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MIT leaders describe the experience of not renewing Elsevier contract

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Re: MIT leaders describe the experience of not renewing Elsevier contract

#201

Post by maeil »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #158
maeil wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the face of it, this sounds like a modern-capitalism take that reduces to "People don't actually have principles, they only care about money". Which is probably correct in 95% of modern business transactions. But surely a skilled negotiator should be able to tell when they're dealing with a party for whom this assumption does not hold. That's one of the main things that being a skilled negotiator is about; the abi…

> modern-capitalism take that reduces to "People don't actually have principles, they only care about money" 1 This is not a modern-capitalism take, maybe just a modern-capitalism phrasing. If you read "money" as common unit of value (which it is), not just dollars in hand specifically, then the statement is effectively true for 99%+ of people; the few for which it doesn't hold are considered insane [0], and we try t…

The principle is the basis of the reward/value and the reward/value is the basis of the principle. They're so intertwined, they can't be separated. The fact that one can always conceive a theoretical "more valuable thing" is trivially true, but does not seem practically meaningful. The idea of a principle here is that the perceived value of sticking to it, or the perceived negative value of abandoning it, is so large that realistically the counterparty will not be able to offer anything that will surpass it.

Re: MIT leaders describe the experience of not renewing Elsevier contract

#202

Post by remram »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #194

When journals aren't publishing physical copies, what are their real costs? If their costs are modest, why can't they be run as cost or cost plus co-op's rather than rent-seeking vampires exclusively for those with lots of money?

They can.

Re: MIT leaders describe the experience of not renewing Elsevier contract

#203

Post by JumpCrisscross »

tivert wrote: post #190
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The coherent way to think about this is in terms of the common good. In fact, the private good is for the sake of the common good: by being able to have private goods, we are better able to flourish (e.g., by removing conflict over common use). But because the common good is superior to private good, it is not the case that there is an absolute right to the private good. This doesn't mean principles of justice can be…

You are exactly right, especially with the example of the famine. Maybe in some cases moderate amounts of greed and selfishness can lead to the common good (though the market), but higher moral principles must always take priority with there's a conflict. Unfortunately a lot of people miss that, especially with the astounding amounts of free market propaganda out there, hocking incomplete models and nonsense like def…

> higher moral principles must always take priority with there's a conflic

People disagree about their higher moral principles. Resolving to absoluteness requires violent resolution.

Re: MIT leaders describe the experience of not renewing Elsevier contract

#204

Post by c22 »

amarcheschi wrote: post #176
robertlagrant wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is our world, and anyone telling us they get to gatekeep information exchange is not an ally Sorry, but this is a worldview that universally leads to nastiness. It's everyone's world, and just as I don't have the right to sleep in your bed (even though it's "our" world and who are you to stop "us"?) we have to have a non-low resolution and non-tribal view of situations. There is a way to think about this that…

Your example would more apt by saying "I don't have the right to sleep in a perfect copy of your bed". You're not literally preventing others (in this case, him) from accessing resources (the bed)

In this case the "resource" is ostensibly the contents of your wallet.

Re: MIT leaders describe the experience of not renewing Elsevier contract

#205

Post by vel0city »

dredmorbius wrote: post #99
Loughla wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because not a lot of professions access these research journals for their day to day outside of medicine, engineering, and academia. It's just not an issue for most people's everyday. So it's just not an issue.

It's an issue pretty much anybody who's gone through a tertiary academic institution should have some awareness of. That's well over half the adult population these days in the US and likely EU. Being cut off from library access was a huge shock for me on leaving uni.

The vast majority of my classmates in undergrad barely even understood what it meant to have online access to the library resources. They barely even bothered getting the books for their classes, much less going and researching outside of those materials directly on the syllabus.

Even a lot of my friends who got master's and Ph.D.'s barely cared about the politics of the library and journal articles. They did what they had to do to achieve their degree and got out of there. Very few cared at all about the library.

Re: MIT leaders describe the experience of not renewing Elsevier contract

#206

Post by vel0city »

lazide wrote: post #191
TeMPOraL wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's the other way around - or at least a feedback loop? That is, because they're cut off from easy access to research materials, most people don't consult them past graduation -- which ensures there's no expectation or benefit from consulting academic work outside of few specific professions, effectively keeping people dumb and stumbling in the dark relative to what they'd otherwise be.

Nah. Most people barely change channels from whatever they’re watching. Even if you made it super easy and public access, I doubt 50% or more of the population would know or care.

I often find people who don't even really know where the local library is, or even begin to know what they might do with it.

Re: MIT leaders describe the experience of not renewing Elsevier contract

#207

Post by _yb2s »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #200
_yb2s wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is in fact what I was referencing when I mentioned that California universities have the power to stop paying for journal access, but not to force researchers publications to be open access. Your information isn't quite accurate anymore, actually in 2022 Elsevier and UC reached an agreement, and they renewed the subscription. Everyone in the UCs currently has full access to Elsevier articles, even the non open a…

Ah, thanks! I wonder why MIT PI's haven't found the same disastrous effects in the past 4 years... unless the summary at OP doesn't accurately represent actual faculty feelings...

It just becomes a pain (slower) to get things, but if it's worth reading I think people still manage to get what they need.

