1.1. Major stakeholders

Science and research have enabled humankind over the last few centuries to develop ideas and solutions that have greatly improved welfare. Governments of most countries appreciate this and allocate considerable resources to enable continued scientific research. On this basis it is clearly of great importance to understand the ecosystem of scientific research: who are the key players and stakeholders, and what are the key processes involved in organizing and driving scientific research?

Four major players and stakeholders can be identified: (1) the scientific journals, or publishing houses; (2) governments, research councils and other public and private funding bodies; (3) universities and other R&D institutions; and (4) the researchers. It may be argued that the researcher should be viewed as part of the university and not as a distinct stakeholder; however, a meaningful analysis of this issue requires identification of the researcher as one of the major stakeholders. To discuss the role of peer reviewing in scientific publishing it is pertinent to first clarify the roles of these four stakeholders, and the ways that they are interconnected.

1.1.4. Scientific researchers

Scientific researchers, who publish and depend on external grants are, as a rule, university employees. In addition to taking care of administrative and teaching duties, they publish in scientific journals and submit grant applications. Both of these activities are normally extremely competitive undertakings. It is common knowledge that the researchers are evaluated not purely based on their published research, but also based on where they publish. In applications for tenure and for funding, the CV of the applicant needs to include publications in prestigious journals to stand a chance. There is thus a stiff competition between researchers to have their manuscripts accepted for publishing in the highest possible ranking journals. Thus, the researchers are heavily dependent on a fair and reliable peer review system to have their research production evaluated. Again, this may be divided between the primary peer reviews to get published in the “right” journals, and next the secondary peer reviews when applying for positions and grants. Their success in these latter reviews are to a large extent dependent on how their publication list appears.

By analyzing the role of these four major stakeholders it appears that peer reviewing is a common denominator of major importance at most stages of the money flow and production of research (Fig 1):

Figure 1.

Interconnection between peer review and the major stakeholders of scholarly publishing. Peer review is a major common denominator.

Research councils depend on peer reviewing to manage a fair and acceptable distribution of public money allocated by the government. The universities and their researchers in turn depend on peer reviewing to facilitate publication. And last but not least, the scientific journals depend on peer reviewing as an instrument to verify the quality of the research and decide on acceptance of submitted manuscripts. In this analysis it is important to understand that the journal-coordinated peer reviewing serves as the basic and primary peer reviewing processes underlying both allocation of research grants and employment of scientific staff. It is noteworthy that the journal-coordinated peer reviewing is beyond the control of the universities and research councils. This is one of the great paradoxes of scientific publishing.

3.1. Increased power to negotiate subscription price and implementation of true open access

Scholarly journals cannot do without peer reviewing. Any scientific journal that was to abandon peer reviewing would soon lose its credibility and perish. This crucial activity is supplied for free mainly by professors and researchers at higher education and research institutions. Hence, peer reviewing may be viewed as in-kind payment from the scholarly community to the journals and publishing houses. We suggest that the scholarly community, in negotiations with the publishers, includes this as part of what they pay for access to the services of the publishers, and thus also as a bargaining chip. To prepare for this, each institution should obtain information on the extent, and for which journals (and publishers), their employees do peer reviewing. Today, to our knowledge, this information is generally lacking in the universities’ administration. When the universities realize that peer reviewing service should be considered as part of their payment to the publishers, the universities will be in a much better position to negotiate down the unjustifiably high subscription prices demanded by some of the big publishing houses. Further, article processing charges (APCs) for open access publishing may also be subject to negotiations. Or, instead of negotiating APCs, a bulk payment for unlimited access to publish open access in the publisher’s journals may be an issue to negotiate. We have seen examples of such negotiations lately—more on this below (section 4.1). And in section 4.2, we describe an alternative strategy, where we apply the bargaining chip of the peer review labor.

