What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier • Hacker News Board

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#171

Post by notyourday » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 6:42 PM UTC

gamedori wrote: post #157

notyourday wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are seriously giving authors too much credit. The vast majority of the journal papers require enormous amount of production editing -- that's exactly why the EICs and societies sold those journals to publishers. Things that I have seen : ( wife was a production editor, I briefly helped an EIC of a society journal that was sold to a publisher ) 1. Graphs do not fit the page or space allotment - journal is uses two…

1 is mostly things that the publication team is asking authors to fix by email for modern journals. Most journals will have a template for these emails, or stick them at the back of the reviewer requests. 2 Is something that I have seen caught in peer review twice, and missed once. Again, it would usually go in a batch email to the authors of issues that need to be fixed before publication. 3 is definitely something…

If this was the case then the journals would not be sold to publishers. They are sold to publishers because EICs and societies that start journals do not want to deal with actually making the manuscript publishable after a year or two.

P.S. Average STEM paper takes about 30 hours to "produce".

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#172

Post by godelski » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 8:15 PM UTC

tjansson wrote: post #107

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's Linux market share for desktops these days?

Or you could ask what does the top 500 supercomputers all run... Linux. See: https://itsfoss.com/linux-runs-top-supercomputers/ Or servers, or mobile devices in the form of Android phones. Desktop usage is only one many use cases for Linux.

To be fair, running on anything in the top 500 is a pain in the butt. Cray's are a major pain. I hear the NSCCs computers (TaihuLight and Tianhe) are essentially linpack machines, in reference to their difficulty. But I've never used them. HPC is just overall difficult and frustrating. But it is getting better.

But if we look at servers, there's a ton of Linux servers out there. Might be a better metric than computers that a small subset of programmers use. Linux accounts for >30% of this share and Unix like is >60%. Those are really important.

Also a lot of embedded systems run Linux.

Either way I think we pretty much agree. Linux is everywhere. Just not big on desktops. But huge everywhere else (which has a larger share of the computing resources in the world).

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#173

Post by buboard » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 11:36 PM UTC

notyourday wrote: post #108

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Actual question:) How is a standard journal-style typesetting a big upfront cost? Surely the authors do all the hard parts, make the graphs, section, maths markup, footnotes. What's left that can't be automated in almost every situation?

You are seriously giving authors too much credit. The vast majority of the journal papers require enormous amount of production editing -- that's exactly why the EICs and societies sold those journals to publishers. Things that I have seen : ( wife was a production editor, I briefly helped an EIC of a society journal that was sold to a publisher ) 1. Graphs do not fit the page or space allotment - journal is uses two…

these do not require "enourmous" amount of editing. Still, if sience was published in open access HTML, none of these issues would exist. Graphs could be anything, layout is irrelevant, and the rest can easily be detected with an automated validator.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#174

Post by buboard » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 11:42 PM UTC

Gatsky wrote: post #46

It is easy to hate Elsevier, but the real problem is academia. Elsevier is just capitalising on an almost perfect business opportunity - take scientists’ work for free, get other scientists to review it for free then sell it back to all of them. You can’t blame them for doing this, or for being so defensive. We are the fools for participating in this racket. We need a hard fork. Large prestigious academic institution…

Elsevier is the bouncer to a trendy club. People flock outside, just because they know that the bouncer rejects 92% of the submitted articles (that's the rate for Nature i think). I think an open access publisher must create this artificial scarcity in order to build reputation. In fact i think they have to advertise it. They 'll also need a massive promotion campaign to attract attentin from authors.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#175

Post by buboard » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 11:47 PM UTC

Iv wrote: post #18

jcampbell1 wrote: post #6

"The UC Libraries do not endorse the use of Sci-Hub for article access.”30 As the UC Berkeley university librarian said in a published interview, “we are unequivocal: it is our understanding (though we are not attorneys!) that Sci-Hub is in violation of U.S. copyright law. We will not advise nor help anyone to use it" That is probably the best endorsing non-endorcement I have read. It never says they discourage SciHu…

At one point, that's a coward's stance. Alexandra Elbakyan's contribution to scientific research at this stage is probably higher than any university's library. Recognize that everyone uses it because none of the legal options are acceptable. Say it and urge a long overdue change in copyright laws. It is abnormal that Elbakyan is the outlaw and Elsevier the respectable institution here.

Everyone uses sci hub, i dont even think it needs advertising. It is used even more by people who legally have access to subscriptions[1]. I prefer it too - it is faster than the often horribly slow official sites

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/whos-downloading-pir...

