I often wonder why academics don't just publish their articles themselves, or on a free platform. If research is publicly funded, why is it not published publicly for free? Who controls where this...
I often wonder why academics don't just publish their articles themselves, or on a free platform. If research is publicly funded, why is it not published publicly for free? Who controls where this stuff is published to?
As an example - in order for me to receive certain credit for published work (for the purposes of things like government/grant funding), it needs to be published to certain supported channels. The...
As an example - in order for me to receive certain credit for published work (for the purposes of things like government/grant funding), it needs to be published to certain supported channels. The vast majority of these are paid publishing centres like Elsevier owned journals, or through conferences like the ones IEEE runs. Anyone in an institution like mine will have paid access to pretty much everything in existence, so it's transparent for us, but is limited to those academics with that access, or individuals who pay.
I look for open access where I can, but it isn't always available, and I can't do research without funding (can't stay employed without recognised published materials either). However, I can send out free pre-print copies of my work when asked, so I do that all the time. And send people to libgen.io when they ask how to get at most of this stuff also.
Potentially. There are significant issues surrounding the control of research, which is how Elsevier & Co got their control in the first place - they generally allow peers to control what gets...
Potentially. There are significant issues surrounding the control of research, which is how Elsevier & Co got their control in the first place - they generally allow peers to control what gets published. That means no government controls and no private corporate interests (there are arguments around the funding, but once the research is done it's down to the academy).
So long as the open alternative covered that, and the government support was there, then yes Elsevier & co would be shit out of luck. My current hopes are on PLOS, but for a publication venue to hit A* ranking it takes a long, long time.
It depends - the merit system for how these things work is tricky. A lot of Journals are very carefully curated, so only the most relevant and most outstanding research gets published. Therefore,...
It depends - the merit system for how these things work is tricky. A lot of Journals are very carefully curated, so only the most relevant and most outstanding research gets published. Therefore, having a free-to-access journal is difficult.
You need to pay expert editors, well versed in the topics at hand
You need to have enough prestige and be a supported channel in order for the work to count as published, if it's in your journal (something that's harder to attain if running a free journal)
Finally, people who employ researchers want publications in prestigious journals, so even if someone starts one today, will it have enough notoriety that it could work? mayyyybe
One way around this would be to start a free journal that goes about verifying existing science. Not glamorous, but it would reproduce scientific work, allowing for result checking as well as re-publication of an experiment, but for cheaper/free. It would also allow students who are undergrad level to potentially learn what goes into research techniques, and be first authors on a paper.
A few countries have started requiring open access to publicly funded works. However, that's not common, and it would overall suck for researchers. On top of this, you can always just email the...
A few countries have started requiring open access to publicly funded works.
However, that's not common, and it would overall suck for researchers.
On top of this, you can always just email the person who wrote whatever it is you want to get your hands on and they'll likely give you a copy.
Why would that suck for researchers? Don't they ultimately just want people to read their work? Or are they getting crazy royalties from the publishers?
Why would that suck for researchers? Don't they ultimately just want people to read their work? Or are they getting crazy royalties from the publishers?
@piedpiper @cadadr This. No open-access journal has a hint of prestige. If you want to be able to keep doing research, you need to get your name in prestigious journals. Have either of you ever...
No open-access journal has a hint of prestige. If you want to be able to keep doing research, you need to get your name in prestigious journals.
Have either of you ever put out a paper? Or have had friends who have? Cadadr in particular seems to have an extreme hint of "Not knowing what he's talking about at all."
Sci-Hub exists, use Sci-Hub. But going open-access across the board would screw over researchers to the extreme.
Thank you for your kind, civil words. I'm soon to go into an academic career in linguistics. I will not publish a single paper in a non Open Access journal. Prestige is something we have to gain...
Thank you for your kind, civil words.
I'm soon to go into an academic career in linguistics. I will not publish a single paper in a non Open Access journal. Prestige is something we have to gain through what we produce, not where we put it. We already have prestigious Open Access journals, and besides, we have conferences and other media. At this point, it is a decision one has to make. I could easily sacrifice a few grants and a few applauds for the advancement of the scientific publishing business for the better.
And besides, how do Open Access journals gain prestige, assuming they have none, if nobody publishes there? Are we scientists or humanists because we want to have prestige and grant money, or we want to discover how things work and advance the state of knowledge? I've sacrificed a lucrative career of software development for the latter.
I did consider labeling your comment for malice, and that would've been the first time that I did that. But I decided I'd rather assume good intentions and failed delivery. You don't know who you're talking to on the internet, so do not assume what people know or don't know. Especially when you demonstrate that one could have made a similar attack on you when you say something like "No open-access journal has a hint of prestige." which couldn't have been farther from truth.
