“You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous” • Hacker News Board

Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”

#111

Post by p4bl0 » Mon, Apr 18, 2016, 5:26 PM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #108

p4bl0 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone paid by the publisher needs to look at every paper. Is that true? If so, what is the use of that? I don't see any scientific added value. I never even noticed such an activity myself. We can get rid of it where it still exists. > Some journals calculate internal costs of up to $40,000 per paper $40k per paper ? Haha sorry but I just don't buy that. I'm not asserting these expenses don't exist. However (see…

>If so, what is the use of that? To prevent bad papers from getting through. Editors at a paper are the first filter, peer reviewers are the second.

Again you are not right about that. In practice in the vast majority of the cases¹ the editorial board (for journals) or the program committee (for conferences) do that. And these people are researchers, and they're not paid by the publishers. At this stage the publisher does not intervene.

¹ In some other cases such as with Nature, what you said is true. But the point is that the model you are describing is far from being the only one, and there is no evidences that it is better. In computer science for example, the most prestigious venues are conferences not journals, and in that cases the publishers does nothing until the very end of the process, where its work often consists in putting PDFs online and that's it.

Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”

#112

Post by dubya » Mon, Apr 18, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

maaku wrote: post #76

wrsh07 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You get promotions and tenure for doing successful grant work that brings in money to the University. You get the best grants by publishing in Science and Nature. The government (main source of grants) shares the blame here.

Grants are not judged by government bureaucrats, but by committees of peer researchers. (At least for NSF grants; not sure about NIH or others).

Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”

#113

Post by ikeboy » Mon, Apr 18, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

p4bl0 wrote: post #111

ikeboy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If so, what is the use of that? To prevent bad papers from getting through. Editors at a paper are the first filter, peer reviewers are the second.

Again you are not right about that. In practice in the vast majority of the cases¹ the editorial board (for journals) or the program committee (for conferences) do that. And these people are researchers, and they're not paid by the publishers. At this stage the publisher does not intervene. ¹ In some other cases such as with Nature, what you said is true. But the point is that the model you are describing is far from…

Computer science and math are very different than other fields, because they can stand independently most of the time.

If you're going to throw around phrases like "vast majority", can you cite numbers?

Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”

#114

Post by mindcrime » Mon, Apr 18, 2016, 5:39 PM UTC

I have to say, I'm a little surprised at how many people in this thread seem to be taking the side of the publishers. If not completely, at least to some extent. I look at this as being pretty cut and dried "if research is paid for by tax dollars, it should be freely available to the public." I don't even see how that's controversial.

That said, I understand the arguments that academics are sort of in a catch-22 situation since funding, tenure, etc. are based on journal publications, impact factor, etc. But I'd like to think that we can all (mostly) agree that the current system is broken, and at least start talking about what it would take to revise it.

At least some progress actually does seem to be happening organically. New open access journals based on the arXiv overlay model are starting to appear, like Discrete Analysis[1]. Hopefully over time this problem may correct itself.

[1]: http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/articles

Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”

#115

Post by mrdrozdov » Mon, Apr 18, 2016, 5:42 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #114

I have to say, I'm a little surprised at how many people in this thread seem to be taking the side of the publishers. If not completely, at least to some extent. I look at this as being pretty cut and dried "if research is paid for by tax dollars, it should be freely available to the public." I don't even see how that's controversial. That said, I understand the arguments that academics are sort of in a catch-22 situ…

To play devil's advocate for a moment, surely there are other things paid for by tax dollars where the benefit is indirect like it is in research?

Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”

#116

Post by p4bl0 » Mon, Apr 18, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #113

p4bl0 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again you are not right about that. In practice in the vast majority of the cases¹ the editorial board (for journals) or the program committee (for conferences) do that. And these people are researchers, and they're not paid by the publishers. At this stage the publisher does not intervene. ¹ In some other cases such as with Nature, what you said is true. But the point is that the model you are describing is far from…

Computer science and math are very different than other fields, because they can stand independently most of the time. If you're going to throw around phrases like "vast majority", can you cite numbers?

