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Psychology Science Quarterly, Volume 51, 2009 (Supplement 1), pp. 184-193
European psychology publication platform: issues and perspectives
ERICH WEICHSELGARTNER1
Abstract
This paper presents a brief summary of the Survey on European Psychology Publication Issues and
the Berlin workshop. Six issues of main concern are discussed: (1) Language, (2) review process, (3)
manuscript handling, (4) impact (visibility), (5) permission barriers (accessibility) and (6) price barriers
(cost). These issues are the concerns of non-native English speaking Europeans as they experienced in
their home countries. As a solution, a possible conceptualization of a European open access publication
platform for psychology is presented. Giving more visibility to scientific work, disseminating
information easy and more broadly and with new features not found in existing journals an open access
platform may be the right direction. Concrete plans for the future on organizational, technical and
funding issues are addressed.
Key words: psychology; scientific communication; information dissemination; journals; open
access; online publishing; language; funding
1 PD Dr. Erich Weichselgartner, University of Trier, ZPID • Leibniz-Institute, D-54286 Trier, Germany;
e-mail: wga@zpid.de
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European psychology publication platform: issues and perspectives 185
1. Introduction
This chapter consists of two sections. The first section presents a brief summary of the
results from the survey mentioned previously (Uhl, chpt. 2) and the main issues raised by the
participants of the Berlin workshop. From the considerations expressed, six categories
emerged: (1) Language, (2) review process, (3) manuscript handling, (4) impact (visibility),
(5) permission barriers (accessibility) and (6) price barriers (cost). These issues reflect
concerns and experiences with international publishers in psychology from the viewpoint of
European non-native English speakers. Since results from the survey are also integrated, this
part stands on an empirical, though non-representative ground. In the second section, an
action plan on how to address these issues in the framework of the development of a
European open access publication platform for psychology is presented. The plan will
address organizational, technical and funding issues.
2. Six main issues
2.1 Language
Physiographically Europe is the northwestern peninsula of Eurasia. From east to west, it
extends from the Ural Mountains in Russia to Portugal, from north to south from Iceland to
Greece. Politically, the Council of Europe has 47 member states with 822 million citizens
(497 million in the 27 states of the European Union). The linguistic patterns of European
countries are complex - shaped by history, geographical factors and the mobility of people.
For example, currently (taken in the year 2008) the European Union has 23 official lan-
guages and 60 indigenous regional or minority language communities (according to the
European Commission for Multilingualism2).
Language skills are unevenly distributed both over the geographical area of Europe and
over socio-demographic groups. German is the most widely spoken mother tongue in the
European Union (18%) followed by English and Italian with a 13% share. English remains
the most widely-spoken foreign language throughout Europe. 38% of EU citizens state that
they have sufficient skills in English to have a conversation (Eurobarometer 243, self-
evaluation). However, the Eurobarometer survey makes no statement on writing skills. It can
easily be assumed that writing proficiency is less common, especially when it comes to
academic writing. Basically all participants of the workshop stated that it is a difficult and
time consuming task to write comprehensive English articles in the style demanded by
international journals.
Authors generally prefer to read and write in their mother tongue. Non-native English
speakers report several problems with writing in English: Language proficiency (syntax,
grammar, idiomatic phrases), differences between spoken and written English, adaptation of
the expected editorial style and insufficient capability of expressing one’s thoughts; thus,
originality and creativity suffer. The latter has severe consequences for the quality of papers.
Even with the help of professional translators, it is not always said that the writers’ thought
will be exactly communicated as the author intended. And of course, traditional writing
2 http://ec.europa.eu/education/languages/languages-of-europe/index_en.htm
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E. Weichselgartner 186
styles of some countries are so different that the translation alone does not solve the problem.
In contrast, native speakers incur less cost for writing an article (time spent, cost of profes-
sional translator) and have an advantage in expressing their ideas. The language issue was
especially stressed by speakers from Bulgaria, France, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania
and Russia.
2.2 The review process
Although the vast majority of participants agreed that peer review is an essential compo-
nent of quality control, various issues regarding fairness, bias and timeliness were reported.
Smaller countries have fewer journals where authors can summit their work and some even
summit to journals that are non-psychology because of the lack of journals in the field. The
availability of experts for peer review is also an issue. In international journals, the rejection
rate and amount of revision requests is seen as unproportionally high for European non-
native speakers of English. In addition, reports of colleagues from southern and eastern
European countries point out cultural differences between their communication and writing
style and the requirements of psychology journals dominated by the “anglo-saxon style”.
These differences might even affect the rigorous standards of scientific discourse. In this
context it was pointed out that more than 50% of the “gatekeepers” to scientific journals are
US researchers, which is out of proportion with respect to the distribution of psychologists in
the world (Carbon, chpt. 6).
At a more general level, the dissatisfaction with the criteria used for acceptance or rejec-
tion and the dissatisfaction with the number of revision requests was reported. An average
six to nine months lag between submission and notification of acceptance or rejection is
regarded as too long.
Most importantly, in terms of fairness, the turning down of papers that deal specifically
with European aspects has been reported. For instance, while European researchers and
students often are confronted with the American educational (terms such as K-12), govern-
mental (state or city institutions) or jurisdictional system (i.e.procedures for juvenile court),
papers on equivalent European peculiarities are often rejected.
