Bianca Kramer and Jeroen Bosman are both librarians at Utrecht University library who – over the past decade – have become renowned for openly sharing their knowledge on Open Science and digital scholarly communication with the wider scholarly community. You might have come across 101 Innovations in Scholarly Publishing, which is an extensive investigation into the digital tools used by researchers around the world. In this episode, Bianca and Jeroen talk with Jo about one of their most recent interactive projects, the Publication Strategy Tool, a tool that helps researchers reconsider their publication strategies by thinking about publishing goals to inform new choices in what, when, how, and where to publish.

Which researcher – dead or alive – do you find inspiring? – BK: Jess Wade, for her efforts to improve women’s coverage on Wikipedia // JB: Sanli Faez

What is your favorite animal and why? – JB: Aardvark, because it recognized the advantages of being at the very start of the alphabet. // BK: I cannot top Jeroen’s 🙂 But one day I hope to be in the service of a cat again.

Name your (current) favorite song and interpret/group/musician/artist. – BK: The album ‘Colors’ by Ken Nordine and Everything by Tom Lehrer // JB: Phoenix by Big Red Machine

JB: Phoenix by Big Red Machine

What is your favorite dish/meal? – BK: I got a renewed love of gazpacho in Spain this summer // JB: Anything Georgian

References (related research articles)

The tool itself: https://tinyurl.com/publishing-strategy 

For the metadata/readme, see: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ALIr6i-ufawnR1_tZBbF_Io7ihWpLZKBOD0aLhRRp0U/edit#gid=1420613308 

Feat. blog post access2perspectives.org/2022/02/publication-strategy-and-open-science/

Innovations in Scholarly Communication | Changing research Workflows: 101innovations.wordpress.com

TRANSCRIPT 

Jo: Welcome Jeroen Bosman and Bianca Kramer today from Utrecht University. We will talk about your recently announced and shared “Publication Strategy and Open Science” document, which is a beautiful, informative tool at the same time. But first before diving into how to use it and what information it entails, a warm welcome and thanks for joining us today, Jeroen and Bianca. 

Bianca: Yeah, thanks a lot for having us. Really nice that this is picked up and sparked interest. Jo: Perfect. So getting off with the discussion to learn about the tool, it looks pretty much like a spreadsheet, but it has some features and functionality in it, it’s also color coded nicely. But what brought you the idea of setting up a tour before we explain how it’s functional or how that can be used and taken for basically making informed decisions on where and how and what to publish? What was the idea to set this up? Was there a specific question that occurred at a conference or how did you decide to build this tool? 

Jeroen: Yeah, I can tell a little bit about that initial stage, as it often happens with things that we do that it starts small and then quickly gets out of hand. But this was a bit slumbering already for a longer period that we were thinking about all the different options that are out there and that you could see as part of a publishing strategy, also taking into account the discussion between what is publishing, what is sharing, and to what extent they do offer that and what might be dissemination, because those things are not considered to be exactly the same. Then also we have in your tracks, series of meetings and discussions with researchers organized by a team from our library that was also on publishing strategy, and that also sparked the idea to look further than things that are traditionally considered publishing, like creating a book, writing a Journal article, but looking at other options, at other types of things that you can share, but especially then thinking about the discussion around it and not so much about where and what, but also the why, the when and the how. And once we had those five categories, then you can start thinking about all the options and how they hang together, et cetera. 

Jo: Yeah, it’s interesting that each color column is headed by or headlined by one of the famously known interrogative questions or journalistic questions why, what, when, how and where, which I think applied to any strategy really and are often not necessarily exclusively utilized, but it has more or less many questions or categories underneath each question that you can ask on a Journal or what to publish. How difficult was it? Or is this based on interviews you had in these meetings? How did you spend time coming up with more? Like when did you decide, okay, this is not enough or we need more? 

Jeroen: We actually never decided that. I think we can still add rows if we want to, though of course, you want to keep it manageable. 

