Summary: Lynn Kamerlin Interview, Part 2
A free summary of the subscriber-exclusive interview about Plan S, research funding, and open science
Lynn Kamerlin’s name may be familiar to you if you’ve been following the Plan S debate. She is known for spearheading an open letter outlining what her research community — chemistry — sees as problems with Plan S. Her open letter may have already had an effect, with the first round of implementation guidance shifting away from a complete ban on hybrid journals to a more reasonable (but still flawed) policy.
Because people and their normal work and aspirations can get swamped in the furor of OA debates, I wanted to talk with Kamerlin with the goal of understanding more about Kamerlin as a researcher and scientist.
In Part 1, we discussed the Nobel scandal, differences between US and EU (and global) research and funding trends, and more.
Today, Part 2 discusses Plan S, the role of societies in supporting scientists, preprints, Open Science, and research ethics, among other topics.
This free summary contains selected quotes from Part 2 of the interview. Subscribers receive full access to the entire interview, as well as to upcoming newsletters and the complete archive of “The Geyser,” which is expanding rapidly.
On Plan S:
I believe that the definition of OA as outlined in Plan S is far too restrictive, and can lead to a wide range of problems, as we outlined in our open letter. . . . I wasn’t expecting my position on this issue to become so public, but it was also something I felt I cannot stay quiet about, especially after extensive discussion with colleagues and seeing how concerned they also were about the situation.
On researchers’ views of OA:
All I have spoken to have been positive about Open Access in general once I have discussed it with them, but APC remain a concern also for early career researchers I have spoken to. I should note that the signatories of our open letter have remained fairly stable at roughly 20% early career researchers so many have engaged in the open letter.
On the role of scientific societies:
Less well known is the substantial role societies take in advocacy for the discipline, for example in national research policy discussions, in organizing mentorship and career development programs for early career researchers, in outreach, in organizing educational programs, for example for underprivileged researchers. . . . at least in chemistry, computational biology and biochemistry, our scholarly societies play a critical role as the backbones of our communities.
On preprints:
. . . as with the post-print world, in the pre-print world, curation of research in such a way that it can be easily found is absolutely critical, in order to expand what preprints are read by researchers. I think this is something existing repositories still need to work on, as while the research is readily available, finding new research relevant to your field is not as trivial, which I am concerned limits the scope of what is read.
On publication ethics:
It’s something I try to teach my team members in my own group from an early stage in their joining the group. Fortunately, it has not been a problem with the various researchers we collaborate with, but then I have been both very selective in my choices of collaborators, and lucky to work with excellent researchers who take these issues very seriously.
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