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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

#191

Post by FabHK »

chrisseaton wrote: post #186
AsyncAwait wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because those people are already being paid anyway What about when the tax payers fund the research and then they have to pay to access it? Didn't they "already pay for it"?

You're asking a totally separate question - you're asking 'since tax payers funded the research shouldn't they be able to see the output?' That's a great question. But the question I was replying to was 'who is paying the reviewers'. The answer is that their employers are.

The question wasn't "who is paying them?", the question was "why aren't the publishers paying them?". And that is a crucial question, and not answered by the observation that they are already paid by others.

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

#192

Post by Vinnl »

panic wrote: post #129
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…

> You have to realize publishers are in the reputation business. Everyone realizes this. The problem is that you're abusing your position in this reputation system for profit. Do you think $40 is a fair price to read a paper from 1987? https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/109434208700100...

> Everyone realizes this.

They absolutely don't. Every time this subject comes up, there are plenty of people wondering how expensive it can be to host a PDF. It's not; the price they're asking is not for the service of hosting a PDF, but for granting you the privilege of using their brand. A publisher has a monopoly on its brands, which means that there's almost no downwards price pressure.

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

#193

Post by Vinnl »

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…

> You have to realize publishers are in the reputation business.

Exactly. The name "publishers" makes people think that their primary business is publishing, but the main source of income is seeking rent on the use of their brand names.

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

#194

Post by FabHK »

dunk010 wrote: post #176
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…

I did a research masters and got VERY frustrated by how publishing worked. But I came to your conclusion, too. I'd put it like this: an academic's career prospects are controlled entirely by the journals and the journals' impact factors, so breaking the cycle a chicken-and-egg problem. There are some great strides towards something better though; like PLOS ONE, or university-specific ventures such as https://www.ucl.…

> so breaking the cycle a chicken-and-egg problem.

Absolutely, huge coordination problem (prisoner's dilemma). Let's see what this cOAlition S can do about it.

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

#195

Post by Vinnl »

sytelus wrote: post #118

HERE is a trivia question for you: what is the most profitable business in the world? You might think oil, or maybe banking. You would be wrong. The answer is academic publishing. Its profit margins are vast, reportedly in the region of 40 per cent. 40% are very normal and consider healthy margins for many businesses. The business with largest possible profit margins I know of is political donations. For mere $100K,…

Consistent 40% margins, year over year, for decades, are rarely seen in other industries. For example, Apple's brand is very strong, so it can ask a very steep markup on their products. Nevertheless, its profit margins are lower than those of the big five publishers, usually.

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

#196

Post by BlackFly »

ms013 wrote: post #180
justinpombrio wrote: post #5

For anyone who still doesn't know this: publishers do not pay paper authors, in any field. I am also not aware of a publisher paying peer reviewers. (Lowly soon-to-be-postdoc here; a professor would be able to say more.)

Nope. Nobody in the review or author role gets paid. And personally, that doesn’t bother me. I put in time to review papers with the understanding that someone else will put in time to review mine. My employer (I’m in industry) understands that this is a reasonable use of my time given that they see value in me being engaged in the academic world. Prior to industry when I was an academic, it was also part of my paid…

You've misunderstood the person you are replying to. The insinuation was not that the labor is unpaid, the insinuation is that the labor is paid for by someone other than the publisher.

The ultimate point being that the group that pays for the labor does not get the benefit of the labor: each member of the public must individually pay for access to the article. This situation is absurd: they have already paid for the article's production.

This is why the most powerful open access initiatives are being driven by grant agencies. They are in a position to unequivocally state that the research they are paying for must be open to the public since they grant the money on behalf of that very same public.

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

#197

Post by nl »

sitkack wrote: post #71
specialp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference with scientific publishing for most disciplines. I work for a non-profit scientific publisher. Much of the research today that is coming out is extremely specialized. Thus there aren't many people in the world that have the expertise to referee a paper. So the review is anonymous in order to get a more frank and honest review (we hope). I am also a developer. There are far more people that can gi…

It sounds like machine checked proofs or other mechanical formalisms need to be employed to ensure scientific validity.

Sounds like you are trying to solve a social problem with technology.

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

#198

Post by em-bee »

im3w1l wrote: post #184
em-bee wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to realize publishers are in the reputation business. And when you start peeling back the onion of how academics are assessed, given jobs, given tenure, etc you start seeing how hard changing behavior can be. there is no doubt about that. but maybe it's time to question how science is done in general. in the end the goal is to advance our knowledge and bring humanity forward. but instead of everyone cooperat…

> which is technology, and reviewers, which are academics. There is another factor to consider - the outsiders. They need to know which research is good and which isn't and independent journals giving a stamp of approval to create "branded" science helps.

the same can be done by independent reviewers.

i would not trust a commercial entity whose goal is profit, to be able to decide for me what research is good, the same way that i don't trust movie distributors. i'll look for outside reviewers who earned my trust because they understand the subject matter.

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

#199

Post by BlackFly »

blazespin wrote: post #93
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

The real problem is that these publishers actually provide real value that gives them leverage over the industry. If they didn't, it'd be pretty easy to destroy their grip over academia. The idea that after 23 years of internet they've maintained their position via smart deals is ludicrous. They've maintained it because of useful curation. If there was a way to open source curation and not lose quality, I can't imagi…

Nobody is asking for science to be done for free, most motivations for open access come from people that realize that the biggest stakeholder in all of this is the public.

Grant agencies receive money from taxes and those funds are devoted to science instead of other public projects. That the output of this work is not generally available to the public is the problem.

Most researchers will never feel this problem since their libraries will have access to the journals that they need. Publishers in general will just charge for access and not see the issue. It is only when you go out as a member of the general public and attempt to read some journal article, presumably funded by your taxes, that you will realize that you haven't had a voice in all of this.

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

#200

Post by tomlu »

neilwilson wrote: post #187

Surely the system should be like ... Hacker News. We publish here, and the stuff that is good rises to the top with upvotes from our peers, and it is all subject to review in the comments where many an interesting discussion is had. We all gain by sharing ideas as widely as possible. We just need a way for that to happen.

You definitely do not want that. Vetted science should not go through a pipeline of what amounts to a low brow popularity contest. Hacker news might be somewhat better than reddit in this respect, but there's no way you want to subject it to that kind of process.
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