 And the last guest you've heard them, give me number one welcome, Marino van Zelsch and Hans van Dijk. Let's start with the introduction, because we already heard you talking, but who you are and what do you do? I'm Hans van Dijk, assistant professor with tenure at the Department of Organization Studies. Welcome. And I'm Marino van Zelsch, fourth year PhD candidate by now also at the Department of Organization Studies. How do you feel about the discussion so far? Because I've heard from you, I think a lot of recognition as well. Yeah, and there's a lot of side comments about other issues that we think we all try to address as well. So, right, this focus is on open access, but I think that there's a lot of side issues or side issues related to it, and that we also try to address in our thing that we're doing. And I'm not calling names, but someone, his name is Daal, has called you revolutionaries. Do you feel revolutionary? Very much so. I just like to work on my hobby. It's also, that's the same as what's going on. Yeah, it's the same, so if that's called revolutionary, then that works for me, yeah. Yeah, and in short, to explain what is it that you are doing? What is this hobby? So, maybe to start with, like, what are really the problems that we try to address, because we've been talking about open access and dependency on publishers, but we all think that that's all part of a bigger problem, or bigger problems actually. So, the first is the hyper competition that we are in, because the current system stimulates researchers to individually try to come up with the best idea for something while you are competing against a hundred other researchers around the world, and it would be much better if just those hundred researchers actually work together to try to address those problems, right? The second thing is, I think we have it there, yeah, so that the current scientific system based on journals and publishing of papers, not just abstract but also delay scientific dissemination. So, we already talked about payables, that's an example, but at the moment, when I have a good idea, I can only bring it out in the open when it's finally published, right? In our field, on average, for, like, the good journals, that's five years. So, I come up with an idea to improve the world, but it takes five years before finally the world can get to know about it, right, which is a waste of time and energy and effort, etc. So, a third problem is that the current scientific system is elitist and exclusive, so we've already in part talked about it. The journals, they target academics, we focus on academic discussions, so if I want to publish there or I need to publish there, I have to address and cater to the academics, so it's a very academic and exclusive discussion that, for example, excludes practitioners and makes it difficult for practitioners to be there. And fourth, related to all of this, a probe point that has also been addressed, it relates to the current health epidemic that we have in science. So, we know that, in particular, early career researchers, on average, six times as much suffer from depression and anxiety. And we think that these issues, these four issues, there's many more to name it, we think these are the main ones, they're all related to each other, right? So, at the moment, we try to have, like, okay, this issue, try to solve it, but then we have a patchwork solution to what we think is a systemic problem, so we need to address the systemic thing. So, our solution. And we are just sort of a ruffle now. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so like Hans said, we came up with this more radical solution that is currently way outside the normal system. So, we are currently developing a new publication system, which would allow researchers and other practitioners or citizens to collaborate, so it focuses on the stimulate collaboration issue. The second thing, and Hans mentioned that, it takes our field like five years, but ours, our proposal says we should disseminate research immediately. So, immediately publish online. And we are working together with Liberate Science, a Berlin-based organization that is actually developing the platform for this. And that is based on peer-to-peer principles, so that would be completely decentralized. We would not be in control. Everybody is in control. So, that relates to the big publish yourself title of this event, of course. And that would allow the community to collectively address problems, because I think that's one of the bigger issues. Now, a hundred individual scientists are just trying to outsmart each other, and I think science should be on collaboratively addressing these problems. Scientists together with practitioners, citizens, that was even, so citizen science was mentioned at some point. And you could currently, the journals also force you to just publish a certain format. I think that's ridiculous. And we should change to an idea where you can just publish everything. So, not just papers, but also your materials, videos, drawings of your papers, individual data points, if you would like. I now understand why Dan calls you the revolutionaries. This sounds like a real revolution. We're going to do things different. It's time for a change, and we are going to make a change. Have you started yet? Yeah, so Liberate Science, that's the organization developing the actual platform. We actually published a couple of papers in different constellations describing this idea. So, the proof of concept is basically out there. So, within a year, I think we should be ready to actually large and get people to develop it. So, the first real steps have been taken? Yeah, so Liberate Science, they got a grant of $750,000 to actually implement this. So, in the beginning there was a paper at Old System, the