Should All Research Papers Be Free? • Hacker News Board

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#91

Post by ikeboy » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:57 AM UTC

denzil_correa wrote: post #86

ikeboy wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Do you have any compelling evidence that the costs for OA journals is one or two orders of magnitude less than everyone claims they are? (See e.g. http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-scie... which also shows a wide variety in publishing costs.)

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#92

Post by 4bpp » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:58 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?

In CS, conferences (which organise peer review and pretty much all publish open-access proceedings) hardly ever charge more than something like $200 for attendance, and this also pays for the conference venue, logistics and a slush fund of financial support for student attendees. Why would the peer review and publication part cost more in other fields?

It seems much more likely that PLOS simply charges the "$1000 or so" because they can, and it's easy enough to piggyback on the traditional publisher narrative that they are actually providing this amount of added value.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#93

Post by jimjimjim » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

unpopular opinion ahead: no, and probably not even for taxpayer funded research.

Can you demand a lift in a garbage truck? or in a tank? both of these things are provided for local or central government. why not? because it distracts from the job that they are there for. The same can be said for research (and source code). It takes time, effort and money to publish and peer review research. If journals can't make money providing access to the research who is going to pay for it?

Also there is currently a lot of BAD research out there. Domain experts don't have time to review all of it. Journals with prestigious names act as filters and as sort of priority queues for where you should look first.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#94

Post by ikeboy » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 2:00 AM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #90

ikeboy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

If authors find that such journals fulfil their needs, then the traditional publishers will have been outcompeted. But make that case directly; don't yell at traditional publishers for being expensive, when they also provide far more service. If you don't think it's needed, don't use it.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#95

Post by return0 » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 2:00 AM UTC

arbre wrote: post #89

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.

Most journals withhold the copyright, and the scientists happily relinquish it. They can distribute preprint copies of their article (very few do in life sciences) but not the article itself.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#96

Post by jacobolus » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 2:01 AM UTC

jimjimjim wrote: post #93

unpopular opinion ahead: no, and probably not even for taxpayer funded research. Can you demand a lift in a garbage truck? or in a tank? both of these things are provided for local or central government. why not? because it distracts from the job that they are there for. The same can be said for research (and source code). It takes time, effort and money to publish and peer review research. If journals can't make mon…

Just to clarify: Is your position that research written by academic scientists, funded by government grants and university budgets, reviewed by volunteers, and proofread and typeset by the researchers themselves, handed off to a journal to put in a print edition or stick a pdf on their website, should belong exclusively to the corporate owners of the journal for a period of ~100 years after publication, with no profit flowing back to the university, the researcher, or the reviewers?

If this is not your position, can you clarify what you think scientific publishing should look like?

> because it distracts from the job that they are there for.

What is the “job scientific papers are there for”, if not sharing knowledge with other scientists and the people of the world?

As for your silly garbage truck / tank analogy: instead of these, we have buses, which work much better for the task.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#97

Post by vlasev » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 2:02 AM UTC

jimjimjim wrote: post #93

unpopular opinion ahead: no, and probably not even for taxpayer funded research. Can you demand a lift in a garbage truck? or in a tank? both of these things are provided for local or central government. why not? because it distracts from the job that they are there for. The same can be said for research (and source code). It takes time, effort and money to publish and peer review research. If journals can't make mon…

I don't think that's a sound analogy. When does getting a lift in a garbage truck allow you the opportunity to further humanity's knowledge to the same extent as being able to access papers and do some research. These are rather different things.

Also, isn't it true that a lot (or most) of the peer review is done on a volunteer basis?

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#98

Post by jkyle » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 2:03 AM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #35

matwood wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1000 for what? The research and paper writing was already funded by the tax payer. Peer review is done for free by other researchers today. Journals provide very little value for the money they extort for paper access.

FTA: >But that financial model requires authors to pay a processing charge that can run anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 per article so the publisher can recoup its costs. Edit: also, I don't expect margins of 30% from companies producing very low value. Do you really think that if they'd lower their margin to 0, with prices of around 30% less, everyone would stop complaining?

> so the publisher can recoup its costs.

Given that peers review a paper for free and it costs fractions of a penny to host a pdf, why should we care about the publishers? What value do they ultimately bring to the table?

We should be rethinking how this is done entirely.

This is off the cuff, but...

Perhaps researchers applying for public funding should be required to register as peers. Each researcher submits their publication to a public service like data.gov (maybe research.gov?). Peers are automatically assigned according to area of expertise. The peering process proceeds much like it does today.

On completion of review and approval, the paper and any materials needed to reproduce the research is made public and available to anyone.

The cost for all of that would be relatively trivial.

Also, many of those journal fees are paid for with tax dollars to begin with. An expense that would no longer be necessary.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#99

Post by zaidf » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 2:03 AM UTC

jimjimjim wrote: post #93

unpopular opinion ahead: no, and probably not even for taxpayer funded research. Can you demand a lift in a garbage truck? or in a tank? both of these things are provided for local or central government. why not? because it distracts from the job that they are there for. The same can be said for research (and source code). It takes time, effort and money to publish and peer review research. If journals can't make mon…

Your analogy is flawed in that a garbage truck or tank isn't designed to provide a lift and providing a lift would incur signicant additional cost to make it suitable for rides.

The same is not true for releasing papers. Government-funded research is done for the public good and its purpose is consumption. Releasing it furthers that purpose. Second, releasing it to public shouldn't incur significant additional cost.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#100

Post by return0 » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 2:04 AM UTC

jimjimjim wrote: post #93

unpopular opinion ahead: no, and probably not even for taxpayer funded research. Can you demand a lift in a garbage truck? or in a tank? both of these things are provided for local or central government. why not? because it distracts from the job that they are there for. The same can be said for research (and source code). It takes time, effort and money to publish and peer review research. If journals can't make mon…

First point: the govt is going to pay for it, by paying the open access fee. Research itself should be freely available, it's only fair to return it to the public which funded it.

Your second point is null, since the filtering job is 100% free (journal editors themselves do little filtering, whenever they are in doubt they forward the job to zero-paid reviewers).