Bianca: I think especially the middle ones for what, when, how, where are very much reflections of developments in scholarly communication and options and possibilities that we, of course, have been researching and following for quite a long time and discussing in a lot of workshops with researchers. So a lot of that, I think, came from there. And then the why questions sort of also came from those discussions when you take a little bit of a step back from just the what and the where, but really also include the why into those discussions. So why would you do these things? What are your goals in publishing? And I think it’s partly also reflected by some developments we see, at least in the Netherlands, where team goals and goals you might have as a researcher or as a team are increasingly taken at a starting point for also discussing, for instance, discussions around evaluation and recognition and rewards, that it’s not some external party deciding what is good output, an important output, but that which should really flow from a goal and a strategy. You set yourself as a researcher or you set yourself up as a research group. So that’s sort of also what informed this? What helped inform this? 

Jo: Yeah. And it’s quite holistic and inclusive of all kinds of options. So when we look at the ‘what’ list the entire research articles, also proposals, data sets, data papers, code and software, workflow description, meta analysis, guidelines, handbooks, policy oriented documents, and then the one that’s quite short, but it’s probably for a reason, I assume. So it looks as four stages within the research workflow of when you might want to decide to share about the research. So there’s probably not too many options there. And upon creation, upon drafting, is this hypothesis also like writing the proposal or thinking about the project idea. The second would be, which I currently take, as early as possible in the workflow. So this can actually be whenever, right?  But whenever you have results to share, try as soon as possible to get it out there. 

Bianca: Exactly. 

Jeroen: That also fits the idea of a sort of modular, open science, that you have many small outcomes in various stages that you can share at that point and connect them later on. Also for making it easy to build upon the separate bits of outcomes of the research project. 

Jo: Yeah. Just go ahead. 

Bianca: And already make them open during the process. So not as one package all at the end, but really during the process. 

Jo: And this is probably for many, the really revolutionary approach of what we as a research community seem to have gotten used to over the past two or three decades, not to share or publish anything in writing, at least, unless otherwise, perhaps in conferences or on posters, but unless it’s published in a period of journal article where within the open science idea and ideology is as much as feasible, transparent, not necessarily everything, which is also what I think of you, which is also a common misconception of open science, doesn’t mean that everything must be openly on the table on the Internet. But whatever is feasible to publish should be made available as early as possible in the process, which I think many from the researchers and early career researchers I talked to is still a huge challenge in their minds for the most part, or in their career trajectories is what they see and experience in the systems where they work. But do you see change there; that there’s a tendency to actually open up towards openness? Midwest University might be a bubble in itself, piloting so many open access initiatives and having so many experts also in key positions. But if you look further beyond Midwest University in the Netherlands or Europe wide or internationally, do you feel that early sharing? 

Jeroen: Well, of course a lot is happening, but yeah, I want to say a lot is happening, but it very much depends on the specifics and also on the disciplines and countries that might differ in that regard. But I think among quite a few researchers the general idea is clear. But there might of course be all kinds of practical and also more fundamental considerations around that. And you also often have to reckon with others in your team or with co authors who might have a different opinion on what and how and where to share. But of course, one of the big examples is the uptake of preprints as a practice. So sharing early versions of your paper that is quite well known and practiced in many disciplines right now. So it’s not marginal anymore, although it’s not mainstream yet in most disciplines. Also things like sharing data and sharing code, that is also well known, but in practice it is still relatively minor in terms of percentages of researchers and research projects in which that is practiced. 

Jo: What do you think is the reason for that? Is it because there is still reluctance in the practice itself, or is it because it takes so much more time to clean up the data when you’re still in the middle of it? Or is there maybe an additional step needed in a PhD program? Also, like now is the time to clean up your data, to prepare for publishing and also actually publish at this stage already kind of thing, because otherwise I feel people might feel overwhelmed to think about data cleaning, adding metadata, even though it’s highly beneficial. Of course, the same thing.

Bianca:  I do think that there are two things at play, but they can be independent. And the idea or the importance of documenting your data and preparing your data in such a way that can be shared afterwards, I think that’s definitely gaining traction, and also support for that is definitely increasing at many institutions with support for data management plans to really start thinking about us before you start doing your research with funders, requiring it with our national funds, actually requiring those data management plans, requiring consultation with data management support at institutions, more of that data management support, more people, more data stewards etc. So that support is getting stronger, which of course, is a prerequisite for any kind of sharing at whatever moment. So I think that’s one thing that needs to be well supported, and then the decision on when to share that and what to share and whether to wait with that till after the article is published or also do it in earlier stages. I think that’s their separate hesitations about that and that’s almost a parallel conversation. 

