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

wired.com

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

#131

Post by drjesusphd »

ikeboy wrote: post #57
aeorgnoieang wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we don't even need the publishers at all! There are already free venues for publishing documents! It's also not even obvious that (anonymous pre-publication) peer review is better than just publishing everything and letting anyone and everyone comment on it just like anything else shared publicly on the web. I mean, for just one example, it's a big deal that researchers don't already publish everything!

If we don't need them, why are they still being used? You may think peer review is over-rated. The response should be to convince others of that and get them to stop using it, not complain about the high cost of peer review/journals/etc.

Peer review is free. The referees do not see a cent of the money paid to publishers.

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

#132

Post by pbhjpbhj »

grondilu wrote: post #43
DarkLinkXXXX wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that benefit everyone?

You end up in a situation where a minority is coerced to pay for everyone. It's morally wrong.

No, the minority pay si that can benefit, it just happens that others who haven't paid benefit too.

Like when a country act to reduce their industrial impact on the atmosphere, their citizens benefit with cleaner air/water or whatever but there's a benefit to the rest of the world too.

Being altruistic leads to greater overall benefit. Being miserly leads to global detriment.

Applying Kant's Imperative as the moral measure leads to say it's morally wrong not to pay as if no-one were to pay we all lose out.

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

#133

Post by iamcurious »

karmelapple wrote: post #120
iamcurious wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And Dreamworks', and Marvel's, and...

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

#134

Post by matthewmacleod »

philovivero wrote: post #130
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe your pragmatic approach is right but I don't think I could settle for "we'll do this for this company because our politicians are easily bought". The real solution seems to be to get politicians with better ethics or create laws that force them to comply with good morals ... then of course you need a strong judiciary.

Ah, yes. I'm familiar with this argument, as I've seen it in tech. "Let's just hack this variable so it stops paging us." "No. Let us re-write the entire thing in Rust and deploy to a new cloud provider, because putting this hack into place will just lead to bad things."

Like in programming, there are upsides and downsides too!

While you spend your time rewriting your code in Rust, your competitor launches with a hackier version and your market opportunity is gone. Or maybe you don't rewrite it, and you end up with a buggy platform that's difficult to scale, while your competitor with a rock solid alternative starts to win your customers.

Pragmatism is always advised, but there is a cost and benefit trade off between pragmatism and idealism.

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

#136

Post by ufo »

ikeboy wrote: post #125
ufo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If that's the case, why do people give them prestige and won't give a new startup journal prestige? Why is it considered hard to get into those journals, when all you need to do is have a correct paper?

> Why is it considered hard to get into those journals

Journals only publish so many papers in a given time. Its not just a matter of submitting a good enough paper.

Dunno why this is the case for journals but when it comes to conferences (where lots of CS research is published) there are obvious time limits regarding the number of presentations that can be accepted.

> why do people give them prestige and won't give a new startup journal prestige?

For historical reasons and perverse incentives, sadly. Young researchers cannot afford to publish on new startup journals because advancing your carrer depends on publishing in prestigeous journals (universities evaluate researchers based on the prestige of where they publish). Meanwhile, tenured professors are under less pressure when it comes to career advancement but they also need to publish on prestigeous journals to secure grant money to fund their labs and to accomodate for their younger co-authors (who are still trying to advance their carrers).

It also doesn't help when the "journal prestige categorization" is defined by the government, as happens in my country[1]. Not only are our journal ratings always outdated (punishing startup journals and conferences) but they also emphasize publishing in journals over publishing in conferences (which is terrible for CS research in particular)

[1] http://qualis.capes.gov.br/

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

#137

Post by ikeboy »

ufo wrote: post #136
ikeboy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, why do people give them prestige and won't give a new startup journal prestige? Why is it considered hard to get into those journals, when all you need to do is have a correct paper?

> Why is it considered hard to get into those journals Journals only publish so many papers in a given time. Its not just a matter of submitting a good enough paper. Dunno why this is the case for journals but when it comes to conferences (where lots of CS research is published) there are obvious time limits regarding the number of presentations that can be accepted. > why do people give them prestige and won't give…

>Journals only publish so many papers in a given time. Its not just a matter of submitting a good enough paper.

And how does that happen without any staff evaluating papers, as you claimed above?

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

#138

Post by p4bl0 »

ikeboy wrote: post #137
ufo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it considered hard to get into those journals Journals only publish so many papers in a given time. Its not just a matter of submitting a good enough paper. Dunno why this is the case for journals but when it comes to conferences (where lots of CS research is published) there are obvious time limits regarding the number of presentations that can be accepted. > why do people give them prestige and won't give…

>Journals only publish so many papers in a given time. Its not just a matter of submitting a good enough paper. And how does that happen without any staff evaluating papers, as you claimed above?

Could you stop faking to be an idiot, please? We already responded to that question and you know it.

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

#139

Post by themartorana »

dahart wrote: post #40
themartorana wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about who would read your work, but who can . I don't read much the FBI/NSA/rest of government produces but I'm pretty frustrated every time the suggestion of exempting troves of content from the FOIA comes up. I also know that my access guarantees other researches access to the same content, meaning the research that they do, that may one day benefit me down the road, has had free access to all of the knowl…

I agree with you, and I have the very same concerns, but you're talking about two different kinds of can . Government info that is FOIA exempt is not available for purchase. You can purchase most research, that is a kind of access. And if you're at a university doing research, chances are you already have access without paying personally. The knowledge we're talking about in this thread isn't being locked away, it's…

That's not access for all. Locking information behind a paywall is limited access no matter how you spin it, whether someone can't afford to access information (individually or at scale) or said access isn't sponsored for them.

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

#140

Post by ikeboy »

p4bl0 wrote: post #138
ikeboy wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Journals only publish so many papers in a given time. Its not just a matter of submitting a good enough paper. And how does that happen without any staff evaluating papers, as you claimed above?

Could you stop faking to be an idiot, please? We already responded to that question and you know it.

ufo claimed above that "The only thing the publisher does is own the name of the prestigious journal."

This is false. Why is calling them on it now "faking to be an idiot"?

I pointed out that there's curation, and that imposes costs. Denying that it exists doesn't help.

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