3.2 Increased power to improve the standards and performance of peer reviewing

More than 28,000 scholarly peer-reviewed journals published almost 2 million articles in 2012. [10] With the growing number of scholarly publications, it could be argued that it is simply not possible to offer all submitted manuscripts a reliable and objective review process. On this background, it appears justified to question the soundness of a regime where journals have the sole responsibility to coordinate and oversee the peer reviewing. Would it not be more logical to leave this academically important activity to a university-based system? The university, but not the journals, may decide on matters such as: (1) Should all scientific staff do their share of peer reviewing?; (2) Should the quality of peer reviewing be reviewed, in much the same way as research itself is reviewed?; (3) Should peer reviewing be regarded as being just as important as doing research and writing papers?; and (4) Should peer reviewing be implemented as part of the curriculum? Although peer reviewing is presently the most reliable process available to ensure that publications meet certain quality requirements of the science, it is also generally agreed that it is full of flaws. [6], [7], [8], [9] Many studies on peer reviewing reliability have been undertaken by journals. It is understandable that the journals themselves wish to perform such studies, since they are so dependent on the peer review service. However, it would appear more beneficial to academic research if studies of peer reviewing be carried out by the scholarly community. If the universities take an interest in and responsibility for peer reviewing it would be possible to implement international good standards of peer reviewing, agreed upon by some coordinating university organization.

Universities and research councils are increasingly focusing on ethics and fraud in research. These issues are included in compulsory courses given to all research students, and it is expected that research is conducted with high quality and ethics. So why is it that the universities take no responsibility in overseeing ethics and fraud in peer reviewing, a cornerstone in the process of scholarly publishing? This question is highly relevant since recent research (conducted by several individual journals) have disclosed both unethical behavior and fraud associated with peer reviewing. [6], [7], [8], [9]

By organizing the peer review job in accordance with internationally agreed upon standards, instead of a multitude of single scientific journals or in any of the recently established web-based initiatives offering payment or other credits for peer review activities, it would appear that some of the known flaws of the peer review regime could be remedied, which would result in improved quality of the published research.

4.1 Big deal negotiations

One strategy is for the universities to insist that open access publishing be incorporated at an affordable price when big deal agreements with the publishers are negotiated.

These agreements are commonly reached with strict nondisclosure clauses, especially with respect to the agreed price, making them impossible to analyze from the outside. But critique has been raised that these agreements will leave publishers in the same position as before, draining loads of money from the universities. The prestigious journals and the powerful publishers will still be able to take very high tolls for access, and also for releasing publications to become openly accessible.

The universities have basically one negotiating power in the big deal bargaining. They may threaten to say no, refusing to sign the deal. So the publishers’ best strategy will be to offer the highest possible price that still makes the universities agree to the deal.

At the time of writing (January 2017), the German consortium “Alliance of Science Organizations in Germany” has turned down the big deal offer from publisher Elsevier, and as of January 1, 2017, the researchers within this consortium no longer have access to the journals published by Elsevier. This is thus rather dramatic for the researchers affected, and will obviously obstruct their research.

Other interesting examples of big deal agreements are found in the Netherlands. The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) has entered into agreements with publishers that give both access to the journals’ content, and also freedom to publish open access in the same journals. Such agreements were reached with publishers Springer (before they merged with Nature) and Wiley. [13] And VSNU also reached an agreement with publisher Elsevier [14], which included, at a limited scale, the option for Dutch researchers to be able to publish open access in their journals.

As part of their negotiation strategy VSNU threatened publisher Elsevier by opening up the possibility that Dutch editors and reviewers would stop doing their editorial and reviewer jobs for Elsevier, and ultimately for Dutch researchers to stop publishing in Elsevier journals. [15] So the Dutch negotiating strategy included more elements than merely the option of saying no to the deal. This strategy was meant to force Elsevier into a deal that would yield 100% open access publishing from Dutch researchers in Elsevier journals, and at an affordable price. In December 2015, VSNU and Elsevier announced that an agreement was reached, but without the full move to open access publishing. This compromise deal indicates that their strategy was rather complex and difficult to pursue. A major reason that VSNU did not reach the goal of 100% open access publishing in the Elsevier journals, was, we believe, that full compliance to their boycott scheme was unachievable as long as editor tasks and peer reviewing in reality is a private affair between the researchers and the journals.