You often give this impression yourself. You did once say that you could learn everything about the humanities by reading books, because no research was ever done in those fields. Not only was...
seems to have an extreme hint of "Not knowing what he's talking about at all."
You often give this impression yourself. You did once say that you could learn everything about the humanities by reading books, because no research was ever done in those fields.
Not only was that very very wrong, it was ignorant and insulting, so perhaps refer to the old story about glass houses and stones before passing judgement on other people's opinions and knowledge.
Even if this were true (and I absolutely believe that it is not), major funding bodies like the EU and the Wellcome Trust are currently heavily encouraging open access publishing for works that...
No open-access journal has a hint of prestige.
Even if this were true (and I absolutely believe that it is not), major funding bodies like the EU and the Wellcome Trust are currently heavily encouraging open access publishing for works that they fund, and will be mandating it in just over a year. If there aren't OA journals around now that are prestigious enough for you, there certainly will be in a year or two when it's the default publishing model for huge numbers of European researchers.
If you want to be able to keep doing research, you need to get your name in prestigious journals.
This is 100% true, and it really underlines how tenuous the publishers' grasp on the market is nowadays. They provided a valuable service back when typesetting, distribution, and communication was deeply involved and difficult. Nowadays they're charging enormous fees for other peoples' work just because their brands currently have the prestige - they don't actually do anything unique or special. Inertia is powerful, sure, but with enough of a push (the people with the money demanding it, for example) that prestige can easily shift.
But going open-access across the board would screw over researchers to the extreme.
I'm honestly not seeing why you think this. Prestige is transferrable, it's not tied to the funding model. If every well-regarded researcher is publishing in OA journals, then by definition those journals are prestigious.
As much as I love the idea of all research being OA in theory, I'd bet five to one - as much as I'd like it not to be the case - this isn't what's going to happen for at least ~seven years. What...
If there aren't OA journals around now that are prestigious enough for you, there certainly will be in a year or two when it's the default publishing model for huge numbers of European researchers.
As much as I love the idea of all research being OA in theory, I'd bet five to one - as much as I'd like it not to be the case - this isn't what's going to happen for at least ~seven years. What will happen is European researchers losing the option of mobility quite quickly. To merge two paragraphs here a bit:
I'm honestly not seeing why you think this. Prestige is transferrable, it's not tied to the funding model. If every well-regarded researcher is publishing in OA journals, then by definition those journals are prestigious.
Yes, prestige is transferable, however that transfer isn't automatic. Especially not in academia. In the meantime, you have a decade of researchers fleeing Europe or having their careers flatlined by staying.
I certainly haven't, which is why I was simply asking questions and not making any claims. I have used a lot of the legal sites when writing papers (for assignments, not publication) and always...
Have either of you ever put out a paper?
I certainly haven't, which is why I was simply asking questions and not making any claims. I have used a lot of the legal sites when writing papers (for assignments, not publication) and always found them to be unnecessarily cumbersome. You still didn't explain how open access would "overall suck for researchers" or "screw over researchers to the extreme". I would be interested to know, as it seems like others here disagree with that sentiment.
Without prestige playing a role, researchers have to move to doing "attractive" research to get grants. Ask more or less any academic security researcher and most computer science ones. This is...
Without prestige playing a role, researchers have to move to doing "attractive" research to get grants. Ask more or less any academic security researcher and most computer science ones.
This is bad because what's "attractive" isn't necessarily what's useful to society. A misalignment of incentives.
EDIT: I elaborated a bit here, in case you were confused/confounded with anything.
Granted they're a good person, or the institution is a proper one. I've made requests that linger unanswered since months. It would not suck at all for researchers. The whole point of publishing...
Granted they're a good person, or the institution is a proper one. I've made requests that linger unanswered since months.
It would not suck at all for researchers. The whole point of publishing to a supported channel is that it is a supported channel. If an open access channel is supported by the government, then there is no point to not publishing on them.
I can not overstate how grateful I am for sci-hub. It has enabled me knowledge I couldn't even think of accessing, with those horrible price points and with the sub-par libraries of my country.
I am not really familiar with the players involved, but is it really as cut and dry, about "free speech", and the ruling against them truly "overreach", as this article makes it out to be? Is...
I am not really familiar with the players involved, but is it really as cut and dry, about "free speech", and the ruling against them truly "overreach", as this article makes it out to be? Is Elsevier really "monopoliz[ing] scientific publishing, paywalling publicly funded science that is selected, reviewed and edited by volunteers who mostly work for publicly funded institutions"?
I ask because the New York district court last year awarded Elsavier $15M for copyright infringement against Sci-Hub and the Nature article on the case makes it pretty clear it was copyright infringement but does also point to Elsavier kind of being a pretty shitty company as well.
