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Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

talyarkoni.org

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131–140 of 148 posts

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#131

Post by lultimouomo »

tdb7893 wrote: post #130
impendia wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly agree that it's ethical. As far as practicality goes, demanding payment will invariably amount to refusing the review assignment. I don't have any problem with that, but I don't believe that any publishers will be willing to meet such a demand.

Can you explain to me why academics will spend their time reviewing journals without the expectation of getting paid? I would never accept work where they weren't planning on paying me

Academics do get paid, and reviews are usually considered part of their work duties.

Publishers have simply managed to externalize the cost of reviews (and authorship) to universities, i.e. to students in the case of private university, and to students and states in the case of public ones.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#132

Post by dagw »

lisper wrote: post #128
mrkgnao wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each journal focuses on a specific subfield of math/CS/$SUBJECT, so they can make more informed evaluations on the quality of the research than an expert in some other field can.

OK, but then why don't the editorial board of these journals just get together to do reviews and jettison the ridiculously high overhead of the publishers, and the concomitant games with copyrights and paywalls needed to sustain that overhead? I mean, seriously, it's 2016. When was the last time you read a paper printed on actual paper?

When was the last time you read a paper printed on actual paper?

I know it's not what you meant, but I almost always print out papers before reading them.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#133

Post by impendia »

kriro wrote: post #111
impendia wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the research not stand on its own? Academic mathematician here. It does, sort of, but ..... Say a mathematics postdoc is applying for a job, and she works in underwater basketweaving. The two underwater basketweavers in her dream department read her application and can see that she's brilliant. She's developed a new methodology for weaving rattan under 100 feet of ocean without even getting it wet. She has let…

I feel like one step for fixing this would be a pledge by hiring committee members. Say the university of X thinks publisher Y is a burden on the scientific community and as such will ignore everything the applicants have published there (or even weight it negatively). It's never going to happen but these issues need to be attacked from all angles that affect the careers of scientists. Employers, publishers, peers an…

I strongly disagree. You can't penalize young scientists for playing the game; they pretty much have to.

I believe it is much more appropriate to put pressure on senior, tenured scientists to publish their work in "ethical" venues. It's more challenging to pick a fight with people in positions of power, and of course they can simply ignore you, but their careers aren't going to suffer nearly as much if they avoid some of the big-name journals.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#134

Post by tdb7893 »

lultimouomo wrote: post #131
tdb7893 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain to me why academics will spend their time reviewing journals without the expectation of getting paid? I would never accept work where they weren't planning on paying me

Academics do get paid, and reviews are usually considered part of their work duties. Publishers have simply managed to externalize the cost of reviews (and authorship) to universities, i.e. to students in the case of private university, and to students and states in the case of public ones.

Coming from working in business it seems kinda weird that they have outsourced not only creating the content but also reviewing the content for free. I wonder why the journals are so expensive when they seem to get a large part of the work for free.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#136

Post by digler999 »

impendia wrote: post #79
08-15 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't review for free. Seriously. Every time you review for a journal and don't ask for a reasonable (say, $150/h) fee, you are enabling their predatory practices. Stop doing it. Come to think about it, why not copy their pricing scheme? Sure, I'll review for this particular journal for $3000/h---or I agree to review for any of your journals, for a flat rate of $3000/week, even if there is nothing interesting to revi…

>Don't review for free. As an academic (who hates Elsevier as much as OP, and who has also signed the boycott), I can't agree. If we accept payment from publishers then we tie ourselves into their ecosystem even more. I personally think of academic mathematics like a giant, collaborative, open source project. Research wants to be free, and there is no reason it shouldn't be. Fortunately (for now at least; researchers…

> If we accept payment from publishers then we tie ourselves into their ecosystem even more.

yet you have no problem accepting payment from students.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#137

Post by 08-15 »

impendia wrote: post #88
Ericson2314 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an academic, but I feel like charging for-profit journals for rwviews but not community-driven overlay ones is a practical and ethical policy.

I certainly agree that it's ethical. As far as practicality goes, demanding payment will invariably amount to refusing the review assignment. I don't have any problem with that, but I don't believe that any publishers will be willing to meet such a demand.

I'm sure no commercial publisher will agree. But there is still a difference between "I will not review because I don't feel like it" and "I will not review unless I get paid for it". They send different messages to both the publisher and the scientific community.

By the way, feel free to provide your reviewing services for non-profit or open-access journal. Just please, pretty please, don't collaborate with publishers who demand to be paid for a service they don't even provide. And point out that is the publisher who is freeloading, not the researcher who merely refuses to work for free.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#138

Post by 08-15 »

Natsu wrote: post #87
Ericson2314 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an academic, but I feel like charging for-profit journals for rwviews but not community-driven overlay ones is a practical and ethical policy.

It would be in isolation, but it would also make it hard for people to replace that income if they came to depend on it.

So you would become a professional reviewer. Sounds like a reasonable career choice to me.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#139

Post by overcast »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #12
overcast wrote: post #8

For the rest of us, what is the TLDR of what Elsevier is?

They're a large publisher of scientific journals, who have repeatedly been caught behaving unethically. Note that don't own the most prestigious journals, like Science, Nature, or New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

Thank you.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#140

Post by euyyn »

mrkgnao wrote: post #127
euyyn wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we need mechanisms to compare researchers working in different subdisciplines, for researchers to "prove" to the community at large that they're doing good work. But the acceptance into those journals is decided by editors, with the same thought process of the hiring committee. What makes their decision any more valuable?

Each journal focuses on a specific subfield of math/CS/$SUBJECT, so they can make more informed evaluations on the quality of the research than an expert in some other field can.

Sorry but that's not the point GP was making:

> One thinks that underwater basketweaving is overhyped. Another thinks that great work was done in the eighties, but all the interesting questions have been solved already.

Then he cites three general Math journals as what the hiring committee can use to rank the candidates, not a journal specialized in underwater basket-weaving.

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