Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU Announces That All Scientific Articles Should Be Freely Accessible by 2020

futurism.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 143 posts

Re: EU Announces That All Scientific Articles Should Be Freely Accessible by 2020

#121

Post by Retric »

baby wrote: post #118
red_admiral wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publisher-hosted open access is a scam. Here in the UK we already have an open-access requirement for RCUK and EPSRC grants, but it can be met by uploading a preprint to an institution- or subject-specific repository (such as arXiv) and including a link to it in your report back to the grant sponsor. Last time I published in a journal, I got a "special offer" of $1200 instead of $2000 to make it open access. I polite…

This doesn't make any sense, why would they make you pay less to make it open access? You mean it was 1200$ more?

They where only going to charge 1200$ to make it open access instead of charging 2,000$.

Re: EU Announces That All Scientific Articles Should Be Freely Accessible by 2020

#122

Post by 08-15 »

a3_nm wrote: post #15
thr0waway1239 wrote: post #12

I sometimes wonder if companies like Elsevier are the patent trolls of the research publishing industry - with the same chilling effect on the spread of innovation. [1] It will be interesting to see how this affects the quality of reviewing. I think the defendants of the current system (who usually say someone has to bear the cost of the review process) are going to be rudely surprised when the academic community emb…

> someone has to bear the cost of the review process Maybe you are aware of it, but this argument is bogus in any case, because reviewing is unpaid labor. You can make an argument that someone has to organize the review process, but publishers usually don't pay for that process (except paying token amounts to an editor for some journals).

> because reviewing is unpaid labor

Indeed, and that's a strange situation.

I submit that it is immoral to review for a for-profit journal without receiving appropriate compensation[1]. Doing so and then complaining about the extortionist behavior of the established publishers is also hypocritical and/or stupid.

Attempts to boycott a publisher or two have happened before, but they are useless. Scientists are hurting themselves by not publishing in the high ranking journals or by not reading them. Boycotting their exploitative review process, however, would hit them where it hurts and cost very little.

[1] Uncompensated review services for any non-traditional journal are equally immoral, but that's another topic.

Re: EU Announces That All Scientific Articles Should Be Freely Accessible by 2020

#123

Post by stcredzero »

paulddraper wrote: post #114
stcredzero wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please provide a quote and explain why you interpreted my comment as a criticism? Once you do so, then explain why your interpretation is more applicable than an interpretation as a non-criticism.

"the US has now ceded innovation to the up and coming powers"

Please note that it was phrased as a question. So, apparently you assumed that the question was rhetorical, and carried on in that vein, rather than responding to a genuine question, even after a hint. Please feel free to go back and re-read the question properly as simply a question.

Re: EU Announces That All Scientific Articles Should Be Freely Accessible by 2020

#124

Post by a3_nm »

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #17
a3_nm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone has to bear the cost of the review process Maybe you are aware of it, but this argument is bogus in any case, because reviewing is unpaid labor. You can make an argument that someone has to organize the review process, but publishers usually don't pay for that process (except paying token amounts to an editor for some journals).

The cost of the review process in this particular two sided marketplace (which publishing is - how do you decide which journal to send your paper to?) is not just the unpaid labor of the reviewers, but rather the establishment of the credentials and authority which the journals build up over time, which basically drove down the cost of reviewing to be much smaller than if it were simply a free for all. To see this in…

> The cost of the review process in this particular two sided marketplace (which publishing is - how do you decide which journal to send your paper to?) is not just the unpaid labor of the reviewers, but rather the establishment of the credentials and authority which the journals build up over time, which basically drove down the cost of reviewing to be much smaller than if it were simply a free for all.

This is a valid point, but why should the commercial publisher reap all the benefit of this authority and brand value? The brand value was built by researchers publishing high quality work and doing high quality reviews.

Further, why couldn't just the same thing happen with non-commercial free open access journals?

Re: EU Announces That All Scientific Articles Should Be Freely Accessible by 2020

#125

Post by [deleted] »

baby wrote: post #118
red_admiral wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publisher-hosted open access is a scam. Here in the UK we already have an open-access requirement for RCUK and EPSRC grants, but it can be met by uploading a preprint to an institution- or subject-specific repository (such as arXiv) and including a link to it in your report back to the grant sponsor. Last time I published in a journal, I got a "special offer" of $1200 instead of $2000 to make it open access. I polite…

This doesn't make any sense, why would they make you pay less to make it open access? You mean it was 1200$ more?

[deleted]

Re: EU Announces That All Scientific Articles Should Be Freely Accessible by 2020

#126

Post by a3_nm »

kahrkunne wrote: post #72

Doesn't that just have the effect that everyone now has to pay for scientific articles? I mean, as a scientist, this benefits me, but I can see why your average Joe wouldn't be happy to pay taxes so he can read articles he can't understand...

> Doesn't that just have the effect that everyone now has to pay for scientific articles?

Everyone was already paying for them before. The money that used to be collected on the sale of articles has never gone to finance the scientists making the work.

Re: EU Announces That All Scientific Articles Should Be Freely Accessible by 2020

#127

Post by Retr0spectrum »

daveguy wrote: post #86

Cough sci-hub Cough Edit: a few of the links on the wiki page still link to it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub They also have a Facebook page and an onion route.

I reckon the existence of scihub might have prompted this decision. In that case, the project is a success.

Re: EU Announces That All Scientific Articles Should Be Freely Accessible by 2020

#128

Post by aurizon »

anonymousDan wrote: post #22

Why on earth do people think this is to the detriment of publishers? This will effectively just lock in their profits by forcing all eu grants to include the cost of payments to publishers to make research papers open access. It just means the taxpayer is now paying for open access instead of individuals having to pay up themselves. Note I'm not saying this is a bad thing, and it is possibly worth publicly subsidisin…

By a law that declares the reproduction of Scientific Articles a permitted use.
Post reply on HN