Jo: Yeah. I think I’ve also heard both. 

Bianca: Well, can I say one more thing? 

Jo: Of course.

Bianca:  One thing that I think is interesting to see how it’s developing is increased attention to code and software. And I have a feeling that people are more the whole thing that you should document as well and share that through GitHub in itself is perhaps more accepted than for data, for people who actually do that. And what’s very interesting there is whether that’s seen as a valuable research output in and of itself and is also recognized as such, or whether you still see that people, when they have a software package, for instance, they feel the need to write a scientific paper about it because only then it’s recognized as uppers. So that’s quite interesting to see. But there is increasing attention also to the importance of sharing code and software, doing that in a sustainable, fair manner. And I was feeling that some barriers to that or sort of the reluctance for doing that might sometimes be lower than for data, which is a good development, at least for code and software. 

Jo: Yeah. I think maybe it’s also a cultural thing, right? Codevelopers often work in teams or basically you have more of a community sense. I mean, researchers in general also do, but not when it comes to the data necessarily. 

Bianca: Exactly. 

Jo: Interesting. We can all learn from each other, from the different expertise and practices, also how to come about and also share. What’s apparently not obvious for many researchers is the benefits they gain from sharing. It might also be something that’s known as imposter syndrome. It has to be perfect before we share it out there. But as we also know, like research, by its very definition is never done. It will never be perfect. There will always be more questions to ask about research topics. And by sharing it early, we allow others to comment. Not only two or three reviewers, but people who otherwise might not have contact or opportunity to contact us from anywhere in the world, or people who would not necessarily run into at a conference have had the opportunity to consume the information, but also inform us as the authors or researchers for the other aspects to perhaps also consider and what can also evolve from early sharing is more collaboration, more data that’s being added to the data set. There’s all kinds of benefits that were seen happening. 

Bianca: And I think for that, I think that’s why the first column is so important with the goals and the aims, because to start, you need to know this. What are the benefits you want to reach both for yourself and also for your audience, and then think from that rather than almost consider it as an afterthought or consider it as sort of a fixed situation that puts limits on those goals. But when you start from those goals and really let them drive the decisions that you make. 

Jo: Yeah. I didn’t leave this out on purpose just yet. But yeah, we can really not stress enough “The big why.” Why are we doing this? Why are we writing about scientific achievements? Sometimes early career researchers respond to the question, well, I have to publish in order to graduate. Excuse me, but you’re doing research here, so wouldn’t you want anybody else to also benefit from whatever you find in your research? Isn’t that the purpose, first and foremost? But then also it’s a requirement for career development. 

Jeroen: Yeah. I think in this regard, it’s also interesting and important to consider that sharing is not a sort of binary action, that you either share it and it’s completely closed or you don’t share it and it’s completely closed or you share it, and then things sort of automatically happen. Of course, once you have it out there and once you share it, you can make sure that things will happen by communicating, by collaborating based on those shared outcomes. So it’s something that you can, to a certain extent, influence. It’s not a matter of sharing and then sitting back and waiting for the nice things to happen. You can be active with your own content in discussions. Jo: Yeah. And that’s important to consider. Like, it doesn’t end there. It’s not enough to land a Journal publication or science knowledge or whatever high impact factor Journal publication.

That’s not the ultimate goal of doing research nowadays, but it seems to be based on how we like the system. The well known and famous system is recognizing and acknowledging achievements, but that also is changing, and it has never been as bad as I think has been criticized. There’s all kinds of in between. However, the tendency was for quite some time, and some instances still are towards the impact factor. Now, for those who are aware of the biases that the impact factor entails and they’re not made for quality assurance in science, communication would rather mean there’s a Journal selection tool in its early stages, but not anymore. I don’t know. Probably it’s one discussion to have, and yet you have it in the ‘where to publish’ section as a point to consider. But then also inform ourselves as users what it means. And in some cases it might be necessary to fulfill funders’ or decision makers’ requirements. But yeah, looking at all the questions that can be asked, like the why, what, when, how and where, high impact factor Journal publishing might be one of the few to tick as a box, but certainly not the only one.

