Creating an equitable credit economy that drives research collaboration
Journal articles are the gold standard for crediting research progress. But, like global trade, tying into a fixed standard limits wealth distribution and innovation. It is time for the community to adopt a credit model that honors collaboration and drives innovation.
Our goal as researchers is to better understand the world around us. To this end, we observe, form hypotheses, gather information, compare notes, and accept, toss out, or reframe hypotheses, and continue the cycle. The research process is inherently collaborative, with research teams, conferences, and peer review as three key components. However, research progress — and credit — is measured by output of papers. Reliance on papers as the main source of credit favors competition over collaboration and slows down research progress overall.
You may ask how we got here. It is fairly simple. Credit is apportioned through research papers because, since the 1960s and the advent of bibliometrics, it has been possible to measure paper output. We measure papers because we have databases and identifiers for them.
Let’s support a new, more equitable, research economy by adopting a credit model that derives value from intentional collaboration.
For sure, papers are relevant indicators of the completion of a cycle of research. But, by focusing our progress metrics on papers, we are missing — and de-prioritizing — other equally relevant aspects of the research cycle. Further, this focus creates perverse incentives. Having journal articles as “coin of the research realm” encourages hoarding of information prior to publication, repression of findings that can’t be packaged into a journal article, and dependence of the community on one measure of research progress.
Allocating Credit for Contributions
Envision a research process in which teams are intentionally created and developed; where hypotheses are shared as they are posited and methods and resources added to hypothesis-testing project plans and shared among the team in a cloud database. Where methods are validated, data are curated, and findings available to re-analyze. Where findings, methods, and hypotheses coalesce and evolve in living reviews, and progress reports are published at regular intervals. Where components of the research lifecycle are connected using open persistent identifiers for people, organizations, and the artifacts collected or created. And all along, metrics of credit and collaboration are collected, analyzed, and disseminated for discussion and iteration.
In such a world, credit can be distributed in a more equitable way. Acknowledging a broader range of contributions are necessary to foster more inclusive work environments, encouraging more diverse perspectives and participation in the research process.
Implementing Design Principles
How we prepare for this future is the subject of several panels at the 2020 OASPA conference. Working with Kristin Ratan and Sarah Greene, we’ve built a vision and action plan based upon principles of discoverability, transparency, and equity. The vision is enabled by an open infrastructure of persistent identifiers for people, organizations, projects, and objects, fully embedded across research lifecycle stages.
To create this world, research process systems need to be re-designed with three core principles:
Credit. Enable the apportionment of credit across the research process and incentivize collaboration by embedding CRediT roles and collaboration metrics throughout research processes.
Communicate. Enable transparency and dissemination of contributions by encoding with persistent identifiers for people, places, things, and projects and associated FAIR-CARE metadata.
Track. Measure progress toward goals (1) and (2) by generating a theory of change and embedding metrics throughout research workflows, assigning provenance, collecting data, and discussing analysis.
Vision for the Future
We are already living in a world where we can collaborate online, instantly discuss findings, and share components of research from lab notebook entries to data to narrative. Our adherence to the journal gold standard limits incentives to utilize these amazing research tools, by restricting what contributions are recorded, credited, and rewarded. It is similarly restrictive through exclusionary practices and more subtle forms of bias. There is growing interest in looking beyond the current credit proxies to establish a more nuanced and inclusive view of research strengths, weaknesses, and networks of opportunity.
What is a gold standard? It is a commodity-based approach to trade. Tied to a stable and well-recognized and acknowledged anchor, it is an automatic way to exchange value across a variety of goods. Just as the monetary gold standard restricted the flow of credit by concentrating wealth in countries that had massive gold reserves, the near-total focus on journal articles as the sine qa non of academic credit limits how researchers interact with each other, with research findings, and with communities more broadly.
Let’s support a new, more equitable, research economy by adopting a credit model that derives value from intentional collaboration. In this new economy, credit can be distributed more equitably across a variety of contribution types and modalities and drive a diverse approach to research and innovation.
To learn more, see Haak L, Greene S, Ratan K (2020) A New Research Economy: Socio-technical framework to open up lines of credit in the academic community. Research Ideas and Outcomes 6: e60477.
