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

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

#161

Post by ikeboy »

wizzard0 wrote: post #158
ikeboy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The result would be that publishers charge for publication, similar to current open access options. It could be that greater usage of open access would bring down the cost, but I'm not sure. Definitely the number of grants would go down as the cost of publishing starts being factored in, although this may be partly or fully outweighed by the reduction in universities' costs.

arXiv charges neither for reading nor for publication. And for-profit publishers have to be profitable to exist, which necessarily incurs costs on authors and readers.

Arxiv is not peer reviewed. If you think we should get rid of that, make that argument; but keeping the review model and getting rid of access fees would increase costs elsewhere.

Regarding profit: sure, you could set up a nonprofit to do the same job. You'll end up reducing costs by 20-40%, even assuming you don't have higher costs because of lower scale/lack of experience/etc.

For other essentials like food, I've seen stories about nonprofits that get large groups together and buy in bulk. Co-ops are basically the same idea. Using a non profit to reduce costs has been done.

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

#162

Post by ikeboy »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #160
ikeboy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The result would be that publishers charge for publication, similar to current open access options. It could be that greater usage of open access would bring down the cost, but I'm not sure. Definitely the number of grants would go down as the cost of publishing starts being factored in, although this may be partly or fully outweighed by the reduction in universities' costs.

> Definitely the number of grants would go down as the cost of publishing starts being factored in, although this may be partly or fully outweighed by the reduction in universities' costs. Universities are paying essentially all of the cost one way or another now, how could it not be fully outweighed? It would be more than fully outweighed because the universities would no longer have to pay the publishers the amount…

1. It's different universities, including ones that don't directly fund research, and so more money in their pocket won't directly lead to more science funding. Also libraries.

2. There are many places to put extra money in a university (add to endowment, expand, etc).

>It would be more than fully outweighed because the universities would no longer have to pay the publishers the amount that constitutes the monopoly rent from the copyright.

Why do you think profit margins would go down? The "rent", to the extent a 30% margin is rent, is from the need to publish in prestigious journals. Copyright just affects how that rent is collected, but it's not clear to me how that would reduce the rent. (It may go down because people become more hesitant to publish due to the increased cost which forces them to lower their price to get more papers. But that wouldn't be such a good thing.)

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

#163

Post by ikeboy »

p4bl0 wrote: post #159
ikeboy wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cursory google search turns up plenty of counterexamples. See http://blog.journals.cambridge.org/2012/06/14/recruiting-a-j... and http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2002/02/editorial-boards-s... I'll note that even PLOS medicine wasn't able to get editors for free, as an open access journal http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/s/competing-interests-...

Paid academic journal editors are rare exceptions. From one of your own links: Carol Barnes, professor of psychology and neurology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, is a reviewing editor at the Journal of Neuroscience, a 3-year appointment for which *she receives no compensation*. (…) Barnes has received funding from the university to hire an assistant to provide clerical support to assist her with the manuscri…

That journal appears to be owned by a non profit.

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

#164

Post by p4bl0 »

ikeboy wrote: post #163
p4bl0 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paid academic journal editors are rare exceptions. From one of your own links: Carol Barnes, professor of psychology and neurology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, is a reviewing editor at the Journal of Neuroscience, a 3-year appointment for which *she receives no compensation*. (…) Barnes has received funding from the university to hire an assistant to provide clerical support to assist her with the manuscri…

That journal appears to be owned by a non profit.

And I can assure you that the situation is similar with journals owned by Wiley, Springer, and Elsevier, for examples.

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

#165

Post by mizzao »

fintler wrote: post #84
mizzao wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Unfortunately, the preprint loophole doesn't really help all that much (depending on the publisher). A few stipulations come along with publishing preprints -- for example, IEEE makes you take down the preprint and add a copyright notice to it after your paper has been accepted. https://www.ieee.org/documents/author_faq.pdf

It depends on the field, but some areas are more friendly toward this than others.
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