Earlier quoted context omitted.
So no tolls on non full roads?
There are expenses involved in using a road even when it's not full.
Like what? What costs more if the road has a single additional car?
“You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
61–70 of 165 posts
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#62Article blocked me for using adblock. I don't use adblock. So I don't read wired and I'm confident I'm missing nothing.
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#63Reputation and Credential-ism, right or wrong are the pillars of Academic Science. Unless we address some of these aspects, it will provide you with copious amounts of "recreational outrage".
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#64I think the most important point was brushed over in the article--that journals offer prestige. Scientists are entirely aware of the problems, yet they still volunteer to submit their work to them, because they significantly improve the chances of promotion and tenure. These things are already tremendously competitive, so most would rather not volunteer for a handicap by publishing in other venues.
One thing to watch in this space: Thomson Reuters created the Impact Factor, which is a mechanism for ranking journals based on the citation count of a journal's published papers. This is the de facto way academics are judged and compared. The cynical view of a tenure application is that it basically boils down to adding up points for how many high-IF journals you've published in.
They are now selling the IP division that owns the Impact Factor. No news just yet (as far as I am aware) on who will end up buying it, but depending on who it is I could potentially see some backlash (finally) within academia if there's an unavoidable conflict of interest (ie if Elsevier buys it). That said, inertia is stronger than anyone wants to admit in academia, so I wouldn't be surprised if IF stays the dominant force in academic reputation for a long time to come. But maybe, just maybe, the time is right for the fall of Impact Factor.
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#65I think the most important point was brushed over in the article--that journals offer prestige. Scientists are entirely aware of the problems, yet they still volunteer to submit their work to them, because they significantly improve the chances of promotion and tenure. These things are already tremendously competitive, so most would rather not volunteer for a handicap by publishing in other venues.
If it's truly misaligned incentives [ie universities are more likely to promote researchers who publish in "top" journals], then it seems like a high-powered university needs to change their criteria for promotion. Instead of requiring publication in top journals for promo, look at other metrics for quality [I imagine this differs some from one field to another]. Imagine if every conference charged speakers for speak…
Its not just the universities. At least in my country, universities are are ranked based on what journals their faculty publishes in and this affects the distribution of grants and other vital research money.
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#66I think the most important point was brushed over in the article--that journals offer prestige. Scientists are entirely aware of the problems, yet they still volunteer to submit their work to them, because they significantly improve the chances of promotion and tenure. These things are already tremendously competitive, so most would rather not volunteer for a handicap by publishing in other venues.
> most would rather not volunteer for a handicap by publishing in other venues.
Why not publish in both places ?
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not true, because it is possible to get rid of the publishers entirely. The only thing that would be needed are people in charge of formatting and such, because some fields do not use LaTeX yet (this need concerns mostly biology, chemistry, and medicine). But that could be easily covered by small local businesses for a teeny tiny fraction of the costs of current subscriptions. The other thing that costs money…
The large open access journals that don't have independent funding charge rates within the same order of magnitude. What evidence do you have that an order of magnitude reduction is actually possible at scale? How do you explain the expenses of both traditional publishers and open access ones, and how would you eliminate them?
First, APCs have not been calculated with regard to the costs of publishing, but rather with the goal of maintaining the same level of profits for publishers' shareholders.
Second, I know what I said is possible because some journals already do it, and there is no scale issues at all here. Journal management is entirely decentralized. One journal = one editorial board.
Let me illustrate this with one of the possible models which is called "overlay journals".
In an overlay journal, papers are uploaded for example to arXiv, and submitted for review by giving the link to the paper on arXiv. Then the editorial board (composed of researchers) does its job as it would in a traditional journal: it sends the papers to review to other researchers of the relevant field (well, at least they try). The reviewers also do their job as they would in traditional publishing. And papers are accepted as is, with modifications, or rejected, again, as usual.
Now what constitutes an issue of the journal is a list of links to the accepted versions (repositories such as arXiv can keep track of the successive versions of a paper) of the paper in arXiv.
There, same level of scientific requirements, no publishers, literaly no costs for anyone except arXiv (which is already paid for by public institutions), and researchers time, that is already spent and not paid for in the traditional system.
If you really want double-blind peer reviews you can use one of the open journal systems free software or as people currently do, public services such as easychair or scienceconf to organize the reviewing phase.
The only thing that is still necessary for some fields, as I already said, is the proper layout work. The ideal situation is that each university or group of university hires a few professional in charge of this work and who can do it in close contact with the authors of the paper. A few salaries costs less than the millions currently spend each year by each university for journal subscriptions, and the job would be done better than it currently is by publishers who often outsource it to low-salary regions of the world to increase their profits.
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#68The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you already pay for it. A lot of people don't even go to the parks now. Making them free will mean more tax money from people who don't go to them. How many people read this research? 1% of America? If it is free then tax payers will have to pay more to make sure it is available. 99% percent will pay to provide things they will never read. To b…
I think a closer argument is the textbook content that professors create. Writing a textbook is something that is often done on tenured professor's salaried time, essentially paid for by their university. And in the case of public universities that's public money just like research grant money. And yet you never hear the argument that all books academics write as part of their job as tenured professors should be free.
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#69I think the most important point was brushed over in the article--that journals offer prestige. Scientists are entirely aware of the problems, yet they still volunteer to submit their work to them, because they significantly improve the chances of promotion and tenure. These things are already tremendously competitive, so most would rather not volunteer for a handicap by publishing in other venues.
You've hit the nail on the head. Journals like Nature and Science are usually considered the top (at least for physics, which I studied). Getting even one article published in these is a big deal. As a grad student you've got it made for when you apply for a post doc. The irony is that most (probably all) of the researchers would gladly want their articles shared widely, and I couldn't see any researcher in favour of…
Usually you can publish a draft version of your paper, but not the version that is edited by the journal. They should be mostly the same, though.
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#70I think the most important point was brushed over in the article--that journals offer prestige. Scientists are entirely aware of the problems, yet they still volunteer to submit their work to them, because they significantly improve the chances of promotion and tenure. These things are already tremendously competitive, so most would rather not volunteer for a handicap by publishing in other venues.
Preprints offer a way forward here, allowing scientists to both publish in "prestigious" venues and disseminate their work more easily:
See for example http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/science/asap-bio-biologist...