41–50 of 128 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zürich, Switzerland, isn't in the EU :-)
For the purposes of European research funding it effectively is.
It's sad that this process hasn't started earlier. It's a farce that publishers got to erect a walled garden around tax funded research without adding anything of value. That being said, EU CS academia is a cess pool where more often than not it matters more who you know than what your actual research is. I partially blame the funding agencies for attaching unrealistic publication metrics to grants (publish or perish…
Well, the administrators have outsourced the domain knowledge to the journal reviewers and pay for this service indirectly through journal fees, so from an accounting point of view it makes total sense. If not publication, what metric should funding agencies use to decide who gets grants? Of course they could hire senior scientists in the field to evaluate grant roposals, but that would mean hiring lots and lots of s…
Except that, by and large, those reviewers aren't being paid. So the 'outsourcing' argument isn't quite it. If it were there would be no problem with open access.
It is more about brand. They're outsourcing the need to determine quality by buying into a brand. That brand is kept afloat by unpaid labour on all sides, yet charges heftily for its brand. It is an understandable model, but not a very pleasant one. Unless you're an Elsevier shareholder, getting paid for your brand IP.
As a related aside: Does anyone know why arXiv has no system of public comments or (even better) a public peer review system built in? Whenever this topic comes up at a (CS) conference, everyone is for that, and yet, arXiv is functionally the same for quite a few years now.
This is actually something I have been thinking about writing myself. Look at all the major social networks, and all their metrics, analysis, ranking systems and the like. Imaging what you could do with a social-network like publication database (research-gate sort of is, but it doesn't think big enough and the UX is confusing, imho). Every publication became a "post" so to speak. You could easily include discussions…
Drafting, extending and version control would be particularly important, I think. It's been a long problem with dead-tree journals, following adjustments in results is hard because they inherently rely on back-links, retractions (in extreme cases), letters, etc. Not a coherent way of centralising information.
I find it amazing that such an article can be written without spending a single word about the craziness of open access. Let's repeat the core concept, in the words of the article: the university or the financier of the research pays to get published In my own words: the author of the research is the customer of the journal. It used to be that the reader was the customer, which paid the journal that provided him with…
You say "It used to be that the reader was the customer" but you don't explain why it should be this way.
I find it amazing that such an article can be written without spending a single word about the craziness of open access. Let's repeat the core concept, in the words of the article: the university or the financier of the research pays to get published In my own words: the author of the research is the customer of the journal. It used to be that the reader was the customer, which paid the journal that provided him with…
But the financier of the research is already paying for the research to be done, rarely for their economic interest, but so that it gets out there, establishes the science, furthers knowledge, cements reputations, etc. For research done by economic interests the incentive is even stronger, a drug company, say, wants to get their drug out, proven, marketed. Your response seems high on derision, but you've not actually…
> So, other than derision, accusations of naked emperors, and a variation of "didn't used to be like that", what actually is your problem with that model?
[0] "Pays" meaning "diverts part of his funding allowance"
I find it amazing that such an article can be written without spending a single word about the craziness of open access. Let's repeat the core concept, in the words of the article: the university or the financier of the research pays to get published In my own words: the author of the research is the customer of the journal. It used to be that the reader was the customer, which paid the journal that provided him with…
There is nothing crazy about it. Most research is funded by tax money and researchers have a moral and in some countries legal obligation to make their results accessible to the public. The traditional publishing model failed to achieve this. Open access journals are a simple and clean solution. You say "It used to be that the reader was the customer" but you don't explain why it should be this way.
"If you're not paying, you're the product" is endlessly repeated on the internet. I think it applies to academic journals as well.
It's sad that this process hasn't started earlier. It's a farce that publishers got to erect a walled garden around tax funded research without adding anything of value. That being said, EU CS academia is a cess pool where more often than not it matters more who you know than what your actual research is. I partially blame the funding agencies for attaching unrealistic publication metrics to grants (publish or perish…
I'll take a little of the publisher bait (I sit on the board of a "dinosaur paywall publisher"). I'd like to question the popular thinking that publishers do not add anything of value. There has never been a time in history when it has been easier to publish your research output in any number of other places than a paywall journal. You can post it on your own blog. You want a DOI? You can post it on The Winnower. You…
Your arguing that if I post it on a blog, it gets lost in a sea of other content. If I publish it, then I get validation.
If I understand correctly, you are saying that one of the fundamental reasons for publishers to exist is because they validate someone's work (citations, vetting, peer approval). Why does this have to happen at the expense of public access, if the research that goes through that vetting process is publicly funded?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, my idea is basically a free-market counterpart to yours: instead of restricting access to verified groups, allow anyone to create groups and let them compete for reputation. This is how some journals come to be more prestigious than others anyway. You don't restrict the creation of journals to verified people; instead everyone gets to run a journal and they compete for reputation.
I think both ideas have merit. Which works best in practice would depend on the degree-of-shit (that's the scientific term) on your network. I fear special interest groups will, if they want, always outnumber legit researchers. If your network becomes large enough to attract the interest of these groups you might end up with "attacks" on climate research and other 'controversial' issues. Verified users could prevent…
I'm currently co-authoring a paper that will be submitted to an Elsevier journal because it is a good fit for our work. All of my time and that of one other co-author is funded by an NIH grant which of course is funded by US tax dollars. I'm fairly certain the Elsevier agreement stipulates that I cannot share my paper without their permission – assuming the paper is accepted. If I were the NIH, I would make it illega…
It's sad that this process hasn't started earlier. It's a farce that publishers got to erect a walled garden around tax funded research without adding anything of value. That being said, EU CS academia is a cess pool where more often than not it matters more who you know than what your actual research is. I partially blame the funding agencies for attaching unrealistic publication metrics to grants (publish or perish…
I noted with increasing dismay that everything people were saying aimed to check off requirements that met EU definitions of interoperability without doing anything at all to the data. For example, someone asked to produce XML could just submit something like this:
unusably restrictive academic license text goes here