The Economics of Scientific Publishing.

The peculiar nature of scientific publishing has allowed for a high degree of market concentration and a non-collusive oligopoly. The non-substitutable characteristic of scientific journals has facilitated an environment of market concentration. Acquisition of journals on a capabilities-based approach has seen market concentration increase in favor of a small group of dominant publishers. The digital era of scientific publishing has accelerated concentration. Competition laws have failed to prevent anti-competitive practices. The need for government intervention is debated. The definition of scientific publishing as a public good is evaluated to determine the need for intervention. Policy implications are suggested to increase competitiveness in the short-run and present prestige-maintaining alternatives in the long run. A fundamental change in scientific publishing is required to enable socially efficient and equitable access for wider society's benefit.

Comparison of Availability of Trial Results in ClinicalTrials.gov and PubMed by Data Source and Funder Type.

This study examines the dissemination of trial results by data source (ie, ClinicalTrials.gov and PubMed) and funder type (ie, industry and nonindustry).

JAMA Network Articles of the Year 2022.

This Medical News article is our annual roundup of the top-viewed articles from all JAMA Network journals.

Neurosurgical Publication-Should We Publish at Any Cost? An In-Depth Analysis of Costs Incurred in Publication.

OBJECTIVE: With the recent paradigm shift in neurosurgical publications, open access (OA) publishing is burgeoning along with traditional publishing methods. We aimed to explore costs of publication across 53 journals. METHODS: We identified 53 journals publishing neurosurgical work. Journal type, submission and open access charges, color print fees, impact indicators, publisher, and subscription prices were obtained from journal and publisher websites. Costs were unified in U.S. dollars. Mean prices per journal were used to equilibrate membership and subscription discounts. Correlations were performed using Spearman ρ (P < 0.05). RESULTS: Of 53 journals, 12 were OA only, 40 were hybrid, and 1 was traditional. Submission costs were provided by 22 and 43 journals, respectively, by the end of phase 1 and 2 (prices always for phase 2: 26 free of charge, 4 <$500, and 1 <$1000). Median OA charge was $3286 (49 journals; range, $0-$7827). Of 53 journals, 36 did not list print fees for color figures (29 in phase 2). Median fee estimate per figure was $422 (range, $25-$1060). Median personal subscription for 1 year was $344 (range, $60-$1158; 48 journals). Median institutional subscription for 1 year was $2082 (range, $38-$5510; 34 journals). There was a mild positive correlation between Journal Impact Factor and OA fees (ρ = 0.287, P = 0.046). CONCLUSIONS: The lack of easily accessible information about neurosurgical publications, such as submission costs or OA charges, creates an unnecessary hurdle and should be remedied. Publishing in neurosurgery should be a positive learning experience, and cost should not be a limiting factor.

Association between Industry Payments and Published Position on Use of Devices for the Treatment of Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the impact of industry payments to authors of opinion articles on the Urolift and Rezum devices. We also examined the extent to which authors omitted acknowledgements of financial conflicts-of-interest. METHODS: We searched Google Scholar for all articles that cite either of the respective pivotal trials for these devices. 2 blinded urologists coded the articles as favorable or neutral. A separate blinded researcher recorded industry payments from the manufacturers using the Open Payments Program database. RESULTS: We identified 29 articles written by 27 unique authors from an initial screening list of 235 articles. Of these articles, 15 (52%) were coded as positive and 14 (48%) were coded as neutral. 20 (74%) authors have accepted payments from the manufacturer of the device. Since 2014, these authors have collectively received $270,000 from NeoTract and $314,000 from Boston Scientific. Of the 20 authors with payments, 9 (45%) received more than $10,000 from either manufacturer. Of authors with payments, 65% (13/20) contributed to only positive articles. Authors who received payments had more than 4 times the number of article contributions than did authors without payments (42 vs 10). Authors of at least one favorable article were more likely to have received payments from the device manufacturers than authors of neutral articles (P = .014, Chi-squared test). Most (80%, 16/20) authors with payments did not report a relevant conflict-of-interest within any of their articles. CONCLUSION: These data suggest a relationship between payments from a manufacturer and positive published position on that company's device. There may be a critical lack of published editorial pieces by authors without financial conflicts of interest.

