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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

#111

Post by DeusExMachina »

krisoft wrote: post #67
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? Because people can have opinions on industries they don’t work in? I don’t work in hospitality, and I have never cooked for a living. I can still confidently tell you when my food is burnt. A chef then can crawl out of the kitchen and explain the complicated process which resulted in me getting burnt food and I won’t car…

> I can still confidently tell you when my food is burnt.

That does not guarantee are be able to cook it without burning it.

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

#113

Post by VHRanger »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #111
krisoft wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing? Because people can have opinions on industries they don’t work in? I don’t work in hospitality, and I have never cooked for a living. I can still confidently tell you when my food is burnt. A chef then can crawl out of the kitchen and explain the complicated process which resulted in me getting burnt food and I won’t car…

> I can still confidently tell you when my food is burnt. That does not guarantee are be able to cook it without burning it.

[flagged]

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

#114

Post by VHRanger »

j-bos wrote: post #109
refurb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing wrong with having an opinion, but having a strong opinion ("the solution is so obvious, i can solve this in 5 minutes") about an industry of which you known nothing of the inner workings come across as rather ignorant. Your example of "I can tell when my food is burnt" is a poor one. Can you tell a quality scientific paper? Do you know what's required to get tenure? To get scientific funding? All of those are…

>Can you tell a quality scientific paper? Given the replication crisis, maybe scientific publishing as it works today also can't tell quality.

The replication crisis is much worse in fields without open publishing.

Computer science/physics/etc. (arxiv), economics (NBER) and other fields with freely available papers tend to have much better replication numbers than fields that are closed-off.

This is even better when data and code are publicly available.

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

#115

Post by gs17 »

fluidcruft wrote: post #95
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…

It would be pretty interesting if Louis Vuitton items were designed, manufactured, quality controlled, etc entirely by customers who then hand them over to Louis Vuitton to have a logo stamped and have put in a box and sold without any of the proceeds returning to suppliers. Having said that Shifting the prices to authors with free access for all is generally seen as pretty fair. Open access publishing has always bee…

> It would be pretty interesting if Louis Vuitton items were designed, manufactured, quality controlled, etc entirely by customers who then hand them over to Louis Vuitton to have a logo stamped and have put in a box and sold without any of the proceeds returning to suppliers.

And that Louis Vuitton charged the customers for the right to have their work sold.

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

#116

Post by watwut »

jasode wrote: post #49
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, It's because the outsider's mental model of "academic journals publishing" is dominated by seeing the artifacts of publishing: the pdf files. With pdf files then driving the intuition about "what I think the publishing industry is", it makes people conclude that Elsevier is just a "glorified pdf server". (E.g. Scihub can host a bunch of pdf files for free...…

The reason scientists submit to these journals is that your career depends on which journal you published at. It is collective action problem.

And elsevier has massive profit margins. It earns way more then needed to pay emplyees.

The reason HN dislikes then is that HN has many members who work or worked in academia.

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

#117

Post by nologic01 »

They have 25% of the market. Just split them in five, mandate that no entity can have more than five percent of the market and watch their margins shrink.

Maybe there is a less brutal way to do it, e.g., raise corporate tax in proportion to market share.

The point is that the market system we currently have does not prevent oligopoly power and that is creating all sorts of problems.

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

#118

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #110
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…

Agreed it's not just Elsivier. Agree that some of it is about "prestige", although I think it's somewhat more complicated than that. But let's just take your model, sure. Where does the prestige come from? The editors of the journal, recognizing that they are pretty much solely responsible for the rigor/quality of the content (well, plus the authors of course), believe they can take their prestige with them. Are they…

> They wound up with a contract that provided much more open access than ever before

Elsevier wanted them to buy more open access. That's one of its main long term goals for its journal business: switch everyone to open access. That's guaranteed money, compared to if everyone just started using a preprint server. (I believe it's on some page of their website, they say they want to move their journals more towards open access)

The consensus seems to be that they needed to change their model because all the negative press about their profits was threatening future revenues (in case academia actually got off its ass and found a new way to do research other than based on who published in Journal X). Open Access is the simple way for them to retain the same business and just get paid slightly differently. As they move more to Open Access their profit may decrease, but they're always acquiring new companies and diversifying the business, so by the time most of the business is Open Access they'll have made up for any profit loss. Or at least that seems like a rational view of the change, based on the fact that they're very clearly trying to get into more Open Access sooner than later.

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

#119

Post by Consultant32452 »

nologic01 wrote: post #117

They have 25% of the market. Just split them in five, mandate that no entity can have more than five percent of the market and watch their margins shrink. Maybe there is a less brutal way to do it, e.g., raise corporate tax in proportion to market share. The point is that the market system we currently have does not prevent oligopoly power and that is creating all sorts of problems.

The product they are selling isn't science/articles, it's exclusivity. Despite the rhetoric, most people don't want inclusivity. They want their stuff to be in the best/exclusive/fancy group, and only want to consume the best, most exclusive stuff.

Obviously, my statement is not universal so providing some counter-examples is irrelevant.

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

#120

Post by jasode »

watwut wrote: post #116
jasode wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, It's because the outsider's mental model of "academic journals publishing" is dominated by seeing the artifacts of publishing: the pdf files. With pdf files then driving the intuition about "what I think the publishing industry is", it makes people conclude that Elsevier is just a "glorified pdf server". (E.g. Scihub can host a bunch of pdf files for free...…

The reason scientists submit to these journals is that your career depends on which journal you published at. It is collective action problem. And elsevier has massive profit margins. It earns way more then needed to pay emplyees. The reason HN dislikes then is that HN has many members who work or worked in academia.

>The reason scientists submit to these journals is that your career depends on which journal you published at.

Yes, I agree and wrote a previous comment repeating the reason you gave: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27804504

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