IEEE: Pay $3000 and we'll remove your article's paywall. • Hacker News Board

Re: IEEE: Pay $3000 and we'll remove your article's paywall.

#31

Post by bertil » Tue, Mar 29, 2011, 8:58 PM UTC

ebiester wrote: post #28

inetsee wrote: post #4

I have a counter-suggestion: pay $3000 to support one of the open access journals (see The Directory of Open Access Journals " http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=home&uiLanguage=en for suggestions) and they'll let you post as many articles as you want. (Of course, I believe most of them will let you post for free, but by contributing articles and money to open access journals, you get to stick it to IEEE twice).

So... how is the tenure committee going to do with the fact that you have nothing in peer-reviewed journals?

All the journals in the list linked are peer-reviewed. We would all appreciate if you could keep your purposely misinformed snide out of academia.

Re: IEEE: Pay $3000 and we'll remove your article's paywall.

#32

Post by _delirium » Tue, Mar 29, 2011, 9:04 PM UTC

grsites wrote: post #26

pedrocr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem that needs to be solved isn't distribution, it's how to transition the traditional model of peer-review into one with much less overhead. Building a web app to allow researchers to submit their articles and have them peer-reviewed by other researchers would be an interesting project that could actually disrupt the industry. I don't think things like arXiv do that yet. Your project seems disruptive and may…

> Building a web app to allow researchers to submit their articles and have them peer-reviewed by other researchers would be an interesting project that could actually disrupt the industry. True, but the chicken and egg problem prevents that from taking off: researchers submit to the highest impact journal they can get the article in, not the open access journals. Similarly, they won't submit their articles to such a…

In a few fields the bootstrapping has taken place by having the entire editorial board of a top journal leave en masse to start a new one, which in a few cases then quickly takes over. The most successful case I know of is the Machine Learning board leaving to set up Journal of Machine Learning Research, which is now considered top-tier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Machine_Learning_Res...

Re: IEEE: Pay $3000 and we'll remove your article's paywall.

#33

Post by bertil » Tue, Mar 29, 2011, 9:10 PM UTC

Mythrl wrote: post #18

I don't understand the criticism leveled at organizations like IEEE although maybe I'm missing something. These are professional organizations and consequently non-profits. So even though they charge a lot to access the articles, it implies that nobody is actually getting rich off this. Edit: I know that there are some for profit publishing houses, but there are also many journals published by non-profits (IEEE being…

Many people are wondering the same thing: because most of the work is done by unpaid third party, the actual cost structure doesn't seem to match their demands. From what I understand, although the publisher is an academic non-profit, they handle the conference and outsource the publishing operation to one of a handful of a for-profit operator, most of whom are Dutch, iirc (Elsevier, Reuters).

Re: IEEE: Pay $3000 and we'll remove your article's paywall.

#34

Post by pedrocr » Tue, Mar 29, 2011, 9:40 PM UTC

bertil wrote: post #30

pedrocr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem that needs to be solved isn't distribution, it's how to transition the traditional model of peer-review into one with much less overhead. Building a web app to allow researchers to submit their articles and have them peer-reviewed by other researchers would be an interesting project that could actually disrupt the industry. I don't think things like arXiv do that yet. Your project seems disruptive and may…

We've seen Zotero and Mendeley trying to offer a platform for that (unconvincingly if you ask me); from mass adoption of those, points for good comments can be awarded to incite proper behaviour (reddit, HNews and Quora are here to attest it works, and abuses and their proper correction are well typed); I'm expecting the Livfe extention of Mekentojs' Paper 2 to come closer to something usable.

As far as I can tell both Zotero and Mendeley tackle the personal paper management space. Did they also move into being peer-review platforms?

Re: IEEE: Pay $3000 and we'll remove your article's paywall.

#35

Post by alexqgb » Tue, Mar 29, 2011, 11:47 PM UTC

Lewisham wrote: post #12

kilburn wrote: post #8

From the website: "Open access can coexist with traditional publishing. IEEE will continue to allow authors to post manuscripts of their articles accepted by IEEE journals on their own Web sites or those of their employers." Hence, it would be perfectly fine for me to publish on IEEE journals. Basically, if you want to read one of my articles you just have to look for it using google scholar. Is it that difficult?

...but remember this is only because they have no choice. IEEE/ACM would love to remove these clauses, but they've realized if they do, that's going to be the match that lights the fuse for all-out academic rebellion. It's not like that's a gift or some evidence that they are in any way reasonable. They're totally aware of the precipitous situation they're in, they just don't want to/don't have the competency to fix…

The fact that they're "granting you permission" to post your own paper, which you wrote at your own expense (or that of supporters you secured independently from the IEEE), and in which they have no legitimate copyright claim on your own website just underscores how dangerously close to the wind these guys are really sailing.

