Should All Research Papers Be Free? • Hacker News Board

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#81

Post by ikeboy » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:29 AM UTC

denzil_correa wrote: post #59

ikeboy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (Arxiv is not peer reviewed, and does not count.)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 (Arxiv is not peer reviewed, and does not count.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

> Peer review adds completely negligible costs (or even ZERO) to a journal.

Then can you explain why arxiv costs around $10 per paper, while plos charges over 100 times as much?

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#82

Post by return0 » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:31 AM UTC

ycmbntrthrwaway wrote: post #40

The main problems with tax-funded research and grants is that money is given in return for citations in journals with high "impact factor". As a result, publishers of those journals are indirectly supported by the state. Instead, government or funding organizations should review the results of the work for themselves, but they are unable to do it, because they usually don't understand a thing about research subject.

That's the problem, organizations don't want do do the work so they outsource it. But the journal market is not free, it's dominated by incumbents who earned the position centuries ago. As the experience with open access journals shows so far, it's near impossible to get scientists to volunteer their free labor to a new journal. Regulatory action (like requiring open access for all govt-funded science) should be taken here.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#83

Post by skybrian » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:38 AM UTC

VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #60

mmmBacon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not actually recommending this license, but it seems relevant to mention:

The CRAPL: An academic-strength open source license http://matt.might.net/articles/crapl/

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#84

Post by skybrian » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:41 AM UTC

lacker wrote: post #72

VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, because if it doesn't even compile then I will call BS on your results.

See, that's exactly what you shouldn't do if you want to encourage academics to release the source code.

Academic code sometimes only has been made to work on one machine (the author's). Someone reproducing the results should still have access to the source, even if they have to hack it to work on their system.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#85

Post by pen2l » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:47 AM UTC

east2west wrote: post #23

pen2l wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that knowledge should be accessible to all. But, do realize that there most certainly is value being contributed by journals who are making you pay. For example, the editorial work, the typesetting, the selection, the whole system, etc. So they do need a paycheck from somewhere. So, I think this is actually like the common software/music/movies piracy situation... but a lot better! My (simplified) fe…

Journals do minimal typesetting, and practically no editorial work. Paper reviews are done by academics, free. Editors are mostly academics, not depending a paycheck from publishers. There is cost, like marketing cost, but none that justifies $35 per article to the general public.

That's either a bad lie, or you don't understand how this works. As a small example: Science, Nature, and various other journals produce high quality videos (like this: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv0aU2eKry3kdSTnFa8QAWA ). And they have many in-house designers and editors who do important work like identifying from a sea of work what is important and what is not, etc.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#86

Post by denzil_correa » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:51 AM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #81

denzil_correa wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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.

> Peer review adds completely negligible costs (or even ZERO) to a journal. Then can you explain why arxiv costs around $10 per paper, while plos charges over 100 times as much?

I don't know why PLOS charges more. The point I'm trying to make is that - just because there's an OA journal out there which charges $100 per article; it doesn't mean that the costs are justified.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#87

Post by wodenokoto » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:51 AM UTC

knorby wrote: post #36

wodenokoto wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a government / national perspective should it be free world wide? If so, why should nations give away their expensive research that potentially give them an edge either military or commercially? Personally I almost never traded technology when I played civilization, let alone give it away!

Nationally-funded research that's published in expensive journals is still very much available to the rest of the world. That's true with about anything that's published...

I was gonna say that the rest of the world purchase from these journals, but of course the journal might as well be foreign so that argument doesn't hold.

Good point about the current situation.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#88

Post by swsieber » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:53 AM UTC

qq66 wrote: post #53

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?

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.

Bingo. Putting the $1000 in context of the total cost makes it much more palatable.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#89

Post by arbre » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:54 AM UTC

Can someone explain me why the researchers themselves don't publish their work for free? The article says they are not paid for the articles so I don't see why they couldn't do that.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#90

Post by skybrian » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:56 AM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #56

ycmbntrthrwaway wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 q…

You can't take the costs provided by journals as a minimum because they are likely providing services that are no longer necessary or could be made much more efficient.

Here's an example of how to do it on the cheap:

"Scholastica charges us $10 per submission. We have a grant to cover this and our other costs, which are very low. Our total costs probably average about $30 per accepted article. Therefore, there are no charges for authors, and obviously there are no charges for readers either. A typical article processing charge for one article published in a traditional journal would keep us going for around 50 published articles."

https://discrete-analysis.scholasticahq.com/post/40-welcome-...