idea, and now there's the money and the resources to actually start building the system. And we are working along those with Esther there. On a demo version, to really try it out in practice and show that it works. And if we're talking about a system change, we also addressed today that the system now still consists of a lot of prestige. There's a lot of money in different ways. Is it sort of an aim to break that, or how you think about that, or are you collaborating with them? Yeah, so, well, breaking might be a big word, but yeah, system change in the end is really what is necessary. So, one of the things Hans and I did, because a lot of people ask us, so do the people that aren't empowered to change things, do they see the problem as well? So, we figured let's just ask them, and so we wrote a paper on this and studied what the relationship is between time to publish. So Ronald talked a lot about that, like it takes too many months. And we correlated that with research and dissatisfaction with the actual system. And of course we found that the longer it takes, the more dissatisfied people get. What we actually feared is if we would figure out whether there's a difference between untanored researchers and tainted researchers. We figured for tainted researchers, of course it would still be negative, but obviously less than for the untanored ones. That was not even the case, so they stopped carrying. So it doesn't matter for them anymore how long it takes them to publish a paper. Their satisfaction with the system just pays the same. So the title of the paper is Comfortably None, after the song of Pink Floyd. And we start with the last sentences of the song, which basically is, when I was young I used to dream, but as I've grown old I've become Comfortably None. And we basically say, myself included, I'm tenured. So that people like... You're tenured? I'm tenured. I have tenured. I have my permanent contract. That we become institutionalized, because the longer that you are here, the more it's like, I know, yeah, sure, the system isn't perfect, but it's the best we've got. And I think that that's the issue. We don't know about an alternative. You need to have an alternative. You need to have a vision about what's in the future, how can we do things differently, and once that's there, and you have a roadmap regarding how to get there, then we can think about different things. I'm going to ask to the audience. Ronald, first? Yeah, well, I see your point, but there's also another coping mechanism with the slow publication track. And basically I don't care about the published version, so once it's at the publisher it also goes to SSRN, and I don't care. We need the stamp of approval of the publisher, but the material is out there already on SSRN, and that's what matters. And many people around me do that, especially also the people that don't... If publishers want to sue me, they know where to find me. Yeah. So in that sense I don't care. I'm constantly numb about the threats that are out there from established publishers. Yeah, well, yeah, sure I am. Thank you for the microphone. I mean, it's an exaggeration, right? But the whole thing is we still publish in the same way that we've been doing for 350 years. So the first academic journal exists in 1665, right? And so if you see the article here on the right, just guess what year it's from. This is 1824, and right now we still do things roughly in the same way. Well, we now have things like the internet, et cetera, so it's the 10th century. We should do things very differently. But not just because we're in the 21st century, but because there is... Because of all the reasons that I mentioned before, because of all the problems that we're having, and rather so many issues to solve. And again, we can do it all at one, and each of these initiatives I applaud, and I think they're really great, and every step forward is a good thing. But at the same time I think really the system is called for, yeah. I also saw a big smile on your face, Rima. Yeah, I was thinking, I wish I was comfortably numb. But I really loved the way that the word science is going, and I hope that you guys change the game. And how big a challenge are they facing, do you think? And let's say you are an investor, you've got a lot of money, do you think, well, I'm willing to give that to those guys or I'm going to invest it in different things? No, if I had money, you would get all my money. Yeah, how... Thank you for this big comment. How hard is it to raise money? Hard, but the funny thing is a number of my friends, right, they work for good companies, make good salaries, and I talk with them about this. And within five minutes, they're giving money out of this whole system. They're like, how can we invest? How can we pay for this? And I'm like, look, you know, the whole thing is we want to give back, so we don't want to have an investment model where some people isn't owner and they make profit out of it. Now, the whole idea is that this is for everyone. So, you know, ownership in that sense. Yeah, Saskia, how would you feel about that? Would you have any advice you would have? Well, it's good to do this. The problem, I think, is the impact factor. As long as people are looked at through the impact factor of the publications, the things just won't change. Also, I'd like to mention that at NWO, they have changed the rules for young academics who applied for calls. And you only are allowed to put up three articles, and you have to describe why you put down those three articles. So there is a sort of changed view on the whole impact factor, I think. But I think as long as the impact factor is there, the publishers will use it. Yeah? Yeah, I just, that has to take this. Because the general impact factor, of course, is a criterion based on