read it like an open book

A few months ago, I paid almost $10,000 to make one of my papers “open access.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about the irony of paying thousands of dollars so the public could read research that the public had already helped fund.

It made me wonder what, exactly, I was paying for.

Was I paying for peer review?

For editorial expertise?

For long-term archiving?

For the journal’s reputation?

Or was I paying for permission to let other people read my work?

That question stuck with me longer than I expected.

what I was actually afraid of

But paying the article processing charge wasn’t actually the moment that changed how I think about publishing.

Submitting the paper was.

People often assume the scariest part of submitting a manuscript is waiting to find out whether reviewers think the science is wrong.

Honestly, that wasn’t what kept me up at night.

If someone finds a flaw in my analysis or points out a better way to interpret the data, I want to know. That’s how science gets better.

What I was actually afraid of was opening an email that said something like:

“This is an interesting story, but we’d like to see another year or two of experiments.”

Not because the reviewers were trying to be mean.

Not because they were bad reviewers.

But because that’s often the role we’ve asked peer review to play.

By the time a manuscript reaches reviewers, the project has usually been alive for years.

The people who designed it have argued over hypotheses, changed directions when the data surprised them, balanced ambitious ideas against limited time and funding, decided what questions the paper was actually trying to answer, and probably rewritten the manuscript more times than they’d like to admit.

Then three reviewers meet the project for the very first time.

Sometimes they see exactly what the authors missed.

Some of the best scientific advice I’ve ever received came from reviewers.

But sometimes the conversation quietly shifts.

Instead of asking,

“Is this science rigorous and well supported?”

we start asking,

“What would make this publishable in this journal?”

Those are very different questions.

And because journals often provide relatively broad guidance about what peer review should accomplish, every reviewer brings their own philosophy into the process.

Some reviewers care most about rigor.

Some prioritize novelty.

Some want the deepest possible mechanism.

Some see every interesting observation as the beginning of another paper.

None of those perspectives are inherently wrong.

The problem is that publication has become tied to satisfying them.

Somewhere along the way, peer review became responsible for deciding not only whether a paper was scientifically sound, but whether it was enough.

publish, review, curate

Around the same time I was wrestling with all of this, I started reading more about the future of scientific publishing.

Partly because my funder, HHMI, has been thinking deeply about open science.

Partly because I was trying to understand why publishing felt increasingly disconnected from the science I actually wanted to practice.

That’s when I came across something called Publish, Review, Curate.

The idea is surprisingly simple.

Publishing.

Reviewing.

Curating.

Three different jobs.

For most of modern science, journals have done all three.

They’ve published papers.

They’ve organized peer review.

They’ve decided which papers deserve attention.

But they don’t necessarily have to.

One of the ideas I find most compelling is that publication should belong to researchers.

When I decide my manuscript is ready to enter the scientific conversation, I should be able to share it.

Not because it’s perfect.

Because it’s ready for discussion.

That’s what preprints are.

They’re researcher-controlled publications.

The authors decide when the work is ready to become part of the scientific record.

Not an editor.

Not a journal.

The paper already exists.

Now the conversation can begin.

Then comes review.

Not as a hurdle to clear.

Not as a negotiation over whether the work deserves to exist.

But as an opportunity to improve it.

That shift completely changed how I think about peer review.

The goal isn’t to see how many additional experiments reviewers can request.

The goal isn’t to turn every manuscript into the definitive paper on an entire field.

The goal is to leave the scientific record stronger than we found it.

Sometimes that means another experiment.

Sometimes it means a better control.

Sometimes it means rewriting a paragraph because the conclusions reach a little too far.

Sometimes it simply means acknowledging a limitation.

Good peer review isn’t measured by how much work it creates.

It’s measured by whether the science becomes more trustworthy afterward.

That’s why I’ve become excited about organizations like Review Commons and PREreview.

They separate peer review from editorial acceptance.

Instead of asking,

“Should this journal publish this paper?”

they ask,

“How can we make this paper better?”

I love that question.

It feels much closer to the purpose of science.

Only after publication and review comes curation.

This is where journals still play an incredibly important role.

We don’t need journals because the internet can’t distribute PDFs.

We need journals because there are far too many papers for any of us to read.

Editors identify interesting work.

Journals provide context.

They organize ideas.

They connect discoveries across fields.

They help readers decide where to spend their limited attention.

That’s valuable.

Really valuable.

I want journals to keep doing that.

I just don’t think they need to be responsible for deciding whether my paper becomes public in the first place.

being an open book

Thinking about publishing this way has also changed how I want to participate in science.

For future papers, I want to post a preprint as soon as I believe the science is ready.

I want to share my code, data, and methods whenever I can.

I want to invite feedback instead of waiting for it.

I’d love to use services like Review Commons and encourage reviews through PREreview.

If a reviewer changes my mind, I want to post a revised version.

If someone catches a mistake, I want to fix it.

If the science improves, I’d like that evolution to be visible.

Then, when I’m ready, I’ll submit the work to a journal.

Not because I need permission for people to read it.

Because I value thoughtful editors.

I value expert reviewers.

I value good curation.

Those are services worth supporting.

This has also made me think differently about my own responsibilities.

If I want better peer review, I should write better peer reviews.

If I want transparency, I should participate in transparent review.

If I want scientists to own the scholarly record, then I should support researcher-controlled publishing by posting preprints, reviewing preprints, and citing preprints when they’re the best available version of the work.

Maybe that’s what I mean when I say I’m trying to be an open book.

Not just making my papers open.

Making my thinking open.

Making my revisions open.

Making my willingness to change my mind open.

Science has never really been a collection of finished papers.

It’s always been a conversation.

I’m starting to think our publishing system should look a little more like one.