The Telegraph recently published a short interview with Dr. Schekman (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/10507434/Nobel-prize-winner-accuses-scientific-journals-of-tyranny.html) on the publishing process and enormous pressure on graduate students, especially in biology, to publish in the top journals. He rightfully claims that research efforts are driven more by the desire to publish in Science, Nature, or Cell than ration decision-making, something which I have seen with my own eyes. We are lucky in the Anseth lab that Kristi, our adviser, is willing to publish quality work in any reputable journal, but I have heard from many graduate students whose advisers refuse to submit to lower-impact publications. This results in either good science going unpublished or the research being directed towards a path with the potential to generate the highest impact rather than the one most likely to be successful.

However, this idea of tyranny is a double-edged sword. Someone has to curate scientific knowledge. For better or for worse, even young scientists are judged by their quality and quantity of publications leading to a strong motivation to publish frequently. This leads to an enormous volume of published science and some entity needs to separate the wheat from the chaff, allowing easy dissemination of ground-breaking science to journalists and industry. I agree with Dr. Schekman in the sense that the current system could use a tune-up and have frequent conversations with other graduate students about publishing, but I’m not sure how a better system would work. Aside from withholding research that does not fit into one of the top journals, which I believe is always a travesty, the current system does a reasonable job of ensuring top work of general interest is published in top journals and field-specific work is published in lower-impact journals. Mistakes certainly get made and researchers probably get too wound up with impact, but any industry faces similar problems and science is no different.