journals. And the way we are proposing to publish research output is completely different than journals currently do. So in one of the papers we published about this, we actually suggested that because you publish these individual research outputs, like methods, hypotheses, you can link them to each other. So these methods are based on these hypotheses. And then you get a network of research outputs. And then you can, so in this paper, we propose a number of different indicators that would evaluate that research, which is more closely connected to what we're actually trying to do. So journal impact factor is a really bad metric of quality. And we're basically saying, if people are building upon your research by going forward from hypotheses to methods, that is actually saying something about the impact of your hypotheses or methods. So we also came up with some new indicators, and we invite a lot of other people to help us develop these indicators as well. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that. Any other questions, remarks, things you want to know? How do you feel about this? Yes? I was trying to figure out, I think, because we discuss a lot the role of editors and also of publishers. But I think a good strategy could be also to get very good authors to publish in your new system. Because I think when you, like, young researchers see the best person in your field publishing in this kind of no impact factor journal, I mean, there is a lot of, like, idea of following in academia. So you see the benchmark. And I think this is exactly also the role of those people that hire, like, top professors, also to start publishing in these tournaments. Because then if you get the highest, like, expertise, then you have also a great quality assurance. If you want to play Champions League, you need messing. And if you want to play Champions League, you need the top professor. So on the one hand, yes, fully agree, and I fully understand the argument, and it's the whole merchant, the mutual effect, et cetera, right? On the other hand, if you want to do things upside down, we just want to get people involved. And people just want to do an open invitation to everyone, like, hey, I'll become part of it and then we'll see who follows. And ideally, shouldn't it be a better strategy that's maybe just suggesting to aim more at the big shot? No, we want to aim at everyone, because the whole idea is that it will be inclusive, so open to everyone. So not just, like, also in the Western universities, et cetera, but also go to second, third-class countries, and they're also invited, not just scientists, but also practitioners, citizens, et cetera, to join and to participate. It would be against your own idea to have that strategy? Actually, yes. Very good. Yes, over here. Over there. Yeah, so I agree with your last point. By the way, I think the challenge that we're facing here is developing a way of quantifying excellence, right? Because that's what universities are looking for. An alternative publishing model, sure. But how can we recognize it's something of good quality where that someone does quality research? And once that's there, then we need a really good transformation in governance to see how we can design a new evaluation system around that. So I would say that it's a two-step system, and I probably think you have an idea for that. Yes, they have. Yeah. It's a two-step system. Well, the very simple answer is, read the paper of Marino and his co-authors, his Hartgerink, in 2018 they published the paper which they basically explained this whole new system, and then they elaborately explained how you can basically get quality indicators in a much more proximal way than we currently do. So the whole, you know, it's ridiculous that currently still we realize so much on the general impact factor, whereas the Dora agreement in 2012 already stated like, hey, that's abandoned it. But we still do it because we don't have alternatives. In that paper, with the system, we do have plenty of alternatives that are much more proximal, accurate, et cetera. So yeah, these are there, you just need time, right, you need time. And we need money to further get this going. And we need to download the paper. Yeah, on top of that, so one of our ideas is that we have post-publication peer review. So currently peer review is withholding you from actually getting your paper published. So we would like to reverse it and say, just publish it, and then afterwards invite people to review. And of course, you can then say, you know, is a paper or something else or a paper, something of quality. You could look at reviews, not to endorse the metro effect again, but you could also look at who reviewed that specific output, of course. So there's many other ways in achieving and measuring excellence, if you would like. Yeah. Thanks. Well, in fact, we can make, this also gets rid of review too, right? Because rather than just having two or three reviewers and one editor that look at your paper, which we all know and probably all have experience with, can be very biased, just in a bad mood, or you know, it goes against the RDS, and therefore, they go against it. The whole idea here of the quality check is that just like any product to serve, that now you want to use, if you go to a city where you haven't been, you want to go to a restaurant, what do you do? You go to TripAdvisor, you go to Google Maps, whatever, and you just look at the ratings of hundreds of people that have gone there before you. Well, basically here, similar kind of idea. Rather than two or three reviewers, you have like the whole scientific community with their hand, and there was a question there, sorry for you, because you want to respond to this idea. Yeah, I'm wondering how, like, what are your concerns in the sense that