Random guess, but it seems that 50% of journals in the fields I've been in are owned by Elsevier, even if it doesn't appear to be at first. And yes, a publication in an Elsevier or Springer journal rather than a new open-access one can make a difference of prestige that could change which university I work for in the next 4 years, for example.
> And yes, a publication in an Elsevier or Springer journal rather than a new open-access one can make a difference of prestige that could change which university I work for in the next 4 years, for example. But won't every university you apply to tell you that that isn't the case?
"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…
> It eventually took Newton, few decades later, to basically sort things out by providing a) an actual explanation for why stuff would orbit other stuff
I'm not sure how you got here. By the standards you're applying to Galileo, Newton did nothing of the kind. The limit of Newton's explanation for why stuff orbits other stuff is "because it's stuff" (you might say "because the stuff has mass"... but all stuff has mass). That's not much of an explanation.
You can make a judgment call about the relative merits of "new theory, doesn't make numeric predictions well" and "very old theory, makes numeric predictions almost flawlessly, additionally predicts things that we know to be false".
"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?
Prosecuted Galileo, resulting in him spending the rest of his life under house arrest?
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.
Well I guess I don't see free and open as being opposing to each other. Now there is the option of being Free as in Beer but I really believe with the Internet we can have free and open. IF someone takes grant money from the government the research should be both free from fees and not behind a paid wall.
Why is it parasitic again? These journals are providing a service. You may not agree with the cost of that service and are free (both authors and reader) to get that service somewhere else.
> These journals are providing a service. The journals provide a service, but Elsevier is a rent-seeking entity, it buys up/takes over publications and hikes up prices. http://imechanica.org/node/1531#comment-3251 estimates that the International Journal of Solids and Structures cost about $0.5m/year to run and had revenues of about $3.5m, or a net profit of $3m going to Elsevier for owning the journal and little els…
Earning profits is good for society. It demonstrates that the seller is providing a needed product. And it triggers others to innovate, to find ways to provide that product too, and get in on the racket. This innovation then drives down costs.
And that's exactly what you see happening here. The linguists are saying that they'll be able to provide the product for a lesser price, but being nice and offering to let Elsevier continue to compete. If Elsevier refuses, and the linguists go ahead and start their own journal, then the free market has triumphed.
This is an excellent argument for piracy as a learning tool and against the current trend in copyright law (see TPP, etc.). I really see no difference between this and someone pirating content with the intent to learn (like my teenage self). I wish our society did more to encourage the extremely few people who actually want to learn, want to better themselves, and have something to contribute to society instead of criminalizing their activities. It'd be one thing if the government provided alternatives, but at least in the US, you won't even get taught basic math properly in many schools, let alone anything that might actually stimulate minds. Is it any wonder then that the government does so much to protect the "intellectual property" (whatever that means) rights of corporations but does nothing to protect the IP rights to scientific research, including research paid for? Even a simple law, requiring government funded research to be publicly, freely available would go a long way, assuming it actually was freely available, not 'freely available for $50 / paper' or whatever the lawmakers want to redefine 'freely' to mean.
"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 prog…
The math and development behind a geocentric model is fascinating in a kink of fractal way. Everything needs and receives its own adjustment.
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?
To be concise, your qualifications for a university may depend on what journals you publish your articles in, and how "prestigious" they are.
My brief visits to France, England, Japan, and Brazil have left me deeply unimpressed with their public library systems. Here in Argentina there are bookstores everywhere but they sell almost exclusively fiction (including astrology, psychology, revisionist history, etc.; maybe "matters of opinion" is a more charitable term) and the library system is a poor shadow of what I'm used to even in the poor parts of the US.…
Based on your clarification, it appears that your comments are opinion based on a couple of brief personal experiences. From your original comment I assumed you were making a broader and more definite statement. Thank you for correcting my assumption. Regarding the English library system, as JupiterMoon pointed out, the British library provides interlibrary loan services, which is the topic at hand. In fact, I've use…
Interlibrary loan services are wonderful. They were a lifesaver when I lived in a small town of 40,000 people 400 km away from the nearest "city" (of 120,000 people). But they are not a substitute for being able to browse the stacks; it's like the difference between using a web browser and a command-line anonymous FTP client.