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Should All Research Papers Be Free?

nytimes.com

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Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#261

Post by catnaroek »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #213
catnaroek wrote: post #128

What follows is just my very uninformed opinion. I'm not a scientist myself, but my interest in CS and math has made me an avid reader of scientific papers and books - whenever they're publicly available, that is. What publishing houses do is exploit the rules of the social games that scientists themselves willingly play. When the importance of an academic work is judged by the names of its authors, or by the name of…

In my country, for example, most applications for tenure, salary complements, required assessments, etc., have an assessment scale like this (simplified but this is basically the idea): Paper in the 1st quartile of the ISI JCR journal list - 3 points Paper in the 2nd quartile of the ISI JCR journal list - 2 points Paper in the 3rd quartile of the ISI JCR journal list - 1 points Rest - 0 points So if you publish a gro…

What you described is exactly what I mean by “the social games scientists themselves willingly play”. I'm not saying that any individual scientist has the power to fix this, but it's undeniable that it's a problem - it empowers publishing houses that profit from restricting access to science!

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#262

Post by ikeboy »

Blahah wrote: post #258
ikeboy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote from the The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (not the UN charter http://www.un.org/en/charter-united-nations/ , odd mistake by the nytimes) is also misleading. The very next sentence says >(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Note that the authors do not get materials benefit when journals sell their articles. If anything that sentence means that authors can claim back the profits made by publishers.

Authors sign over their copyrights to the journals. Are you suggesting copyright should not be transferable (people should not be permitted to transact freely)?

Authors do benefit by being able to publish for much less than it would cost were they to bear all the costs. To be precise, they benefit by the cost of open access that offers comparable service.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#263

Post by albinofrenchy »

taneq wrote: post #119
lacker wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would also have the benefit of making sure the code actually works. From my time in CS grad school I'm pretty sure there are many published papers where the author never had code that achieved the results they described.

Or code that worked on the specific test case described in the paper but was flaky as hell on anything else.

The most disillusioning thing for me as an undergrad was to try to replicate results from a paper on a relatively complicated problem, and not achieving anywhere near the papers level of results.

I got access to the source code, and the super complicated algorithm added almost nothing to the results, the glossed over / hand waved past data normalization worked so well that there wasn't a need for any further classification. This paper was pretty well received and cited, despite it basically not work.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#264

Post by biehl »

mattlutze wrote: post #218
kriro wrote: post #199

If it is funded by government in any way (public university, research project) I think it is borderline defrauding the tax payer that the research funded by tax-money is not free by default. Since close to all research is government funded in some way, shape or form...my answer would be yes in the general case. I think the long term answer is decentralized publishing. Publish everything you do on a university or priv…

I don't have a ton of time to search each university's publication database or every 2nd tier research team's private home-grown web site. Journals provide a filtering intermediary that helps me better use my time. Hopefully I can figure out which editorial teams are going to publish good vs ok vs crap research and pick from those, relying on the curative capabilities of their staff to provide interesting and useful…

But they provide a lousy and expensive filtering.

So-called "high impact" journals suffer more retractions. http://peterdedmonds.blogspot.dk/2015/06/retractions-and-hig...

Society is most definitely well-served by completely decimating [legacy publishers] economic model. Legacy journals stand in the way of progress and they are laughably inefficient in what they do (filtering / online storage / layout (really!) )

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#265

Post by sevensor »

mattlutze wrote: post #218
kriro wrote: post #199

If it is funded by government in any way (public university, research project) I think it is borderline defrauding the tax payer that the research funded by tax-money is not free by default. Since close to all research is government funded in some way, shape or form...my answer would be yes in the general case. I think the long term answer is decentralized publishing. Publish everything you do on a university or priv…

I don't have a ton of time to search each university's publication database or every 2nd tier research team's private home-grown web site. Journals provide a filtering intermediary that helps me better use my time. Hopefully I can figure out which editorial teams are going to publish good vs ok vs crap research and pick from those, relying on the curative capabilities of their staff to provide interesting and useful…