how can people gain this system? That's a good question. A technological question. Oh, technological question. So it's not really a technological answer, but so currently, your name is attached to what you're out with, right? So if you would publish reviews, and your name is attached to the review, I would not try to help my friends by just publishing positive reviews all the time because people will not take me seriously anymore. So we think in the system itself, it counterbalances because your name is attached to everything. The same as with if I sign my own reviewers for journals, I become so much more careful with what I say than if it's just anonymous, and I think that just works on a big scale as well. Happy with that? Okay, I come all the way up here and for you as well, but you had a question first. Yeah, so you said that the new system also stimulates collaboration, if I'm not mistaken. So are your particular strategies and methods, how to do that beyond the fact that we don't have to out-compete each other? And specifically interdisciplinary research, I wrote about. We all thought Ronald was impatient, but you were impatient as well. I'm enthusiastic, and I've become just more enthusiastic. At the moment, programs are working to create the system. And the first step that then we're going to do, we actually last Friday, we had a meeting about it with the project team, is we're going to run a pilot. And the pilot is going to focus on one central question that we want to address and then see, like, is this the way which we can decide. That central question is going to be, does power corrupt? Which is a very simple yet age-old question, which you can address from many different disciplines. And what we then want to do is once the system is ready, we invite researchers from the different disciplines to collaborate and try to address that question by giving input from their own perspective and from their own discipline, and then see what happens. For instance, like a test, it's a demo to see, does this system work? Do they arrive in the end at like an answer? But it's also cool because there's all these different disciplines, so we're going to probably get not just one answer, but different answers in a way that we've never had seen inside before, because it's academic journals. So the whole idea is it's in this collaboration because it's question-based and issue-based and problem-based rather than, you know, trying to fill the middle gap. And the idea is that it in particular tries to stimulate this cross-disciplinary collaboration. Thanks for that. Oh, something to add? Yeah, something to add. If you're interested in does power corrupt research, please let us know because we need collaborators. So this is an invitation to all of you. Great, thanks for that invitation. Final question here in the back, sir. I just wanted to ask, because you said the prototype is ready and I was just going to ask when would the real system be ready and done? What is your any model? Or any model that will also be conducive to you, your group, the developers or the initiators and also the authors? So what are your thoughts? Yeah. Are there thoughts on that? Yeah, so we actually had a meeting last Friday, so that helps, so there's a lot of meetings. So many meetings. And so the idea is that in the upcoming months the software developers are going to work on this. Then as Hans just explained, the research project will be the first beta test, I would say. So I think the prototype tweaked and updated should be ready year, and I'm looking at Esther also here, but yeah, more or less a year then we should have a running platform. Have you said anything, everything that you wanted to say so far here? Or is there something you want to add? I guess one of the other questions was like is it for what kind of disciplines is it, right? Is it just for our field? The idea is really for all scientific disciplines. And then it's also transdisciplinary in that sense. I was talking about the any model. Hang on. You were talking about any model? I was talking about the any model. How do you end from it and how do the authors end from it as well? How do they end from it? Yeah, how do they make money? Yeah, the money. And there was a question from you as well? Yeah, how are you going to categorize? I mean, is there like a community that can have a linguist and you are an organizational specialist? Yeah. And am I going to upload the first article ever in linguistics and then I decide this is the category that is going to work, but if you are a social linguist, I don't want you in my category. So how is this going to work? And is it collaborative? Yeah. Two final questions. I think we want to go to the drinks. Regarding the money question, still trying to figure it out. Ideally, all of this is subsidized publicly so that we don't need to worry about money. So the timeline also, the more money comes in, the sooner we can get everything ready and done, etc. Regarding the categories, still being worked on by the ideas, there is more about an up approach. So if you feel like, hey, this doesn't really suit me, I want to do something else. It's a platform for you that you can yourself as a developing user. If there's a price for the fastest-talking scientist, you will probably win it. Thank you very much. Yeah, so like you were asking before, do you want to say anything as a conclusion? I think everybody should be on that side by now. Right? But a lot of the questions also came from who is new to me. So I think find support by the open-size community. And I was just talking to Rima and Nea. We're starting the reproducibility club in January. So if you need practical help with your questions, yeah, then please join us. Yeah, that's fine. And Drake. And Drake, thank you very much. Marino and Hans.