2.3 Manuscript handling
The issue of how manuscripts are handled refers to a general dissatisfaction with the
traditional publication process. The timespan for reviewing, decision making and publication
is regarded as too long. Typically, time lags between 6 and 18 months are reported (see
Carbon, chpt. 6; Frey, chpt. 13; Zografova, chpt. 7). However, the upper end can even be
longer: “Some authors mentioned a time delay of almost two years from submission to
publication in some foreign journals” (Parada, chpt. 4). This is a big problem for young
researchers. Given the fast pace of science and the time young academics can spend at a
particular place of work, they are most likely doing something else by the time feedback
arrives and kudos can be gained. Established researchers might still work at the same
institution, but their interests might have shifted to other areas. As a matter of fact, this issue
is even more complicated since the time between publication and reception has to be added.
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A special case of reception is the abstracting and indexing services (e.g. PsycINFO or
PSYNDEX for psychology). Approximately another 6 – 12 month have to be added until
published material is listed in the databases.
2.4 Impact and visibility
Why do authors publish? In an ideal world, one might say, for the advancement of
science and the particular field (psychology). Scholarly communication per se, the
widespread sharing of knowledge and the acceleration of research are the driving forces. In a
less ideal world, other factors also play a role: Economics (authors have to make a living)
and vanity (authors want to advance their careers and become famous). In science, the
economic and career factors are intertwined, because (although publications usually are not
paid for) they are related to hiring and tenure decisions, to salaries and promotion. The
publication record is vital for the evaluation, as well as, the funding of researchers and
programs.
Given these points of departure, authors should have a fair chance of achieving a high
impact and good visibility, i.e. become widely read, used, and cited. As reported in
paragraph three above, American gatekeepers may tend to handicap the dissemination of
European research work, especially when it comes to a local context (e.g., some aspects of
French research in social psychology are specific to a French context).
In addition, yet another problem is reported: The “impact factor” which is widely used
for assessment requires indexing in an expensive proprietary database (ISI Web of Science).
However, European journals are under-represented in ISI (e.g., only one Czech journal),
especially when they use local languages. This issue has raised some of the strongest
concern. “As the impact factor is calculated with reference to the ISI databases the level of
visibility for French research in psychology is underestimated” (Arnould, chpt. 3); “[the
impact factor] does not necessarily reflect expertise or innovation (Parada, chpt. 4);
“calculation and assignments of ISI Web Of Science impact factors are made by one single
commercial company (Thomson Scientific Inc.) and should therefore be used with caution”
(Carbon, chpt. 6); Bulgarian publications use the cyrillic alphabet and can’t be included in
the international system for measuring the impact factor (Zografova, chpt. 7); “Cypriot
psychologists appear concerned that it is not easy for a local journal to achieve the necessary
audience [for a high impact factor]” (Karekla, chpt. 10); “All the psychology journals
existing in Lithuania do not have an impact factor” (Pakalniskiene, chpt. 11); ”if [national
journals] do report an impact factor, it is in general considerably lower than the impact
factors of leading international journals” (Frey & Herzberg, chpt. 13). Summing up all these
concerns one could say that non-native English speaking European researchers are
navigating between Scylla and Charybdis: Either spend extra time and effort and publish in a
high impact factor English journal or publish locally and lack reception. The solution might
require a heroic deed equal to Odysseus: Create a European multilingual publication
platform for psychology that either achieves high ISI impact factors or develops an
independent but widely accepted high reputation.
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2.5 Permission barriers (accessibility)
Two issues are reported regarding the availability of research literature which are mainly
related to the so called toll-access model of publishing (this is where the subscriber pays to
read the publication) as opposed to the open-access model (this is where the authors pay to
have their work published), but not entirely. Even if the subscription cost can be covered,
administrative and technical problems remain.
Administrative problems are the simplicity and speed of access, e.g. location dependent
access to electronic material or the long duration of delivery of paper copies (shipping time).
In some countries the amount of copies are very limited to the point that some journals are
not to be found in bookstores of major cities and electronic accessibility is only at its infancy
where the subscribers have to check themselves for the newest edition and are not notified
(Glaveanu, chpt. 5). On the technical side, artificial barriers superimposed on the information
itself may hinder access (e.g. digital rights management technologies). Access thus becomes
constrained in space, time and technical resources.
Related to the accessibility issue is the problem of locating articles. As mentioned above,
European work is underrepresented in search aids like renown international databases, or
researchers do not have access to such databases at all (subscription too expensive). Access
to international publications and databases is especially problematic in Eastern European
countries where funding is scarce.
2.6 Price barriers (cost)
The cost issue has sparked the so called open-access movement. “Prices of many journals
have spiraled out of control and libraries have had no choice but to cancel subscriptions,
defer new subscriptions, and cut into their book budgets” (SPARC, 2004). Contributing
factors to the so-called serials crisis are the publish or perish philosophy, the explosion in
the number of academic subfields, and the increasing domination of scholarly
communication by commercial publishers. According to the American Association of
Research Libraries (ARL), their serial expenditures have risen by 321% from 1986 to 2006
(Kyrillidou & Young, 2008), while the average cost of living has only risen by 84%
(Consumer Price Index Inflation Calculator, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). Scientific
journals more and more become an unendurable weight for the budget of universities and of
research institutes. In Europe, the high cost of international journals is usually paid for by the
taxpayers (universities and research institutes are mostly publicly funded). Especially in
Eastern Europe there is little money for non-national journals. At an increasing rate, scholars
have to use personal funds to buy certain journals.
Thus, open access is seen as a possible solution to the serials crisis, at least from the
point of view of the reader. Respondents of the survey and the workshop participants argued
strongly in favor of open access (Uhl, chpt. 2). But open access does not only overcome the
price barrier, it also improves visibility and impact. In psychology, the percentage gain in
citations for open access articles (self-archiving by their authors) compared to toll access
counterparts in the same issue of the same journal is more than one hundred (Harnad and
Brody, 2004). Mental health professionals are roughly twice as likely to read a relevant
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