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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

#281

Post by tialaramex »

jononor wrote: post #216
bahmboo wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the wikipedia article that was referred to: Prior to the enactment of Bayh-Dole, the U.S. government had accumulated 28,000 patents, but fewer than 5% of those patents were commercially licensed Not saying I understand the complexities but an outright repeal doesn't seem like it would address this underlying systemic problem. Maybe times have changed.

Are more than 5% of university patents commercially licensed these days?

Some large fraction of patents are useless and will never be commercially licensed because it would never make any sense to pay a dime for them. A further fraction would demonstrate market failure if they were licensed - there's something much better that isn't patented, so if people are obliged to do the worse patented thing AND pay commercially for a license then we've made everything worse. So "more than 5%" might be a bad sign anyway.

This is what happened to audio codecs for years for example, several alternatives are superior to MPEG Audio Layer III (today you should use Opus), but the MP3 patent holders could expect their revenue to keep flowing for their inferior alternative anyway.

A certain kind of person really wants a patent, the same way someone might really want to win themselves a Hugo. I guess employer can think of it as a relatively expensive employee retention benefit, OK, we'll pay for your useless patent filing and we'll get you a laminated front page you can pin up in your cubicle. Go you.

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

#282

Post by edanm »

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.

> 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).

Do you have any reference/proof for that? At least the part about slowing innovation?

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

#283

Post by rsfern »

Vinnl wrote: post #273
_bxg1 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 endo…

I really like the idea of unlinking publication from evaluation. Especially in CS people cite arxiv preprints all the time since the field moves so fast. I do this in my own work as well, but most of my field does not publish preprints on arxiv. Without real infrastructure, we’re all de facto relying on google scholar to sort all these things out.

I’m starting to think that open and signed reviews would go a long way towards moving from review as a gatekeeping mechanism to a means of improving the overall quality and accessibility of the scientific discourse.

What is the project you’re involved in?

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

#284

Post by a3_nm »

xiii1408 wrote: post #101
driverdan wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Career progress in academia is mostly based on publications in top-tier journals in your field. If those journals aren't open access, you're required to publish in closed access journals if you want to (1) get a Ph.D., (2) get tenure, etc.

Even if you already have a PhD and tenure, many academic papers are collaborations, and so if the top relevant journals aren't open-access then you need to publish there if one of your co-authors needs a PhD, tenure, etc. Given that much research involves at least one PhD student, it's very hard to move out of the system.

(My personal policy has been to avoid submitting to closed-access venues, but accept it if my coauthors needed it. However, I don't do reviews for these venues.)

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

#285

Post by a3_nm »

lacker wrote: post #47
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.

The steel man for the Elsevier side is that nobody is forcing scientists to submit content to Elsevier journals or to read Elsevier journals. It’s a product that they create, so they have the right to price it as they see fit. If Elsevier was really providing no value, why don’t scientists simply submit their work elsewhere? Clearly scientists and universities don’t really care about open access. If it was that impor…

> If Elsevier was really providing no value, why don’t scientists simply submit their work elsewhere? Clearly scientists and universities don’t really care about open access. If it was that important to them, they would just stop submitting content to non-open-access journals.

The problem is coordination: everyone would like to stop, there would be a huge collective benefit if everyone stopped, but the first ones who stop will be penalized, so no one wants to be among the first.

> Elsevier puts a lot of work into making their journals prestigious

This gives the impression that the journals are prestigious thanks to Elsevier. In fact, what makes the journals prestigious is the hard work of paper authors and reviewers over the last decades, none of which were paid by Elsevier.

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

#286

Post by a3_nm »

im3w1l wrote: post #108
braythwayt wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "prestige." Framing it that way makes it sound like Elsevier is in the vanity business, and academics are vain. In actual fact, Elsevier is a gatekeeper to obtaining funding and making a living in research. Elsevier is rent-collecting, not selling an intangible feeling.

So let's go to the root of this. What is it that the funding agencies value in Elsevier publications? That if it's published there it's a mark of high quality research. Assuming Elsevier is killed off, someone else will have to put in the work of sifting good from bad. And that's not an easy problem, especially when many try to pervert the process for ideological gain.

> Assuming Elsevier is killed off, someone else will have to put in the work of sifting good from bad.

All of this work is performed by unpaid reviewers, not by Elsevier themselves.

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

#287

Post by ktaylor »

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.

Assuming people will create great works while living off a sustenance-level basic income is a bit of a stretch. And, it seems to ignore the extreme level of work, commitment, and persistence it takes to write books, publish science, etc.

The issue is not whether people should be able to profit off their own work but whether a rent-seeking gatekeeper should be able to hijack others' work and profit off it.

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

#288

Post by dotancohen »

whatshisface wrote: post #167
cortesoft wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clicking a link is requesting it, and I am professionally courteous to everyone.

Despite the popular reputation of lawyers, the courts typically frown on interpretative trickery (unless you are so good at it that you can make the reasonable interpretation sound like the tricky one).

The action is actually called "an HTTP _request_".

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

#289

Post by cultus »

olliej wrote: post #125
tingletech wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you put your author's final version in https://escholarship.org ? Do you ever use https://oapolicy.universityofcalifornia.edu/ ? (it's only open to senate faculty right now, be we are rolling it out for all ~240k UC employees) Also related https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu (disclosure, I'm the nominal tech lead for these)

Elsevier requires that authors do not do that - they can only provide copies of their papers in response to requests.

Elsevier 100% does allow authors to post preprints (most due). However, there are some journals published by Elsevier that don't.

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

#290

Post by Vinnl »

rsfern wrote: post #283
Vinnl wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 endo…

I really like the idea of unlinking publication from evaluation. Especially in CS people cite arxiv preprints all the time since the field moves so fast. I do this in my own work as well, but most of my field does not publish preprints on arxiv. Without real infrastructure, we’re all de facto relying on google scholar to sort all these things out. I’m starting to think that open and signed reviews would go a long way…

It's called Plaudit.pub [1] and launched not too long ago. The aim is for preprint servers (and eventually journals) to display endorsements right next to the research they host, but more most of them, this currently requires a browser extension.

Also note that it currently only provides a solution for the endorsement part of evaluation - you'd still have to use, say, email or a comment form to provide actual feedback.

[1] https://plaudit.pub/

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