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Dutch universities start their Elsevier boycott plan

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Re: Dutch universities start their Elsevier boycott plan

#71

Post by Jugurtha »

badlogic wrote: post #5

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…

And for what! I left Universtiy a year ago. To prepare my dissertation, I had to read hundreds of articles like everyone, and like everyone, I had to sort through all the crap that somehow makes it to IEEE. I expected that peer reviewed articles would be the best there is.

I was working on ECG signals that were acquired in our institute and in a hospital to deal with all sorts of unbearable noises and artefacts. And then there were articles that would be published after testing their algorithms on a synthetic ECG (as if the world is lacking true hearts) with a cute gaussian noise (as if the world is lacking funky electrodes on sweaty hairy dudes), or the least noisy signals of the MIT database (the ones who test their stuff on the first seconds of 100.dat, you know who you are).

What I also found frustrating is that we have to trust the words of the authors about the results.

Cool, the signal is filtered but how long does your program take to deal with the 1.5 million samples? How many lines of code? What was the gear used?

These are all important things to know so that people know if they're improving stuff or not. But the FPGA cluster seldom gets mentioned in the articles.

I didn't expect I had to go through all that crap because I assumed they're frigging on renowed journals (so pre-filtered).

So I spoke to some people about it and it appears there are "international conferences" where you don't even have to attend for them to vouch you attended. You only need to pay.

After hanging out in some of the labs and seeing the mindset of the publishing game and how it's done, my supervisor still calls me so that we can publish something together but the answer is always that I don't have the necessary skills, nor the desire to publish.

I don't want to publish something that'll be a waste of time for other students.

There seem to be some efforts to deal with this racket (I think some companies are doing that)..

Re: Dutch universities start their Elsevier boycott plan

#72

Post by dougmccune »

return0 wrote: post #65
dougmccune wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

These publishers added value back in the days when they actually enabled communication via printing. They should have been abandoned the day after WWW was invented. The "established" publishers literally suck the blood of academia and taxpayer money nowadays. First, they appropriate other people's work in all stages (writing, review, corrections, illustations etc etc.). Then they stymie the development of open-access…

I'm not going to argue with all the reasons you think publishers are insane. However, I will argue with the comment that "selling prestige in 2015 is a ridiculous thought."

Offering prestige in 2015 is even more valuable than it has ever been. There is more research published than there has ever been, from all around the world. The amount of research information is increasing dramatically, just like it is with all information (blog posts, videos published, etc). The value of curation increases with the increase in content, it doesn't decrease. I don't know what the future holds when it comes to how curation is going to be done and how prestige will be awarded, but I'm certain that there will be some mechanism for separating good research from bad research and bestowing prestige. That isn't decreasing in value - on the contrary, it's increasing.

Re: Dutch universities start their Elsevier boycott plan

#74

Post by elektromekatron »

dougmccune wrote: post #35
badlogic wrote: post #5

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…

you are acknowledging the fact that your field values the prestige awarded by that journal. That's what you're getting, the prestige.

If that is what your field is betting on, then it is utterly doomed. Ephemera such as prestige is mobile.

Re: Dutch universities start their Elsevier boycott plan

#75

Post by dougmccune »

elektromekatron wrote: post #74
dougmccune wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

you are acknowledging the fact that your field values the prestige awarded by that journal. That's what you're getting, the prestige. If that is what your field is betting on, then it is utterly doomed. Ephemera such as prestige is mobile.

Trust me, the idea that the prestige currently offered by today's journals might move to an entirely different venue is a top concern.

I'm not convinced that betting your business on the idea of curation (ie prestige) is a bad one, although I suppose I'd agree that betting a business on the idea of paywall journals as the mechanism of that prestige bestowment isn't wise.

Re: Dutch universities start their Elsevier boycott plan

#76

Post by elektromekatron »

dougmccune wrote: post #75
elektromekatron wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are acknowledging the fact that your field values the prestige awarded by that journal. That's what you're getting, the prestige. If that is what your field is betting on, then it is utterly doomed. Ephemera such as prestige is mobile.

Trust me, the idea that the prestige currently offered by today's journals might move to an entirely different venue is a top concern. I'm not convinced that betting your business on the idea of curation (ie prestige) is a bad one, although I suppose I'd agree that betting a business on the idea of paywall journals as the mechanism of that prestige bestowment isn't wise.

Prestige isn't curation. Curation is a genuine functional benefit, but it is one that is getting cheaper year on year. Prestige is really just the upmarket term for cool, and cool is flightly.

edit - another way of putting it, is if curation is what is being relied upon, then they seriously run the risk of being popcornTimed

Re: Dutch universities start their Elsevier boycott plan

#77

Post by tsurantino »

dougmccune wrote: post #55
tsurantino wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't "publishing with a paywall journal you acknowledge that your field values the prestige awarded by that journal" contract with "it's not the publishers that are dictating the prestige". 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…

I think we agree. It would be better if there was a different way to validate the importance/impact of research. Particularly if there was a way to evaluate the importance immediately, as opposed to waiting years to see how the impact plays out (via citations, etc). So if there was a committee that provided that evaluation entirely outside of the publishing ecosystem, that would be great (great from the viewpoint of…

This makes sense. Thanks a lot for clarifying and taking the time to write your original post.

Re: Dutch universities start their Elsevier boycott plan

#78

Post by jhallenworld »

dougmccune wrote: post #35
badlogic wrote: post #5

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…

I would say that the real value of your work could be measured with something like pagerank: basically if your work is eventually cited, it's prestigious.

What the journals maybe provide is prestige before your work has been widely cited, plus publicity. Even if the article is on arxiv, more people will take a look if you say it will soon be published in, say, Cell. Maybe they shouldn't even bother publishing- just have a list of articles which they would publish if they actually bothered to do so.

Re: Dutch universities start their Elsevier boycott plan

#79

Post by choppaface »

dougmccune wrote: post #35
badlogic wrote: post #5

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…

Prestige only has value if the community upholds it with integrity and warrant. The journals are fundamentally looking to protect their business model and their attachment to the community. Thus the journals' prestige becomes significantly diluted (and with warrant).

Publication prestige originated in the publication's crucial role as a discovery mechanism before the Internet. Now there's a much better discovery mechanism, and the community is adapting well to it. If publications had the community in mind foremost, they'd similarly adapt.

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