Should All Research Papers Be Free? • Hacker News Board

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#51

Post by rfrey » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:11 AM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #24

rfrey wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who conduct the research, and the people who fund the research, are not collecting the fees to view the research.

The open access journals charge thousands. Journal publishing has costs, and they need to be born by someone. If not from access fees, they'll need to be paid upfront, which means each study costs more, which means either less studying gets done, or funds come from elsewhere to fund it.

From searching on the web it seems like the only open access journals who charge thousands are the traditional publishers (Wiley, Springer) with an "open access" option. They probably have internal conflicts around cannibalizing existing business. Exclusively open access journals seem to charge $USD500-1000. Happy to be corrected with other examples though.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#52

Post by mirimir » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:11 AM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #44

mirimir wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does ACM sell individual papers? If so, what's the price?

It's about the same as everyone else: about 15 USD per paper, e.g. https://dl.acm.org/purchase.cfm?id=2756548&CFID=761526954&CF... They also have a somewhat restrictive licensing on their software: http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/softwarecrnotice This part is kind of weird, as they have a noncommercial clause on their copyrighted algorithms, which makes them non-free. On a slightly different note, I was some…

How the hell can that be "non-profit"? Where is the money going? Free conferences in Dubai?

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#53

Post by qq66 » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:11 AM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #20

payne92 wrote: post #5

I feel especially strongly that papers that result from taxpayer-funded research should be free.

Are you, as a taxpayer, willing to pay (your share of) the extra $1000 or so per paper that it would take?

Yes, as a taxpayer, I am 100% ok with that. The $1000 is a small fraction of the total cost, and I'd be paying close to or more than that amount for all the journal subscriptions that a federally funded research institution carries anyways. The benefit being, that the work that I am paying for is accessible to everyone instead of just the elite institutions.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#54

Post by return0 » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:13 AM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #42

return0 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities already pay comparable subscription fees

If most papers can be accessed for free, why would universities still pay?

They cant be accessed legally. Most universities are too invested in the current system to stop paying. That's why publishers bundle their journals in extremely expensive packages they sell to libraries.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#55

Post by mirimir » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:14 AM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #38

mirimir wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe public funders ought to claim copyright on any work produced, and require open access publication.

That's a perfectly fine policy, if they want to implement it. Just note that it will increase the cost of every paper, because they now need to pay for open access.

Publication costs are minuscule relative to research costs. Rounding error.

And furthermore, they're minuscule compared to costs of journal access.

Edit: I'm wrong on the second point. They're actually comparable. See comment below.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#56

Post by ikeboy » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:14 AM UTC

ycmbntrthrwaway wrote: post #43

ikeboy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you, as a taxpayer, willing to pay (your share of) the extra $1000 or so per paper that it would take?

As a taxpayer, you already pay state universities to access those papers. If every paper was published as open-access, I am sure the price of open-access could be reduced.

>If every paper was published as open-access, I am sure the price of open-access could be reduced.

Do you have any evidence of such economies of scale in existing publishers? As the article says, their margins are around 30%. That means the maximum they could reduce the price without losing money (with simplifying assumptions) is in the 30% range. If you have a way to be significantly more efficient than the status quo, go ahead, I'm sure everyone will be thrilled.

>As a taxpayer, you already pay state universities to access those papers.

That's a fair point. Is the government paying more in access fees than they're saving by not using open access journals?

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#57

Post by ikeboy » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:16 AM UTC

rfrey wrote: post #51

ikeboy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The open access journals charge thousands. Journal publishing has costs, and they need to be born by someone. If not from access fees, they'll need to be paid upfront, which means each study costs more, which means either less studying gets done, or funds come from elsewhere to fund it.

From searching on the web it seems like the only open access journals who charge thousands are the traditional publishers (Wiley, Springer) with an "open access" option. They probably have internal conflicts around cannibalizing existing business. Exclusively open access journals seem to charge $USD500-1000. Happy to be corrected with other examples though.

https://www.plos.org/publications/publication-fees/ lists significantly more than that.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#58

Post by return0 » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:17 AM UTC

I hope this publicitly doesnt lead to swift shutdown of scihub. She provides us with a great service that helps many researchers work faster. We should also commend her for stirring the most lively debate about an anachronistic and dumb publishing system.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#59

Post by denzil_correa » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:18 AM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #46

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Journal publishing has costs I've yet to see any justification at all for the outrageous fees charged by academic journals. The only costs I can see are printing/distribution and web hosting. Typesetting is trivial. Editing is non-existent. Editorial isn't paid. Peer review isn't paid. Having a nice office and marketing staff who hold university libraries to ransom shouldn't count as a cost.

The first fact you need to deal with is that open access journals, started to explicitly counter the cost problem, have similar costs. If it was as simple as you think it is, open access journals would be much cheaper. (Arxiv is not peer reviewed, and does not count.) The second point is that publishers costs are around 70% of revenue, as the article says margins are around 30%. That means there's a limit to how low…

> (Arxiv is not peer reviewed, and does not count.

Oh it does count. Peer reviews in journals are done by scientists for free. Peer review adds completely negligible costs (or even ZERO) to a journal. ArXiv is the perfect example.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#60

Post by VerminOctopus1 » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:18 AM UTC

mmmBacon wrote: post #13

payne92 wrote: post #5

I feel especially strongly that papers that result from taxpayer-funded research should be free.

I also think code used to produce results should be published as well.

I agree with this in theory... but do you really want my garbage, ad hoc, messy code that I used to pipe output from one program to another?