 En dan gaan we naar onze volgende guest en welkom. Ronald Ledersch. En ook hier moet ik originaal in de PR van deze event a.a.R.o.Martin zijn naam. En hij kon het maken en dan zijn we blij om in zijn plek te vullen. Is dat correct? Ja, dat is correct en ik heb geen idee waar hij is. Hij zou in Japan zijn, hij zou hierover zijn. Ik weet het niet, maar... BASICALLY WHAT WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT IS TACREC. A NEW JOURNAL THAT WE STARTED COUPLE MONTS AGO. AND I'M THE EDITOR IN CHIEF AND I'M THE MANAGING EDITOR. MAYBE TO GIVE IT AWAY A LITTLE BIT ALREADY. THIS IS ABOUT OUR HOBBY PROJECT. YOUR HOBBY PROJECT? AND WHAT IS THIS THAT YOU DO FOR A LIVING? WHAT I DO FOR A LIVING IS I'M A PROFESSOR OF REGULATION BY TECHNOLOGY AT TILBER GLOVE SCHOOL. HEAD OF DEPARTMENT OF LAW TECHNOLOGY, MARKTS AND SOCIETY. WHICH IS A VARISIZABLE GROUP OF PEOPLE WORKING ON. AT THE INTERSECTION OF LAW TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY, UNSURPRISINGLY. AND THE REASON... WHO'S SKIPPING OVER TO WHY WE ENTER THE JOURNAL. SO THERE ARE A LOT OF JOURNALS ON THE FIELD OF TECHNOLOGY, REGULATION AND LAW TECHNOLOGY AND THINGS. MOST OF THEM ARE CLOSED SCIENCE. THEY'RE BEHIND PAVELS. AND THAT HAS BEEN BODTERING ME FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS ALREADY. AND AT ONE POINT GIVEN THAT I'M RESTLESS. I'M IN PATIENT. I'M A BIT OF AN ACTIVIST. I THOUGHT, OKAY, WE CAN DO BETTER. SO WE HAVE A CRITICAL MASTER TO LAUNCH A JOURNAL TO SUPPORT THE FUNDATION OF THAT. OF COURSE WE NEED LOTS OF OTHER PEOPLE TO HELP US OUT OF THAT. BUT WE HAVE THE CRITICAL MASTER TO MAYBE PULL IS OFF. AND THAT LET TO TECHNOLOGY AND REGULATION. AND THAT'S YOU'LL SEE THE FUNDATIONS OF THAT BEHIND US. WE PAY RELATIVELY SMALL FEE TO THE PLATFORM THAT PROVIDES THE INFORSTRUCTURE AND THE REST OF IT IS COMPLETELY ONLINE. THERE ARE NO FEE'S FOR ANYONE, AND THAT MEANS THAT AAN AND I SPEND PART OF OUR FREE TIME ON RUNNING THIS JOURNAL. THAT IS SORT OF ONE OF THE DISADVANTEGES AT ONLINE. SO IT'S ABOUT MONEY, I MEAN THAT HAS BEEN RAISED ALREADY. AND WE'RE DISCOVERING WHERE WE ACTUALLY NEED THE MONEY FOR. BUT SO FAR WE'VE BEEN... AND OF COURSE AT THE MOMENT WE GET HELPED FROM UNIVERSITY IN TURNS OF SMALL BUDGET FOR GETTING THIS STARTED. AND THAT WE'LL HAVE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE THIS SUSTAINABLE. AND ARE YOU SATISFIED SO FAR? BECAUSE YOU SAY I'M AN IMPATIENT MAN, IS IT GOING THE WAY YOU THINK IT SHOULD BE GOING? OR IS IT NOT GOING FAST ENOUGH OR IS IT GOING ALREADY? I'M IMPATIENT BY DESTINATIONS, SO IT DOESN'T GO FAST ENOUGH. BUT LET ME GIVE A COUPLE OF EXAMPLE. SO ONE OF THE THINGS IS THAT THERE IS A REALLY BIG JOURNAL IN THIS FIELD CALLED LOW INNOVATION TECHNOLOGY, WHICH IS A TELLER AND FRANCE'S JOURNAL BEHIND THE PAVAL. BUT IT'S KIND OF SPECIAL BECAUSE APPARENTLY THE NEDALANS HAS A CONTRACT WITH THIS PARTICULAR JOURNAL THAT OUR PAPERS ARE FULLY OPENACCES IN THE JOURNAL. AND THEN YOU GET INTERESTING THINGS. SO NOT THAT I'M THE REALLY BRILLIANT SCIENTIST HERE, BUT A COUPLE OF MY PAPERS THAT WERE OPENACCES IN THAT JOURNAL ARE IN THE TOP OF THE JOURNAL. SO THE TOP PAPER IS IN THE UPSILOT TOP AND HAS 14 K DOWNLOADS, WHICH IS, AND THEN THE SECOND ONE, I MADE SOME NOTES, SO THE SECOND ONE IS 7 K DOWNLOADS, SO THE TOP ONE WAS PROBUSED IN 2017, 7 K'S IN 2018, 3 K, THEN IN 2019. AND THEN WE GO TO PAPERS WHICH ARE NOT OPENACCES. A PAPER PROBUSED IN 2015 THAT HAS 2000 DOWNLOADS. SO YOU CAN CLEARLY SEE, IT'S NOT ME, IT'S THE FACT THAT IT'S FULLY OPENACCES, THAT HELPS CREATE AN ODIENCE AND GET PAPERS TO PEOPLE. NOW, THE INTERESTING THING WHEN WE STARTED THE ADVENTURE, WAS I TALKED TO THE EDITOR IN CHIEF OF LOW INNOVATION TECHNOLOGIE, WHICH IS ONE OF THE BIG PEOPLE IN THE FIELD, AND SAID, LOOK, WE'RE GOING TO DO THIS, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THIS, AND HE SAID, OKAY, THIS IS FINE, THERE IS, THIS IS THE TIME TO START DOING THIS, AND ACTUALLY HE WROTE THE OPENING PAPER FOR THE JOURNAL. SO WE GOT THIS REALLY BIG GUY ON BOARD, AND WE LAUNCHED THE JOURNAL AT THE TILTING CONFERENCE EARLIER THIS YEAR, WHICH IS A REALLY BIG CONFERENCE IN THIS FIELD, AND WE GOT A LOT OF ENTHUSIASTIC RESPONSES FROM SENIORS THAT SAID, OKAY, WE'RE ON BOARD OF THIS, WE'RE GOING TO SUMIT PAPERS FOR THIS, AND THEN OTHERS FOLLOWED AS WELL, AND AT THE MOMENT WE'RE ACTUALLY SWAMPED IN SUBMISSIONS. SO WE'RE LANGING BEHIND, AND THAT'S DUE TO