Hello there,
it seems youβre interested in learning more about academic publishing! This game leads you through the different phases of publishing an academic paper. During each phase youβre going to have to answer some questions. Every decision you make has an impact on your score, which consists of three attributes associated with you as a researcher:
- Funding (π)
- Ethics (π)
- Reputation (β)
By the end of the game youβll learn about the different forms of publishing. For this, it is very important that you keep track of your stats. You can either write it down during the game or leave the answer of your choice open and sum up in the end in the end.
Part I: Funding, grants and preparation
Question I:
Choose your companion β The Assistant
Youβre staring at two CVs and one business card on your desk at the University of Cologne. Your choice will define your labβs culture.
A brilliant coder funded by a data-mining giant. They have all the latest tools but require βfirst-lookβ rights to your findings.
They specialize in endangered dialects and insist on community-led data ownership. Itβs slow work, but itβs the ethical way.
They have a track record of publishing in high-impact, paywalled journals. They want results fast and arenβt interested in open-access paperwork.
Question II:
Choose your weapon β The Grant
Your ongoing research needs a budget. You have found a portal where you can apply for some grants. The portal shows three options:
It requires a 50-page Open Science Plan. Itβs prestigious but the funding is barely enough to cover coffee.
Impact:
-2 π, +2 π, +1 β
A private corporation offers a lot of money, but you must use their proprietary software for analysis.
Mid-level funding with no open science requirements. Itβs easy, but it contributes nothing to the movement.
Question III:
Choose your path β Pre-registration
Youβre half-way through your study. Your colleague mentions that if you pre-register your study, a rival lab in Munich might scoop your project.
Preregister publicly on OSF or AsPredicted and make your study public. Youβre protected by a timestamp, but everyone will know what your study is about.
Preregister your study on OSF or AsPredicted but keep it private for two years. Itβs a paper trail only you can see for now.
Donβt preregister. You prefer the flexibility to adjust your hypotheses, which is great if the p-values donβt look good later.
Question IV:
While you start your in-depth research for your study, you realize most key papers are behind paywalls. You are not able to afford this with your budget.
Pay the fee from grant money. The paper is essential for your research.
Only cite freely accessible research, such as preprints and work published in Diamond Open Access journals. You save money but might miss important work that might change the trajectory of your research.
Only pay for the most important articles, and rely on abstracts and secondary sources for the most of your study. And when push comes to shove, thereβs other ways to acquire literature (cf. shadow libraries (Wikipedia)).
Question V:
Pick your pace
Your preliminary findings on your study are looking great! However, a rival lab has just announced a similar study at an upcoming conference in Berlin. You are exhausted and your budget is tight. How do you handle the last round?
You insist on going strong and reliable with your results and performing a double check to ensure total transparency. Itβs slow, and the delay costs you but you leave no room for mistakes.
You skip the secondary audit and βquickly take a lookβ at the final 20% of the data to get the manuscript submitted tonight. You beat the rival lab, securing the publishing first prestige, but your methods section is now a bitβ¦ vague.
You use the last piece of your grant to hire a student assistant to finish the remaining tedious tasks on your research. You maintain quality and speed, but your emergency fund is now down to zero.
Question VI:
Does something seem⦠WEIRD?
The participants of your study are (as is typical in the majority of Western linguistic and psychological research) 90% university students. How do you deal with the WEIRD-ness (that is: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, cf. Henrich et al. (2010)) of your data?
You spend your budget on social media ads to recruit speakers from more diverse linguistic backgrounds.
You keep the student sample but add a tiny disclaimer in the paper. Itβs the industry standard, but itβs lazy.
You narrow your research claim to university students only. Itβs honest, but you make weaker claims that may attract less attention and citations.
Question VII:
Grand Theft Work-device
Disaster strikes at a cafe. Your laptop, only secured by a weak password, containing the majority of your sensitive recordings is stolen. What do you do?
Admit the breach to your ethics committee. Youβll have to cut your losses and your reputation will take a hit.
You still have your notes. You use a generative algorithm to fill in missing data points. No one will know.
You hire a private investigator and a data recovery specialist to track down the hardware containing your data.
Question VIII:
Peer-ing Review
You are asked to peer-review a draft for a journal but you notice that the article was written by your friend/colleague/supervisor, what do you do?
Let the journal know that you feel uncomfortable reviewing the article, since you are reasonably sure who wrote it.
