Associate Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at OHSU, School of Medicine
Publishing in its current form does not serve the scientific community or the public well enough. Scientists have an ever increasing work load and following the most relevant science becomes harder and harder. Taxpayers have a right to access publicly funded research results. I am excited to be part of an initiative to improve how we disseminate scientific information, and I believe the discovery stack pilot will be a milestone in this process. I am passionate about making science more open, inclusive and diverse. I recently volunteered as an ad hoc editor for a postdoc who wanted to publish their science on a public server but acquire reviews nevertheless. My lab is part of several internship programs that are aimed at increasing diversity in science, and I encourage my trainees to join initiatives and mentoring activities themselves. I attend training such as the CIMER training for culturally aware mentoring on a regular basis.
Professor of Immunology, Virology, and Microbiology at Rockefeller University Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute
I am an advocate for DEI, mentorship, sustainability. I am participating in the DS/DC campaign to transform the peer-review system to become more inclusive, efficient, and fair. I am cautious about reinforcing the current problems within academic publishing with any new endeavor.
Associate Professor--Dept. of Pharmacology, Center for Immunology, Masonic Cancer Center--University of Minnesota
I've been a faculty advisor to Empowering Women in Science and the Pharmacology Graduate Student Organization at my university. Science communication and collaborative science are also focal points of my classroom teaching and laboratory. Mentoring is one of the great joys of my faculty position, and I love sharing the experience of doing science with my team. I like the idea of uncoupling assessments of manuscript rigor and impact, which could ultimately help readers to build priority lists and authors to share high-quality but field-specific work. I like the assessment-based approach and orthogonal platform for workshopping ideas, which democratically tests the process without undermining journal PR or workflow. Changing the system risks betraying authors' and readers' trust in existing platforms, which this pilot will avoid. Requesting new service tasks of our already-maxed-out community is also a big ask. Experimental programs should be mindful of this and compensate or streamline accordingly.
Assistant Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at OHSU, School of Medicine
I believe in: • Creating an inclusive, welcoming research environment for historically excluded voices and minds. • Innovative ways to use less and confront climate change. • Connecting our academic community to the needs and also expertise of our local communities. I am excited that this effort is optimizing for scientific communication that prioritizes using our collective expertise to improve our science and push our understanding forward. And we get to do the experiment to test if this model is going to better achieve our goals of making these exciting new discoveries accessible by combining open access with accountable peer review. I am most concerned about Sustainability. How can we get the granting agencies, tenure panels and prestige award groups to recognize a new type of scientific quality shorthand metric?
Assistant Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Anatomy Department, UCSF
There is a clear unmet need in scientific practice related to the publication process: publishing in prestigious journals is challenging, costly, and time-consuming. The visibility of our research is heavily influenced by the journal's reputation and editorial scope, which restricts our ability to share our work widely and reach a broader audience. Given that knowledge and data sharing are central to scientific practice, any initiative aimed at improving the current publication experience would significantly enhance our role as academics while respecting the constraints we face in academia. DS/DC address these issues, and I believe we are well positioned to meet the expectations of this initiative Publication is a business where funding agencies support scientists, who then use those funds not only to conduct research but also to pay for publication. Additionally, readers often pay subscriptions to access these studies. This model is incredibly lucrative, which naturally leads to resistance against any significant changes. Also, many funding agencies assess the quality of our work based on the journal's reputation, creating an additional barrier to change. Shifting towards a new culture that evaluates scientific quality beyond the journal's name will be a gradual process, but it's a necessary for any meaningful progress in this important aspect of the scientific practice. To facilitate access to information and data, I advocate for the practice of sharing new datasets and promoting open access to studies, ensuring that everyone can benefit from the research.
