81–90 of 212 posts
In France, there is a proposal, backed by an overwhelming majority of scientists, to mandate free and open access to scientific research results. See: https://www.republique-numerique.fr/consultations/projet-de-... Hopefully this could end up in the Law next year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scientists still love giving up their rights to Elsevier though. They're as much to blame as the publisher. Maybe something would start to happen if scientists preferentially avoided citing non-openly published papers. They won't though, because their work is too competitive, but it might help to put a damper on it.
> Scientists still love giving up their rights to Elsevier though. They're as much to blame as the publisher. Scientists don't love giving up their rights to Elsevier. Elsevier owns many high IF journals in a number of fields, and publishing in high IF journals is part of how you "prove your worth" and get grants. Scientists give up their rights to Elsevier because that's how the "scientific economy" of their field o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think the paper is free? You think the editors, typesetters etc are free? I'm not saying it should be as expensive as it is, I'm saying if you want to distribute for free, the publishing party (the research group) will have to pay more or the journal will have to take less profits.
Printing is a separate concern to modern publishing - if people want to read paper versions of academic work, they can foot the bill. Academic editors often work free for scientific publishers, and very few journals employ copy editors (though some do). Typesetting for the internet can be automated. Nobody needs to pay more, but the publishers should certainly be making less profit. What really needs to happen is the…
I also don't like it but the paper needs be printed and reviewed. This is not free. Perhaps we should agree that the publishing group pays for the entire cost of the article so that it can be free after the process of publishing it? Or boycot paywalled publishers, maybe go for PLOS? If you have ever complained about paywalls, don't ever publish in a paywalled journal yourself. I'm all for free papers by the way, noth…
- Reviews are always free (nobody gets paid for reviewing academic paper, in contrast to grant proposal for which we are sometimes paid)
- I have not seen a printed version of a journal for a while (except the very big ones like Nature or Science, but we buy them mostly for the news/view section, not that much for the academic papers at the end)
- Copy editors never did anything useful to my papers. In CS, we usually submit a nice latex file and they do not really do any work on the layout (it might be different in other fields, where people submit crappy MS Word files).
... so, let's say that the added value of the publisher (even for PLOS) is marginal...
With that said---I'm a Nature subscriber, and I'm pleased to see the emphasis on "Open Access" by many scientists and organizations. Hopefully this trend will continue, and silly issues like individuals requesting PDFs from fellow scientists won't be termed "piracy".
[0]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Piracy
Good for them. Living in developing country you learn to ignore copyright or you never learn anything. I don't know if it was invented as a way for developed countries to keep competive advantage, but it sure would work that way if people actually obeyed.
The only "online piracy" I see here is when Elsevier demands US$30 from you to get a copy of a paper written by scientists paid for by your tax dollars, who paid Elsevier page fees to publish it . Elsevier and similar companies are the thieves here, and they have a hell of a lot of nerve to be accusing scientists of "stealing" and "piracy" for working to create the very knowledge Elsevier shamelessly exploits. (Even…
Agree completely with the idea of your comment, but I have to nitpick on one thing: > So did the Pope when he sentenced Galileo to life in prison for promoting heliocentrism. As far as we can tell, Galileo was persecuted by the Pope not because of science, but because Galileo was basically an asshole, who abused his friendship with the Pope and then kept venting out against him. The issue was strictly political. See…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Scientists still love giving up their rights to Elsevier though. They're as much to blame as the publisher. Scientists don't love giving up their rights to Elsevier. Elsevier owns many high IF journals in a number of fields, and publishing in high IF journals is part of how you "prove your worth" and get grants. Scientists give up their rights to Elsevier because that's how the "scientific economy" of their field o…
If they have the will and the guts they'll do it or is Elsevier going to cream off taxpayers' money for ever and a day? Gower has said "no" http://thecostofknowledge.com/ - how about a few others?
The only thing "will and guts" do when all your field's high IF journals are big publishers is give you the boot.
> Gower has said "no"
Gower was a Fields medalist, Royal Society fellow and Shaw selection committee member before saying no, his stand is nice but he's not what I'm talking about.
> how about a few others?
Many have signed the petition and possibly more have actually done the work of trying to set up or raise the profile of open-access journals.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree completely with the idea of your comment, but I have to nitpick on one thing: > So did the Pope when he sentenced Galileo to life in prison for promoting heliocentrism. As far as we can tell, Galileo was persecuted by the Pope not because of science, but because Galileo was basically an asshole, who abused his friendship with the Pope and then kept venting out against him. The issue was strictly political. See…
Galileo definitely did not luck into the right theory. He was one of the most important scientists of all time, and his heraldry of the empirical scientific method and the results it produced are anything but a product of chance.
Peer Review = Flawed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/ Tax Payer Money going to research not available to continue science = Flawed Policy How can an article about this not mention Aaron Schwartz?
Then again, as per your article
> Nevertheless, it is likely to remain central to science and journals because there is no obvious alternative
And the problem outlined with TFA has little to do with peer-review, it has to do with open access which is largely orthogonal.