licenses would be viewed as valid by both the new entity and the NLM.
• COPE would no longer have to worry about its brand being used to prop up bad actors, and it could stick to its knitting.
• Journalists would be able to differentiate bad actors from licensed publishers more easily, as would the public.

There are so many potentially positive externalities to this, my head spins.

Why are we not doing this? Are we not willing to police ourselves with an education, licensing, and certification process?