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Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

newscientist.com

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Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#151

Post by sgillen »

Fomite wrote: post #133
sgillen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the op is not saying that peer review as a concept is broken, more that the current peer review system is broken. I think we could start fixing things by incentivizing good peer review. There’s a lot of ways to do this and I’d be interested in a discussion of different schemes. It will by no means be easy but I think that’s what needs to happen.

For reference, good peer review is incentivized in some places. A journal I read gives awards every year for the best reviewers, and good reviewers end up as Associate Editors.

Thanks for pointing that out. I have started to see those recently. Not sure if it is a recent phenomena or if I’ve only noticed it recently.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#152

Post by eecc »

Academics, I have a proposal/question and was curious if such a system would work for you. Here it goes:

Take a P2P program similar to Kazaa or BitTorrent to share paper pdfs and datasets.

Next to these files also share indexes, derived data for searching.

Next to that, also share user generated review comments and endorsements to implement peer review and quality filtering.

Finally, digitally sign all these data to guarantee provenance and credibility of the data found on the network.

Let me know what you think of it. I’ve been loosely working on a prototype application that does all that for a while.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#153

Post by qwerty456127 »

Fomite wrote: post #131
qwerty456127 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just build a kind of a social network where people would post research papers, "like" interesting and high-quality papers and reference papers relevant to their research, post their comments and for every participant you would be able to see what papers they have published and reviewed? Sounds fairly simple. Why not?

People have tried this, or spins on it, and they don't particularly gain traction. Part of the problem is these have to exist alongside the traditional structure, and "Hey academics, do you want to be busier for intangible rewards?" is a hard sell.

What are, if any, the reasons these have to exist alongside the traditional structure other than the fact only specific reputable traditional journals are recognized as valid publication places by universities boards and other relevant institutions?

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#154

Post by ms013 »

Fomite wrote: post #141
shrimpx wrote: post #124

The trouble here is that the entire academic structure is extremely difficult to question and change. Disrupting academia is kind of like disrupting the Catholic Church. It's so entrenched in its assumptions and rituals that trying to bring revolutionary change to it is pretty hopeless. Professors gained their status in this archaic structure and will resist challenging it. I mean, your PhD advisor will make sure you…

> I mean, your PhD advisor will make sure you never challenge the research status quo with your thesis topic This will come as a surprise to both my PhD advisor and my current advisee

Same for my PhD advisor and current/past students. Unfortunately, this HN post seems to be full of the usual cohort of passionately opinionated HN readers who don’t have a deep understanding about that which they’re passionately opinionated about.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#155

Post by sweezyjeezy »

eecc wrote: post #152

Academics, I have a proposal/question and was curious if such a system would work for you. Here it goes: Take a P2P program similar to Kazaa or BitTorrent to share paper pdfs and datasets. Next to these files also share indexes, derived data for searching. Next to that, also share user generated review comments and endorsements to implement peer review and quality filtering. Finally, digitally sign all these data to…

Not sure that user generated review comments are a good idea - it would be to hard to convince people (me included), that they'd be a good replacement for peer-review. You don't know the user's expertise, you have no guarantee that they have read the paper. Granted that last one is sometimes not true in real world publishing either - but at least the social pressure is there. It could also lead to gaming, asking your colleagues to give good reviews, or worse, companies that are paid to write good reviews, same as what has happened with Amazon etc.

Academia is largely a social construct, that's why it's hard to replace with 100% technology.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#156

Post by em-bee »

dougmccune wrote: post #138
garmaine wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you summarize, in 50 words or less, what tangible benefit your family’s business provides to justify the intermediation? I’ll wait.

Not sure if you're asking about the role that academic journals play in general, or about what specific actions publishers do. Journals in general serve to curate an ever-increasing body of research and provide a crude method of gauging scientific quality, relevance to your field, and importance. They provide a crude method of judging the impact of scholars without having to read every single paper ever published. Pu…

out of those identifying new fields that are in need of new journals to help disciplines form and mature, ensuring standards of the scientific method are being followed are things that really should be done by academics and not by hired professionals.

if commercial publishers are doing that now, it means that academics have dropped their responsibility on this.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#157

Post by sweezyjeezy »

elvinyung wrote: post #72

Here's a Twitter thread with a director at Elsevier (@mrgunn) making extremely snarky comments about why they think academia shouldn't be free and widely available: https://twitter.com/dgmacarthur/status/1028489457803161600

I will never know why CEOs wade into Twitter spats like this. So little to be gained, so much to lose. Maybe lack of control of ego leads to better decisions elsewhere, I don't know...

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#158

Post by randomsearch »

impendia wrote: post #20
rsa4046 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In academia (at least the hard sciences), no faculty are ever paid for publishing in mainstream, peer-reviewed journals. No reviewers are ever paid either, although recently Elsevier has started to publish the names of its "star reviewers", presumably as a token for the large investment in time and expertise required to evaluate papers for publication and improve the field. Even book deals (or editorships) yield no r…

> No reviewers are ever paid either That's almost true. Elsevier once surprised me with a $100 Amazon gift card, which they said was in recognition for a particularly good job of peer review that year. I'd laugh at the prospect of Elsevier rewarding me with "recognition" -- certainly something I would not put on my CV -- although I did take their money. Another time, the American Mathematical Society (which is non-pr…

In some subjects, reviewers are indeed paid.

Probably the parent has experience in CS or similar where reviewers are never paid.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#159

Post by randomsearch »

dougmccune wrote: post #115

Academic publishing is a favorite recurring topic on HN, and it's one I've occasionally dipped into discussing, although these discussions are typically 99% one-sided and void of nuance or reasoned arguments. It's like discussing politics online. I'm a shareholder and board member of a large privately-held, family-owned academic publishing company. If anyone is interested in trying to understand what makes the indust…

Allow me to turn the tables a little:

- why don’t publishers pay reviewers for the extensive time they spend reviewing the paper?

- why don’t publishers pay academics who edit journals, another time consuming task?

- why don’t publishers pay academics or institutions for a product they sell?

I can’t comment on your company, but the above is the status quo for most of academia.

Do you think this business model is ethical?

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#160

Post by sweezyjeezy »

Aelius wrote: post #101

This comment is more directed at hn commenters than the article itself. I'm led to believe that free journals aren't successful precisely because they don't have standards. They don't have standards because they can't fund people to do basic vetting (this is not the same as peer review), or otherwise are eager to accept whatever comes their way- which are usually papers that have been rejected by the reputable journa…

There are some good free/non-profit journals, I just don't think you hear about them so much. There's a really good one in Number Theory called Algebra and Number Theory that has been around for about 10 years now. It was started by first-rate mathematicians and their standards, and reject rate have always been really high.
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