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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

#141

Post by riku_iki »

dbmueller wrote: post #51
jhbadger wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine that Elsevier would argue that they (and their fellow for-profit journal publishers) are providing a valuable service of being the gatekeepers of scientific knowledge and without them science would collapse in a chaos of confusion and misinformation. (Not that I really believe that's the case; things like ArXiv show that science can work without the involvement of journals open or closed at all, but t…

I'm not sure arXiv is an example of doing without journals. arXiv doesn't involve peer review, so that any result published there are to be taken with a big grain of salt. On the other hand, there are open access journals that essentially act as a layer above arXiv, so that the main added value is review.

In AI field such layer is recognizable conferences, researchers compete to get their papers accepted, and conference committees are doing peer review.

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

#142

Post by SequoiaHope »

marksomnian wrote: post #114
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright is what keeps billions of people from accessing every book ever written for free. Google really tried to do this but stopped digitizing books halfway through the worlds collection because of copyright law. It hurts to think of all the knowledge we could have shared if this had been permitted.

Copyright as an idea is fine - as in, how it was described in the Constitution: "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries", emphasis on "limited times". It's our current batarnak of an implementation that's causing all the problems. Getting rid of copyright and instituting a copy-anarchy would mean that creatives would have no real incentive…

I see it another way: bring about a true socialist society where people do not need to work to survive, and in that world people can do as they please with no concern for income. Creativity has many benefits other than income and eliminating profit incentives would allow us to pursue those other benefits more freely.

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

#143

Post by SequoiaHope »

michaelmrose wrote: post #127
marksomnian wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright as an idea is fine - as in, how it was described in the Constitution: "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries", emphasis on "limited times". It's our current batarnak of an implementation that's causing all the problems. Getting rid of copyright and instituting a copy-anarchy would mean that creatives would have no real incentive…

How about a combination of - free health care for all - universal basic income at a really basic subsidence level - voluntary patronage People define themselves by their art if they can live a reasonable life and produce they will do it.

Yes! I see a more complex socialism as being necessary versus UBI, but in either case eliminating the need for survival work would mean artists could create art and be copied without anyone losing their livelihood.

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

#144

Post by richardwhiuk »

bahmboo wrote: post #140
sitkack wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As enabled by Bayh–Dole Act [0]. Reversing this law would put publicly funded research back into the hands and minds of the public. This is the very law that creates a perverse incentive for universities to operate as for profit corporations, even with public dollars. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act

Wouldn't that just put it back in the hands of the Federal Gov where it would languish like it did before?

Work produced by the Federal Government are usually automatically in the public domain.

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

#145

Post by TaylorAlexander »

petra wrote: post #130
api wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Many patents areuseless. But without patents, and with today's reverse engineering, most things would be reduced to cheap chinese clones. Yet it's not the case, in many fields.

What I find interesting is how open source hardware companies can coexist with their cheap clones. The Prusa i3 printer is a great example. An assembled Prusa costs $1000 while clones are $200, and yet the two options serve different markets. If you’re a broke hobbyist you get the clones, and they take a lot of work to keep running. If you’re operating a school, business, or makerspace you get the Prusa because it’s the first party brand that works every time.

So I see all the businessss that would die without IP protection as maybe only existing because of our historical legal structure. Perhaps without IP laws the boundaries of who does what work would change but we would still strive to create new things just as we always have. Does that make sense?

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

#146

Post by raegis »

titanomachy wrote: post #58
HarryHirsch wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the bootcamp graduates really believe they'll be Senior Architect 10 years down the line? They'll be in for a surprise.

10 years is more than enough time to learn all the CS you missed out on in school, and then some. And architecure is learned more on the job than in school anyway. I went to a bootcamp and it doesn't seem to be holding me back too much. Still moving up the ranks in FANG just like everyone else. I don't feel academically inferior to my colleagues, most of them have gradually forgotten most of what they learned in coll…

Yes, but if your degree was in mathematics or engineering, your example is not as compelling.

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

#147

Post by breck »

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…

Awesome, thank you for doing that!

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

#148

Post by tanakachen »

gisely wrote: post #135
dproblem wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your university commercialization office will disagree. Check with them. From what I understand, it is illegal to release your code in CC0 or MIT unless you have taken permission from the commercialization office (Some universities allow GPL without explicit permission). Have you checked your contract ? Your work is not yours if it has any value. The value belongs to the university (mostly) - which also means you hav…

Grad student at Berkeley. The commercialization office only takes an interest if your work is high profile enough and has enough commercialization potential. Plenty of UC researchers release CC0 or MIT license code without issue. Elsevier may be only one of many problems for the UC community, but that doesn’t mean it’s a distraction—- millions have been wasted every year subsidizing their profits. And Elsevier’s rent…

To Elsevier CEO: It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It.

Elsevier’s model is being disrupted and there is no going back.

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

#149

Post by amluto »

apo wrote: post #45
jimbob45 wrote: post #26

Can anyone steelman the Elsevier side? I don't want to be caught in the headlights of I have to debate this.

Elsevier owns copyrighted material, which it licenses to individuals and institutions for a fee. The fee is negotiated on a case-by-case basis, which is no different than any other intellectual property such as movies, music, books, or software. If a customer is unable or unwilling to pay the prevailing rate, then no access will be granted. The argument that Elsevier uses unpaid academic labor and therefore should fa…

> Authors signed over their copyright to Elsevier, and like any other copyright holder Elsevier can license its property toward any legal purpose that advances its business interests.

I have two counter arguments here:

1. Funding agencies should not permit this. If I were to fund public research, the results should be public under an appropriate license.

2. Something is very wrong with the system if authors are willing to do this without being paid. If Elsevier paid the author $3k, that would be another story. (And possibly unethical.)

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