51–60 of 127 posts
German researcher here. There are multiple problems with the offer from VG Wort (which is the German association "representing" authors and publishers). One is that they raised the license fee. Another one is that they want to replace the current "flatrate" (where a university pays a fixed sum for the right to copy books or parts of books for education) with a individual billing concept. That means, lecturers have to…
The thing is, scientists have a much more powerful tool to stop bad publishers: Don't give them your texts. And maybe even more important: Don't demand from your applicants that they have published in high impact journals from the very same publishers that make your life hard. That might really change things. Everyone has been complaining about Elsevier for years now. They still have publications and they still seem…
I would love a world where publishing papers is cheap and reading papers, particularly taxpayer-funded ones, is free. However, I'd also like a job and none of the "top tier" biomedical journals are open access. While I'd like to think that the quality of my work would speak for itself, the imprimatur that one gets from Nature , Science , Cell , and Neuron is worth quite a bit when applying for jobs and grants. Unless…
Some more info here: https://www.authorea.com/123679/d8cErAb_olPC5CvcWWwsig
Earlier quoted context omitted.
By restricting access to the material whose copyright is owned by a journal publisher, this is what Germany is doing, to a degree.
It's the publisher who restricts access by charging a fee and taking a profit, not the university for choosing not to pay it. The author and reviewers gave their work for free. Journals should charge enough to cover costs and be sustainable, and no more.
German researcher here. There are multiple problems with the offer from VG Wort (which is the German association "representing" authors and publishers). One is that they raised the license fee. Another one is that they want to replace the current "flatrate" (where a university pays a fixed sum for the right to copy books or parts of books for education) with a individual billing concept. That means, lecturers have to…
Yes, but isn't the VG-Wort §52a UrhG thing a different issue? It's creating a whole lot of uncertainty right now, no doubt about that, but the article is about universities failing to reach an agreement with Elsevier. What you're talking about is a terrible new deal between VG Wort and the Kultusministerkonferenz about licensing for publication of any kind of protected material for education and research.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you find an OA journal with cachet matching Nature or Science , I would be happy to submit stuff there. As far as I know, there's nothing even particularly close. In other words, I doubt anyone is explicitly penalized for submitting to PLoS Biology instead of Journal of Neuroscience. However, there is an implicit penalty for not submitting to Nature/Science/Cell. [As an aside, I really hate the obsession with IF a…
At least in my country, I'm thankful for these quantitative measurements, that difficult corrupt practices: Oh, I assure you he's a great researcher, just not in any measurable way. He's my nephew you say? Well, that's not the point...
Particularly for early career people, I suspect most of these "quantitative" measurements are basically reflecting where and wtih whom you worked.
The thing is, scientists have a much more powerful tool to stop bad publishers: Don't give them your texts. And maybe even more important: Don't demand from your applicants that they have published in high impact journals from the very same publishers that make your life hard. That might really change things. Everyone has been complaining about Elsevier for years now. They still have publications and they still seem…
Here is a proposal:
Towards Open Science: The Case for a Decentralized Autonomous Academic Endorsement System