Bianca: Yeah. And I think one of the reasons to also have it here is to make visible any tensions that resolve from that. So either when you start from some of the goals where you think in the end that publishing a Journal with a high impact factor Journal would be beneficial for that goal, you might also have picked other goals where it might be one counter to that and to make that visible also sparks that discussion and informs that discussion. So I think that’s also one of the reasons why it is there. So it’s not that all of these things are necessarily either recommended or not meant to be prescriptive, far from but really to spark that conversation, to make people aware of the different options that are out there and what it means when you choose or prioritize one over the other. 

Jeroen: Yeah. I think that choice should also be seen in the range of use cases that we see with this tool. So it might be a small research team or a group around the PI or whatever kind of research group that is also looking at their current choices. So you might first use this tool to sort of charge your current choices and then think, okay, what are our aspirations actually? Is there anything you want to change or do differently? And then compare that. And that’s why we are sort of holistic in this list of options. So including more traditional things next to more innovative types of publishing or all kinds of choices more fitting, really in an open science workflow. 

Jo: And maybe then eventually the Journal impact factor will come back to its original sense if it’s being used also the way it was suggested to make informed decisions of which Journal library should subscribe to based on the research topics. But isn’t that still redundant? Okay, there’s a bit of a topic because at least the big five publishers seem to be covering all disciplines, but then it’s about the journals and the publisher. 

Jeroen: Yes. We are very much aware that also within research groups and especially within internationally collaborating groups of authors, there might be all kinds of drivers at play. And some people might even be required by their institution or in some cases even their country to publish in certain types of journals. And we really acknowledge that in some cases it can be the outcome that you want to publish in a certain more traditional or well known prestige Journal. But that doesn’t preclude that you can make certain choices regarding the other dimensions of publishing that indeed do fit an open science workflow. 

Jo: Yeah, totally. And also the other selection option, highly selective Journal is not necessarily a bad thing if the research is highly specific. We would hope the journals that focus and specialize on a certain topic would be selective for that topic, right? 

Bianca: Yeah. Although the question about what that selectivity was actually selected on because, yes, topical unit is one thing. I think it’s quite a different thing if there’s sort of a pre-selection for expected impact rather than for quality and methodology. 

Jo: Yeah. And there can also be unbiased or unconscious or conscious biases against criteria that don’t matter, which is why also in the ‘why’ section, there is a section on how to become more inclusive. As a research team, we want to publish in certain journals and not the others. So what is the underlying functionality now? And it seems to work from the ‘why’ right? So starting from the first column, you can tick boxes and then it highlights certain depending on what’s being ticked, it preselects what is recommended. 

Jeroen: Yes, that is indeed a way of going through this tool and the way it is set up. So we did on purpose have this order of starting with the why and ending with the where, especially and not starting with the where, although people can use it in any way they want. Of course, we don’t prescribe that. But one functionality that is built in is that if you select a certain goal for your publishing, such as just getting your funding or being reproducible or having your work peer reviewed formally, then there are some options in the other dimensions. So regarding the how or the where or the what that are highlighted, but those are explicitly just suggestions, things that you could look at and you can ignore them if you want and you can choose other options, it’s just to make it a little bit easier, because we do realize that it’s a lot and people might want to have some support or some guidance. And of course, it’s not really very visible. But for each of the dimensions and for many of the practices, the choices in those dimensions, we do have a column with links with Is and Us, and most of those links mostly link to Wikipedia pages, just explaining a certain practice or a certain type of publication. You can read up on that. And they use those links to pages on our own University website. But if people want to adapt this to their own institutional context, they can of course change those links. 

Jo: Great. That’s a super nice feature. So this is totally adaptable, obviously, as you just said. So there can also be sections, added links, added tools. Yes, go ahead. 

Jeroen: We do advise people that if they just want to explore, they can just use the version that we have online. But if they really want to adapt it or use it in a group for a certain session or just for their own and make sure that others can change it, then we advise them to make a copy in their own Google Drive. 

