Thousands of AI researchers are boycotting the new Nature journal • Hacker News Board

Re: Thousands of AI researchers are boycotting the new Nature journal

#231

Post by Tomminn » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 4:22 AM UTC

Vinnl wrote: post #197

Tomminn wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to think about this is an article in Nature is like winning a tiny Nobel prize, with no prize money. You can make whatever other sensible publication outlet you like, but it's hard to create something that has the prestige of winning a tiny Nobel prize. That's Nature's value proposition. Brand, history and exclusivity. This is why you can't get too angry at the scientists who continue to publish in it. If you…

I don't think Sci-Hub breaks the loop. Researchers still need to publish with the mini Nobel prizes to advance their career in a highly competitive field, and governments/funders still don't want to dictate where researchers get to publish their work, so in effect, what happens is that governments mandate Open Access and pay the same old publishers significant (and disproportionate) amounts of money to make the singl…

At the university I'm at, every time the library dropped its subscription to a particular journal there used to be a strong backlash from academics at the university.

Since sci-hub, the library has been able to drop a bunch of journals and for some mysterious reason none of the academics seem to give as much of a shit anymore. Obviously, no-one has no idea why..

Re: Thousands of AI researchers are boycotting the new Nature journal

#232

Post by cannotbenull » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 11:35 PM UTC

Iv wrote: post #172

sanxiyn wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should cite "A Proposed Currency System for Academic Peer Review Payments Using the BlockChain Technology". Abstract here: http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/5/3/19

I think this is one of the rare cases where blockchains can actually provide good values: we could potentially get third parties of trust eventually to make a blockchain unnecessary but for now, the established parties are unethical and entrenched. I hope this publication gets an implementation soon.

There are already serveral projects trying to solving these problems.(https://pluto.network)

Re: Thousands of AI researchers are boycotting the new Nature journal

#233

Post by cannotbenull » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 11:43 PM UTC

I found some blockchain project teams trying to solve the problems in scholarship communication. Pluto(https://pluto.network) is non-profit organization and trying to make standard academic data for free. Check out this video with English subtitle. (https://youtu.be/IKqUhJZN6Zg). And also there is scienceroot project(https://www.scienceroot.com) and Orvium. If you wnat to see the details, check this post. (https://hackernoon.com/mapping-the-blockchain-for-science-la...)

Re: Thousands of AI researchers are boycotting the new Nature journal

#234

Post by rlayton2 » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 11:52 PM UTC

fwip wrote: post #159

rlayton2 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prestige is a made up concept to keep the big players at the top. If the paper is good then it shouldn't matter where it's published.

You've got it backwards though. A paper isn't good because it's in Nature - it's in Nature because it's good.

I'm actually more concerned about the negative (your statement is mostly true), i.e. "if it's in a second-tier journal, it doesn't exist". Sure, some just look for an outlet for their crappy research, but the publication outlet shouldn't be used as a shortcut to evaluating quality.

Re: Thousands of AI researchers are boycotting the new Nature journal

#235

Post by a1369209993 » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

rowaway93 wrote: post #228

a1369209993 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think anyone disagrees that Nature provides a valuable service Ooh, ooh! raises hand and waves franticly Nature does jack shit that couldn't be (and in many cases isn't ) done as well or better by the authors' personal or institutional websites. What they "provide" is a brand name for wasteful status signalling, the same as Goochi purses or sportsball teams.

If you have to pay royalties to use a digital font, it stands to reason you have to pay royalties to the keepers of information. Why that's elsevier et al all I don't know, but they are is the only logical conclusion.

Someone spent time and effort designing that font, and it's reasonable that they should be compensated for it. (Giving them the right to censor any use of the font so they can run a protection racket is a awful way of doing that, but that's not the point I was addressing.) Nature contributes nothing (today - they used to contibute printing presses) that couldn't be accomplished by publishing a first draft and soliciting reviews.