Publish or perish: how our literature serves the anti-science agenda
Channel: Björn Brembs
Date: 2021-11-23

One of the three most pressing problems in the way we do science is that the journal-based hire, promotion, tenure and funding system helps promote unreliable science. Unreliable science, in turn, is used as ammunition for the anti-science agenda, aiming to eliminate publicly funded science altogether. The second problem, the affordability of the journal system upon which the hire, promotion, tenure and funding system rests, exacerbates the first, as the means to acquire and implement improved quality control measures are taken out of the hands of researchers. As such, quality control is but one of a long list of functionalities missing from the current digital infrastructure. In addition to these many missing functionalities for our literature, there is hardly any institutional infrastructure supporting research data or scientific code/software.
The solution is to replace journals with a more modern solution. Details beyond this presentation here:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5526634
Online presentation at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries on Oct 22, 2021. Slides here: https://www.slideshare.net/brembs/publish-or-perish-how-our-literature-serves-the-antiscience-agenda