Assistant Professor, Basic Sciences Division, Fred Hutch
I’m a big fan of efficiency and transparency. We are planning on doing a roundtable journal club (no ppt, everyone holds the paper in their hands – or tablet - and takes turns presenting figures) followed by a DSP review. In doing so, this will enable me to contribute to changing peer review, keep current on new discoveries, AND help my trainees learn the review process. Publishing has become a real problem – the bar keeps getting higher and higher. While I don’t expect everything to be solved by DSP – I appreciate the opportunity to be part of the change. If no one tries anything, how will things ever change? The anonymity of classical peer review can be helpful in asking key questions to advance the science without fear of retaliation – especially when there is a power imbalance. However, it can be harmful when reviewers ask for impossible experiments or those that don’t actually help clarify the main message or ‘truth’. I hope that through DSP we can get back to constructive, supportive critiques to help advance swift – while rigorous- scientific discovery for all.
Professor, Department of Immunology University of Washington I think many aspects of the current publishing model are really frustrating; it doesn't work well for authors, reviewers, or readers. Given that, the opportunity to test a new way to disseminate science is really exciting, even just at the proof-of-concept phase. Despite that, I am concerned about the perceived value of findings shared outside of "brand name" journals. Publications in these journals are still key currency when building a career in academia, so sharing data via other means represents a risk, particularly for trainees for whom a publication may be a key career stepping stone. Overcoming this will take a real change in mindset for academic search committees and study sections, and that will undoubtedly take time. I think the data-driven proof-of-concept undertaken by DS/DC will be a great tool to drive that conversation, though. We all love to see the data. Outside of this endeavor, I'm a PI on a large training grant, and have participated in several mentorship training programs; I spend a lot of time thinking about what "effective mentorship" means. Navigating the inherent competitiveness of academic research while creating research environments that are welcoming and inclusive remains a challenge, and I think addressing it starts with improving mentorship.
Professor at the University of Arizona, College of Medicine Immunobiology, BIO5 Institute, Genetics-GIDP
We - The Scientific Community - need object metrics to determine if there are changes that can be made that would be viewed as improvements by the community at large. In taking part in this pilot, We are a community of experimentalists. We generate, evaluate, and consume the content of publishing. It seems natural that we should reflect upon the process, determine if it is meeting the needs of our community, identify areas in which we think it could benefit from improvement, and test if there are ways to make improvements upon the current system. I get excited about experiments and data. I look forward to the results of this experiment and what they will teach us.
Professor of Pathobiology at UCSF Co-founder of ImmunoX Co-founder & Chair of the Board at Solving For Science
I am an advocate for Access and inclusion, Engagement with the non-academic world (SciComms), and the thought of a faster and more helpful review process. What excites me about the DS/DC endeavor is the thought of continuous assessment of manuscripts with inline comments from the community. And I am most concerned about our efforts being misplaced, on the community wasting time on things that will go nowhere.
T. Grier Miller Professor of Medicine at Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Associate Director, Center for Molecular Studies in Digestive and Liver Diseases Co-Director, Gnotobiotics Core Facility
I am an advocate for science communication. It’s something I am continuing to work on for myself and I greatly admire those who are good at it. The DSP is an exciting experiment to me and an opportunity to learn a lot about our behavior and motivations during peer review. I am looking forward to seeing how people articulate their comments and critiques in this new platform. I would like to avoid creating a publishing landscape that is only favorable to the “big shots”. We need to make sure that any changes to the existing system will help promote the careers of trainees, early stage investigators, and individuals from an underrepresented background.
Professor of Immunology, University of Washington
I am excited about setting fair and equitable standards in the review process and scientists reclaiming control of science publishing from for-profit driven corporate entities. Adoption of this platform must be embraced by a broader scientific community for sustainability. I believe in interdisciplinary approaches to solving scientific problems, promoting equity in science, and engaging the community in science dissemination.
Associate Professor of Immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine
Science has traditionally had a lot of gate keeping by senior academic faculty, so bringing transparency to science is important. But at the same time there must be some curation to help scientists place data in context. There is currently a fire hose of new publications and it is hard to filter through this. I’m excited about a new way of sharing information about important findings in our field. Additionally, Mentorship for junior scientists is critical, especially one where we let people know that career success is achievable. Success is not a finite resource, everyone can be successful.