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#176

Post by geofft » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:25 AM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #170

geofft wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 40%, because if you're comparing relative to the early 2000s, mobile devices are now filling the role that only desktops filled them. Drawing a distinction makes about as much sense as distinguishing desktops and laptops. Plus, given that when folks like Darl McBride said "He can't have written an entire OS" they were clearly not thinking about just the Linux kernel, I think there's a solid argument for countin…

Wow, that comment was misunderstood... I use Linux, don't use Windows, and still think it's obvious that there is a certain feature set, i. e. the classic consumer desktop, that the community tried and failed to compete for. Of course Linux is a perfectly fine OS, but it again took a commercial effort (Android) to reach mainstream adoption on mobile. Please read this in the context of the analogy: the OS is the scien…

So, yes, GNOME and KDE didn't put a dent in Windows. But that wasn't the argument the anti-Linux folks were making. They were saying that as a process of producing software, open-source development was missing some magical property of the development practice - testing, professionalism, sustainability, security, etc. - that only closed-source proprietary development could provide. The reason Linux desktop failed to displace Windows was none of that: there's no (serious) argument that customers stayed with Windows because it had better stability or security. They stayed with Windows largely for compatibility and because it was free. The only missing feature was 100% compatibility with existing Windows software, which wasn't part of the claim.

As it happens I think that's actually directly analogous to the open access fight now. Universities stick with pricy journals not because those journals provide better typesetting or distribution (or science) but because those journals are the only way to get to existing papers. If Windows had never existed until today, nobody would switch to it; similarly, if Elsevier had never existed until today, nobody would start subscribing to them.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#177

Post by bonoboTP » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #94

bonoboTP wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do the well established and well known, successful researchers not boycott it? It could start a chain reaction.

I'm a tenured professor, so my own position is not in danger if I boycott the likes of Elsevier (salary bonuses and grant money still would be, but at least I could still get a reasonable paycheck every month and keep a good standard of living). But the overwhelming majority of my publications are coauthored with PhD students or young postdocs who are fighting for stable positions, and their career depends on high-im…

I'm in computer science so fortunately almost everything is open access. Do you know how CS ended up like this and whether it could be replicated in other fields? I suspect the close relations to the math community may be part of the origin of it. Perhaps also the the values of hacker culture.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#178

Post by dmitriz » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

buboard wrote: post #112

Jerry2 wrote: post #30

This paragraph made me smile: > Elsevier alleges that “one senior library official has repeatedly pointed to illegal sources of articles, including a Russia-based piracy site.” > We are unaware of any library employee who has been directing users to illegal sources of articles. On the contrary, UC explicitly published a statement on its website, in response to questions asked by users, that states: “The UC Libraries…

There was a thread on twitter about how important it is not to talk about sci-hub. Please tell your friends not to use sci-hub to instantly download any science article. Sci-hub and its various domains which can be found by searching "where is sci hub now" must be stopped from their criminal violation of intellectual rights law. I repeat, do not talk about sci hub https://twitter.com/NeuroPolarbear/status/11574701061…

And under no circumstances you should tell anyone to edit the URL by inserting their illegal domain name after the article's, as that would directly, and importantly - illegally, download the article.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#179

Post by buboard » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 1:18 AM UTC

dmitriz wrote: post #178

buboard wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a thread on twitter about how important it is not to talk about sci-hub. Please tell your friends not to use sci-hub to instantly download any science article. Sci-hub and its various domains which can be found by searching "where is sci hub now" must be stopped from their criminal violation of intellectual rights law. I repeat, do not talk about sci hub https://twitter.com/NeuroPolarbear/status/11574701061…

And under no circumstances you should tell anyone to edit the URL by inserting their illegal domain name after the article's, as that would directly, and importantly - illegally, download the article.

people beware: do not create a browser toolbar bookmark with this link. it will instantly download any article from sci-hub, which is illegal and wrong. You should never use sci-hub, in fact you should avoid mentioning sci hub to anyone who might be interested in sci hub.

    javascript:window.location='http:/'+'/sci-hub.tw/'+window.location

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#180

Post by bonoboTP » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 1:20 AM UTC

tomxor wrote: post #109

bonoboTP wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But having public domain papers (eg arxiv) does not advance a carrier in the same way. You need papers in high impact factor journals in many fields to look good in evaluations (at all stages in the academic carrier ladder).

That is true in the past, and present out of sheer momentum, but it's clear opinion is changing on the value of these journals, especially in light of various absurd failures of their peer review process. I think they are only "high impact" merely out of critical mass, not any intrinsic quality of the journal itself. You are correct in pointing out it's a significant factor in the perpetuity of these organisations, a…

Sure but academia is pretty traditional and you also need to be good in the eye of others, not just researchers in your field who understand these things. But also administrators and regulators who may not really know or care about "how the sausage is made", they want to tick boxes, and see impressive numbers for impact factors etc. They could be reeducated but convincing and educating governments must also happen.