4.2 Alternative negotiating strategy

The strategy we suggest is much simpler than the Dutch approach. We propose to include the supply of labor used for peer reviewing in negotiations between the universities and the publishing houses. How can this be achieved? Today researchers choose freely which journals and publishers to peer review for. Our suggestion is that the universities should threaten to withdraw the free supply of peer review labor from those publishers who are unwilling to enter into agreement at a reasonable price. The withdrawal of the free labor will thus be a way to hold back part of the payments.

This strategy will effectively give the universities the power to favor the less costly publishers and the journals run by scholarly societies, which are normally much less costly than the journals run by commercial publishers.

With this negotiation strategy the toll access journals may still be available to the institution's researchers. And there is no need for the universities to tell their scientists to stop publishing in any journal. All that is needed is for the institutions to use their right as employer to threaten to instruct their researchers not to do peer review with publishers they find too unwilling to enter a fair deal. In this way the researchers’ choice of where to publish, which is at the core of academic freedom, will not be undermined through the negotiation between universities and publishers. And the researchers may continue to access their journals as before, as long as it is only the in-kind payment of peer reviewing that is withheld.

It may be claimed that choosing where to do peer review is an important part of academic freedom. Admittedly, through peer review tasks researchers get access to peers’ manuscripts, which can be a potentially important way to “read news” about the research front. Nevertheless our proposed strategy will not take away the freedom for the researchers to decide how and where to publish their articles.

A journal’s status as a trustworthy publisher of science will be in jeopardy if access to expert peer reviewers is limited. Thus, establishing the threat of withdrawing the peer review effort will be a forceful bargaining power, even if the act of withdrawal will seldom be put into effect. We therefore maintain that the disadvantage for the individual scholar will be rather small. And the risk of scientists not complying should be much less than in the Dutch strategy and with similar strategies where scientists ultimately would be required to stop submitting manuscripts. It should also be noted that the current publishing market, dominated by for-profit publishing houses, where scholarly articles are barred by heavy payments for access, and likewise heavy payments for open access publishing, is a real and serious threat to academic freedom, and a fight worth fighting.

Some may argue that it is the right of each individual scientist to decide on the extent and for what journal to perform peer reviewing. However, if an employer issues directives on the amount of time used by employees to do peer reviewing, this does not interfere with the academic freedom to do research and to choose freely where and how to publish. After all, work contracts include instructions on how to perform a certain amount of teaching, administration, and research. The option of directing where to do or not to do peer review should not be very controversial.

By taking control of, and organizing, peer reviewing universities would obtain a means to regain the academic freedom that was lost when commercial enterprises took over the society driven journals, introducing heavy payment bars to get access to papers and publishing open access.

4.3 Coordinated international action

The directorate-general for research and innovation (RTD—EU) recently launched a new policy initiative: the establishment of an Open Science Policy Platform. The communiqué on this initiative states that “The Policy Platform will provide advice to the Commission on open science policy in Europe as well as on the coordination of those policies with stakeholders. The implementation of open science policy will be effectuated by the active advocacy of agreed policies by these stakeholders.” [16] It is noteworthy that “universities” are listed among the stakeholders. This underscores our point that by taking an interest in and control of the peer review task the universities will greatly facilitate development toward an open science regime.

Further, the EU has recently announced their goal of making all European scientific articles freely accessible by 2020. This announcement was made unanimously by the EU ministers responsible for research and innovation. We welcome this announcement from EU. The ministers have not announced what means to use in achieving their announced goal. We suggest that a united approach in taking control of the peer review job could be an interesting road to follow. Such a unified international action among universities and grant agencies would be very beneficial in order to make the changes needed to establish peer reviewing as a truly academically based responsibility.

Cooperation between universities and their coordinated actions are not something new. Universities have since long joined forces in consortia, not the least for negotiation purposes. Each consortium is free to choose its strategies. But there is nothing preventing the consortia from talking together and exchanging experiences, in forums like the European University Association, and discussing how the EU goal may be reached. Thus, a coordinated international approach that moves the universities toward taking control of the peer review should be achievable.

The increasing international agreements and actions to implement open access publishing are indications that necessary changes in scholarly publishing are possible. By standing together universities will be able to break the economic grip that the big commercial publishing houses have on academic research.