HOLIDAYS, SO PEOPLE, OUR REVIEWERS ARE ON HOLIDAYS, YEP, THEY DESERVE THAT, SO IT'S GOING A LITTLE SLOWER THAN WE HAD HOPEED FOR, BUT WE'RE GETTING THERE, SO IT SOUNDS LIKE A SUCCESS. IT'S PARTUALLY A SUCCESS, I MEAN MY INTENTION WAS TO, SO WE LAUNCHED IN MAY THIS YEAR, MY INTENTION WAS TO HAVE A COUPLE OF SERIES PAPERS ONLINE, IN SUTEMBER WE DIDN'T MAKE THAT, BUT NEXT WEEK WE HAVE ONE, AND THEN A COUPLE OF OTHERS WILL FOLLOW US. En did you also get emails or calls from people from completely different fields, who said, oh what you're doing, I want to copy, I want to take your template, your format, can you tell me more about that, does it work as that as well? No, not yet, but I can imagine that that happened. So one of the things that we did, so we have this platform, but of course it's not, we also wanted to have a decent format. We had a graphics designer do the templates for the paper, so we have an in-design thing that we use, which has its own issues, but so that is, I think what you need, so that the quality of the printed stuff is okay, absolutely comparable with the classical journals, but it's way easier to make. The thing is that our graphics designer was like, okay, so you want to do a journal, and what they had in mind was like the glossies that we also have at university, no, no, no, this is an academic journal. So we have footnotes, we have references, we have the whole shebang, and that was kind of difficult, and then it turns out simple things like the abstract field is too small for what academics write in terms of abstract, so we have to force them to limited space, things like that, but those are simple things. Those are the simple things? What's the hardest thing so far still for you? Is that still a struggle, Do you think, well, I think I've done 90% of what has to be done for this to run? I think we have the basic structure in place of handling things, and so one of the other things, and that's again my impatience, it takes far too long to get papers published, so I want to have that down to two months or something, start to finish, and that requires, that is a challenge for the core editorial team. I mean Aaron and I have to read everything that comes in, then decide whether or not it is suitable for the journal, then we have to find somebody who acts as a sort of, there's a term for that, so internally within our editorial team who takes over then the process of finding reviewers and et cetera, and then we have, but one of the hard parts is that yes we tell people this is the template that we use, so you have to do Oskola and then you don't do any weird formatting and then you get papers and nobody understands what Oskola is and so it really, let's say the copy editing is a challenge. I'm also going, yeah, question here, I saw two of you laughing, was it a private moment or something to share? No, that's something to share. Often in discussions we address that there are work patch solutions to incremental solutions so we keep hearing a lot of potential solutions in the hands of just laughing, we make our statement later on but we think we have one integral solution to many of the problems. But I do have one question because one of the issues is like either old money, it does sound like you have to invest some money so where did you get the money from? Oh, every time we have an issue today, ladies and gentlemen, Dan is our answer. Dan is the one to talk to. Now we got a little seed money too and that basically goes to the platform which is like $15 euros or something en part of Adam's time is being paid for by, for getting this done. But ultimately, we need to probably hire somebody to do part of the copy editing and also language correction for instance and that's where the money goes. We all do, all the academics in the room, review papers for journals. We do it a lot. That is partially one of the challenges of course is that although I have a big team, everybody is involved in reviewing for everyone and his horse, partially we have to look after our own journal without making it entirely our thing. So in a sense, the burden increases on the people within my group but hopefully enough other people will come on board as well. Question here. I think you should find a good publisher which isn't too expensive because you're an academic which shouldn't be your job. I really like the idea that you started it up. I'm not sure how many articles will you be publishing, do you think? A year? We're aiming at... Does it work so far? How many articles? 