Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 254 posts

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

#171

Post by anonymouskimmer »

froh wrote: post #167
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of the journal bureaucracy, such as peer-review, actually adds value. Do we really need vetted journals? Are pre-print upload sites with the ability to comment good enough?

if only the reviewers were paid I'd understand the question in the context of price gauging. however the journal does _not_ pay the reviewers. the question how to best organize academic peer review is independent from the price gauging.

The need for a journal in the first place is, in small part, to coordinate peer-review. Eliminate pre-publication peer review and you eliminate, in a small part, the need for a journal.

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

#172

Post by lores »

Someone wrote: post #157
spamizbad wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument makes no sense. Journal publishers don’t weigh in on tenure or grant decisions. While they provide a conduit for materials that impact such things (the researchers papers), they have no say in anything (including, incidentally, sometimes what gets published) A publisher provided distribution. That’s it. They aren’t even the chef in this analogy: they’re FOH staff. Journal editors are faculty at academic…

> A publisher provided distribution. That’s it. throwawaaarrgh argues that they provide prestige, too. I agree. Certainly, I can’t see that publishers only provide distribution, as that should be almost trivial to replicate, and lead to a race to the bottom, price-wise, and the entire process would long have been “replaced by a CMS solution hosted in the cloud” .

You are absolutely correct. I have made a tool that suggests the most suitable journal for a particular paper to publish. Fewer than 50% researchers care; they all want to be in Nature, price be damned. Academia is not wrong to say publishers make too much profit, but is entirely unwilling to change the way it works too. And how much is Nature supposed to charge when they need 600 highly qualified people to pick the best handful of papers amongst thousands?

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

#174

Post by lores »

spamizbad wrote: post #168
Someone wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A publisher provided distribution. That’s it. throwawaaarrgh argues that they provide prestige, too. I agree. Certainly, I can’t see that publishers only provide distribution, as that should be almost trivial to replicate, and lead to a race to the bottom, price-wise, and the entire process would long have been “replaced by a CMS solution hosted in the cloud” .

That prestige exists because of its editors and its history in a specific field of study. There’s no “value” being created by the publisher itself in this respect.

There is, in hiring a highly qualified set of reviewers.

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

#175

Post by lores »

JackFr wrote: post #122
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…

> Your example of "I can tell when my food is burnt" is a poor one. Can you tell a quality scientific paper? Think of it in these terms: don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining. The science isn’t the issue. The money is. Academic publishing is much like the US healthcare system, bond rating companies and various other interests, industries and organizations in that through quirks of the path of history they fin…

Publishers make ~30% profit. High? Yes. Sit-on-your-pile-of-gold-cackling? No.

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

#177

Post by fastneutron »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #171
froh wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if only the reviewers were paid I'd understand the question in the context of price gauging. however the journal does _not_ pay the reviewers. the question how to best organize academic peer review is independent from the price gauging.

The need for a journal in the first place is, in small part, to coordinate peer-review. Eliminate pre-publication peer review and you eliminate, in a small part, the need for a journal.

The fact that a coordinator like a publisher exists isn’t necessarily in dispute. Sometimes it’s necessary to have a 3rd party coordinate reviewers, maintain quality standards, and settle plagiarism disputes. The issue is the price. It’s wholly unreasonable to charge $30 to read a paper, to charge a PI upwards of $2k-$7k to remove the $30 reader charge, or to charge whatever ungodly amount they charge libraries to offer free access to researchers.

Like I said, I’d value the service I get at a factor of 10-20x less than what they charge.

(Edited for formatting)

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

#178

Post by tastyfreeze »

fast_neutron wrote: post #123

Elsevier is far from the only offender in the academic publishing space. This price gouging is rampant, and it affects everyone you could call a "customer." The only variable is who gets stuck with the bill. When I was in grad school, I easily went through 1000+ articles via my institution's library, most of which were dead ends. My school even had to drop the subscription of a journal I was actively using because th…

What I read in this is that sci-hub is only a third of the solution of cutting out the middle man. The another third is a credible place for researchers to publish to. The current publishers are trying to retain a dead model. We don't really need a publisher anymore. What they do provide that I haven't seed a good solution for is visibility among peers.

Sci-hub is great to grab a paper when you already know the DOI. If you are looking for papers in a specific field you will usually end up on a publisher's site using their search engine.

If researchers could easily browse papers relevant to them I think they would dump publishers all together. The expense of prestige can't hold up over time against a more efficient model that costs way less.

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

#179

Post by tastyfreeze »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #158
fast_neutron wrote: post #123

Elsevier is far from the only offender in the academic publishing space. This price gouging is rampant, and it affects everyone you could call a "customer." The only variable is who gets stuck with the bill. When I was in grad school, I easily went through 1000+ articles via my institution's library, most of which were dead ends. My school even had to drop the subscription of a journal I was actively using because th…

I wonder how much of the journal bureaucracy, such as peer-review, actually adds value. Do we really need vetted journals? Are pre-print upload sites with the ability to comment good enough?

The journals don't actually do peer review. They are really only an expensive distribution network with limited reach due to cost expense on the reader side.

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

#180

Post by eternalban »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #178
fast_neutron wrote: post #123

Elsevier is far from the only offender in the academic publishing space. This price gouging is rampant, and it affects everyone you could call a "customer." The only variable is who gets stuck with the bill. When I was in grad school, I easily went through 1000+ articles via my institution's library, most of which were dead ends. My school even had to drop the subscription of a journal I was actively using because th…

What I read in this is that sci-hub is only a third of the solution of cutting out the middle man. The another third is a credible place for researchers to publish to. The current publishers are trying to retain a dead model. We don't really need a publisher anymore. What they do provide that I haven't seed a good solution for is visibility among peers. Sci-hub is great to grab a paper when you already know the DOI.…

> If researchers could easily browse papers relevant to them I think they would dump publishers all together. The expense of prestige can't hold up over time against a more efficient model that costs way less.

arXiv is an emerging solution. The peer review bit is missing.

https://arxiv.org/category_taxonomy

ArXiv.org Reaches a Milestone and a Reckoning 2022:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/arxiv-org-reaches...

Post reply on HN