The Scientist's Publication Dilemma: A Call for a Science Gardener

The Scientist’s Publication Dilemma: A Call for a Science Gardener Vladislav A. Yastrebov September 23, 2024 1 Introduction Science has become heavily dependent on the economic incentives of big publishers like Elsevier, Springer, and since recently, MDPI. True scientific priorities should be quality, deep thinking, reproducible experiments, and thoughtful filtering of scientific production through unbiased peer review. However, for-profit publishers’ key performance indicators (KPIs) are the quantity of papers, rapid peer review, fostering dependence on metrics like the H-index and impact factor, and ultimately, maximizing profit through subscription-based models, Article Processing Charges (APCs), or selling data and knowledge produced by the global scientific community over the last century and granted to these publishers in exchange for dissemination. The objectives of genuine scientific endeavor in pursuing truth and advancing progress are thus orthogonal to the profit-driven motives of these large publishers. As a result, science finds itself in a classic Moloch’s trap (Alexander,2014): many people see downsides of the current system but can hardly do anything about it. As a co-founder of a Diamond Open Access Journal and advocate of Open and Reproducible Science, I often think about the publication decisions we undertake in academia, and I believe the situation becomes very clear if we look at it through the classical model from Game Theory: the Prisoner’s Dilemma. In this short note, I aim to analyze the situation of scientific publication and explore potential ways out. 2 The Essence of the Dilemma in Scientific Publication In the well-known Prisoner’s Dilemma (Wikipedia,2025), a classic example in Game Theory, individuals (prisoners) face a choice: betray their partner and minimize their own sentence or cooperate for the common good but risk a harsher outcome if the opponent betrays. Without external enforcement, the rational choice is always to betray. V. A. Yastrebov The Scientist’s Publication Dilemma Let’s apply this dilemma to academia. Consider two scientists, A and B, each conducting research and writing a paper. They face a choice: to publish in, let’s call it DOAJ, a young and relatively unknown Diamond Open Access journal run by the community, or in, let’s call it ElseviJ, an established, high-impact journal published by Elsevier. Let’s clarify the key characteristics of each option, which could be seen as pros or cons depending on the choice you do in the dilemma: DOAJ has: •A low (or absent) impact factor and lack of status in the community. • A slow, rigorous, and thus tough, peer-review process ensuring high quality. • A requirement to share all data and code with proper metadata and documentation (doubling the effort needed for publication). • Publicly available reviews, exposing among other things any eventual weaknesses identified by experts. •A risk to be perceived as publication in predatory Gold OA journal. •True Open Access: free for authors and readers. ElseviJ offers: • A high impact factor and a prestigious status (whatever that might mean). • Widespread recognition within the community which often puts equal sign between a good research and publication in ElseviJ. • Reduced submission-to-decision time, i.e. fast and possibly superficial review. • Open Access publication without additional fees for the author, as the institution has signed a transformative agreement (see details below). Assume that scientists Aand Bcompete for funding, professorships, or recognition within their institutions/communities. We can express their choices in a two-by-two payoff matrix: A publishes A publishes in DOAJ in ElseviJ B publishes in DOAJ RB|RASB|TA B publishes in ElseviJ TB|SAPB|PA Where: •RA,B is the reward for cooperation: both scientists can produce serious research without excessive pressure and be evaluated based on the merit of their work (beneficial for both science and scientists - a win-win situation). •TA,B is the temptation payoff: the scientist publishing in ElseviJ gains increased recognition and stands out against their colleague who published in DOAJ. •SB,A is the sacrifice payoff: a scientist who published in DOAJ feels morally right but suffers in recognition, funding, and career 2 V. A. Yastrebov The Scientist’s Publication Dilemma advancement compared to their ElseviJ-publishing counterpart. •PB,A is the punishment payoff: both scientists face increased pressure to publish more frequently, aiming for higher-impact journals, which ultimately harms work-life balance and increases the risk of fraud (detrimental to both science and scientists - a lose-lose situation). The typical payoff structure follows: T>R>P>S. The temptation T to gain rapid promotion and recognition through ElseviJ is the highest individual reward. The cooperation reward R is valuable for science in general and for maintaining scientific integrity and a balanced lifestyle, in particular. The punishment payoff P is the reality for most academics and represents a hamster wheel in the race for more and more publications to increase the profits of Commercial Publishers, ultimately at the cost of betraying scientific values. The sacrifice payoff S is the worstcase individual scenario, leaving the DOAJ publisher struggling without recognition or funding and eventually forcing them to quit academia. As in the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma, the rational choice for an individual scientist is to betray and publish with ElseviJ. This results in either a 2 P gain or a T+S “gain” for the overall system. However, if both scientists cooperate by choosing DOAJ, the total reward is 2 R , which is greater than 2 P and possibly greater than T+S , ultimately benefiting true scientific progress. The reality is that few people consciously consider this choice and instead default to publishing in ElseviJ. The fear of ending up with the sacrifice payoff drives scientists to continue publishing with ElseviJ. This tendency is further reinforced by the “prestige” of commercial journals, the inertia of long-standing scientific traditions, and institutional administrations that often rely on citation counts and impact factors rather than evaluating the quality of the research itself. Despite initiatives like the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) (DOR) and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) (COA) advocating for quality-focused research evaluation, many academics remain unaware of these efforts and continue to equate impact factor with quality, particularly in promotion and award-selection committees. 