Jo: Nice. Cool. Yeah. Which is also written down in the Disclaimer. So for other listeners, you will find the link to the data set, obviously in the show notes and then associated blog post. And there’s also a Disclaimer suggesting that please make a copy and then adapt it to all your wishes and preferences. 

Bianca: And that would also actually be really interesting to see because if you ask in the beginning, like, how did we get to this? Of course, it’s a result of a lot of thinking and a lot of just research we do ourselves in this environment, but also very much interested in what people feel is missing here and what people feel could be added to this. So that would be very definitely very interesting to hear. And also what kind of use cases people see for this. 

Jo: Yeah. And it’s also still connected or within the scholarly system. I’m asking this because also it’s a separate project that was preceding the 101 innovations you’re also encouraged on the open science rainbow. There was an addition towards social media when it came to dissemination. Was there a reason when you considered adding social media platforms as possible outlets and to decide against them, or did you explicitly want to focus on scholarly outlets only just to have a focus on seeing if you’re most familiar with or confident with publishing them? 

Jeroen: No, I think there are some practical limitations. But for instance, in the ‘what’ category, we do include various types of blocks to talk about your research project or research outcomes in the ‘why’, there are, of course, some choices that really relate to connecting also to audiences outside academia. But you’re right, using social media in your day to day communication, it’s not included here. But again, if people want to make it more comprehensive, in that sense, they are free to do that. And we are also open, of course, to feedback in that regard. People might say, well, it really can be improved by including some of these. We are open to that. 

Jo: Yeah. I think it’s also a constant shift in cohesive understanding as a community and social media play an important role nowadays. This morning I read a Twitter thread on somebody who landed a job within a day; he had that job interviewed the same day based on Twitter communication, and had confirmation of that job within 30 minutes after the interview.

And then also there’s lots of peer review going on in Twitter nowadays, apparently highly engaged in some disciplines and topics. So there’s something happening in that area. But there’s also quite some reluctance. And this is really scientific and whatnot. I think in the eyes of open science or with an open science perspective, it’s difficult to know where to draw the line. Jeroen: By the way, regarding peer review and open forms of that. If you look at the ‘how’ column, we do include various types of traditional peer review, but also we have contributed to open commenting and using that feedback and improving your early versions. So open commenting is either a little bit organized like in Peer or using generic tools like Hypothesis to comment on any type of page with the URL or just using Twitter or other social media to do that. So we do see that having a function in the system. 

Jo: Nice. So what’s coming now with this? Have you had feedback? Are you looking into basically running a publication strategy ‘tool show’ to bring this to practice or have others? I mean, I’m happy to adopt it in my courses and share it with anyone who learns and reads about scholarly publishing because it’s super nice and informative. And I think it’s a huge trigger of thought, especially for the ‘why’ section, but also all the other options of how and where and when and what. It’s really an eye opener in the process. So what’s the plan or the idea of how this is being adopted? 

Jeroen: To be honest, there’s no clear cut plan, although we would very much like to sort of apply this, especially within groups and perhaps also have groups have a session around this, either with some of us present or without. But perhaps the latter is even better. So that would be very nice. We did get some feedback, although not that much, some very nice feedback from Germany, of course, wanting to have a translated version. It was mentioned. I saw that just the other day in a paper on ethical issues regarding publishing. So that was nice to see. We got some detailed feedback on a few options. And also I think for us, at least for me, Bianca can speak for herself, but it also functions as a kind of general framework for all kinds of other sessions and discussions that we have. So we can just ourselves refer back to this and see whether we sort of should include certain discussions or not. So it helps in that way also for all kinds of other projects. 

Bianca: Can I add one thing to that? Just as a nice example, I’ve discussed with some people that it has been used within a resource group. I’ve heard that people use it there as a way also for people individually to fill this out as the beginning of a conversation and then to compare within a research go black. What are different people’s priorities or ideas or intentions, and how does that relate and to what extent are people on the same page or to what extent do people actually want different things? And it can be a really nice conversation starter in that way. So I was really happy to hear that that happened. 

Jo: Yeah, that’s a great idea.I haven’t thought of that.

