How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?
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Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?
#2Reminds me of the time I wanted to read Chadwick's 1932 paper "Possible Existence of a Neutron" in which he mentioned the discovery of the neutron.
Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?
#3> The reason is that the big publishers have rounded up the journals with the highest academic impact factors, in which publication is essential for researchers trying to secure grants and advance their careers(16). You can start reading open-access journals, but you can’t stop reading the closed ones.
This is the only problem standing in the way of open access publishing. While the arXiv doesn't offer peer review and so doesn't negate the need for journals, the ecosystem would quickly adapt to open peer review. Unfortunately the implied reputation of being published in certain journals is still something that's too ingrained in academia. It's getting better slowly but it's going to take at least a generation to go away at the current rate.
Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?
#4Yes this is a problem. Occasionally I have to to resort to emailing authors directly and asking for a copy of the paper - in most cases they have been obliging.
As far as I am concerned publicly funded research papers should (must) be freely available. If the public are funding it then the public has a right to the fruits of this investment. And newspapers must be able to link to or reference a source when they quote or review academic literature (in fact I think it should be law that they have to).
A very simple solution would be for authors or institutions to make copies freely available on their websites. I can only assume that they are not allowed to, due to copyright imposed by the journals.
It's ironic that the invention of the www was driven by the need for an easy way to freely distribute and share academic literature.
P.S. There's also a strong case for privately funded research to be made public too. Companies who make product claims based on privately funded research for example absolutely must make this research ("research") available for the public to review. It is notoriously hard to get pharma firms to cough up the papers which support their claims for the latest wonder drug.
Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?
#5Yes this is a problem. Occasionally I have to to resort to emailing authors directly and asking for a copy of the paper - in most cases they have been obliging. As far as I am concerned publicly funded research papers should (must) be freely available. If the public are funding it then the public has a right to the fruits of this investment. And newspapers must be able to link to or reference a source when they quote…
In a lot of cases, you can find the pre-print of the paper on arXiv.org (at least that's the case for my field of nuclear and particle physics.) Copyright imposed by journals is an odd beast, since I think few people subscribe to them directly. Mostly, their money comes from academic institutions and unlike consumer-focused organisations like the RIAA, the journals won't usually go after the little guy.
All that being said, the IoP's previously open-access journal JHEP in which my collaboration typically published our papers was bought by Springer last year. I don't know how their open-access policy has been affected by that.
Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?
#6Yes this is a problem. Occasionally I have to to resort to emailing authors directly and asking for a copy of the paper - in most cases they have been obliging. As far as I am concerned publicly funded research papers should (must) be freely available. If the public are funding it then the public has a right to the fruits of this investment. And newspapers must be able to link to or reference a source when they quote…
In a lot of cases, you can find the pre-print of the paper on arXiv.org (at least that's the case for my field of nuclear and particle physics.) Copyright imposed by journals is an odd beast, since I think few people subscribe to them directly. Mostly, their money comes from academic institutions and unlike consumer-focused organisations like the RIAA, the journals won't usually go after the little guy. All that bein…
ha I'm a particle physicist by training :) I was going to add to my comment that in my (ex-) field I'm pretty sure that papers were/are freely available on the CERN websites, as well as arXiv.org.
Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?
#7> The reason is that the big publishers have rounded up the journals with the highest academic impact factors, in which publication is essential for researchers trying to secure grants and advance their careers(16). You can start reading open-access journals, but you can’t stop reading the closed ones. This is the only problem standing in the way of open access publishing. While the arXiv doesn't offer peer review an…
Unfortunately the implied reputation of being published in certain journals is still something that's too ingrained in academia.
It's worse than that: this isn't just a matter of old fogies (who will eventually retire) clinging to out-moded ways.
The problem is, academic career progression is dependent on publication. And these days, it's also contingent on citations. Your work is more likely to be cited if it's in a prominent journal. So by gaining a lock on the high academic impact publications, the big publishers have got a stranglehold on the career ladder.
Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?
#8[deleted]
Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?
#9Yes this is a problem. Occasionally I have to to resort to emailing authors directly and asking for a copy of the paper - in most cases they have been obliging. As far as I am concerned publicly funded research papers should (must) be freely available. If the public are funding it then the public has a right to the fruits of this investment. And newspapers must be able to link to or reference a source when they quote…
In a lot of cases, you can find the pre-print of the paper on arXiv.org (at least that's the case for my field of nuclear and particle physics.) Copyright imposed by journals is an odd beast, since I think few people subscribe to them directly. Mostly, their money comes from academic institutions and unlike consumer-focused organisations like the RIAA, the journals won't usually go after the little guy. All that bein…
I recently published in JHEP and when I tried to view my paper outside the university I was greeted with a pay wall :(. They wanted the going rate of about £30.
All of my research to date and the work in that paper has been funded by the UK taxpayer. There is something very wrong with that.
Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?
#10Yes this is a problem. Occasionally I have to to resort to emailing authors directly and asking for a copy of the paper - in most cases they have been obliging. As far as I am concerned publicly funded research papers should (must) be freely available. If the public are funding it then the public has a right to the fruits of this investment. And newspapers must be able to link to or reference a source when they quote…
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