Smaller, faster, smarter publications
A new way to publish scientific discovery, from flashPub
In 1665, the first scientific journal articles were published in England. Instead of waiting decades to publish a complete set of work as a book, scientists could actively lead their community with rapid, more frequent publications. Over three hundred years later, journal articles remain the primary method of formalizing and publishing new scientific discoveries.
In 1969, the internet was born with one fateful message between two computers: “lo-”. Despite its anti-climatic beginnings, the internet has since completely transformed the way we communicate, interact, and work. Our communications have gotten smaller, faster, and smarter, with one glaring exception — the way scientists publish their discoveries.
Today, there is a growing fervor to disrupt the outdated status quo of academic publishing. Science funding agencies are launching sweeping initiatives to mandate publishing in open journals. Researchers are illegally sharing scientific knowledge and refusing to participate in closed journals. And entrepreneurs are launching companies to introduce new tools, new workflows, and help imagine a new status quo.
At flashPub, we are tackling one small piece of this new vision. We are a passionate group of researchers, technologists, designers, and science advocates on a mission to make publishing a scientific discovery as fast as possible.
We are motivated by three key insights:
- There is a wealth of unpublished data (as much as 80% of all research outputs) waiting to be published with smaller publication formats.
- A brand new publication hot off the press is actually years old work — capturing science in real time will require much faster publication cycles.
- Paywalls for reading and publishing science create potent anti-network effects that preclude a much larger, data driven market derived from smarter content.
These insights have driven us to re-imagine what academic publishing could look like with much smaller, faster, and smarter publications. Instead of waiting years to publish a complete set of experiments as an article, we’re empowering researchers to actively lead their community with rapid, more frequent publications.
The foundation of our workflow is a much smaller scientific publication called a ‘micropublication’:
At the heart of each micropublication is a single, narrowly scoped finding expressed as a claim, such as:
The key advantage of a micropublication is reduced burden on authors and peer reviewers, which enables a much faster publication cycle. Yet the smaller scope creates a host of new problems: How do you make sense of these smaller bits of information? What stories do they tell? What the heck is a claim, anyways? And how can you use them to inspire your community and advance your career?
Research narratives emerging from micropublications will not look the same as research narratives in articles, in the same way that articles do not tell the same stories as books. Micropublications support faster, more granular, and rapidly evolving research narratives. They will be messier and more chaotic from moment to moment, but will converge more rapidly on the truth.
Using the example claim above, let’s say one clinician claims that Drug X cures Disease Y but ten other clinicians claim that Drug X actually aggravates Disease Y. Published in rapid succession, these supporting and opposing claims can be streamed into a single view to visualize how scientific consensus is emerging around Drug X not helping Disease Y. In this way robust narratives emerge organically across many independent researchers and clinicians.
Since the birth of the internet, many people have been waiting for a new revolution in academic publishing similar to the disruption journal articles sparked so many years ago. While change is slow, we can’t help but notice the tipping point this industry is rapidly approaching.
We feel that the time is right for drastic changes in how scientific discovery is published. We believe this because it is already happening. Researchers are engaging in real time discussions on Twitter, publishing preprints, and finding new ways to share more rapidly. Giant publishers are responding to public pressure and experimenting with new business models. And in specific areas existing workflows are completely breaking down such as in facilitating rapid research responses to pressing health crises. All we have to do is embrace these trends and provide a formal outlet for rapid, peer reviewed scientific publications.
Stay tuned for our next post about the very first micropublishing community we’re launching for clinical case reports, coming in December.
Questions? Ask what we’re up to and how to get involved at hello@flashpub.io