Carry on with the review (not making any difference, despite the fact that you know the author).
Ask your friend what type of feedback or comments they would like. They might just write the review themselves.
Part III: Manuscripts and Visibility
Question IX:
Manuscript transparency
Your analysis of your study is finally complete. You are ready to upload your manuscript, but you must decide how much of your secret sauce β the raw data files, the proprietary metadata, and your specific coding scheme β you will share as part of the public repository.
You upload everything to a public repository with a DOI. Every step of your method is visible and reproducible. Itβs exhausting work that eats into your research time, but you are a paragon of Open Science.
You share a summary dataset and your final results, but you keep the raw data and the specifics private. It protects your competitive advantage for future papers and keeps your reputation high among peers who value proprietary data, though Open Science advocates find it lacking.
You provide no data sharing whatsoever, saying it is about participant privacy to avoid the extra work. You save yourself some time setting it up, but the Open Science community marks your work as unverifiable.
Impact:
-4 π, -2 β, +3 π
Question X:
Visibility Cross-roads
Your paper (the one you spent months on) is complete. But now you face a strategic crossroads. You want the world to see your work, but how you present it changes everything.
You book a flight and a hotel to present your findings at a major linguistics conference in Birmingham. Youβll network with the big names and your reputation will soar, but it is a notable expense.
You upload your manuscript. Itβs freely accessible to everyone, right now. Thereβs a risk: rival researchers might see your idea and try to improve upon it with a more polished version in a journal before you do. But at the same time: you registered your idea, you can prove that you came up with this plan at the time you registered.
You keep the paper on your hard drive until itβs officially accepted by a journal months from now. You save on your budget, but in the publish-or-perish world, you risk becoming irrelevant or forgotten by the time the paper actually comes out.
Yay, you made it to the end! But there is one final choice to make. Look at your final scores for Money, Reputation, and Ethics. If you havenβt already, you can calculate your score by searching the page (using CTRL + f/β + f after copying π, π, and β to iterate through all answers and compute the final stat) based on your chosen answers (the ones you read and left open). Have a look at the score table and choose the type of journal to publish in based on your stats. If you have more than one possibility congratulations, you get to chose!
Prerequisites stats for your journal choice
| Journal Type |
Funding (π) |
Ethics (π) |
Reputation (β) |
| π Diamond |
-25 to -6 |
32 to 22 |
19 to 13 |
| π₯ Gold |
-5 to 2 |
21 to 6 |
12 to 6 |
| π Conventional |
3 to 6 |
5 to -5 |
5 to 1 |
| βοΈ Predatory |
7 to 9 |
-6 to -26 |
0 to -11 |
(n.b.: π Conventional journals are those that follow the established model of academic publishing: written work is only accessible with a subscription or direct purchase of content, open access publishing is either not possible or is very expensive, for the author(s).)
Journal choices
Diamond OA provides immediate free access to articles without charging article processing charges (APCs) to authors. Journals are supported by institutions, scholarly societies, grants, consortia, or volunteer labour. Articles are often published under open licenses (e.g., CC BY), enabling reuse and broad dissemination.
advantage: equitable for both authors and readers, freely accessible to anyone
drawback: many Diamond (and other newer) Open Access journals are less well known, (possibly) reducing your potential audience
Gold OA makes the final published article immediately free on the publisherβs site. Funding commonly comes from article processing charges (APCs) paid by authors, institutions, or funders. Articles are often published under open licenses (e.g., CC BY), enabling reuse and broad dissemination.
advantage: maximum visibility and compliance with OA mandates, freely accessible to anyone
drawback: APCs can exclude authors without funding, since they are the primary source of income for Gold Open Access journals
Paywalled, conventional βclosedβ access journals restrict access to subscribers or pay-per-view users. Publishers generate revenue only from individual or institutional subscriptions because authors typically do not pay publication fees. Content is usually under publisher-controlled licenses, limiting reuse and redistribution.
Predatory journals publish the article immediately without any direct peer review. The author is charged lower publication fees, but the editors provide little or no quality control, archiving or indexing.
advantage: fast processing and easy acceptance, (may be) freely accessible to anyone
drawback: low quality assurance, risk to author reputation and career, higher costs and lack of transparency
Acknowledgements
All pictures of Dr. Owl have been created using ChatGPT 5.2.