Unless they're actually bribing tenure committees to maintain their exclusive (and totally unearned) hold on people's professional futures, it seems like they're one coordinated action away from a richly-deserved implosion.

Re: IEEE: Pay $3000 and we'll remove your article's paywall.

#36

Post by alexqgb » Tue, Mar 29, 2011, 11:58 PM UTC

Mythrl wrote: post #18

I don't understand the criticism leveled at organizations like IEEE although maybe I'm missing something. These are professional organizations and consequently non-profits. So even though they charge a lot to access the articles, it implies that nobody is actually getting rich off this. Edit: I know that there are some for profit publishing houses, but there are also many journals published by non-profits (IEEE being…

Also, "non-profit" only refers to the tax status of the organization. The fact that the organization employs management that may be grossly overcompensated is left unmentioned. In any case, the relationship is likely to be highly - and personally - profitable for the people running it.

Re: IEEE: Pay $3000 and we'll remove your article's paywall.

#37

Post by tensor » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 5:12 AM UTC

thomasknowles wrote: post #22

grsites wrote: post #15

This kind of gouging soon won't be a problem anymore. I'm in the process of creating an online service (launch date sometime this summer) that will provide completely free full-text access to all academic journals in one fell swoop. Think Napster for academic research. I won't give implementation details for now, and I'm still evaluating different domain names, but it will be called Acropolis. Yes, I know it will cre…

I'd very much consider uploading a few of mine to that service, it's hard to justify what the IEEE deems as reasonable. Heck I don't even get access to my own papers.

Having published in an IEEE journal myself, this is false.

Unless the IEEE journals differ, you should have full rights to give people a preprint version of your paper, as well as to put a preprint version of your paper on your personal website. Not to mention that you need to ok the final version of the paper, it's hard to see how you don't have access.

Re: IEEE: Pay $3000 and we'll remove your article's paywall.

#38

Post by Muzza » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 8:32 AM UTC

Mythrl wrote: post #18

I don't understand the criticism leveled at organizations like IEEE although maybe I'm missing something. These are professional organizations and consequently non-profits. So even though they charge a lot to access the articles, it implies that nobody is actually getting rich off this. Edit: I know that there are some for profit publishing houses, but there are also many journals published by non-profits (IEEE being…

http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/

Read the section "Non-profits are NOT the Answer".

Re: IEEE: Pay $3000 and we'll remove your article's paywall.

#39

Post by MrGunn » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 6:06 PM UTC

naish wrote: post #5

elouise wrote: post #2

they think scholars have enough money to do the research AND pay $3000 to have it openly published? it's the beginning of the end of closed academic publishing models.

I certainly do not. It is usually enough of a challenge to cover "overpage" charges that publishers charge when an accepted article runs over the "standard" length (usually 8 pages for a standard or regular article). Often times, the "extra" pages are introduced by additional text required to satisfy reviewers. One time I was requested to convert an 8 page article submitted as a regular paper into a short paper forma…

The idea here is that the tend of thousands your library is paying now could be used to offset your costs to go the "Gold OA" route. With this discussion of fees, I have to point out that the majority of OA journals don't charge any fees at all, and of those that do their fees are generally comparable to the page charges you'd be paying at a non-OA journal.

It's only a rare few, like these guys, Nature Publishing, and a few others that charge so much. PLoS charges about half that.

Re: IEEE: Pay $3000 and we'll remove your article's paywall.

#40

Post by MrGunn » Wed, Mar 30, 2011, 6:14 PM UTC

bertil wrote: post #30

pedrocr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem that needs to be solved isn't distribution, it's how to transition the traditional model of peer-review into one with much less overhead. Building a web app to allow researchers to submit their articles and have them peer-reviewed by other researchers would be an interesting project that could actually disrupt the industry. I don't think things like arXiv do that yet. Your project seems disruptive and may…

We've seen Zotero and Mendeley trying to offer a platform for that (unconvincingly if you ask me); from mass adoption of those, points for good comments can be awarded to incite proper behaviour (reddit, HNews and Quora are here to attest it works, and abuses and their proper correction are well typed); I'm expecting the Livfe extention of Mekentojs' Paper 2 to come closer to something usable.

Hey, I work for Mendeley, so I can comment on a few things. Commenters here have noticed that it's the lamentable reliance on journal prestige that is keeping this whole dysfunctional system held together. The good news is that there are a number of smart people working on alternative metrics for papers (and for datasets and code as well) which focus on reuse, basically an extension of citation. Mendeley helps because we can collect and display some of these stats back to the academics who use our service. Not only does this allow research to proceed much faster by radically shortening the feedback cycle, but it provides a possibility that as the alt metrics get better uptake and respect, the lack of a suitable IF won't be a barrier anymore.