3 Way out Escaping this trap requires more than individual action, as individual academics lack the power to trigger a “phase transition” to an R/R (winwin) world. Commercial publishers, academic administrators, and national policymakers have high interests in maintaining the status quo, a trap profitable for the publishers but detrimental to both scientists and science. The opposite of a trap is a garden Alexander (2014) with a gardener. For academia to move toward a cooperative R/R model, we need such a “gardener”, an entity like the Goddess of Wisdom, Athena Pallas, to incentivize 3 V. A. Yastrebov The Scientist’s Publication Dilemma cooperation and make it the risk-free choice. Some encouraging initiatives that this “gardener” could build on include: • DORA (DOR) and CoARA (COA) for fair and sustainable research assessment; •The 2024 Global Diamond Open Access Alliance by UNESCO; •Open archives like arXiv,HAL,bioRxiv, and others. • The Peer Community In (PCI) platform for promoting and peer-reviewing scientific preprints; • Diamond Open Access platforms like Episciences,SciPost, and many others. There are also numerous other initiatives worldwide, even including SciHub, ZLibrary, and Anna’s Archive, which provide access to and preservation of scientific knowledge, enabling the advancement of science even in resource-limited areas where paying high fees to commercial publishers is not feasible. However, the trap and a seeming lack of choice is deeply ingrained in the collective mindset and on a global scale. Even one of the major scientific players like France cannot escape it alone, as other players would likely choose to betray, resulting in France suffering from the sacrifice payoff and ending up in the worst possible position, S/T , compared to the rest of the world. This would mean falling significantly in World Rankings of countries and institutions based on conventional bibliometrics. Consequently, at the national consortium level, France recently signed a new “transformative agreement with Elsevier” (Els,2024), which includes a limited number (“hurry up, or you lose”) of Open Access publications with no extra fees - another drug that deepens the hamster-wheel trap (Yastrebov, 2024). This action disregards the ongoing efforts to promote Open Science by institutions such as CNRS (the French National Center for Scientific Research), INRIA (the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology), and the French Academy of Sciences. This new agreement costs 135 million euros for 5 years. As a result, scientists trapped in the P/P dilemma are now satisfied, as they can outperform their international colleagues in “recognition/dissemination” by being able to publish “for free” in Open Access with Elsevier. So, the national level is not sufficient to escape the trap and provoke a transition to sustainable science R/R . Therefore, Athena Pallas must extend her help to the garden on a global scale. One of the recent bold actions in the right direction is an antitrust lawsuit (Uddin,2024) against Elsevier and other commercial publishers, alleging that they have caused “tremendous damage to science and the public interest.” In the context of this article, I would add that these commercial publishers have inflicted this damage by consciously keeping scientists and academics deep in the P/P trap for the sole sake of their profit margins. Moreover, many other players, including scientists themselves, have supported and amplified this trap within the system. 4 V. A. Yastrebov The Scientist’s Publication Dilemma 4 Conclusion In conclusion, we, as scientists and academics, need an intelligent gardener - Athena - who cares about the well-being of Science and the mental health of its contributors. This gardener must help us escape the P/P trap (the hamster wheel of chasing more and more publications) and guide us toward a win-win world of R/R , where we are rewarded with sustainable scientific progress, reproducible research, and strong, rigorous science. References Scott Alexander. Meditations on Moloch. URL: slatestarcodex.com/2014/ 07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ , 2014. Blog post on Slate Star Codex, published July 30, 2014. Wikipedia. Prisoner’s dilemma, 2025. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma. San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). https:// sfdora.org/. Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). https://coara.eu/ agreement/signatories/. Transformative agreement with Elsevier. https://www.couperin.org/ negociations/accords-specifiques-so/elsevier/, 2024. Vladislav A. Yastrebov. A post on Open Science and scientific publishing. LinkedIn Post, 2024. Lucina Uddin. Antitrust lawsuit filing against major academic publishers: Uddin v. Elsevier, B.V. No. 1:24-cv-06409 (E.D.N.Y.) https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nyed. 520652/gov.uscourts.nyed.520652.1.0_2.pdf, September 2024. V.A. Yastrebov Yastrebov, V.A. “The Scientist’s Publication Dilemma: A Call for a Science Gardener”, Sept. 2024. DOI (Oct 2025): 10.5281/zenodo.17405497, LinkedIn (Sept 2024): www.linkedin.com/posts/... Dr. Vladislav A. Yastrebov is a CNRS Research Scientist in Computational Mechanics at Mines Paris - PSL, France. His research interests span a broad range of fundamental and practical aspects of the physics of solids, fluids and their interaction. Vladislav is also a co-founder and technical editor of an Overlay Diamond Open Access journal JTCAM and a promoter of Open Science. 5