Nowadays you can pay extra for open access even in a closed access journal and most do- so there are very few truly closed articles published anymore. It is mostly accessing older literature where it becomes a problem, but of course there are ways to get anything, especially if you are tech savvy. Most people in academia have access through some other means- their local public library, alumni access through the schools they went to previously, etc. ResearchGate has also semi-automated the 'request a copy from the author' route. People keep requesting my open access articles through that, which is annoying.

Re: MIT leaders describe the experience of not renewing Elsevier contract

#208

Post by jrochkind1 »

_yb2s wrote: post #207
jrochkind1 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, thanks! I wonder why MIT PI's haven't found the same disastrous effects in the past 4 years... unless the summary at OP doesn't accurately represent actual faculty feelings...

It just becomes a pain (slower) to get things, but if it's worth reading I think people still manage to get what they need. Nowadays you can pay extra for open access even in a closed access journal and most do- so there are very few truly closed articles published anymore. It is mostly accessing older literature where it becomes a problem, but of course there are ways to get anything, especially if you are tech savv…

Makes sense. That doesn't sound like a disaster though?

> It is mostly accessing older literature where it becomes a problem

Not sure if this was true with UC, but MIT still has access to all Elsevier content they had before, if it was published before 2020. )

> ...leaving users with immediate access to only pre-2020 backfile content...

I'm not sure the details, but I think there are contracts where the university gets to keep access to the stuff they used to have even when cancelling contact; when transitioning from paper journals, the thought was "If we cancel our subscription we don't lose all those paper journals, and don't have to pay for them again, we want something like that."

Now I'm curious the details of this. But the OP write-up was clear that all the pre-2020 "backfile" was still accessible. Also pointing out that as time goes on this will of course be a lower percentage of all requests, since it will remain fixed at pre-2020.

(update: during the period, UC said "most articles" 2018 and earlier were still available from backfiles for them too. Perhaps most packages included such a license but not all https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/news/elsevier-outcome )

> ResearchGate has also semi-automated the 'request a copy from the author' route.

While the practice is standard of authors handing out free copies, in most cases I think this is either a copyright or license violation with the publisher? The authors have either assigned copyright to the publisher (and do not have permission to distribute on their own), or assigned the publisher an exclusive license that also doesn't let them distribute on their own. Unless this has changed in the past ~5 years since i was more familiar with it.

The publishers don't really try to enforce this though, as long as it's individual one-on-one which is interesting. ResearchGate is pushing the boundaries a bit there -- not legally, it's all illegal, but in terms of at what point will the scale and ease of access be high enough that publishers try to get their authors to stop giving away for free what the publisher is trying to sell. Obviously it would look bad, and they don't want make enemies of their authors.

The whole thing is a bit odd.

Re: MIT leaders describe the experience of not renewing Elsevier contract

#209

Post by robwwilliams »

_yb2s wrote: post #198
jrochkind1 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The University of California system already cancelled it's Elsevier subscription in 2019, with an aim to making all UC research open access. Without a legislative instruction from the state, just UC librarians and administrators and whatever other UC decision-making processes. https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-termina... https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/03/01/university-ca... https://www.na…

That is in fact what I was referencing when I mentioned that California universities have the power to stop paying for journal access, but not to force researchers publications to be open access. Your information isn't quite accurate anymore, actually in 2022 Elsevier and UC reached an agreement, and they renewed the subscription. Everyone in the UCs currently has full access to Elsevier articles, even the non open a…

There are so many quick ways around these issues.

1. The old-school method is to simply send a request for a PDF to the contact email address. I usually get 24 hr turn-arounds on requests.

2. Check pre-print servers for the research.

3. Sci-Hub

One final comment on the impact of LLMs: If the need for a very specific paper is not critical AND IF the research research had deep content before the cut-off date of Claude 3.5 Sonnet, THEN one can often get good context on a topic in a useful Q&A format I have come to love.

The implications and impact of LLM on pay-walls are enormous. Most users and scientists do NOT need a specific reference. They need some information or insight on a particular question.

In this context I find Claude highly reliable when my questions are relatively broad (e.g: “Claude, please explain Wright fixation index, F, and its use in comparing genetic similarities and differences among chimpanzee populations?”). For that question and others of this type I get great first-pass answers, better than I would from all but a dozen experts in the world.

In contrast if I ask Claude for specific citations on the fixation index in chimps it is very likely to provide a confabulated reference. I will occasionally luck out but every citation you get from an LLM now needs to be vetted unless you have a RAG front-end.

All of these methods are available to almost anyone with internet access.

Re: MIT leaders describe the experience of not renewing Elsevier contract

#210

Post by dredmorbius »

vel0city wrote: post #205
dredmorbius wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an issue pretty much anybody who's gone through a tertiary academic institution should have some awareness of. That's well over half the adult population these days in the US and likely EU. Being cut off from library access was a huge shock for me on leaving uni.

The vast majority of my classmates in undergrad barely even understood what it meant to have online access to the library resources. They barely even bothered getting the books for their classes, much less going and researching outside of those materials directly on the syllabus. Even a lot of my friends who got master's and Ph.D.'s barely cared about the politics of the library and journal articles. They did what th…

Addressing your and numerous other responses, should is doing some heavy lifting in my comment. The key factum however is the percentage of the population with tertiary academic experience. It is a supermajority.
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