Well, I have never used Elsevier. I always visit Sci-Hub.
German research institutions boycott Elsevier
121–127 of 127 posts
Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier
#122The 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…
The second one is the hard one, because prestige is the very thing they have. Something like PageRank (itself a citation-weighting scheme) should do it, based not on the coarse-grained prestige of editor-gatekeeper publishers, but the fine-grained prestige of researcher-authors and the work itself.
The Eigenfactor is a metric for ranking journals that uses an algorithm similar to PageRank http://www.eigenfactor.org/index.php and is one of the many metrics competing to replace IF
Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be surprised if students are funding the library to any substantial degree. Most research universities charge F&A ("facilities and administration")/indirect costs on sponsored projects. This is essentially a "tax" on grant money that is supposed to cover things like utilities, the library, and so on. While the details vary a bit from place to place (and funder to funder), this is often a pretty sizable amount…
If the F&A is 70%, you'd need to raise $333k to have $100k left for your research budget...
The details vary a lot, but it's usually calculated as percentage of the direct costs (like a sales tax). If your grant involves spending $100k on salaries, reagents, services (etc), the total outlay from the sponsor is closer to $170k (at 70% F&A). Here's an example from UW: http://f2.washington.edu/fm/maa/fa/facosts
In practice, the rate varies a bit. Capital equipment, like a really expensive microscope, is often exempt from F&A, but salaries sometimes have an extra charge (for benefits) attached.
Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
The journals have an "impact factor", an arbitrary metric that determines how noteworthy they are. My impression is that very few journals are actually read directly - most papers are found via Google Scholar and the journal they're in doesn't matter. However, in academia, the "prestige" of the journals you have published to is hugely important. Good journals, in theory, are more selective about what they publish, so…
> Good journals, in theory, are more selective about what they publish, so the assumption is that if you have publications in a good one you must have done more groundbreaking research. I wonder why nobody created a single peer-reviewed platform for all scientists to use? Elsevier is just piggybacking on other people's work and funds.
So, the solution to a market taxed by a hegemon is to create even bigger hegemon?
What happens when the investors and shareholders of 'even bigger hegemon' start wanting their profits? Elsevier II.
Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, this nonsense of mostly just counting publications must stop. If at all, there is only a very light correlation (or perhaps even a negative one, who knows?) between the number of publication and the quality of a scientist's research. And what's so crazy about it is that everybody knows this. No one has ever been called a great scientist, because he published many articles. Such scientists may be called proli…
It's almost as if academia were set up to advance the careers of those within academia rather than to advance human knowledge.
People will game the metric you impose on them.
The onus is on the administrations to get a metric that is gamed by advancing human knowledge, instead of throwing logs at flame wars. That's why they get the big salaries.
Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier
#126I'm surprised at this being such a painful problem and no one jumping forward to solve it (pardon my ignorance, if such startups exist but are not well known, I wouldn't know it).
Why wouldn't blockchain db for receiving and requesting p2p reviews not a good solution? This journal can be open access and still make boat loads of money on allied services, ads and so much more. The best part, most of this can/needs to be automated leading to super low costs of operation.
Am I missing something obvious here?
Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the F&A is 70%, you'd need to raise $333k to have $100k left for your research budget...
The details vary a lot , but it's usually calculated as percentage of the direct costs (like a sales tax). If your grant involves spending $100k on salaries, reagents, services (etc), the total outlay from the sponsor is closer to $170k (at 70% F&A). Here's an example from UW: http://f2.washington.edu/fm/maa/fa/facosts In practice, the rate varies a bit. Capital equipment, like a really expensive microscope, is often…
Okay, i stand corrected! I was being intellectually lazy and assumed that what you were saying was that 70% of the raised funds were taken by the faculty, but thanks for the detailed example!