Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by checkyoursudo » Mon, May 08, 2023, 11:56 AM UTC

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.…

Didn't sci-hub stop adding new papers? Has that changed?

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

#232

Post by lores » Mon, May 08, 2023, 12:03 PM UTC

hgsgm wrote: post #190

lores wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Reviewers are volunteers. Journals main business is selling the stone for stone soup.

I worked in the kitchen and know how the soup is made. If you insist on calling it stone soup, then it's granite - unglamourous, lots of skilled but drudge work to process, but valuable then.

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

#233

Post by lores » Mon, May 08, 2023, 12:09 PM UTC

freeone3000 wrote: post #203

lores wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peer review absolutely add costs. Finding a reviewer who's qualified, free and willing takes time and effort, and that's increasing by the day. Frankly, I think peer review is doomed. There's now a flood of AI-generated papers that journals need to weed out, and even 99% success is not good enough for peer-reviewers' workload and continued respect. On top of that, natural demographics, the cuts to university funding…

It might be easier to find reviewers if they were compensated for their time instead of volunteers for a for-profit publisher.

Believe it or not, not enough to make a difference. The limiting factor is qualified academics' time.

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

#234

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, May 08, 2023, 12:42 PM UTC

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #192

jrochkind1 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if "negative press about profits" can lead to a threat to their revenues in some way, then it would appear something other than "research no longer depending on prestige" can do so, right? I would guess US federal (and other) government mandates for open access when receiving publishing are part of it -- and the increasing general "public" discussion of the market ("negative press about profits" if you like) has…

I'm not so much sympathetic to publishers as I'm a reformed populist. I had formerly held the usual HN view, that Elsevier is the only journal publisher, that they act differently than anyone else, that somehow they have cornered a market or tricked people onto paying too much money. Imagine my surprise when I found out, actually academia only uses them because prestigious journal publication is the only real metric…

From seeing the purchasing side of academic journals, I definitely don't think that Elseiver is the only journal publisher, or that they act differently than anyone else, and I agree that popular discussion often thinks they are more special than they are.

But what they are is indeed the biggest one. And, from the purchasing side, one thing that gives them is the ability to get universities into these giant package deals. (I also wouldn't be surprised if they have bigger profit margins than their competitors -- but of course their for-profit competitors would love to be as profitable and are doing their best).

Mostly I think it's much more complicated than "as long as universities use prestige of journals published in to decide tenure, journal publishers will be able to extract enormous profits from universities."

For reasons I've tried to touch upon.

I think while you are perhaps a reformed populist, you are perhaps still as interested in over-simplified one-factor explanations as you used to be, you've just flipped em.

Why shouldn't this editorial board be able to take their "prestige" with them to the new journal they are founding, with the purpose of being more affordable? (I agree there are reasons this is probably not going to lead to widespread changes in the market, but I don't think it's because they can't take the journal's prestige with them in this individual case, I don't see any reason why not).

What about fields like computer science where tenure decisions, while still based on publication, are not generally based on publication in for-profit journals from Elsevier or anyone else?

Another thing to look at in the market is the transition from print to electronic that happened over the past honestly not much more than 20 years, in which I believe it could be shown that % of university acquisitions budgets spent on journals as well as profit margins of publishers have skyrocketed -- but I don't believe academic's interest in "prestige" used to be a lot less.

I agree that tenure and promotion processes are pretty broken, I'm not trying to defend them. I just don't think they are a one-note explanation of the academic publishing market.

But I certainly identify with being really frustrated with academia and how it works. It's a mess.

I'm still curious if you work for a journal publisher or used to.

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

#235

Post by tastyfreeze » Mon, May 08, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

checkyoursudo wrote: post #231

tastyfreeze wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Didn't sci-hub stop adding new papers? Has that changed?

Still going on until the lawsuit in India is resolved.

I have a couple papers I have been trying to get for almost a year. Can't get them on Sci-Hub and the authors never responded when I asked directly.

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

#236

Post by tastyfreeze » Mon, May 08, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

jasonm23 wrote: post #226

tastyfreeze wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The search on sci-hub is not great. It is best when you know the DOI of what you want.

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

#237

Post by ModernMech » Mon, May 08, 2023, 2:08 PM UTC

psychomugs wrote: post #230

ModernMech wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Again, you are making conclusory statements. You haven’t brought anything to back your statements.

The original claim was that:

"Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."

First, you haven’t shown academic politics are more vicious and bitter than other forms of politics, let alone the most. I’ve already shown that national politics in America is violent in another thread, so to show that academic politics is a more vicious form, I think you need to demonstrate it is at least as violent. Your examples of “viciousness” in academia seem more like pettiness. Maybe you could argue it’s more bitter, but you’re not arguing that.

The second part of your original claim was that the politics are this way because the stakes are low. Insofar that you think the stakes are low, you still haven’t linked the two casually. There are other alternative explanations for viciousness, like the stakes being high, a position which you’ve accidentally argued in your prior post.

