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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

#41

Post by pbhjpbhj »

collyw wrote: post #39
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically we want a similar system but at rates where profit is c. 0 (zero) and wages are around the median? But doesn't that translate to other "industries"? Or, is it recognition that science has a fundamentally greater importance to humanity ... it's that true though, arts are pretty fundamental too, medicine certainly is, housing, food, water supply, sewerage, ... Why do we accept rent-seeking and profiteering an…

> Aside: Seems to me "science must seize [some of] the 'means of production'" is pretty communist. When the research is funded by the state it seems reasonable.

So only industries that get government support - like rail, electricity supply in UK? Food production in USA? Farming across the EU?

Then there's the premise that "private property is theft", so perhaps all industries that use land ownership or natural resources owe their utility to the public too?

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

#42

Post by rusticpenn »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #30
geezerjay wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Researchers dont get any money for writing papers in those journals, Infact, researchers have to pay to get their paper published in most of these journals.

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

#43

Post by Vinnl »

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…

Oh, they have. See e.g. https://coko.foundation and https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs.

The problem is not creating the software. The problem is getting academics, and the people funding them, to recognise alternative publishing outlets as valid, as long as the research they publish is valid.

(Disclosure: I'm working on something addressing that.)

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

#44

Post by Vinnl »

bertil wrote: post #32
globuous wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 citatio…

The number of stars on GitHub is significant because most people whose opinion you’d care about are on GitHub, they wouldn’t star project that they were not interested in and there aren’t widespread fake accounts. I don’t believe that there is an equivalent in academia, one that would capture the h-index dynamic (copied by PageRank) that a star from a prestigious professor is worth a lot more. It’s trivial to build,…

In case you're interested: I'm working with eLife and the Center for Open Science on creating something just like that. Having those two organisations as partners has really boosted the profile, leading to others jumping on board.

There's still ways to go, but I think we're on the right track. But you're right: it's really hard, and it took me a year to even get here.

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

#45

Post by Vinnl »

jononor wrote: post #23
n1000 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 appea…

The usual parlance for that is an "overlay journal", and there are quite a few of those now. Many of them use Scholastica [1].

[1] https://scholasticahq.com/

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

#46

Post by wlesieutre »

rusticpenn wrote: post #42
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Researchers dont get any money for writing papers in those journals, Infact, researchers have to pay to get their paper published in most of these journals.

Pay out of their research budget with your tax dollars

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

#47

Post by justinpombrio »

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.

Researcher here. That argument is bullshit. Papers are the main method for researchers to communicate their findings. They're written by the researchers themselves, who are often funded by taxpayer dollars, and reviewed by other researchers for free. I hear that sometimes a publisher will do some copy editing at the end, but in my field there's nothing beyond some simple formatting checks.

Which is why you can find all of my "preprints" online.

It is incredibly silly that it's legal for taxpayer-funded research papers to be hidden behind a paywall, which sends money to a corporation that did not fund the authors of the paper.

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

#48

Post by mr_gibbins »

ArtWomb wrote: post #25

Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques recently published a breakdown of their costs hosting an open journal. Approx. $100 per annum ;) http://jcgt.org/news/2018-01-04-expenses.html

I'd be interested to know if there are any additional costs involved to have the journal listed in the major directories, getting/calculating an impact factor, promoting it to institutions and so forth. This example calls itself a journal but looks a lot like a website and not much more.

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

#49

Post by currymj »

afpx wrote: post #40

Not too long ago, I had communications with Elsevier's technology team, and through that experience, I also spoke with some of their directors. Let me say that the experience was kind of mind-boggling and surreal. My impression is that Elsevier is a company locked into the past by a couple of decades. The leadership that I spoke with seemed to have worked in publishing for a very long time. And, probably because of t…

These were almost definitely not even Elsevier employees. They were editors of an Elsevier journal, but likely were paid only a token amount for their work, and probably not even that.

The world of academic publishing is very strange, almost inconceivably so. The publishers push off most of the substantive work to unpaid academics (reviewers, editors, and of course the actual paper authors) but then charge thousands of dollars for the results. It is a wonder their profit margin is not 100%.

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

#50

Post by gabestein »

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…

Adding to the list of great options here: I'm part of a team based out of MIT that has been building an open-source, hosted journal publishing platform called PubPub: https://pubpub.org

We're part of a group trying to address some of the larger ecosystem problems in knowledge creation and ownership discussed in this thread called the Knowledge Futures Group (https://kfg.mit.edu/). We've just setup a discourse forum for folks interested in working with us (https://discourse.knowledgefutures.org).

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