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Should All Research Papers Be Free?

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291–300 of 327 posts

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#291
post #131
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's the problem with the current system, though. The authors aren't choosing a journal for the extra services the publishers provide, they're choosing it for the prestige associated with e.g. Nature. It's similar to the reason why any new social network, no matter what features it has, would have a hard time competing with Facebook.

This isn't entirely true. Authors try to publish in Nature not just because of its prestige, but also because it provides a wider audience. If you have a strong result that you think would be interesting to a wider audience, then publishing in Nature or Science, rather than a specialized journal, makes sense.

Additionally, these journals really do provide more services than most specialized journals. In particular, the editorial service at Nature or Science is of much higher quality than your typical specialized journal. The editing includes editing the text for language and clarity, typesetting, and commissioning third-party high-level summaries (Nature's "News and Views" section). In contrast, at least in computer science and mathematics, most journals do minimal, if any, editing. The editors of prestigious journals do add value, and this helps to maintain the journals' relatively broad audiences.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#292
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…

Science has been for hundreds of years the most open and transparent institution. But I think that recently it has appeared a new contender that is even most transparent, open software development. I think science could use the same approach for research, from step zero.

One scientist has an idea, he publishes his hypothesis and intended metodology. Others can jump in and tell him, for example, that the hypothesis has been proved wrong in a recent paper, or suggest improvements in his methodology. Others can chip in and offer to replicate the experiment to increase the sample size. Mathematicians could observe and correct the statistical analysis before the conclusion are published. I think that will improve the quality of the results.

Of course, the bigger problem is that most papers would have dozens or hundreds of authors, diluting the individual contribution of each one. On the other hand, finished reasearch already would be peer reviewed and corrected.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Have you worked with biologists? If they could figure out how to use git, let alone github, I would be astounded. No forgetting, these are incredibly smart people, they just are bench-top scientists, not laptop ones. If you want their code, it will be, at best, a copy-paste of badly hardcoded Matlab, years in the making, with for-loops for the sake of for-loops alone, and without ANY comments or documentation whatsoe…

What is Fortran 88? I was under the impression it jumped from Fortran 77 to Fortran 90?

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#294
post #5

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

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!

> Personally I almost never traded technology when I played civilization, let alone give it away!

This is one of the easiest ways to manipulate the AI players...

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#295
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all that matters , a badly formatted "times 12" word document is just as fine as a "polished" research article. This is science we are talking about, it's not an infomercial. Besides, all journals have strict and long guidelines that all presumbissions follow. I just don't buy the manual labor argument.

I've read enough journal articles that I've come to appreciate proper formatting, rather than "Time New Roman 12" Word documents or "Generic LaTeX Template #17"

[deleted]

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#297
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…

If there is truly economic value to be had in filtering papers, we would expect an eventual growth in service businesses to help sift through the glut of openly published papers. Since we're currently in a long transitional period from closed to open publishing, there's plenty of time to evolve these third-party filters - from both the business and community sides - without incurring a chaotic "filter vacuum" period.

The major difference, however, would be that the research would be at least accessible to those who can't afford to pay the intermediary. That's what seems odious (to me, at least) about the current arrangement: if I want to access most of the research my taxes have funded, I have to pay again. This is on a moral par with being forced to pay for access to read laws and court decisions that should be a matter of public record, especially in an era where the marginal distribution cost is rapidly heading to zero, and I can't fathom an argument against having basic, immediate, and perpetually guaranteed access in either case.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#298
post #264

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…

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!) )

Low impact journals may be significantly worse, but if fewer people look for defects fewer defects get found.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the easy way to solve that would be to not have research where the government funds only a small part. If the government is going to fund it, fund it the whole way. The alternative has way, way too much potential for rent seeking. You'll get private interests who connive a way to have the government pay to do the hard/uncertain/expensive part while they don't put in their dime until they're already sure…

"Easy"? Certainly in biology that would overturn the entire system for drug/treatment discovery. The government is good at funding basic research, and the private sector is good at bringing products to market. There is no clean separation between the two activities.

The government is good at funding research but it doesn't fund FDA trials and neither will anybody else if they aren't provided some incentive to. That's a pretty clean separation.

The second is a completely separate problem from the research. If you have a promising drug that people have been using in other countries for a thousand years but has never been FDA approved, it never gets FDA approved because nobody can patent the prior art so nobody will pay for the drug trials even if no research is required whatsoever.

Two possible solutions are to have the government fund the FDA trials or to give the party who does a temporary monopoly on the drug regardless of patentability. And if two parties offer to fund the trials in exchange for the monopoly, let them bid for the right.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#300
post #297

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…

If there is truly economic value to be had in filtering papers, we would expect an eventual growth in service businesses to help sift through the glut of openly published papers. Since we're currently in a long transitional period from closed to open publishing, there's plenty of time to evolve these third-party filters - from both the business and community sides - without incurring a chaotic "filter vacuum" period.…

I agree with you that it's ridiculous in both cases, but I have to point out that PACER, the Federal Judiciary database, isn't free.
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