Science AMA Series: Are community calls to change scientific publishing
right and, if so, what is the future? We are Jason Hoyt and Peter
Binfield, Co-founders of PeerJ, Ask Us Anything!
Abstract
Hello /r/Science. We are Jason Hoyt (CEO and Co-founder) and Pete
Binfield (Publisher and Co-founder) of PeerJ and PeerJ Computer Science
- peer-reviewed open access academic journals offering low cost, high
quality publishing for researchers in the fields of life science,
medicine and computer science. Ask us anything! Jason Hoyt - As
Co-founder and CEO of PeerJ I believe that research needs to be openly
available if we are going to solve this century’s biggest challenges.
I’ve long been an advocate of Open Access and not afraid to challenge
the closed nature of the scientific publishing establishment. It is also
this ethos that led me to believe that authors deserve to publish their
work at a very minimal cost to make it openly available to the world.
The premise when starting PeerJ was a simple one - If we can set a goal
to sequence the Human Genome for $99, then why shouldn’t we demand the
same goal for the publication of research? At PeerJ we have built a
publishing venue that serves the needs of academic authors and not the
other way around! With today’s technology there is no excuse for
research to be hampered by slow publishing processes, high costs, or
locked behind paywalls. By building our publishing platform in house,
and open sourcing many of those components, we are able to significantly
speed up the publishing process and add useful technology for authors on
an ongoing basis. I firmly believe in transparency which is why PeerJ
offers optional open peer review and article level metrics. Prior to
founding PeerJ I was Chief Scientist and VP of R&D at Mendeley. I also
hold a Ph.D. in Genetics from Stanford University, so I understand
firsthand the challenges facing researchers. Peter Binfield - Having
been a Publisher in academic publishing for over 20 years I have
witnessed the growth of the internet and its transformative power for
scientific research and communication. As Co-founder and Publisher of
PeerJ I want to ensure this technology enables a democratized scientific
publishing process and helps to make research openly available for all.
I believe that publishing needs to be in service to the academic
community to best facilitate the rapid and broad dissemination of
research findings. It is still an unfortunate fact that for many
scientists today their work is often hidden behind expensive publisher
paywalls making it inaccessible, not just to those researchers who can’t
afford the cost of the journal subscription, but also to the rest of the
world’s population who may benefit from those discoveries. By making
scientific research open and more shareable it in turn enables
reproducibility and therefore a faster scientific discovery process. I’m
proud that PeerJ is a part of making this happen. Prior to co-founding
PeerJ I held senior positions at Institute of Physics, Kluwer Academic,
Springer, SAGE and Public Library of Science (PLOS). At PLOS I ran PLOS
ONE, and helped to develop it into the largest and one of the most
innovative journals in the world. There is always more to be done but we
hope our efforts at PeerJ encourage further change in the academic
publishing process. We look forward to answering any questions you may
have about PeerJ, open access publishing or anything else in general.
Ask us anything and we’ll be happy to answer. We’ll start answering
questions at 1pm ET (10 am PT, 5 pm UTC.) 1.14 pm PST 9/24/15: Thank you
to you all for the insightful questions and debate - we are now signing
off. We look forward to publishing more great science, freely available
to the world!