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Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

newscientist.com

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Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#121

Post by geoalchimista »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #102
geoalchimista wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machine checked proofs only work for deductive, non-experimental disciplines. You can't use machine checked proofs to tell if a drug is effective or not. Human referees have to be involved no matter how advanced the AI is.

You can precisely "quarantine" the "human referree part within the framework of a formal proof. That's still a huge step forward from the status quo of reasoning and opinion being smeared together and nothing formal.

> You can precisely "quarantine" the "human referree part within the framework of a formal proof.

I think it is unlikely you can separate the two precisely. If it be so, mathematicians can replace doctors who make diagnoses. I don't think all empirical facts can fit nicely into a formal proof system.

But still, any effort to reduce the burden on the human referees would be welcome. This said proof system for peer review would be most useful to math and theoretical CS (though not so much to biomedical sciences).

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#122

Post by dompydumpy »

justinpombrio wrote: post #5

For anyone who still doesn't know this: publishers do not pay paper authors, in any field. I am also not aware of a publisher paying peer reviewers. (Lowly soon-to-be-postdoc here; a professor would be able to say more.)

Yes, authors even pay for submissions themselves often

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#123

Post by garmaine »

dougmccune wrote: post #115

Academic publishing is a favorite recurring topic on HN, and it's one I've occasionally dipped into discussing, although these discussions are typically 99% one-sided and void of nuance or reasoned arguments. It's like discussing politics online. I'm a shareholder and board member of a large privately-held, family-owned academic publishing company. If anyone is interested in trying to understand what makes the indust…

Could you summarize, in 50 words or less, what tangible benefit your family’s business provides to justify the intermediation?

I’ll wait.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#124

Post by shrimpx »

The trouble here is that the entire academic structure is extremely difficult to question and change. Disrupting academia is kind of like disrupting the Catholic Church. It's so entrenched in its assumptions and rituals that trying to bring revolutionary change to it is pretty hopeless. Professors gained their status in this archaic structure and will resist challenging it. I mean, your PhD advisor will make sure you never challenge the research status quo with your thesis topic, let alone partaking in the academic publishing structure being fundamentally restructured.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#126

Post by noobiemcfoob »

garmaine wrote: post #123
dougmccune wrote: post #115

Academic publishing is a favorite recurring topic on HN, and it's one I've occasionally dipped into discussing, although these discussions are typically 99% one-sided and void of nuance or reasoned arguments. It's like discussing politics online. I'm a shareholder and board member of a large privately-held, family-owned academic publishing company. If anyone is interested in trying to understand what makes the indust…

Could you summarize, in 50 words or less, what tangible benefit your family’s business provides to justify the intermediation? I’ll wait.

Not OP, but maybe credibility through established published history and network effects? Facebook sucks and yet...

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#127

Post by esfandia »

dougmccune wrote: post #115

Academic publishing is a favorite recurring topic on HN, and it's one I've occasionally dipped into discussing, although these discussions are typically 99% one-sided and void of nuance or reasoned arguments. It's like discussing politics online. I'm a shareholder and board member of a large privately-held, family-owned academic publishing company. If anyone is interested in trying to understand what makes the indust…

> You have to realize publishers are in the reputation business.

That's right, and that's also why the prestigious researchers and universities, those with an already established reputation, have a responsibility: collectively leave the editorial boards of for-profit publishers, set up alternative venues with the help of university libraries. Share the archival, indexing and discovery effort among universities via peer-to-peer digital library federation.

All the tools are there. The same way that places like Stanford, Berkeley and MIT made MOOCs a thing, they can revolutionize scientific publishing.

There's already such venues such as JAIR for AI research (and that was set up looong ago without all the tech we have today), so it's certainly possible. It just needs to become the norm rather than the exception.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#128

Post by guscost »

specialp wrote: post #68
lumost wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It strikes me that the challenge of peer review is that it is non-transparent, and gate-keeping. It is impossible for one to read the peer review feedback related to a published paper, and it's similarly difficult to publish controversial pieces that break established norms. Contrast this to the peer review culture of popular open source projects - major pull requests have extensive and transparent dialogue, and disa…

There's a difference with scientific publishing for most disciplines. I work for a non-profit scientific publisher. Much of the research today that is coming out is extremely specialized. Thus there aren't many people in the world that have the expertise to referee a paper. So the review is anonymous in order to get a more frank and honest review (we hope). I am also a developer. There are far more people that can gi…

Anonymous doesn’t have to mean secret, although it isn’t always trivial to achieve.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#129

Post by panic »

dougmccune wrote: post #115

Academic publishing is a favorite recurring topic on HN, and it's one I've occasionally dipped into discussing, although these discussions are typically 99% one-sided and void of nuance or reasoned arguments. It's like discussing politics online. I'm a shareholder and board member of a large privately-held, family-owned academic publishing company. If anyone is interested in trying to understand what makes the indust…

> You have to realize publishers are in the reputation business.

Everyone realizes this. The problem is that you're abusing your position in this reputation system for profit. Do you think $40 is a fair price to read a paper from 1987? https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/109434208700100...

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#130

Post by Fomite »

avip wrote: post #29
smaddox wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open publishing and commenting would be a good start---having a dialog, like is done at conferences. Older academic journal articles (pre 1900) read much more like discussions than like the hundred dollar word vomits of modern academic publishing. The broken incentives are at the core of this rotten fruit, though. Just making journals open isn't enough.

We have (almost) open publishing and open commenting. Did that improve anything?

I have been distinctly unimpressed with open peer review, and given it's antithetical to something I actually think does concretely have benefit (double-blind peer review) I've gotten rather curmudgeonly about it as a fix.
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