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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

#221

Post by a_bonobo »

noisy_boy wrote: post #143
a_bonobo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, there used to be Plan S by the EU, 'all research has to be open access' - which led to an explosion in publisher's prices as people were forced to pay them! Nature used to be Closed Access only, but once Plan S came around they added an OA option for about 10k in euros. Ridiculous.

The EU just announced they're changing that towards no cost open access mandates: https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-europe-infr...

Good news! We'll see how the publishers will torpedo it

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

#222

Post by [deleted] »

christophilus wrote: post #206
cma wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Louis Vouitton sells a handbag for $2k. Is it worth $2k? You could say no, that any other bag would be just as useful. But value isn't utility alone. People find that the bag is worth the price because of the prestige that the brand imbues the owner with. Change the analogy so that the customers design and mostly manufacture the bag.

And the government uses taxpayer dollars to fund the design process.

[deleted]

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

#223

Post by noisy_boy »

a_bonobo wrote: post #221
noisy_boy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, there used to be Plan S by the EU, 'all research has to be open access' - which led to an explosion in publisher's prices as people were forced to pay them! Nature used to be Closed Access only, but once Plan S came around they added an OA option for about 10k in euros. Ridiculous. The EU just announced they're changing that towards no cost open access mandates: https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-e…

> Good news! We'll see how the publishers will torpedo it

Indeed! Maybe they will try to make it difficult to access but atleast as long as the access is open and free (as in beer), all those efforts will do is give rise to a secondary platform that will solve the ease-of-access issue.

I suggest you submit a new post once EU decision is final, either way, so that this topic stays in the forefront :)

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

#224

Post by lapinot »

PeterisP wrote: post #220
lapinot wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why did you pay if i may ask? I would guess it's because if you don't your career will be in trouble because that's what employers value. The current state of affair isn't a random thing. It's because the global policy of employment in public research and the definition of success is completely stupid and based on metrics (i don't care which metrics, the sole fact that we try to quantify everything just makes thi…

They probably paid because, as the grandparent post suggested, taking public funds from NIH imposes a requirement to publish the research results in this manner, so for the research team it's an unavoidable part of the expenses related to the grant - and so it's not the researchers' money nor their decision; NIH defined what they want and so they're paying publishers a significant portion of their funding for that.

Indeed, most likely the question of paying or not wasn't even asked properly and this is just the norm.. In any case my point is that the problem of this capture from some scientific publishers is much deeper than just a problem of how publishing is setup. Its one of the many symptoms of how current research institutions are governed.

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

#225

Post by latency-guy2 »

ModernMech wrote: post #185
psychomugs wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course national politics would be represented by the media as vicious and high-stakes: the media needs vicious and high-stakes messages to keep up viewership as its lifeline. Not even academics are interested in academic politics beyond their own immediate purview of the next publication or deadline.

Do you have any first-hand knowledge of academic politics, or can you offer any examples that demonstrate they are particularly "vicious"? When I think of vicious politics, I think of violence, which we see on the national stage. Would you say academic politics are violent, or no? > Not even academics are interested in academic politics beyond their own immediate purview of the next publication or deadline. Can you s…

Do we see violence on the national stage? I don't think we've seen a fist fight in the US senate or house in quite a while, using flimsy recording in this wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_violence#United_St... it's been 6 years.

I think I'd put some money in for some fights. Maybe some pay per view ones like AOC vs MTG, attack of the acronyms.

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

#226

Post by jasonm23 »

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.…

This may be naive but, doesn't Sci-Hub provide visibility?

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

#227

Post by ModernMech »

latency-guy2 wrote: post #225
ModernMech wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any first-hand knowledge of academic politics, or can you offer any examples that demonstrate they are particularly "vicious"? When I think of vicious politics, I think of violence, which we see on the national stage. Would you say academic politics are violent, or no? > Not even academics are interested in academic politics beyond their own immediate purview of the next publication or deadline. Can you s…

Do we see violence on the national stage? I don't think we've seen a fist fight in the US senate or house in quite a while, using flimsy recording in this wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_violence#United_St... it's been 6 years. I think I'd put some money in for some fights. Maybe some pay per view ones like AOC vs MTG, attack of the acronyms.

Last week, several people were convicted of seditious conspiracy relating to the violent coup attempt on 1/6.

So yes, there is violence in American national politics.

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

#228

Post by ModernMech »

psychomugs wrote: post #210
ModernMech wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any first-hand knowledge of academic politics, or can you offer any examples that demonstrate they are particularly "vicious"? When I think of vicious politics, I think of violence, which we see on the national stage. Would you say academic politics are violent, or no? > Not even academics are interested in academic politics beyond their own immediate purview of the next publication or deadline. Can you s…

I have a PhD. Students are shackled to dead-end projects, uprooted from their communities by careerist mentors, and generally fucked over - in at least one case, literally - by their PIs. Scooping - having work similar to yours get published by another party - is a pervasive enough fear that reviewers can block publications to guard their own moats. Publication venues choose arbitrary selectiveness criteria, e.g. con…

I appreciate your strife, but at the same time this doesn’t really speak to your original assertion, that academic politics are particularly “vicious”. Moreover, you haven’t linked the purported viciousness to the stakes being low. Actually, your post seems to argue the opposite; that academics hold in their hands the lives and futures of students. How are the stakes low?

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

#229

Post by ModernMech »

serial_dev wrote: post #204
ModernMech wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree to a large extent. At the same time, we have a problem in this country where scientists are paid a pittance for their fundamental work, which downstream is capitalized by corporations, paywalled, patented, and sold for a huge profit. One thing that many scientists do is start businesses using their research, which serves as an incentive in the face of meager salaries. If not for the prospect of commercializin…

I don't see how scientists starting businesses and making the articles public domain are connected. Having the articles freely available is good for encouraging discovery, communication and learning. I don't see how that would significantly change the equation for protecting your business, as we assume the article was already available for 30 dollars. If a 30 dollars fee is the only thing that stops someone from stea…

Parent said “work, data, journal, etc.” should be public domain. I presume “etc.” would mean patents as well.

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

#230

Post by psychomugs »

ModernMech wrote: post #228
psychomugs wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a PhD. Students are shackled to dead-end projects, uprooted from their communities by careerist mentors, and generally fucked over - in at least one case, literally - by their PIs. Scooping - having work similar to yours get published by another party - is a pervasive enough fear that reviewers can block publications to guard their own moats. Publication venues choose arbitrary selectiveness criteria, e.g. con…

I appreciate your strife, but at the same time this doesn’t really speak to your original assertion, that academic politics are particularly “vicious”. Moreover, you haven’t linked the purported viciousness to the stakes being low. Actually, your post seems to argue the opposite; that academics hold in their hands the lives and futures of students. How are the stakes low?

I’m not sure that strife is something to “appreciate,” but, thanks(?)

Peer-to-peer politics is vicious because of the incentive to compete for citations in a publish-or-perish milieu were big players block little players with few alternatives apart from favor currying. Mentor-mentee politics is vicious because the institutional power dynamics are skewed overwhelmingly towards the former with little recourse for the latter. The stakes - publications read by and impacting very small fractions of very small research fields and whose individual contributions are further diluted by the modern diarrhea of least-publishable units - are low.

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