I do not have precise numbers, but I've worked on these issues with biologists, philosophers, physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and people in cognitive science, and also with librarians and people in charge of negotiating with publishers. What I told matches with what all these people also see from their point of view.

Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”

#117

Post by iamcurious » Mon, Apr 18, 2016, 5:47 PM UTC

cableshaft wrote: post #105

Houshalter wrote: post #80

I hate how copyright now lasts indefinitely. There are many papers from the 50's by people who are dead, and these companies are still claiming ownership over them. Copyright should last a relatively short time, and maybe be even shorter if you don't pay a fee to get it extended. Perhaps even a special exemption for scientific research. If you could read all papers published 10 years ago for free, that would be incre…

I wish they'd just acknowledge that Disney really, really wants to keep their IP forever, and just make a "Disney Exemption" -> if you're willing to pay all the money you would normally pay lobbyists to lobby to keep copyright perpetual, you get to keep your IP. Otherwise, you only get X number of years, period. That way we can stop artificially extending copyright terms just to make one corporation happy and ruining…

Then they will lobby to decide exactly the amount they have to pay. Exercise for the reader: show that they would want to pay a substantial sum.

Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”

#118

Post by karmelapple » Mon, Apr 18, 2016, 5:47 PM UTC

mrdrozdov wrote: post #115

mindcrime wrote: post #114

I have to say, I'm a little surprised at how many people in this thread seem to be taking the side of the publishers. If not completely, at least to some extent. I look at this as being pretty cut and dried "if research is paid for by tax dollars, it should be freely available to the public." I don't even see how that's controversial. That said, I understand the arguments that academics are sort of in a catch-22 situ…

To play devil's advocate for a moment, surely there are other things paid for by tax dollars where the benefit is indirect like it is in research?

The national interstate system might be one of those things.

Sure, it's directly helpful to people going on long drives in their car between cities... but people could fly or train it, too.

However, the indirect benefits are that produce and other goods can be shipped via semi trucks quickly (ignoring the environmental and road quality impact they make).

So there's both direct and indirect benefits to taxpayers there.

Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”

#119

Post by ufo » Mon, Apr 18, 2016, 5:48 PM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #107

ufo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its hard to answer your argument directly because publishers like Elsevier never publish transparent accounting numbers. For all we know, their costs could mostly be "Hollywood Accounting". (not to mention, the profit they do report is already through the roof). It all does strike me as obviously inefficient though. In my day to day research as a grad student I almost never benefit from work the publishers did. I don…

>It all does strike obviously inefficient though. In my day to day research I almost never benefit from work the publishers did. I don't even use them to download my papers because the paywalls are so annoying that I usually go directly to the author's home page (google scholar will even find these for you). Every half-decent CS researcher makes their work available on their personal website, at no cost, Different fi…

In all fields, the peer review process is performed by volunteer researches at no cost. The publisher DOES NOT evaluate arguments or ensure that the contents of the paper are correct. The only thing the publisher does is own the name of the prestigious journal.

Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”

#120

Post by karmelapple » Mon, Apr 18, 2016, 5:49 PM UTC

iamcurious wrote: post #117

cableshaft wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish they'd just acknowledge that Disney really, really wants to keep their IP forever, and just make a "Disney Exemption" -> if you're willing to pay all the money you would normally pay lobbyists to lobby to keep copyright perpetual, you get to keep your IP. Otherwise, you only get X number of years, period. That way we can stop artificially extending copyright terms just to make one corporation happy and ruining…

Then they will lobby to decide exactly the amount they have to pay. Exercise for the reader: show that they would want to pay a substantial sum.

At least then other IP is not negatively affected. Now it's just Disney trying to save Disney money, whereas the rest of the IP properly goes into public domain.