15 or something per year. Is this a good idea? Is this something you're thinking about? Because this is not your core business. Maybe find a publisher I mean it depends on... Saskia. It would be great to have Saskia. No, but it's like... What do you want these people to do? It's organization. What can they do that he doesn't do? Actually it's the organization and technical side which you are doing now and which takes time and are you aware of you open in Utrecht which is a publisher within the library? They have a contract with Ubiquiti Press which is a publisher who has a platform and they organize it all for you. And if you have 1500 euros that would be enough for 5 or 6 articles if you do 20, you need twice as much. It's not that much more. Are you aware of this initiative? Yes I am. We consciously made a step not to do that and go for a platform that does all the infrastructure for us. All reviewing process and whatever is completely streamlined within the platform. So basically it's really the effort is in getting reviewers to do a review of the papers which is normal, which we always have and then the final step is getting it from a word file into InDesign. That's where the challenge is. And apart from that I don't see any need for a publisher actually. All right. Any other questions or remarks? I think from the others. We're smiling again. Oh no, the idea that he doesn't need any publisher. Is that naive? Maybe for the field it works. But I think your arguments about why publishers can be helpful is also relevant. I think it's an ecosystem. Sometimes you need each other. Sometimes you can know with us. And that's coming back to something Sascha said before. Of course one of the big I mean in the list of questions that we got prior to this was what do you see as the as the sort of the where are we now on? You can pick your own questions. Which one would you like? So what are the prejudices against open access and things. I don't know if it's a prejudice but of course reputation is incredibly important. And what publishers so far have done is this really clever plot in the sense that there is a link between publishers and editorial boards and they depend on each other and then we as simple scientists depend on the reputation that that system has. And that's incredibly difficult to change. And even scopers and impact factors etc. That's all part of this whole thing because all the impact factor things are run by the same publishers dat keep us locked in. En I'm not overly optimistic that we can change that whole system soon. We have to take small steps and I'm trying to leapfrog and make bigger steps in a sense. But of course we need to have we have to be on lists where young scientists may think they don't care about impact factors but they do as soon as they apply or position higher up in the food chain. So we need to have reputation that is partially dependent on editorial boards and unfortunately it's also tight at the moment to publishers. Is he noting as well? Is correct? What's he saying? Ja, I do think that we do care about impact factors even though that impact factor itself is a very questionable thing the way it is calculated and whether it actually makes sense. But in the end I mean we don't have a job or let's say I'm just speaking generally for junior researchers. I think at some point it would be nice to have a job where you don't worry about being unemployed in two years down the road. So if you want one of those at the moment the game is that you have to have publications that are in places that are well inspected. I would really hope for that to change but while it hasn't changed yet I think I'm taking a big leap I'm doing what I can, what else can we do? So I don't want to shove the blame to people but I do think that the seniors or less early career people are in charge of changing hiring criteria changing criteria for who they would like to employ and then actually living by it and hiring people who do good work and not necessarily work that's great. Do you want to go on off? Always. We need more software because I'm overburden so I can use a double. No but I think so impact factors are one thing but I think a number of downloads for instance is an important thing that is independent