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Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees

theguardian.com

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Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees

#81

Post by bro_thebro »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #34

Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing? First off, if the only publisher you have a problem with is Elsevier, you have already shown your hand. A half dozen other publishers are more expensive, but you can only name Elsevier. That means you're just repeating a meme that started on forums like this one. So take a moment and ask yourself why any of these publisher…

The analogy you made using Louis Vuitton handbags is fairly weak.

Louis Vouitton handbags are prestigious because they're expensive. If the time comes where Louis Vuitton handbags are given free of charge to any Tom, Dick, or Harry, Louis Vuitton loses its prestige.

On the other hand, successfully publishing in a prestigious journal, would still be prestigious even if it was done for free.

Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees

#82

Post by testHNac »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #34

Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing? First off, if the only publisher you have a problem with is Elsevier, you have already shown your hand. A half dozen other publishers are more expensive, but you can only name Elsevier. That means you're just repeating a meme that started on forums like this one. So take a moment and ask yourself why any of these publisher…

> Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing?

I find this with almost any topic I am familiar with.

The absolute confidence with which certain things were stated on HN was completely different from my lived experience.

This made me start placing less value on HN comments, and going and reading up more when I found a topic interesting.

I also find comments related to a certain worldviews generally get voted up more. Probably it's because of the HN demographic.

Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees

#83

Post by sseagull »

gtsop wrote: post #58
foven wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider you are another researcher (not the one who has just published). You may want to keep up to date with your field. This is good to do and it helps foster new ideas for now and for future proposals. There will be a selection of journals that are relevant to you and they will publish work that, generally, will be tiered by either the scope or impact of the journal. Journal A publishes a lot of papers you find v…

Maybe I am wrong here, but shouldn't the quality metric be whether it acts as a basis for practical applications? As far as I understand, research is supposed to give theoretical answers and frameworks. X works like this. Y doesn't work like that. This knowledge should then be applied to the real world and will be prooved wrong or right. Maybe a silly thought, but I suppose pre 1800 science didn't have to pay such fe…

As a society, we want to have a "portfolio" of research. We want short-term research with tangible results, moderate-term research that builds on the current state of the art and advances it, and long-term research that might pay off decades from now. You also want to mix in "moonshot" research that likely won't pay off, but if it did would be revolutionary. The proportion you invest in each is up for debate.

Generally, as the time horizon increases, risk increases, and it becomes less and less likely any particular research direction will pay off, but you still need to do it or you won't have anything after all the current directions have dried up, matured, or otherwise run their course.

I think the error people make is to assume academia is supposed to cover all three. Largely, academia covers long-term and maybe some moderate-term and moonshot. Short term is better handled by industry where there is a more direct measure of applicability ($$). But business is generally not interested in the longer term stuff because it is too risky.

So academia as a whole is about forming the bricks that industry uses to build useful things. While any particular paper is not going to be useful to society anytime soon (if at all), the aggregate knowledge will likely be useful at some point in the future.

Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees

#84

Post by eynsham »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #34

Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing? First off, if the only publisher you have a problem with is Elsevier, you have already shown your hand. A half dozen other publishers are more expensive, but you can only name Elsevier. That means you're just repeating a meme that started on forums like this one. So take a moment and ask yourself why any of these publisher…

There’s quite an interesting model by which the editors of a prestigious closed journal leave en masse and set up a new open-access one, hopefully transferring the prestige of the former one. Gowers wrote about it here (https://gowers.wordpress.com/2018/06/04/a-new-journal-in-com...). I’d claim that it’s mostly inertia that’s the problem. Prestige doesn’t require profit.

Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees

#85

Post by bradleyjg »

gtsop wrote: post #37
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #34

Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing? First off, if the only publisher you have a problem with is Elsevier, you have already shown your hand. A half dozen other publishers are more expensive, but you can only name Elsevier. That means you're just repeating a meme that started on forums like this one. So take a moment and ask yourself why any of these publisher…

I like your point but let's dive another layer down the rabbithole. Why do researchers need to buy prestige in the first place? Academic research should be done for the sake of advancement of knowledge and of course the people doing it should make a good living out of it. How does buying prestige come into play here? (just asking)

It’s proxies all the way down.

Evaluating candidates is really hard so employers rely on the prestige of their colleges. Evaluating professors is really hard so colleges rely on the prestige of their publications. Evaluating papers from post docs is really hard, so referees rely on the prestige of their advisors/institutions. Graduate admissions is really hard so admissions officers rely on the prestige of authors of letters of recommendation. Undergrad admissions is really hard so admissions officers rely on SAT and diversity factors.

Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees

#86

Post by Grimblewald »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #2

The always entertaining question of do you pay for value or cost

Unfortunately, in this regard what you pay for isn't what it seems. There's a reason that machine learning is moving fast as a field, and that is because for this field academic discourse happens primarily through pre-prints and conferences. This would stop if discourse moved to publishing via journals. This is because the publishing system is cripplingly slow, exploitative, and a perverse shadow of what it was supposed to grow to become.

Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees

#87

Post by bombcar »

testHNac wrote: post #82
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #34

Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing? First off, if the only publisher you have a problem with is Elsevier, you have already shown your hand. A half dozen other publishers are more expensive, but you can only name Elsevier. That means you're just repeating a meme that started on forums like this one. So take a moment and ask yourself why any of these publisher…

> Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing? I find this with almost any topic I am familiar with. The absolute confidence with which certain things were stated on HN was completely different from my lived experience. This made me start placing less value on HN comments, and going and reading up more when I found a topic interesting. I also find comments related to…

HN is subject to all the trials and tribulations of any social media, it just hides some of it better through excellent moderation and consisting mainly of identical people.

Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees

#88

Post by dalbasal »

apples_oranges wrote: post #8

By watching the vintage TV show Miami Vice I learned that many people make a living out of selling an image (one of the cornerstones of Sonny Crockett's policing philosophy). TED comes to mind. Or WEF in Davos. They are all basically just marketing operations. (TED sells the hip/green young futurists and WEF plays the conspiracy angle.) Same with this science stuff here. Of course the professional scientists love the…

>basically just marketing operations.

"Just" might be a dangerous reduction here... You can reduce a lot of things to "just marketing."

Prestige unversities attract students, teachers, researchers & grants with prestige Just marketing. Publications, conferences... also.

Whatetthus pretige/marketing/perception thing is, it's very central to how we operate.

Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees

#89

Post by ZoltanAK2 »

6510 wrote: post #55
ZoltanAK2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They also manage the review process (screen papers, find reviewers, communicate with authors and reviewers), They do not. That's the editor's job, and Elsevier journal editors are unpaid volunteers -- as the Guardian article correctly pointed out. > A half-decent review can easily take 3-4 hours, and a typical paper gets 2-3 reviews, so something like 8-12 hours of PhD-level labor which are not currently compensate…

Who pays for those hours?

Ultimately, the taxpayer funds the researchers' salaries, and the researchers spend some of their research time on peer review instead of advancing their research.

But these hours dedicated to peer review are not the issue: something scientifically useful gets done. It's the tax dollars that go to Elsevier, in exchange for literally nothing*, that we should worry about.

* sometimes they charge you, the taxpayer, in exchange for access to the research output

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