MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations • Hacker News Board

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#101

Post by mattkrause » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #87

foepys wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people getting paid in the reviewing process are the journals that are only coordinating the reviews. Actual reviewers (aka other researchers in the same field as the paper) are working for free.

Perhaps this is the real change that's needed. Getting a review structure that rewards really thorough reviews, monetarily. Those reviewers then become like YT stars where yes, everyone can review, but these reviewers are top-notch. The payment structure would depend on fees from accessing the works or fees for subscription to access. That might finally break (or finally justif) Elsevier and their ilk.

"Rockstar reviewers" seem like a cure that's almost as bad as the disease. Some scientific fields already have a problem with groupthink, with a few well-defined and vigorously-opposed schools of thought. I would vastly prefer a broader reviewer pool to the usual suspects from the same few labs.

Everybody likes money, but I'm also not sure that's the way to go either. It would be great if reviewing directly impacted people's academic/research careers; I suspect the ability to review well is highly correlated with the ability to successfully run a research group. However, there are lots of thorny issues involving power and interpersonal relationships.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#102

Post by dheera » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

abhv wrote: post #39

underdeserver wrote: post #22

I honestly don't understand why JSTOR, Elsevier and others like them still need to exist. Top universities should just found a non-profit, per subject, with a single paid facilitator and a single paid editor (per journal) to find peer reviewers and edit the papers into a monthly journal. Modern tech has made it ridiculously easy to type, edit and publish such a thing if the inputs are LaTeX, Word, Markdown files or a…

I'm an academic. For years, my academic niche has tried to break free from the likes of Springer/Elsevier. Here are the bottlenecks: * There are wonderful "pre-print" servers like arxiv and eprint.iacr.org. However, these do not maintain the "archival quality" document storage that is needed for academic scientific literature. In day-to-day, all researchers use these to stay informed on recent results. But how to gua…

> I wonder how it is going to work now that Elsevier's catalog won't work this way

MIT alum here. In my experience you can always request a copy directly from the author by e-mail. There is ResearchGate which aims to make this easier, but doesn't because the fundamental problem is academics don't have time to respond to every e-mail, much less every ResearchGate notification. So yes sometimes you have to ping them by e-mail about 2 or 3 times.

I think ResearchGate -- or even Google Scholar -- should add a feature to allow manuscript requests to be auto-replied with a copy of the document instead of waiting for the author to manually send a copy.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#103

Post by heyblinkin » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

As a former employee of Elsevier, you really do love to see it.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#104

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #99

saalweachter wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose that is a third way to deal with automation. I usually say, there are two ways to deal with productivity increases (from automation and industrialization): you can either attempt to do more as a civilization (build moon bases, increased consumer goods, etc) or you can have everyone work less (3 or 4 day work weeks, 5 hour work days, etc). I guess you can also just create lots of bullshit jobs so everyone is…

I believe your third answer is indeed the reason that despite so many things being automated, we're not seeing benefits of that in terms of reduced workloads on people. The way I see it, as long as creating bullshit jobs is easy, the market will force everyone to work 40+ hour a week to survive. And as long as creating bullshit jobs that just shuffle money around is easier than creating socially valuable jobs, we won…

Look at it from another angle: would people work bullshit jobs if they didn't have to? Fix the incentives, pay people a minimum income where they don't have to work, and if you absolutely need labor you're going to have to pay someone who doesn't have to be there if they don't want to.

If people's basic needs were met, I think you'd see a lot of labor shift to work that is valuable, but currently not compensated for.

Also, you have to adjust constraints to deal with legacy systems: the Federal Reserve works to maximize employment through monetary policy. This is suboptimal, when work will expand to consume the time allowed for it [1]. You need to use a one way policy ratchet to ratchet down the hours per week worked as productivity has increased, otherwise workers will never see productivity gains and society will be stuck on the 40 hour labor work week forever.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#105

Post by ComodoHacker » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

abhv wrote: post #39

underdeserver wrote: post #22

I honestly don't understand why JSTOR, Elsevier and others like them still need to exist. Top universities should just found a non-profit, per subject, with a single paid facilitator and a single paid editor (per journal) to find peer reviewers and edit the papers into a monthly journal. Modern tech has made it ridiculously easy to type, edit and publish such a thing if the inputs are LaTeX, Word, Markdown files or a…

I'm an academic. For years, my academic niche has tried to break free from the likes of Springer/Elsevier. Here are the bottlenecks: * There are wonderful "pre-print" servers like arxiv and eprint.iacr.org. However, these do not maintain the "archival quality" document storage that is needed for academic scientific literature. In day-to-day, all researchers use these to stay informed on recent results. But how to gua…

>But how to guarantee that nobody hacks in and figures out how to change a few bytes in one paper that is 10years old?