We're there already, at least in my field. Many research groups and individuals do actually host copies of their papers on their own websites, whether or not the journals are officially OK with it. Failing that, most Ph.D. dissertations are available for free to the public through university websites. If you want to find out what a research group has been up to, the chapters in a group member's dissertation are often substantially the same as the paywalled journal articles with his name on them.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#266

Post by matwood »

emodendroket wrote: post #257
raverbashing wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems the real BS is paying to publish in "big name journal" because the Cabal will place a high value in said "big name journals" It makes just as much sense as wearing a fashion accessory. "This person must be important because of his fancy watch"

I mean, not really. It's a big name because the best research is published there. Therefore, if you are published there it's because you are doing some of the best research.

> It's a big name because the best research is published there.

The fact they charge the author to be in the journal immediately brings into question if it is truly the best research.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#267

Post by afandian »

elbear wrote: post #241
mattlutze wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a ton of time to search each university's publication database or every 2nd tier research team's private home-grown web site. Journals provide a filtering intermediary that helps me better use my time. Hopefully I can figure out which editorial teams are going to publish good vs ok vs crap research and pick from those, relying on the curative capabilities of their staff to provide interesting and useful…

Couldn't we have a wikipedia equivalent for research? The peer reviewers do voluntary work anyway. I'm not in the system, so this is a genuine question.

You're describing an Overlay Journal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlay_journal

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#268

Post by logfromblammo »

mattlutze wrote: post #218
kriro wrote: post #199

If it is funded by government in any way (public university, research project) I think it is borderline defrauding the tax payer that the research funded by tax-money is not free by default. Since close to all research is government funded in some way, shape or form...my answer would be yes in the general case. I think the long term answer is decentralized publishing. Publish everything you do on a university or priv…

I don't have a ton of time to search each university's publication database or every 2nd tier research team's private home-grown web site. Journals provide a filtering intermediary that helps me better use my time. Hopefully I can figure out which editorial teams are going to publish good vs ok vs crap research and pick from those, relying on the curative capabilities of their staff to provide interesting and useful…

Journals can still perform their review, critique, filtering, and indexing functions without also acting as sole gatekeeper for the source material.

I don't have time to read every newspaper. Aggregator sites (like HN) provide me with a handy list of links to articles relevant to a specific interest or theme. Thus, I have not been overwhelmed by celebrity gossip when I go looking for nerd news.

And many of those aggregator sites are community curated, meaning that there is no editor to pay--only the site hosting bills.

But on the other hand, I'm not sure I want to see what karma whoring looks like for academics.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#269

Post by emodendroket »

matwood wrote: post #266
emodendroket wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, not really. It's a big name because the best research is published there. Therefore, if you are published there it's because you are doing some of the best research.

> It's a big name because the best research is published there. The fact they charge the author to be in the journal immediately brings into question if it is truly the best research.

I mean, maybe there is better stuff somewhere. Nonetheless, its position as an selective and influential journal with excellent research is pretty secure, which is precisely why they can charge. I still don't see it as quite analogous to an expensive handbag.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#270

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

winter_blue wrote: post #245
robertwalsh0 wrote: post #147

Full disclosure: I'm a founder of a company called Scholastica that provides software that helps journals peer-review and publish open-access content online. One of our journal clients, Discrete Analysis, is linked to in the NYT article. It is incredibly obvious that journal content shouldn't cost as much as it does. - Scholars write the content for free - Scholars do the peer-review for free - All the legacy publish…

> Can you believe it? Paywalling. PDFs. For billions. Wow, I'm amazed that a scientists of all people would tolerate such a scam. Why don't they come together, and en masse leave these pay-walled journals, and switch to free open ones? In politics, you hear about how uneducated voters are tricked by politicians, but this is far more worse. Here you've got some of the most intelligent and creative people on the planet…

Here's a hint: some perfectly qualified scientists pursue work outside academia because they're unwilling to put up with publishers and journals. The ones who stick around base their career advancement almost entirely on publication-derived credentials, so it isn't in their best interest to rock the boat. There's a strong selection bias at play.
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