Finally, I believe your perspective is colored by your former status as a PhD student; there’s a lot more to academic politics than paper politics, and I understand maybe you don’t have the full picture.

Nonetheless, you still should have the tools to argue your position cogently, and you haven’t yet provided such an argument. Can you make a better one?

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

#238

Post by neuronerdgirl » Mon, May 08, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

lapinot wrote: post #217

neuronerdgirl wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NIH indeed requires all work published under their grants to be made available open-access. Problem is publishers figured out that meant they could charge EVEN MORE for submissions to be made open access than they charged for standard closed publishing. Wiley charged me $2,975 last year for an accepted submission to Human Brain Mapping.

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…

Publish or perish my friend, you've hit the nail on the head. There is not currently a widely accepted avenue for free open publication in neuroscience because the preprint system (and its lack of peer review) are distrusted, and the A-tier journals know their status and can set their prices based on demand. I, on the other hand, am effectively required to show a regular pattern of publishing in A- and B-tier journals to even be considered competitive for a potential tenure-track position, let alone land one and earn tenure.

This is a major reason I am evaluating alternative career options.

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

#239

Post by psychomugs » Mon, May 08, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #237

psychomugs wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Again, you are making conclusory statements. You haven’t brought anything to back your statements. The original claim was that: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." First, you haven’t shown academic politics are more vicious and bitter than other forms of politics, let alone the most. I’ve already shown that national politics in America is violent in anot…

The statement isn't mine [1] and employs the literary device of hyperbole (noun - extravagant exaggeration) in the use of "most."

Definitions of key words from the original statement from Merriam-Webster:

- politics (noun) - ...; the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government; political actions, practices, or policies

- vicious (adjective) - dangerously aggressive; marked by violence or ferocity

- bitter (adjective) - ...; distasteful or distressing to the mind

- stake (noun) - ...; something that is staked for gain or loss

The primary _stake_ (something gained or lost) in academics is not the individual academics' wellbeing, but publication and research output, which is often only relevant to very few within siloed fields. The politics (actions, practices, policies) behind this process - e.g. papers that receive positive reviews but are rejected to protect research moats, or otherwise receive undeservedly _vicious_ (aggressive) comments because peer review operates on a volunteer system that overworks at best and nepotistically gatkeeps at worst - are _bitter_ (distressing to the mind) to the authors who receive mixed feedback as the process is out of their locus of control, yet it is the measure by which academics advance (e.g. graduation, promotion).

In (anti-)academic fashion, I'll bow out of this conversation because the stakes are so low.

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/18/acad-politics/

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

#240

Post by ModernMech » Mon, May 08, 2023, 3:30 PM UTC

psychomugs wrote: post #239

ModernMech wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you are making conclusory statements. You haven’t brought anything to back your statements. The original claim was that: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." First, you haven’t shown academic politics are more vicious and bitter than other forms of politics, let alone the most. I’ve already shown that national politics in America is violent in anot…

The statement isn't mine [1] and employs the literary device of hyperbole (noun - extravagant exaggeration) in the use of "most." Definitions of key words from the original statement from Merriam-Webster: - politics (noun) - ...; the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government; political actions, practices, or policies - vicious (adjective) - dangerously aggressive; marked by violence…

> The statement isn't mine [1] and employs the literary device of hyperbole (noun - extravagant exaggeration) in the use of "most."

Even still, you said you vibed with it, and then credulously defended its essence. You could have easily noted that you were just being cheeky, but instead you launched into a defense of the core idea of the quote. So you're a little late to disavow it.

> The primary _stake_ (something gained or lost) in academics is not the individual academics' wellbeing, but publication and research output, which is often only relevant to very few within siloed fields.

You've identified low stakes, but as I said earlier, your position as a Ph.D. student has precluded you from high stakes discussions that occur in academia. Just because you're only familiar with the low stakes, does not mean there aren't high stake discussions and politics surrounding those that occur in academia. In many cases, the stakes can be as high as the continued longevity of institutions that have existed for over 100 years, with hundreds of millions to billions in assets, that serve as a homes and communities to tens of thousands of people, and are cornerstones of their local communities. Those seem like high stakes to me.

> or otherwise receive undeservedly _vicious_ (aggressive)

The definition you provided is "dangerously aggressive; marked by violence or ferocity". You can't just leave out key aspects of the definition to make it fit your narrative (and again, that's all your providing here is a narrative, no proof or evidence). How is anything you've noted "dangerous"? How is it "marked by violence or ferocity"?

> are _bitter_ (distressing to the mind) to the authors who receive mixed feedback as the process is out of their locus of control

To me, this really just gives the impression that you couldn't make it in academia. Not a dig, not everyone can. Congrats on your Ph.D., sounds like you had a bad experience, but that's not a reason to smear all academics with smarmy quips you can't substantiate.