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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

#141

Post by psychomugs »

itronitron wrote: post #41
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…

'measuring influence' was established in the science community long, long before it ever became a social media thing.

SEO, a precursor to social media influence as a metric, is itself precursed by the academic citation metric.

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

#142

Post by psychomugs »

refurb wrote: post #104
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…

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…

Maybe because "the solution is so obvious, i can solve this in 5 minutes" is what HNers are asked to do on a professional basis?

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

#143

Post by noisy_boy »

a_bonobo wrote: post #68
noisy_boy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it is the equivalent of the Facebook problem. You are on Facebook because all your family is and no one leaves for a new platform because no one else is using that. Except it is worse here and instead of just missing out on updates/photos, it directly affects your livelihood.

Exactly!!! And there's very little 'regular' scientists can do about this. It's a system upheld by senior academics' conceptions, funding agencies, and university management staff.

Seems like the only answer to this is law enforcing open sourcing of academic research, atleast that which is funded by the taxpayer; though not much hope of that with the lobbying pushed by the incumbent journals.

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

#145

Post by daniel-cussen »

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…

[dead]

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

#147

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

> yet none of them work in publishing?

Why are you so confident people don't know what they are talking about when you are in a forum with a lot of people that clearly work on that industry and a lot that clearly noped out of it after experiencing all the bullshit?

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

#148

Post by AlbertCory »

VHRanger wrote: post #113
DeusExMachina wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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]

Not to mention he couldn't even write one sentence correctly.

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

#149

Post by mjklin »

Fordec wrote: post #136
mjklin wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both?

Don't mistake self-congratulatory with show-y about academia. Only the home crowd know academics names, politics at least has the public eye on them.

I feel like this depends on the field. Newer / “hotter” fields (e.g. evo psych) tend to be dominated by rockstars while traditional / staid fields (e.g. linear algebra) have mostly solid and competent practitioners.

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

#150

Post by joshvm »

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.

This is not true for all fields. Computer science (specifically machine learning) is possibly the most lucrative area to work in right now and comparatively few people publish in journals. Computer vision has been this way for a long time even with journals like IEEE PAMI.

Our equivalent is highly competitive conferences that have sloppy/inconsistent peer review and (as a result of the format) limited submissions. You have to submit a full paper and acceptance rates are low. Researchers plan and structure entire projects around deadlines for big venues. Inconsistent peer review is somewhat made up for by community validation (most of the time, since publishing code is strongly correlated with citations). Really big papers often turn up as preprints first because speed is important (if you wait 6 months to go through review, someone will beat you).

Or you have fields like astrophysics where everyone cross-publishes in Arxiv when they submit to a journal.

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