Regardless, that is a pretty funny response from the ISP, although I suspect they will come to regret it... even if fighting for Sci-Hub and against Elsevier is ultimately "for the greater good".
Yes. It's as simple as that. Even Harvard University can't afford to purchase all the journals it needs:
Is Elsevier really "monopoliz[ing] scientific publishing, paywalling publicly funded science that is selected, reviewed and edited by volunteers who mostly work for publicly funded institutions"?
Yes. It's as simple as that. Even Harvard University can't afford to purchase all the journals it needs:
Robert Darnton, director of Harvard Library told the Guardian: "I hope that other universities will take similar action. We all face the same paradox. We faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all of it for free … and then we buy back the results of our labour at outrageous prices.["]
Well in that case, it makes this news a hell of a lot more satisfying to read about. Thanks for the Guardian link. That definitely doesn't seem to be an isolated case either since even the Nature...
Well in that case, it makes this news a hell of a lot more satisfying to read about. Thanks for the Guardian link.
More than 10,000 academics have already joined a boycott of Elsevier, the huge Dutch publisher, in protest at its journal pricing and access policies. Many university libraries pay more than half of their journal budgets to the publishers Elsevier, Springer and Wiley
That definitely doesn't seem to be an isolated case either since even the Nature article I linked mentions a similar boycott effort:
In Finland, for example, several thousand scientists have signed a petition saying they will abstain from all editorial and reviewing requests from Elsevier journals until a “fair deal” is reached between the publisher and the Finnish library consortium over subscription costs and open access models.
Even if it was clearly copyright infringement and illegal, I don't think it should be up to the ISP to block websites. It just sets a dangerous precedent and is already happening too much.
Even if it was clearly copyright infringement and illegal, I don't think it should be up to the ISP to block websites. It just sets a dangerous precedent and is already happening too much.
I often wonder why academics don't just publish their articles themselves, or on a free platform. If research is publicly funded, why is it not published publicly for free? Who controls where this stuff is published to?
As an example - in order for me to receive certain credit for published work (for the purposes of things like government/grant funding), it needs to be published to certain supported channels. The vast majority of these are paid publishing centres like Elsevier owned journals, or through conferences like the ones IEEE runs. Anyone in an institution like mine will have paid access to pretty much everything in existence, so it's transparent for us, but is limited to those academics with that access, or individuals who pay.
I look for open access where I can, but it isn't always available, and I can't do research without funding (can't stay employed without recognised published materials either). However, I can send out free pre-print copies of my work when asked, so I do that all the time. And send people to libgen.io when they ask how to get at most of this stuff also.
So you are telling me if there was a free government supported channel to publish to, then there wouldn't be an issue?
Potentially. There are significant issues surrounding the control of research, which is how Elsevier & Co got their control in the first place - they generally allow peers to control what gets published. That means no government controls and no private corporate interests (there are arguments around the funding, but once the research is done it's down to the academy).
So long as the open alternative covered that, and the government support was there, then yes Elsevier & co would be shit out of luck. My current hopes are on PLOS, but for a publication venue to hit A* ranking it takes a long, long time.
It depends - the merit system for how these things work is tricky. A lot of Journals are very carefully curated, so only the most relevant and most outstanding research gets published. Therefore, having a free-to-access journal is difficult.
One way around this would be to start a free journal that goes about verifying existing science. Not glamorous, but it would reproduce scientific work, allowing for result checking as well as re-publication of an experiment, but for cheaper/free. It would also allow students who are undergrad level to potentially learn what goes into research techniques, and be first authors on a paper.
A few countries have started requiring open access to publicly funded works.
However, that's not common, and it would overall suck for researchers.
On top of this, you can always just email the person who wrote whatever it is you want to get your hands on and they'll likely give you a copy.
Why would that suck for researchers? Don't they ultimately just want people to read their work? Or are they getting crazy royalties from the publishers?
AFAIK they're not paid a dime by the publishers. It's just the name of the journal which helps bring grants their way.
@piedpiper @cadadr
This.
No open-access journal has a hint of prestige. If you want to be able to keep doing research, you need to get your name in prestigious journals.
Have either of you ever put out a paper? Or have had friends who have? Cadadr in particular seems to have an extreme hint of "Not knowing what he's talking about at all."
Sci-Hub exists, use Sci-Hub. But going open-access across the board would screw over researchers to the extreme.
Thank you for your kind, civil words.
I'm soon to go into an academic career in linguistics. I will not publish a single paper in a non Open Access journal. Prestige is something we have to gain through what we produce, not where we put it. We already have prestigious Open Access journals, and besides, we have conferences and other media. At this point, it is a decision one has to make. I could easily sacrifice a few grants and a few applauds for the advancement of the scientific publishing business for the better.
