Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elsevier journal editors resign, start rival open-access journal

insidehighered.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 128 posts

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

#51

Post by currymj »

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.

For the most part, researchers would prefer to publish open access, and agree with your stance about public money 100%, but with the current state of things, it would have a negative effect on their careers. You have to publish in certain highly-regarded journals to advance.

In some countries this is basically enshrined in law: there's a big table of journals ranked from high to low, and you need a certain number of publications in the high-ranked journals to keep your job with a public institution. Many of the high-ranking journals are closed access, for-profit.

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

#52

Post by nekopa »

Vinnl wrote: post #43
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 .)

Can you please share more about what it is that you are working on?

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

#53

Post by besulzbach »

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

It is literally just hosting in this case.

However, even if you were to pay the people behind the journal for their work it should be fairly inexpensive as long as they did as little as Elsevier does.

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

#54

Post by specialp »

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

Last year they published a grand total of 8 articles with the editorial staff doing the copy-editing, and web work for free. It is nice they are doing this but it isn't indicative of the cost of hosting/peer review/copy-editing more substantial journals.

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

#55

Post by PascLeRasc »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #33
sudoaza wrote: post #13

Hurra, Elsevier are a band of crooks, they have way more profit margin than giants like google and apple, science does good by moving away from them.

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…

We should improve society somewhat.

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

#56

Post by Vinnl »

nekopa wrote: post #52
Vinnl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .)

Can you please share more about what it is that you are working on?

The link's in my profile, but in a nutshell: it's taking the stamps of approval peer reviewers currently give, and removing the journal as its intermediary. So when researchers read an article that is not published in the traditional outlets (e.g. on a preprint server like arXiv), and they find that that article is up to scientific standards, they can publicly endorse that article right there to inform other potential readers and funders of that.

It's still early days and we're still testing the concept, but I think there's potential. I've got a newsletter that I haven't sent a mail to for a while, but if you're interested I'll eventually send an update there when there's more to share: https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic

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

#57

Post by apetresc »

currymj wrote: post #51
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.

For the most part, researchers would prefer to publish open access, and agree with your stance about public money 100%, but with the current state of things, it would have a negative effect on their careers. You have to publish in certain highly-regarded journals to advance. In some countries this is basically enshrined in law: there's a big table of journals ranked from high to low, and you need a certain number of…

Wow, seriously? Which countries?

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

#59

Post by snambi »

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…

Who reads all these journals? Let alone pay for them...

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

#60

Post by Vinnl »

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…

To be fair, there isn't really anything the leadership can do. The profit margins they are able to attain now are artificial, and anything those in the technology team can think of doing will be very unlikely to achieve those margins. All Elsevier can do is postpone the inevitable for as long as possible, and prepare for the period after that.

(Which they're doing somewhat, btw, but probably not in the way those in that team would envision. They're transforming into an analytics company, primarily by buying up others in that space. The best asset Elsevier has, currently, is money, not its technologists.)

Post reply on HN