Jeroen: Also in the tool, it does have various tabs, and one of those is a sort of to do list with some of the feedback that we got. One interesting one is some people that said you should have a 6th column with audiences because now that is sort of hidden in the various options of ‘why to publish’ publishing goals. So you could discuss separating the goals from the audiences. But we haven’t got around to that. Just too busy. 

Jo: Yeah. I often have the audience exercise, like all the types. What types of scientific output are there, what audiences do we have, and what’s the purpose of publishing? I usually give that as a task, as an exercise in the scientific writing course, and it turns out that many of the audiences are overlapping, but they can be looked at separately. What a nice suggestion.

Jeroen: Also, I would just very much love to discuss this more in depth with specific people, people that we know we are now in our network or specific organizations like a funder or, for instance, people like Chris Hartgerink from Research Equals that has this modular approach to sharing. And I would like to have a discussion with him on how the ideas that are sort of behind this tool fit his vision of science communication. 

Jo: I’m sure it does. But yeah, it would be interesting to hear his view as well. It’s all highly complementary and cross informative.

Great. Okay, so everybody out there, have a look at the tool, put it to you, do your exercises as an individual researcher, bring it to the attention to your research group, and maybe for a couple of concluding remarks, is there anything else you would like to add as to, or also what’s the next big project coming out of your office? Because it’s always exciting to see what’s falling in your head, and all of a sudden we have no big new innovation. 

Jeroen: Well, regarding things to add, perhaps on this tool still is that we had our own little discussion on the functions of the narrative. So the tool automatically creates a sort of small short narrative around your choices. And what is the use of that narrative, whether people would put that on their website or whether it’s just functions to make your choices very explicit. And when you see them in writing, you may even want to reconsider them. We are very much interested in feedback on the potential uses of those narratives. And regarding anything that’s coming up, as I said before, we don’t plan that much. We just fit our tools and things that we do around what’s happening and what’s needed. 

Jo: That’s basically innovation, right? See opportunities and needs and then being creative and actually solution oriented and actually doing the work of creating a tool like you’ve done on repeat. 

Jeroen: Yes. And also perhaps reflecting on 101 when we started that, we really saw that a lot of what we mentioned there and what we told there was relatively little known, little known about, and certainly not accepted that that’s still not the case. But we do see that over the years among many research groups, there’s a lot more knowledge, at least about what open science is, what the goals are, what main choices are available, types of tools and platforms that are available. So there’s so much more knowledge and innovation and application actual implementation going on that it’s interesting really also to build on that and to see what choices people make and what is not taken up and what is not being done yet and why that could be.

Jo: Yeah. I also think this is so highly applicable and it invites us to finally take action. I think especially for people who have known for a long time now we can do more. There’s more we can make use of from our research findings and discoveries and this is how because it’s very applicable and pragmatic. 

Bianca: Yeah, and exactly. I also hope that with a lot of things that we do also trying to make things either give a clear overview or give people tools to think about this and to play with it and to make it more concrete and also for this one thing I hope it could be useful for is that in the whole recognition and rewards debate that it’s more and more accepted that we should look at the wider research output and wider goals and wider activities and from that sort of consensus that is important towards more concrete implementation and what it means in practice. I think there’s still a big gap and I hope something like this, like you said, by sparking discussion, by sparking questions might help in sort of making that next step towards implementation. 

Jo: Yeah, thank you.

Bianca: It palys more part in that. 

Jo: Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for putting this together and again, I will do my part to bring it to use. And I’m sure others will as well. I hope this episode will also help to gain more insights and visibility. 

Bianca: Thanks so much for the opportunity to talk about this here.

Jo:  It’s a great honor. 

Bianca: It’s really nice. 

Jeroen: It’s really a pleasure to be shut up on your show. 

Bianca: Yeah

Jo: Cool. Okay. So hopefully we’ll meet again in this or other fora. We’ve also met at conferences before. It’s so nice with hybrid and online events. It’s so easy going to get together. What seemed so difficult before the pandemic is now really good lessons learned after all this project. 

Bianca: Definitely. 

Jo: And hopefully in person at some point again. 

Joeren: Looking forward to that.

Bianca:  Looking forward to that. 

Jo: Okay. Thank you. 

Jeroen: Okay. Thank you very much. 

Bianca: Thanks.