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Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

latimes.com

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Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#91

Post by dredmorbius »

traderjane wrote: post #31
betterunix2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because of the growing student debt problem (which is spilling over into the rest of society and will probably be a factor in the next economic crisis), the tendency of some employers to demand college degrees for jobs that simply do not require them, and the feeling by many hackers who did not go to college that they are not receiving the respect people with their skills deserve (this may be a justified fee…

College degrees might not be required in some contexts but are they predictive of some kind of job success? If so, then employers are just being rational in hiring strategy.

Predictive != causal.

College may simply be an expensive interview prefilter, in many cases.

It is exclusionary for many.

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#92

Post by TaylorAlexander »

HeavenFox wrote: post #62

Every time I read about the incredibly exploitative scientific publishing industry, I can’t help but think: can we just make scientific papers not copyrightable? Researchers and their institutions don’t benefit from the copyright protection; they barely make any money from their work. Sure, someone can take your work and claim it as their own, but we already handle them as plagiarism rather than copyright infringemen…

I honestly feel like intellectual property is harmful in almost every field I look at. It concentrates wealth and slows innovation (the opposite of what IP proponents claim). I voluntarily waive copyright protection for most of my work, but I’d ideally see the dissolution of the concept more broadly. Our government protects these laws which I see as unjust, and some change to that would be beneficial I believe.

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#93

Post by filleokus »

I’ve always thought that a more reasonable model for academic publishing would be to disconnect the availability of the content from the peer review / “publishing”.

Couldn’t the PDF’s be hosted in the open, in a repository similar to arXiv, and then be “published”. Being published would then just basically mean that your paper gets tagged in the repository as “Published in Journal of X”, almost like a Twitter verification mark but more granular [0].

Some publishing fees would remain, and pay for the curation and costs associated with the peer review.

[0]: Of course the journal could still be compiled and published separately as well.

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#94

Post by marcosdumay »

titanomachy wrote: post #66
gumby wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. COnsider: First, PLoS fees are lower and as a nonprofit only have to support operation (no profit). Also as a nonprofit there is some transparency as to where those fees go, so I assume that publishing there really does cost something like $1600. Second PLoS's fee rules include the sentence "Authors' ability to pay publication fees will never be a consideration in the decision whether to publish." Else…

Physics has always been a pioneer when it comes to information. Didn't physicists basically invent the internet to make collaboration easier? Also I guess some (theoretical) physics/math papers kind of stand on their own. If you proved the Poincaré conjecture, it doesn't matter if you post it in Science or on your WordPress blog: anyone in the field can verify the correctness of your work. Contrast with life science…

> Didn't physicists basically invent the internet to make collaboration easier?

You mean the Web? For the Internet, no they didn't. It was created by a US military organization.

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#95

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

CydeWeys wrote: post #7

Sounds like everyone at UC is going to use SciHub now, and most likely won't switch back once access gets restored? This seems like a self-defeating move on Elsevier's part? Incidentally, I heard from someone who worked at Elsevier around four years ago that the working environment there was terrible, and she couldn't wait to leave. That doesn't seem surprising.

> Sounds like everyone at UC is going to use SciHub now

Plenty of people already do.

It's much easier to use than any kind of library proxy service if you're not on campus, and it's also far more reliable. Even if you have access, sci-hub often has things that the library doesn't.

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#96

Post by driverdan »

notafraudster wrote: post #76

I am an academic at a UC who publishes in Elsevier journals. I support this. I don't want copyright for anything I work on. I also work in a field where patent/IP stuff would not be relevant, so I view all of my work as public domain as far as I am concerned. With my code I either do CC0 or MIT licenses. I have had to publish in journals that are not open access -- mostly I just make pre-prints available to anyone wh…

> I have had to publish in journals that are not open access

Why is that?

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#97

Post by api »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #92
HeavenFox wrote: post #62

Every time I read about the incredibly exploitative scientific publishing industry, I can’t help but think: can we just make scientific papers not copyrightable? Researchers and their institutions don’t benefit from the copyright protection; they barely make any money from their work. Sure, someone can take your work and claim it as their own, but we already handle them as plagiarism rather than copyright infringemen…

I honestly feel like intellectual property is harmful in almost every field I look at. It concentrates wealth and slows innovation (the opposite of what IP proponents claim). I voluntarily waive copyright protection for most of my work, but I’d ideally see the dissolution of the concept more broadly. Our government protects these laws which I see as unjust, and some change to that would be beneficial I believe.

What I've seen in tech is that a patent is a straw asset to make the bean counters feel more comfortable. The value of non-capital-intensive tech companies is almost entirely ephemeral. Even for capital intensive ones most of the value is usually not in the physical capital but in the brand, ideas, collective employee knowledge, and customer relationships. A patent looks like a physical asset on the books so it makes accountants and investors sleep better even if it doesn't actually mean much of anything.

It'll probably fade away for the most part once a new generation that is comfortable with the dematerialization of value takes high leadership positions.

Copyright is a bit of a different beast as it covers a specific work, not an "idea."

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#98

Post by dredmorbius »

hirundo wrote: post #32
hyperbovine wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: why do commenters here frequently seem to bear a chip on their shoulder when it comes to institutions of higher learning?

An attempt at an honest answer: In my case it's related to the continual drumbeat of news stories that seems to show them being transformed from bastions of free inquiry into centers of political indoctrination. It's been reinforced in the last couple of years by a friend who sent his sweet, friendly, apolitical hard working daughter to a liberal arts college, and she returned as a politicized tattooed pierced foul m…

The political and cultural role of universities has existed from the beginning, though it mostly serves to reinforce cultural hegemony, not challenge it. Universities are a part of that battleground though. John Stuart Mill commented on this in the 19th century:

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6x7u6a/on_the_...

For a recent example of this leaning the other direction, there is author T.J. Martinson being fired -- before he could begin teaching, from Olivet Nazarene University, over the contents of a book written outside his proffesorial duties, for including swearing, a lesbian protagonist, and a character choosing hope over prayer:

https://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-university-alle...

For a more substantive instance, there are the Lewis Powell memorandum and cooption of many university programmes (particularly economics departments) by right-wing libertarian ideologues:

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

https://time.com/4148838/koch-brothers-colleges-universities...

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#99

Post by xiii1408 »

godelski wrote: post #69
HeavenFox wrote: post #62

Every time I read about the incredibly exploitative scientific publishing industry, I can’t help but think: can we just make scientific papers not copyrightable? Researchers and their institutions don’t benefit from the copyright protection; they barely make any money from their work. Sure, someone can take your work and claim it as their own, but we already handle them as plagiarism rather than copyright infringemen…

In addition to what you said, I want to remind everyone that a significant portion of money that is used to fund research at universities (and other institutions) is from the government.

At least with most DOE-funded research, we're required to retain the copyright to the official "release" copy of papers. This allows us to redistribute the official paper ourselves.

Even if you don't retain the copyright to the camera-ready version of your paper, you can just redistribute a preprint version that is almost identical (on arXiv and/or your website).

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#100

Post by kurthr »

driverdan wrote: post #96
notafraudster wrote: post #76

I am an academic at a UC who publishes in Elsevier journals. I support this. I don't want copyright for anything I work on. I also work in a field where patent/IP stuff would not be relevant, so I view all of my work as public domain as far as I am concerned. With my code I either do CC0 or MIT licenses. I have had to publish in journals that are not open access -- mostly I just make pre-prints available to anyone wh…

> I have had to publish in journals that are not open access Why is that?

It's your job... publish or perish. It was especially true more than 5 years ago. Most academics have been working 20years or more.
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