Scientific Publishing: Enough Is Enough • Hacker News Board

Re: Scientific Publishing: Enough Is Enough

#11

Post by radioactivist » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 4:36 AM UTC

ashwinsundar wrote: post #9

jltsiren wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article also says "I help oversee billions of dollars in funding across several science and technology organizations.", which is clearly an administrative activity. It's also easy to find what the author currently does. Administrative track is an established part of the academia. Many professors choose it for a variety of reasons, including interests, ambitions, and a diminished ability to contribute to research.…

I guess I'm still not understanding the point you're making about this person being an administrator. Does science change so rapidly that all of the observations that the author made, as a scientist in the last 10 years presumably, are completely invalid? Or maybe that they have a completely perpendicular motive from scientists, because they are now an administrator? On your last point about the system cannot be fixe…

I'm not the person you're replying to, but in my subfield (scientist is such a broad term) I would say in my opinion at least half of those key problems that are listed in the article are basically non issues. Things really are quite different field to field.

Re: Scientific Publishing: Enough Is Enough

#12

Post by fc417fc802 » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 5:17 AM UTC

tracerbulletx wrote: post #6

jltsiren wrote: post #4

This sounds like something written by an administrator. Someone who used to be an active scientist but then chose an administrative career. I'd say that the biggest barriers to progress are the people who choose to take the easy path. Progress has always depended on people doing what they believe in. Not because of the institutions and incentives, but despite them. External sources of motivation can help to a degree,…

Huh? Aren't the administrators the ones pushing the publish or perish meta? How does this sound like an administrator?

I don't think anyone is "pushing the meta" here. It's a consequence of how funding is awarded. Fixing it is going to require changing that, which presumably means a coordinated effort to achieve legislated changes.

Re: Scientific Publishing: Enough Is Enough

#13

Post by jltsiren » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 5:24 AM UTC

ashwinsundar wrote: post #9

jltsiren wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article also says "I help oversee billions of dollars in funding across several science and technology organizations.", which is clearly an administrative activity. It's also easy to find what the author currently does. Administrative track is an established part of the academia. Many professors choose it for a variety of reasons, including interests, ambitions, and a diminished ability to contribute to research.…

I guess I'm still not understanding the point you're making about this person being an administrator. Does science change so rapidly that all of the observations that the author made, as a scientist in the last 10 years presumably, are completely invalid? Or maybe that they have a completely perpendicular motive from scientists, because they are now an administrator? On your last point about the system cannot be fixe…

"Publish or perish" is not about publishing papers. It's about winning the competition for opportunities to do science. It's about collecting more merits than your peers, in order to land on the right side of the funding line. If publishing becomes easier, you need to publish more in order to win. Or publishing becomes less relevant, and you have to focus on other merits.

If there are more qualified and interested scientists than funding opportunities, there is competition. If you want less competition, you need fewer potential scientists and/or more funding.

The main flaw in the article from my point of view is the administrator attitude. You identify a problem, and then you propose solving it by playing politics and making major changes to the system, with unpredictable consequences across the fields. A more constructive approach would be focusing on solving the problem in your own niche, and letting others figure out the solutions in theirs.

For example, instead of complaining about for-profit publishers and other abstract things, people can just act. There are examples of editorial boards resigning collectively and starting independent journals, which then replace the old for-profit journals or at least become competitive with them. And in some subfields of computer science, many conferences have moved their proceedings from Springer to the LIPIcs series published by a German non-profit.

Re: Scientific Publishing: Enough Is Enough

#14

Post by lentoutcry » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 1:48 PM UTC

y-curious wrote: post #2

My former PI was a generally terrible person that thankfully no longer has that role. He said something to our group once which summarizes OP's article quite well: "There is no journal of negative results." It's a crappy attitude, but it's true; If you don't make a breakthrough, you won't publish. If you don't publish, you don't eat. During your introduction to the scientific method in high school, they conveniently…

to be completely fair, journals of negative results have popped up in some fields, but I've never really heard anyone mentioning any paper published in such a journal

Re: Scientific Publishing: Enough Is Enough

#15

Post by afiori » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 11:30 PM UTC

ashwinsundar wrote: post #5

jltsiren wrote: post #4

This sounds like something written by an administrator. Someone who used to be an active scientist but then chose an administrative career. I'd say that the biggest barriers to progress are the people who choose to take the easy path. Progress has always depended on people doing what they believe in. Not because of the institutions and incentives, but despite them. External sources of motivation can help to a degree,…

The second paragraph literally says "I'm a scientist". Scientists do things other than pipette liquids and stain slides all day. They also get to think about the meta details of their field and try to solve them, which it sounds like what this author is after. I think a lot of proof is given in the article about the claims that you suggest are "false generalizations". What "niche" field do you think the author works…

I completely agree with the author but during my brief presence in academia I discovered (was told by someone I trusted who claimed to have seen it) that some subfields of biology liked how publishers helped with typesetting and proofreading.

I was surprised