The political economy of academic publishing: On the commodification of a public good.

This paper provides an institutional and empirical analysis of the highly concentrated market of academic publishing, characterized by over proportionally high profit margins for publishing companies. The availability of latest research findings is an important issue for researchers, universities and politicians alike. Open access (OA) publication provides a promising but also costly solution to overcome this problem. However, in this paper we argue that OA publication costs are an important, but by far not the only way for academic publishers to gain access to public funding. In contrast, our study provides a comprehensive overview of the channels through which public expenditure benefits big academic publishing companies. Furthermore, we offer the results of an explorative case study, where we estimate the annual financial flows of public expenditures in Austria for the field of social sciences. In all, these expenditures add up to about 66.55 to 103.2 million € a year, which amounts to a fourth of total public funding for this field. Against this background, we contribute to the debate whether and to what extent public subsidies are justified for economically successful companies.

Collaborative transition to open access publishing by scholarly societies.

For decades, universities, researchers, and libraries have sought a systemwide transition of scholarly publishing to open access (OA), but progress has been slow. There is now a potential for more rapid and impactful change, as new collaborative OA publishing models have taken shape. Cooperative publishing arrangements represent a viable path forward for society publishers to transition to OA as the default standard for disseminating research. The traditional article processing charge OA model has introduced sometimes unnavigable financial roadblocks, but cooperative arrangements premised on collective action principles can help to secure long-term stability and prevent the risk of free riding. Investment in cooperative arrangements does not require that cash-strapped libraries discover a new influx of money as their collection budgets continue to shrink, but rather that they purposefully redirect traditional subscription funds toward publishing support. These cooperative arrangements will require a two-way demonstration of trust: On one hand, libraries working together to provide assurances of sustained financial support, and on the other, societies' willingness to experiment with discarding subscriptions. Organizations such as Society Publishers Coalition and Transitioning Society Publications to Open Access are committed to education about and further development of scalable and cooperative OA publishing models.

Patterns of National Institutes of Health Grant Funding to Surgical Research and Scholarly Productivity in the United States.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to assess the contemporary trends in National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants awarded to surgical investigators, including potential disparities. BACKGROUND: The NIH remains the primary public funding source for surgical research in the United States; however, the patterns for grants and grantees are poorly understood. METHODS: NIH RePORTER was queried for new grants (R01, -03, -21) awarded to Departments of Surgery (DoS). Principal investigators' (PIs) data were extracted from publicly available information from their institutions' websites and/or professional social media accounts. RESULTS: The NIH awarded 1101 new grants (total: $389,006,782; median: $313,030) between 2008 and 2018. Funding to DoS has doubled in the last 10 years ($22,983,500-2008 to $49,446,076-2018). Midwest/Southeast institutions and surgical oncologists accounted for majority of the grants (31.9% and 24.5%, respectively). Only 24.7% of the projects were led by female PIs, who were predominantly nonphysician PhD scientists (52% vs 37.7% PhD-only male PIs; P = 0.002). During this time, there was a significant increase from 12.4% to 31.7% in grants awarded to PIs with >15 years of experience. These grants were associated with 8215 publications; however, only 13.2% were published in high-impact journals (impact factor ≥10). 4.4% of the grants resulted in patents, and these were associated with higher award amounts ($345,801 vs $311,350; P = 0.030). On multivariate analysis, combined MD/PhD degree [odds ratio (OR) 5.98; 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.18-16.39; P < 0.001] was associated with improved odds of patent creation; conversely, practicing surgeon PIs affected patent creation negatively (OR 0.31; 95% CI 0.11-0.85; P = 0.024). CONCLUSION: In the last decade, a greater proportion of NIH grants in DoS were awarded to more experienced investigators. Disparities exist among grantees, and female investigators are underrepresented, especially among practicing surgeons.