And how Springer/Elsevier guarantee that? Is it written into cintracts?

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#106

Post by ComodoHacker » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #90

abhv wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an academic. For years, my academic niche has tried to break free from the likes of Springer/Elsevier. Here are the bottlenecks: * There are wonderful "pre-print" servers like arxiv and eprint.iacr.org. However, these do not maintain the "archival quality" document storage that is needed for academic scientific literature. In day-to-day, all researchers use these to stay informed on recent results. But how to gua…

I’m also an academic. Hash each paper, then hash the hashes. Publish the result with the proceedings. After year one, include the hash of the prior year(s). Problem solved. Recently I downloaded one of my old peer-reviewed papers. The “archival” service added a spammy logo to the bottom left corner of each page. I’ve been meaning to find the original and put it on my web page. Honestly, I might just add a list of all…

>Problem solved

Not at all. There are corrections and amendments. It isn't as complicated as in law, but still.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#107

Post by mattkrause » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #19

calvinmorrison wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably not as 1) most academics are just as familiar with extra-legal ways to access papers and 2) there's likely a few specific papers you need to cite, maybe from your PI, or a partner lab, or other person pretty close to your network who is working on the same type of stuff and you're building on it

I have seen a recent trend in my field of people citing recent papers for things that were literally known in the 1800s. However this is probably due to fraudulent citation rings and relationships, so I'm not sure if it contributes to my point.

This....doesn't seem crazy to me? Somebody might have known it in the 1800s, but any given modern reader may not.

You could cite the original source, but it might be inaccessible (and possibly not very complete). A modern article could be easier for the reader, especially if it's a review. Sometimes you might just want a few examples of a phenomenon too, so the choice doesn't matter much.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#108

Post by x86_64Ubuntu » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

abhv wrote: post #39

underdeserver wrote: post #22

I honestly don't understand why JSTOR, Elsevier and others like them still need to exist. Top universities should just found a non-profit, per subject, with a single paid facilitator and a single paid editor (per journal) to find peer reviewers and edit the papers into a monthly journal. Modern tech has made it ridiculously easy to type, edit and publish such a thing if the inputs are LaTeX, Word, Markdown files or a…

I'm an academic. For years, my academic niche has tried to break free from the likes of Springer/Elsevier. Here are the bottlenecks: * There are wonderful "pre-print" servers like arxiv and eprint.iacr.org. However, these do not maintain the "archival quality" document storage that is needed for academic scientific literature. In day-to-day, all researchers use these to stay informed on recent results. But how to gua…

I don't mean to be rude, but I think you are greatly exaggerating the technical and cost considerations behind this effort.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#109

Post by mihaaly » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

underdeserver wrote: post #22

I honestly don't understand why JSTOR, Elsevier and others like them still need to exist. Top universities should just found a non-profit, per subject, with a single paid facilitator and a single paid editor (per journal) to find peer reviewers and edit the papers into a monthly journal. Modern tech has made it ridiculously easy to type, edit and publish such a thing if the inputs are LaTeX, Word, Markdown files or a…

I believe peer review should be supplemented or even replaced by social review methods where not only arbitrary reviewers but the whole scientific community might have chance judging, discussing and commenting any paper. Online. The logic and safeguards may not be that easy to create in the first place but in my opinion it would worth the effort eventually!

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#110

Post by setgree » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

btrettel wrote: post #97

setgree wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. No author will be required to relinquish copyright, but instead will be provided with options that enable publication while also providing authors with generous reuse rights. I've published a few papers (and have worked closely with Elsevier in a business context). When we published in a paywalled journal, we had the option of paying an APC [0] to make the particular article open access. So in that sense, we wer…

> When we published in a paywalled journal, we had the option of paying an APC [0] to make the particular article open access. So in that sense, we were not 'required' to relinquish copyright. It was just costly to retain it. It's worth noting that some (maybe even many) journal open access options do not allow the authors to keep copyright, even if they pay money! Open access ≠ keeping copyright.

good point. I just double-checked and ours says:

> This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

So I guess Cambridge is the copyright holder but it's available under CC, which I think qualifies as "generous reuse rights," as originally stipulated.