Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#121

Post by masklinn » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 3:01 PM UTC

baldfat wrote: post #118

masklinn wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Peer Review = Flawed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/ 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.

The opposing argument to Open and Free is that the main argument is that they need money for journals because they are peer reviewed. Peer reviews cost money. The integrity of the journal and science cost money. Therefore we are befitting science by having a pay wall. So they take grants and federal money put the results behind pay walls and say they are doing us a service. That is flawed.

Again Open (access) and Free (publication) are largely orthogonal. For instance PLOS journals are Open Access but not Free Publication, the publication fees funding edition and review.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#122

Post by kragen » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 3:01 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #99

TeMPOraL wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which has to be one of the worst institutional decisions ever That is very, very true. That PR fuckup carried on to this day and age. Three and a half centuries later, people still blame them for that.

Hindsight's 20/20. Jailing some scientist trying to promote some radical new theory is a different matter when you're looking at it from their perspective. In fact, that'd be almost as reasonable as modern commercial interests arguing against some kind of theory that proposed humans were impacting the climate of the planet...

"Arguing against" is always okay. It's okay to be wrong. What's not okay is squelching conflicting opinions with violence so that neither you nor anybody else has a chance to stop being wrong. How many decades of astronomical progress did we lose to Urban VII? How many scholars or potential scholars in other fields suffered a chilling effect from seeing that proposing new scientific theories could bring the Inquisition down upon their head?

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#123

Post by leephillips » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 3:04 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #112

leephillips wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"enough evidence to promote his model" I don't know what this is supposed to mean. For Galileo, his observations that Venus had phases, like the Moon, and that Jupiter had its own moons, and more, were enough to convince him that the Copernican theory was more likely to be correct than the geocentric model. We now know that he interpreted the evidence correctly.

The three links, especially the LW comment, go into details of what exactly this is supposed to mean. TL;DR: The models that were popular in times of Galileo weren't stories told to poor villagers by the Evil Church; they were precise mathematical tools that could be used to predict in advance the positions of planets, eclipses, etc. They also had an elaborate explanations for what the parts of their models mean. And…

Your version of the history and relationships among ideas at the time in physics and astronomy is hopelessly garbled. I respectfully suggest you read Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution. Your comments about people not being stupid, the Church's motivations, etc., if intended as a reply to me, are strawmen.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#124

Post by dalke » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 3:05 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #119

dalke wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate? I haven't seen any differences in the Swedish library system compared to the US one, and my experiences with the German libraries have also been good.

I'm sure you know more about the Swedish and German library systems than I do.

Sure, but I don't know about 'most of the rest of the [developed] world', which apparently you do.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#125

Post by yati » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 3:05 PM UTC

I've never published a paper, and can't understand why we need actors like Elsevier and other paywalls for scientific research publication. What motivates scientists to use a publisher's services? Can't these be replicated by setting up a government publication house?

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#126

Post by wolfgke » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 3:06 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #101

arbitrage wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is being unfairly controlled by oligopolists, if not straight out monopolists in many areas. This is not free market doctrine. This is econ 101 on how to subvert the free market.

How is it a monopoly situation? There are multiple journals out there where scientists can publish their work. They could also start their own journal (open-access if they like) without many barriers.

This is a two-sided market, where the publishers are the middlemen between scientists publishing their results and readers of the papers.

You argue that the side scientists - publisher is a free market. I consider this as dubious because of, say, impact factors, but for the sake of argumentation, I'll accept it for now.

But the really interesting side of the market is not scientist - publisher, but publisher - reader (this is what the original article is all about). And this is part of the two-sided market clearly is a monopoly, since there is no competition between publishers for a given paper, but there is only one publisher that is allowed to sell access to a paper (thanks to the copyright laws).

TLDR: Thanks to the copyright laws one side of the two-sided market is a monopoly.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#127

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 3:08 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #122

ethbro wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hindsight's 20/20. Jailing some scientist trying to promote some radical new theory is a different matter when you're looking at it from their perspective. In fact, that'd be almost as reasonable as modern commercial interests arguing against some kind of theory that proposed humans were impacting the climate of the planet...

"Arguing against" is always okay. It's okay to be wrong. What's not okay is squelching conflicting opinions with violence so that neither you nor anybody else has a chance to stop being wrong. How many decades of astronomical progress did we lose to Urban VII? How many scholars or potential scholars in other fields suffered a chilling effect from seeing that proposing new scientific theories could bring the Inquisiti…

What did Urban VII do?

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#128

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 3:10 PM UTC

leephillips wrote: post #123

TeMPOraL wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The three links, especially the LW comment, go into details of what exactly this is supposed to mean. TL;DR: The models that were popular in times of Galileo weren't stories told to poor villagers by the Evil Church; they were precise mathematical tools that could be used to predict in advance the positions of planets, eclipses, etc. They also had an elaborate explanations for what the parts of their models mean. And…

Your version of the history and relationships among ideas at the time in physics and astronomy is hopelessly garbled. I respectfully suggest you read Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution . Your comments about people not being stupid, the Church's motivations, etc., if intended as a reply to me, are strawmen.

I'll add that to my ever-growing ToRead list. Since you seem to have read Kuhn, could you elaborate in which parts he disagrees with the sources referenced upthread?

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#129

Post by refurb » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 3:13 PM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #126

refurb wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it a monopoly situation? There are multiple journals out there where scientists can publish their work. They could also start their own journal (open-access if they like) without many barriers.

This is a two-sided market, where the publishers are the middlemen between scientists publishing their results and readers of the papers. You argue that the side scientists - publisher is a free market. I consider this as dubious because of, say, impact factors, but for the sake of argumentation, I'll accept it for now. But the really interesting side of the market is not scientist - publisher, but publisher - reader…

By that same argument, the computer market is a one-sided monopoly as well. Apple and Apple alone produces and sells Apple computers.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#130

Post by thaumasiotes » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 3:14 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #122

ethbro wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hindsight's 20/20. Jailing some scientist trying to promote some radical new theory is a different matter when you're looking at it from their perspective. In fact, that'd be almost as reasonable as modern commercial interests arguing against some kind of theory that proposed humans were impacting the climate of the planet...

"Arguing against" is always okay. It's okay to be wrong. What's not okay is squelching conflicting opinions with violence so that neither you nor anybody else has a chance to stop being wrong. How many decades of astronomical progress did we lose to Urban VII? How many scholars or potential scholars in other fields suffered a chilling effect from seeing that proposing new scientific theories could bring the Inquisiti…

> How many decades of astronomical progress did we lose to Urban VII?

Good question. I've never thought of astronomy as characterized by a constant stream of progress building mainly on the work of past astronomers; instead, I've seen it as more in line with the model of "technology advances, with ancillary benefits to all sorts of different fields including astronomy". For example, radio telescopes owe a lot to progress in physics, but not very much to progress in astronomy specifically.

If that's the case, "none" is a very plausible answer to your question.