What stands out from the answers to the three miracle questions about imagining alternative outputs, evaluation criteria and which aspects of research are important to be invested in, is that a variety of many different aspects of research were mentioned and overlapped across the three questions. Our results show that there is a need for adapting output and evaluation to the context and that research performance shall be valued in all its aspects. Hence, a scientific culture which encourages high quality research may not only be based on intellectual & demographic diversity, but also value a diverse set and combination of different facets of the research process.
Drawing on the variety of ideas that were mentioned as a response and on solutions that are being implemented and discussed around the world in order to improve aspects of the scientific system, we arrive at the following recommendations [1] about what a desired culture in astrophysics could entail. The order is chosen according to the flow of the narrative.
Study participants argued that they would like to own the journal they publish in as a community to dictate the rules of the publication process themselves. This includes improving infrastructure that allows for curated data & code storage. While “replacing traditional journals with a more modern solution is not a new idea”, “the lack of progress since the first calls more than 15 years ago has now convinced an increasing number of experts that a disruptive break is now necessary” (Brems et al., 2021: 1). The reason for this inaction is that every player is locked-in: the researcher, the library and the institution. Whoever moves first would be at a disadvantage and “the corporate publishers are the only player profiting from this system” (ibid.: 3). The authors estimate that 700 tools (ibid.: 7), developed by start-ups and community initiatives, already exist, which could replace traditional journals with an open scholarly standard.
The disruptive break from the lock-in needs to be one with regards to governance to strengthen the independence of science. Under the governance of the scholarly community, a modern digital infrastructure could evolve to a “decentralized, resilient, evolvable network that is interconnected by open standards, that allow seamlessly moving from one provider to another”, preventing another vendor lock-in (ibid.: 5). Such open standards already exist (for examples refer to Brems et al., 2021: 6) and could be expanded on basis of continuous feedback of the scientific community. A replacement solution will not only encompass literature in paper format, as we know it, but also “all components of the scholarly workflow, with modern technologies taking care of text, data, and code, allowing dynamic updating, version/quality control, and tracking of contributor-ship” (ibid.: 6). This will require specialised staff dedicated to the curation of the new output platform and realigning financial incentives with academic interest. The latter may include updating funding guidelines to reward efforts that support and feed such an open infrastructure with functionalities and knowledge (Breuer & Trilcke, 2021; Brems et al., 2021).
Establishing such a knowledge management infrastructure will require all stakeholders to cooperate. The development of data sharing standards and solutions for technical and ethical issues, such as the sharing of confidential personal information, must be discussed and implemented by researchers, institutions and funding agencies. Miyakawa (2020) and Breuer & Trilcke (2021) summarise what a non-commercial, community-governed, open infrastructure would require (last two points added by the author):
Our study is congruent with findings of Zuiderwijk & Spiers (2019) that astronomers feel motivated to share data & code for the sake of transparency and speeding up the research process. Open source coding generally has a decades-long tradition in academia (Brems et al., 2021: 7). Zuiderwijk & Spiers (2019) find that demotivational factors for open sharing of information are significantly related to a lack of (interlinked) infrastructure. Providing such an open infrastructure in the form of a “global library of interoperable repositories” (Brems et al., 2021: 7), not only moves away the focus from the “paper” as the only output that counts, but also enables researchers to share other valued aspects of the research workflow, such as data & code. Evaluation of a researcher’s performance may be adapted as a consequence and scientists may be able to focus on quality, rather than “wasting time” on antiquated publication processes. Therefore, bringing the “means of scholarly communication back under the sovereignty of the scholarly community” (ibid: 6) by replacing the journal system with a digitally innovative solution, would change the publication paradigm. This paradigm change could contribute towards a solution of several aspects addressed by our study participants: the requirement for various output formats and for data & code repositories, the need to improve peer review, the quality of published research (especially in terms of replicability) and the need for a diversity in evaluation criteria. The following recommendations will elaborate on these and more aspects for improvement in academic culture in astronomy, raised in this study.
The sub-section above argues for replacing the traditional academic journal by a community-governed, open infrastructure, which enables the researcher to communicate all stages of the research workflow. This sub-section focusses on what such a living knowledge repository may entail.
Despite the fact that “communication in science is an integral part of the process of ‘doing science’” (Albrecht, 2007: 141), publications are increasingly becoming more difficult to understand (Hayes, 1992), and are based on antiquated “Gutenberg technology” [2] (Albrecht, 2007: 143). An open scholarly infrastructure would offer a living knowledge repository instead. Other labels found in the literature are “3D publication model” (ibid.: 143), “Wikipedia-type of representation” (ibid.: 148), enhanced publication, and interactive, integrative, dynamic, hybrid formats including multimedia (Breuer & Trilcke, 2021). Whatever the label, such an open infrastructure would come with several advantages:
First, this new platform would offer functionalities that a linear print format cannot, such as access to original data, to literature references, transitive & forward references, links to supporting information, calculations and so forth. Depending on the context and what makes sense in terms of efficient communication, researchers could exploit the diversity of available media formats, such as animations, videos, podcasts and collapsible text.