Science writer in residence assesses science publishing

John Rennie is the fall, 2011 UW–Madison science writer in residence. He will be on campus the week of Oct. 23 and will give a public lecture on the “tumultuous state of science publishing” at 4 p.m. Oct. 26 at the Memorial Union. A veteran science communicator, the New York City-based Rennie is a blogger at the Gleaming Retort (http://blogs.plos.org/retort/) and a freelance science writer and speaker He served as editor in chief of Scientific American from 1994 to 2009.

Inside UW–Madison: What is the current state of science publishing?

John Rennie: Publishing in general is rather famously in disarray, so the woes of science publishing are almost just a subset of that larger disruption. To state the obvious, the traditional business models for publishing have been built around the idea of circulation revenue from readers, advertising revenue or some combination of both. But these days, readers have grown accustomed to the idea that they can get lots of content online for free, so they’re unwilling to pay for it directly. And as audiences have shifted online, advertisers’ interests in paying for ads has shifted accordingly, too—but the online revenues don’t compensate for the lost print revenues even for those media players who have been willing to embrace the Web. Those issues represent gigantic problems for popularized science in newspapers, magazines and the like.

Scientific journals aimed at professional audiences are more of a special case in that their audiences are a little more captive to whatever the publishers have wanted to do, which is why journal prices have been allowed to climb to the terrifying levels that they have. But nowadays, traditional journals face ever more pressure from open access journals, which operate under different models and have shed the high costs to their readers, and from other types of open discussion.

All of this obviously points to some crises afflicting science publishing. And yet, I’m not entirely discouraged by these facts because all the problems related to new avenues for science getting out to audiences, too. So in many respects, it’s a golden age for science publishing—it’s just a rotten era for science publishers and those employed by them. The unresolved question is whether that distinction will eventually break down if enough really good contributors to science writing can’t stay comfortably employed by it.

iUW: How does this affect science?

JR: We have to think about it at two levels. First, do these changes interfere with the capacity for good scientific results to be recognized and to be disseminated through the peer-reviewed scientific literature? To the extent that the woes of journal publishers have been offset by the rise of new open access journals, that might not directly be a problem. Second, do these changes interfere with ways of informing the public about important scientific discoveries, both for disseminating that news to those who could use it  and for building supportive constituencies for science? I think that’s a more complex problem, with a less black-and-white answer.

iUW: Why should we care about that?

JR: If we don’t have healthy ways of getting new scientific discoveries out to the professional community, the pace of scientific  progress will slow. If we can’t find good ways to get the word of what science is accomplishing out to the public, I fear that the ranks of new scientists will stagnate and science will become a more marginal topic in the eyes of those setting public agendas. I can’t see that turning out well for our nation or our world.

iUW: What’s the prognosis?

JR: In many ways, it’s still anybody’s guess, but I’m rather determined to be hopeful. In the end, I believe that there’s too much fundamental interest, appreciation and enthusiasm for science to let it founder. Also, I’m constantly impressed by the new possibilities for better communication that new digital media represent. Many of the traditional definitions of “science news” were also overdue for an overhaul, in my opinion, and this digital crisis is an ideal time for addressing those problems and making some revolutionary changes. One way or another, I’d like to think that scientific information and commentary is so valuable that people will be willing to pay to subsidize it one way or the other. The models for accomplishing that may be new and novel, however. We’ll see!

iUW: Will new publishing models emerge?

JR: They already are. You can look at the open access journals, which change their authors rather than their readers. Lots of people are watching what happens with iPad, Kindle and other digital readers because of how they represent models in which the publishing is tied to certain devices or platforms, which offers rather different possibilities than in the past. Individual authors are seeing self-publication via  digital platforms as more attractive than traditional publishing, partly because the definition of what constitutes a reasonable “digital book” are up in the air. We’re also seeing new platforms like The Atavist, which published long-form non-fiction as a multi-media experience, and that’s exciting, too.

Publishing models are only part of it, though. I’m equally interested in ways in which these upsets may cause us to finally re-examine what constitutes news. In an era when organizations can distribute their own very informative newsy press releases as easily as newspapers can send out new editions of stories, news organizations maybe need to rethink what filters they’ll use in determining which information to send out to their readers, and when they’ll do it.