Not to mention that journals employ armies of unpaid editors and reviewers.
If Karl Marx were alive, he would have probably chosen this as the perfect example of how capitalism exploits the masses.
Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals
271–280 of 313 posts
Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals
#272I don't understand the problem, and the article doesn't really help. If I understand correctly, universities pay a fee to Elsevier to access papers. They also submit their published papers to Elsevier. And (this is where I'm not sure anymore) they have to pay a fee to make their work freely accessible?
Then why don't they just pay for the subscription, but don't submit anything? Or upload a freely accessible pre-print version like many people do?
Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem isn’t document hosting, it’s that the journals serve as a proxy for research quality, and everyone wants to publish in journals that have high (perceived and/or actual) impact. To effect real change the editors and prominent authors will need to leave, like when Machine Learning was forked into JMLR
So the world's most prestigious universities who have a problem with the status quo band together and lend their own credibility to a new platform that they run together. Cut out the middle-man.
It's not just that the platform needs to be considered credible; it's that they're used as a proxy for the relative quality of academic research. So an article in Nature is considered "better" than an article in Humbug's Best Journal.
Generally, I think the better idea would be to unlink evaluation from publication - so researchers can publish their articles wherever, and separate from that, reputable colleagues endorse their works (or not). In the end, journals derive their credibility from the reputations of their peer reviewers and editors, so that is a way to cut out the middle man.
The challenge, of course, is getting researchers to actually do that.
(Disclaimer: I'm part of a project that does exactly that.)
Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals
#274Is there value in a blockchain based academic journal? have it be well distributed, and only let universities submit new articles if they prove themselves doing replication studies against other universities' submissions
There have been many, many initiatives based on this thought. However, in my opinion they don't quite hit the mark.
The problem blockchain solves is wanting to store data, making sure that it is not tampered with, but without a single party you can trust.
That's not the problem of Open Access though. Everybody does trust Elsevier not to intentionally tamper with scholarly articles, and they have no reason to. The problem is the oligopoly they and a couple of other publishers have, and the ridiculous prices they charge as a result. Those aren't just solved by adding another failed player; you need to remove the reason the oligopoly can continue to exist. Blockchains do not do that.
Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals
#275Earlier 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.
The concept of 'free health care' in the absence of infinite resources has to be heavily qualified and that's the tricky bit.
Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals
#276Sounds 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.
My guess is that this announcement will coincide with a new wave of technical or legal assaults against SciHub. Otherwise, as others have pointed out, it would have made more sense for Elsevier to go after smaller targets first. Dinosaurs die hard.
But die they do and in the case of Elsevier it can't happen fast enough. It's about time the execs get publicly named and shamed and interviewed about how they feel about holding back progress.
Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are few open access journals in my field, and the ones that will publish open access charge absurdly high fees for it. I have a spreadsheet for my field: $2000 to $3140 per article, average $2690. I tried to negotiate with one smaller and more specialized journal in my field on the fee without any luck. I've also tried to find journals willing to take my paper without copyright transfer, as if commonly done for…
Interesting that you did not succeed negotiating. We had a case where our open-access fund would only help out if the fee was $2000 maximum. We communicated that to the journal and they obliged without further comment. (Though this was after review and that journal really wanted our paper as it was obvious that we would raise their impact factor). I agree that $2000 still seems like a lot of money for an online-only…
> Interesting that you did not succeed negotiating.
Cartels are pretty good at negotiating. Fuck off or bend over.
Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hasn’t there been a strong academic with enough confidence in their work to not publish with these “top tier” journals? Surely if the work is groundbreaking enough it would be able to stand on its own and thus erode the prestige of these journals? I mean, the rest of the world has already moved on to the internet age where prestige is earned through likes/shares/forks/follows/stars/retweets/upvotes, from developers t…
As I explained in another comment in this thread, it is extremely unlikely that there is any quid-pro-quo exchange of money for favors by the journal publishers. I've heard plenty of third-hand rumors of star professors having an easy route into the prestige journals, but it's always because of a personal connection to an editor and/or exceptionally good reputation. I've never heard any rumors of money changing hands…
I’m not talking about straightforward exchange of money for favours... rather, it’s a systemic “meta” corruption where money and favours are flowing to the right influencers who are incentivised to maintain status quo.
Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals
#279Earlier 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…
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 is what keeps billions of people from accessing every book ever written for free.
While that is true, would those books have been written without copyright protection? If you eliminate copyright laws today, will we see more or less (quality) books in the future?
Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing the layman loses with no IPR is the ability to tell which are the "real" Prusa, or the real brakes for their bike, or whatever. That is one thing that causes clear and imminent harm. I'm pretty communist in my thinking, rail hard against established IPR structures, but most of it would be sensible IMO if the balance were shifted back toward the demos . Things have been allowed to slip away from the IP deals…
Apart from excesses, I don't even consider trademarks "real" intellectual property. If you infringe on a trademark you don't commit "theft", but fraud.
It's fraud towards the user but theft in the sense that it removes the ability for the trademarks 'owner' to use the mark to uniquely identify the origins of their goods/services.
If I also make Nike products then they lose the ability to identify by branding alone that marked goods are endorsed by them.
IMO trademark should have a requirement to identify the factory in which a good was made (eg on the label or packaging). That extends the ability for consumers to compare the _true_ origin of goods in way that gives usable information. Capitalism only optimises resources if consumers have perfect information ... so in theory a goal of capitalist government should be provision of as much useful information as possible.
An example of how that would be useful would be if I buy supermarket Weetabix, that uses the trademark shape, if they're from the same factory then they're probably the same product (not necessarily) so I can just buy the cheaper product.