Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals
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Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals
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Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals
#2> Now people barely bring it up at all. It’s like a lion has escaped the zoo and it’s gulping down schoolchildren, but when people suggest zoo improvements, all the agenda items are like, “We should add another Dippin’ Dots kiosk”. If you bring up the loose tiger, everyone gets annoyed at you, like “Of course, no one likes the tiger”.
Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals
#3I have had so many "why don't you just" conversations with academics about this. I know the "why don't you just" guy is such an annoying person to talk to, but I still don't really understand why they don't just.
This article pointed to a few cases where people tried to do the thing, i.e. the pledge taken by individual researchers, and the requirements placed by certain funding channels, and those sound like a solid attempt to do the thing. This shows that people care and are somewhat willing to organise about it.
But the thing I don't understand is why this can't happen at the department level? If you're an influential figure at a top-5 department in your field, you're friends with your counterparts at the other 4. You see them in person every year. You all hate $journal. Why don't you club together and say "why don't we all have moratorium on publishing in $journal for our departments?"
No temptation for individual research groups to violate the pledge. No dependence on individual funding channels to influence the policy. Just, suddenly, $journal isn't the top publication in that field any more?
I'm sure there are lots of varied reasons why this is difficult but fundamentally it seems like the obvious approach?
Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals
#4Part of the problem is we got tricked into thinking "peer reviewed" meant "true," or at least something like it.
It doesn't. Not even close.
Peer review doesn't even mean that it's free from errors, free from fraud, free from methodological mischief; it doesn't mean anything at this point. Yet we continue to act like it does.
Darwin's work wasn't peer reviewed. Nor Einstein's. It's something we cooked up in the mid 1900's to deal with the fallout from another mistake ("publish or perish") that meant people had to try to publish even if they had nothing to say.
Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals
#5[deleted]
Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals
#6I have had so many "why don't you just" conversations with academics about this. I know the "why don't you just" guy is such an annoying person to talk to, but I still don't really understand why they don't just. This article pointed to a few cases where people tried to do the thing, i.e. the pledge taken by individual researchers, and the requirements placed by certain funding channels, and those sound like a solid…
I like the author's idea:
> So the solution here is straightforward: every government grant should stipulate that the research it supports can’t be published in a for-profit journal. That’s it! If the public paid for it, it shouldn’t be paywalled.
The article then acknowledges this isn't a magic solution to all the problems discussed, but it's so simple and makes so much sense as a first step.
I'm no expert here and there are probably unintended consequences or other ways to game that system for profit, but even if so wouldn't that still be a better starting point?
Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals
#7> Now people barely bring it up at all. It’s like a lion has escaped the zoo and it’s gulping down schoolchildren, but when people suggest zoo improvements, all the agenda items are like, “We should add another Dippin’ Dots kiosk”. If you bring up the loose tiger, everyone gets annoyed at you, like “Of course, no one likes the tiger”.
Is the switch from lion to tiger in that paragraph intentional? If only the quote from "everyone" was switched I might think it's intended to convey people trying to derisively dismiss the issue or something but it does specifically reference the tiger rather than the lion being brought up, so I was confused when I got to this part of the article.
Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals
#8I have had so many "why don't you just" conversations with academics about this. I know the "why don't you just" guy is such an annoying person to talk to, but I still don't really understand why they don't just. This article pointed to a few cases where people tried to do the thing, i.e. the pledge taken by individual researchers, and the requirements placed by certain funding channels, and those sound like a solid…
I like the author's idea: > So the solution here is straightforward: every government grant should stipulate that the research it supports can’t be published in a for-profit journal. That’s it! If the public paid for it, it shouldn’t be paywalled. The article then acknowledges this isn't a magic solution to all the problems discussed, but it's so simple and makes so much sense as a first step. I'm no expert here and…
I think that's also a good proposal, and I don't think it conflicts with the "prestigious departments stop publishing in $journal" idea at all. Probably we want both.
Only difference is that the author is writing for a wide audience and his best angle to change the world is probably to influence the thinking of future policymakers. While I am just an annoying "why don't you just" guy, my "audience" is just the friends I happen to have in prestigious research groups.
Adam M also probably has lots of friends in prestigious research groups (IIUC although he complains a lot about academia he was quite successful within it, at least on its own terms). And the fact that he instead chooses to advocate government policy changes instead of what I'm proposing, is probably a good indication that he knows something I don't about the motivatioms of influential academics.
Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals
#9Based on title, I was figured it was referring to USA moving to the metric system
Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals
#10We already have open-access publications: Just put it on arXiV. Most researchers I work with do this already.
The problem isn't access, it's citations. arXiV is not considered a credible citation source since anyone can publish anything. TPCs don't use it in their list of citations, neither do grant funding agencies or government institutions.
The current academic enterprise relies heavily on third-party gatekeeping. We rely on others to do the vetting for us. The first thing an academic does is check where a paper is published, before even reading it. It's a crutch.
Any gatekeeper will naturally tend towards charging for access over time: It's a captive market, the economics demands it. Unless we eliminate that dependency, we cannot change the system.