And besides, how do Open Access journals gain prestige, assuming they have none, if nobody publishes there? Are we scientists or humanists because we want to have prestige and grant money, or we want to discover how things work and advance the state of knowledge? I've sacrificed a lucrative career of software development for the latter.
I did consider labeling your comment for malice, and that would've been the first time that I did that. But I decided I'd rather assume good intentions and failed delivery. You don't know who you're talking to on the internet, so do not assume what people know or don't know. Especially when you demonstrate that one could have made a similar attack on you when you say something like "No open-access journal has a hint of prestige." which couldn't have been farther from truth.
You often give this impression yourself. You did once say that you could learn everything about the humanities by reading books, because no research was ever done in those fields.
Not only was that very very wrong, it was ignorant and insulting, so perhaps refer to the old story about glass houses and stones before passing judgement on other people's opinions and knowledge.
Misquote.
Even if this were true (and I absolutely believe that it is not), major funding bodies like the EU and the Wellcome Trust are currently heavily encouraging open access publishing for works that they fund, and will be mandating it in just over a year. If there aren't OA journals around now that are prestigious enough for you, there certainly will be in a year or two when it's the default publishing model for huge numbers of European researchers.
This is 100% true, and it really underlines how tenuous the publishers' grasp on the market is nowadays. They provided a valuable service back when typesetting, distribution, and communication was deeply involved and difficult. Nowadays they're charging enormous fees for other peoples' work just because their brands currently have the prestige - they don't actually do anything unique or special. Inertia is powerful, sure, but with enough of a push (the people with the money demanding it, for example) that prestige can easily shift.
I'm honestly not seeing why you think this. Prestige is transferrable, it's not tied to the funding model. If every well-regarded researcher is publishing in OA journals, then by definition those journals are prestigious.
As much as I love the idea of all research being OA in theory, I'd bet five to one - as much as I'd like it not to be the case - this isn't what's going to happen for at least ~seven years. What will happen is European researchers losing the option of mobility quite quickly. To merge two paragraphs here a bit:
Yes, prestige is transferable, however that transfer isn't automatic. Especially not in academia. In the meantime, you have a decade of researchers fleeing Europe or having their careers flatlined by staying.
I'll take that bet! I disagree, but I see where you're coming from - it'll be interesting to see how it pans out.
Likewise!
I certainly haven't, which is why I was simply asking questions and not making any claims. I have used a lot of the legal sites when writing papers (for assignments, not publication) and always found them to be unnecessarily cumbersome. You still didn't explain how open access would "overall suck for researchers" or "screw over researchers to the extreme". I would be interested to know, as it seems like others here disagree with that sentiment.
Without prestige playing a role, researchers have to move to doing "attractive" research to get grants. Ask more or less any academic security researcher and most computer science ones.
This is bad because what's "attractive" isn't necessarily what's useful to society. A misalignment of incentives.
EDIT: I elaborated a bit here, in case you were confused/confounded with anything.
Granted they're a good person, or the institution is a proper one. I've made requests that linger unanswered since months.
It would not suck at all for researchers. The whole point of publishing to a supported channel is that it is a supported channel. If an open access channel is supported by the government, then there is no point to not publishing on them.
I can not overstate how grateful I am for sci-hub. It has enabled me knowledge I couldn't even think of accessing, with those horrible price points and with the sub-par libraries of my country.
I am not really familiar with the players involved, but is it really as cut and dry, about "free speech", and the ruling against them truly "overreach", as this article makes it out to be? Is Elsevier really "monopoliz[ing] scientific publishing, paywalling publicly funded science that is selected, reviewed and edited by volunteers who mostly work for publicly funded institutions"?
I ask because the New York district court last year awarded Elsavier $15M for copyright infringement against Sci-Hub and the Nature article on the case makes it pretty clear it was copyright infringement but does also point to Elsavier kind of being a pretty shitty company as well.
Regardless, that is a pretty funny response from the ISP, although I suspect they will come to regret it... even if fighting for Sci-Hub and against Elsevier is ultimately "for the greater good".
Yes. It's as simple as that. Even Harvard University can't afford to purchase all the journals it needs:
Well in that case, it makes this news a hell of a lot more satisfying to read about. Thanks for the Guardian link.
That definitely doesn't seem to be an isolated case either since even the Nature article I linked mentions a similar boycott effort:
Even if it was clearly copyright infringement and illegal, I don't think it should be up to the ISP to block websites. It just sets a dangerous precedent and is already happening too much.
Right. While this seems hilarious to me, it also makes me a bit uneasy about ISPs choosing to censor whatever they feel like.