on where things are. In our field SSRN and many people know about that is an incredibly important platform where you have basically you can put everything on there, you see the number of downloads unfortunately SSRN is owned by Elsevier at the moment so I don't know but yeah we need to change the entire landscape. If we talk about change I think one remark I hear here is that you have more prestige, your professor if you change something, if you say something it will have more impact than the younger generation so can you maybe encourage other older colleagues that's what we're doing and I see I see an interest of more established people within my field of exactly doing that so we realize that we're in a locked in situation where things and that we need to change and I mean Roger Bronsworth as writing the opening chapter the opening paper for the journal is a prime example there he doesn't care anymore where he's published but he helps us establish a name so that others can join us 2 questions Hi I think this point you're making about being overburdened and things are not going fast enough and it has happened in 2 months etc this kind of this acceleration of society in general and people burning out I see a lot of people involved in do-yourself organizations burning out and I was thinking of also such a thing as a slow science movement right I'm not sure if you know anything about that I know Isabel Stengas from Brussels universities involved in that yeah so just this idea like should there be an interesting collaboration between open and slow those two might help each other make each other bigger make each other better is that the question sure I fully realize that but on the other hand I'm not aiming to have people work harder or anything or increasing the number of burnouts in our field which is law and technology it's incredibly frustrating that you have done slow science in a sense you've worked long on a particular paper then you submit it to a journal and then it takes up to a year to get it in print come on that's not 21st century so that's why I want to bring down the because it's not the amount of time spent actually on the production of things it's lying on desks waiting for something to happen and that is something we can speed up by doing things in parallel by having platform support etc so that's what I'm trying to do with decreasing the period between submission and print happy with that Brian I applaud the initiative you're making yourself more work so that takes courage to do I wanted to ask how university support to this university supported you in that initiative and how acknowledged that you also increases their reputation besides giving you a small budget to do it because you know it's nice to have but what I want to ask is did these kind of things really change in my mind because what we were mentioning the impact factors they are the ones that create policy for hiring so if they have this and support it that's very good but if they turn around and then still apply the same old policy when hiring then it's a little bit window dressing and I mean really honestly yeah so many questions there so one of the things and that is one of the reasons why this initiative is to see whether we can do this and then use that as a model for others to also follow so we're building experience with the platform with running this what it actually costs to do it so I'm very grateful for university for doing this but it's not entirely so there is an agenda here and Dan has mentioned that already so we want to try and push this forward and I think and that was one of the reasons why I got into this that I feel that we're talking about public money we have and in my view we have a responsibility as a university to help foster open access so that's why we're in this and I think that this is also supported by university on the other hand in terms of hiring I am one of the people hiring people so I have to eat my own dog food and that's what I'm doing so I'm very aware of a number of the issues at least young scientists have over the last two years I've done I think 200 job interviews or something for hiring over 20 people we look at where people publish and what they run up against happy with that thank you for that any other questions from the audience or remarks and also for you things you wanted to say have you said anything? you're good?