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Elsevier journal editors resign, start rival open-access journal

insidehighered.com

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Re: Elsevier journal editors resign, start rival open-access journal

#21

Post by mdlincoln »

n1000 wrote: post #16

So, as an academic myself, I have been wondering. Why don't some tech-savy people (the kinds that roam around HN) create an open-source publishing platform and offer journals to use their services for free / cheaply? Something like a GitLab for publishing papers. I wouldn't be surprised if the German government would agree to fund such a thing these days. This would make such a jump for willing editorial boards much…

You may be interested in what Birkbeck has been developing: https://github.com/BirkbeckCTP/janeway

Re: Elsevier journal editors resign, start rival open-access journal

#22

Post by globuous »

jononor wrote: post #18
n1000 wrote: post #16

So, as an academic myself, I have been wondering. Why don't some tech-savy people (the kinds that roam around HN) create an open-source publishing platform and offer journals to use their services for free / cheaply? Something like a GitLab for publishing papers. I wouldn't be surprised if the German government would agree to fund such a thing these days. This would make such a jump for willing editorial boards much…

Recognition/prestige is what the journals offer. Hosting is incidental. Editing and reviewing too.

I mean, github does too. Some projects have 0 stars, some have 16k; some have 0 contribs, some have thousands; some have no forks, some have hundred. You know what I mean ? All these variables are a pretty good measure of recognition, I check them every time I add dependencies to my projects. And just like any other measure, it isn't perfect and is hackable in ways I haven't imagined yet.

Forks are similar to citations in a way. It's not the same, there are many differences, but there are some similarities in my opinion. By the way, wouldn't it be great to be able to contribute to papers, and their assets (figures, code, equations) ? I don't know how a system like that might work in practice, it must be non trivial to govern, like any other sizable community - but I can see how it could work.

Does science really need to pay for recognition and prestige today ? It used to be the these journals allowed more people to have access to quality research, now it restricts them. Non free journals are dead a parellel universe Nietzsche might write.

Re: Elsevier journal editors resign, start rival open-access journal

#23

Post by jononor »

n1000 wrote: post #19
jononor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recognition/prestige is what the journals offer. Hosting is incidental. Editing and reviewing too.

Fully agree. But whenever an editorial board (like the one here) is fed up, they might be more likely to make the jump. I believe we may be about to reach a critical mass behind open access, but publishers won't make this easy.

Agreed that it could be useful to have a "go to" project to rally around.

Arxiv.org is very successful for pre-prints, at least in some fields like computer science. Maybe a modern "journal" offering review and editing could be built on top of that? It would utilize open reviews instead of the traditional anonymous private reviews. Once a certain bar has been reached with reviews, the paper can be nominated for appearing in a journal, which editors can decide on.

Re: Elsevier journal editors resign, start rival open-access journal

#24

Post by baldfat »

dankohn1 wrote: post #8

I have so much respect for the editors who were willing to make this jump. I've wondered if there is some cognitive dissonance between the strong feelings I have that scientific journals should be open access and my willingness to buy and use closed source software (even though I run an open source software foundation). But I don't think so. Fundamentally, I think authors have the right to determine how their work is…

> Fundamentally, I think authors have the right to determine how their work is used.

Fundamentally, I think TAX PAYERS have a right to access all funded research!

Re: Elsevier journal editors resign, start rival open-access journal

#26

Post by geezerjay »

baldfat wrote: post #24
dankohn1 wrote: post #8

I have so much respect for the editors who were willing to make this jump. I've wondered if there is some cognitive dissonance between the strong feelings I have that scientific journals should be open access and my willingness to buy and use closed source software (even though I run an open source software foundation). But I don't think so. Fundamentally, I think authors have the right to determine how their work is…

> Fundamentally, I think authors have the right to determine how their work is used. Fundamentally, I think TAX PAYERS have a right to access all funded research!

That's very true, but in practice these corporations argue that that particular paper is their copyright, not the research. Thus, just because the general public need to pay to access a particular document, that doesn't mean they are barred from the research.

Re: Elsevier journal editors resign, start rival open-access journal

#27

Post by buboard »

n1000 wrote: post #16

So, as an academic myself, I have been wondering. Why don't some tech-savy people (the kinds that roam around HN) create an open-source publishing platform and offer journals to use their services for free / cheaply? Something like a GitLab for publishing papers. I wouldn't be surprised if the German government would agree to fund such a thing these days. This would make such a jump for willing editorial boards much…

there are many open source solutions for running a journal. and even low cost publishers that run them.

https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/d8cccde3/elife-coko-...

for manuscript submission systems, github has a dozen of projects. Elseviers manuscript system is not sophisticated in any way.

but that is not enough to make a new journal successful

Your idea has merit however, if a well known name such as google offered something like a "free journal platofm"

Re: Elsevier journal editors resign, start rival open-access journal

#28

Post by n1000 »

mdlincoln wrote: post #21
n1000 wrote: post #16

So, as an academic myself, I have been wondering. Why don't some tech-savy people (the kinds that roam around HN) create an open-source publishing platform and offer journals to use their services for free / cheaply? Something like a GitLab for publishing papers. I wouldn't be surprised if the German government would agree to fund such a thing these days. This would make such a jump for willing editorial boards much…

You may be interested in what Birkbeck has been developing: https://github.com/BirkbeckCTP/janeway

Very interesting - thanks! For completeness' sake: GitHub-based publishing is possible too: http://www.theoj.org

Re: Elsevier journal editors resign, start rival open-access journal

#29

Post by otron »

n1000 wrote: post #16

So, as an academic myself, I have been wondering. Why don't some tech-savy people (the kinds that roam around HN) create an open-source publishing platform and offer journals to use their services for free / cheaply? Something like a GitLab for publishing papers. I wouldn't be surprised if the German government would agree to fund such a thing these days. This would make such a jump for willing editorial boards much…

The European Commission (EC) has been funding zenodo.org[0] for some years now, which is an open-source publishing platform[1] built on an open-source digital library framework[2]. While its main focus is providing free hosting and serving as a publishing venue for scientific data and results in order to enable reproducibility of the research, it can also be used (by anyone!) to "publish" their research (or just about anything you'd want to publish).

While I guess it's not technically a journal as there's no editorial or review process for what gets published (and absolutely no prestige associated with publishing on it), everything is assigned a DOI number which you could use to uniquely identify it for citation purposes.

The story behind it, as off-handedly told to me by the then-project manager back in 2015 when I was working on it, is that it was created after the EC had mandated that some percentage of EC-funded research results be published in open-access and the instutions which received such funding complained that there existed no proper open-access alternatives for them to publish in.

[0]: http://about.zenodo.org/

[1]: https://github.com/zenodo

[2]: https://github.com/inveniosoftware

Re: Elsevier journal editors resign, start rival open-access journal

#30

Post by pbhjpbhj »

geezerjay wrote: post #26
baldfat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fundamentally, I think authors have the right to determine how their work is used. Fundamentally, I think TAX PAYERS have a right to access all funded research!

That's very true, but in practice these corporations argue that that particular paper is their copyright, not the research. Thus, just because the general public need to pay to access a particular document, that doesn't mean they are barred from the research.

Which is fine.

Just that the public should demand that all research using public money is done openly, so all data and papers are accessible to the public in perpetuity.

Researchers are welcome to refuse to accept that deal, just so long as they don't take any public money.

Simples.

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