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Should All Research Papers Be Free?

nytimes.com

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Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#41

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

ikeboy wrote: post #24
rfrey wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who conduct the research, and the people who fund the research, are not collecting the fees to view the research.

The open access journals charge thousands. Journal publishing has costs, and they need to be born by someone. If not from access fees, they'll need to be paid upfront, which means each study costs more, which means either less studying gets done, or funds come from elsewhere to fund it.

>Journal publishing has costs

I've yet to see any justification at all for the outrageous fees charged by academic journals.

The only costs I can see are printing/distribution and web hosting.

Typesetting is trivial. Editing is non-existent. Editorial isn't paid. Peer review isn't paid.

Having a nice office and marketing staff who hold university libraries to ransom shouldn't count as a cost.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#42

Post by ikeboy »

return0 wrote: post #30
ikeboy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you, as a taxpayer, willing to pay (your share of) the extra $1000 or so per paper that it would take?

Universities already pay comparable subscription fees

If most papers can be accessed for free, why would universities still pay?

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#43

Post by ycmbntrthrwaway »

ikeboy wrote: post #20
payne92 wrote: post #5

I feel especially strongly that papers that result from taxpayer-funded research should be free.

Are you, as a taxpayer, willing to pay (your share of) the extra $1000 or so per paper that it would take?

As a taxpayer, you already pay state universities to access those papers. If every paper was published as open-access, I am sure the price of open-access could be reduced.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#44

Post by jordigh »

mirimir wrote: post #28
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is the scientists who are writing the papers and editing them, the journals provide a valuable service as intermediaries between the scientists. Whether this service is best provided "for free" or for profit is another question. In some fields, the leading journals are already published by not-for-profit organizations such as the ACM, but I am not sure that they are doing a better job than Springer or Elsevi…

Does ACM sell individual papers? If so, what's the price?

It's about the same as everyone else: about 15 USD per paper, e.g.

https://dl.acm.org/purchase.cfm?id=2756548&CFID=761526954&CF...

They also have a somewhat restrictive licensing on their software:

http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/softwarecrnotice

This part is kind of weird, as they have a noncommercial clause on their copyrighted algorithms, which makes them non-free.

On a slightly different note, I was somewhat saddened by how the International Lisp Conference talks were recorded but unavailable because the ACM will not allow their publication.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#45

Post by return0 »

wodenokoto wrote: post #33
payne92 wrote: post #5

I feel especially strongly that papers that result from taxpayer-funded research should be free.

From a government / national perspective should it be free world wide? If so, why should nations give away their expensive research that potentially give them an edge either military or commercially? Personally I almost never traded technology when I played civilization, let alone give it away!

Journals don't buy the science. It's given to them for free from scientists in return for "prestige". Most of the time this is damaging to their government's interests, since they give away taxfunded research usually to a foreign entity.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#46

Post by ikeboy »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #41
ikeboy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The open access journals charge thousands. Journal publishing has costs, and they need to be born by someone. If not from access fees, they'll need to be paid upfront, which means each study costs more, which means either less studying gets done, or funds come from elsewhere to fund it.

>Journal publishing has costs I've yet to see any justification at all for the outrageous fees charged by academic journals. The only costs I can see are printing/distribution and web hosting. Typesetting is trivial. Editing is non-existent. Editorial isn't paid. Peer review isn't paid. Having a nice office and marketing staff who hold university libraries to ransom shouldn't count as a cost.

The first fact you need to deal with is that open access journals, started to explicitly counter the cost problem, have similar costs. If it was as simple as you think it is, open access journals would be much cheaper. (Arxiv is not peer reviewed, and does not count.)

The second point is that publishers costs are around 70% of revenue, as the article says margins are around 30%. That means there's a limit to how low they can go and not lose money, and I doubt many of those complaining would suddenly stop if prices were 30% lower.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#47

Post by stegosaurus »

zanny wrote: post #14
savanaly wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not exactly post-scarcity, it's just zero marginal cost. It's true that, given the product has already been created and has zero marginal cost, it "should" be free. But for setting the expectations that producers of future products have about what compensation they'll receive we can't simply say it should be free.

The marginal units absolutely can be free, just pay for the research itself. Fixed cost for fixed work.

Posting in a seperate comment here as I was mainly aiming to provoke debate with the original one.

This generally chimes with my feeling. It seems to me that the users of research can derive vastly different value from it and so the flat price model doesn't really work.

Consider some new research on light emitting diodes and the value Samsung might get from that vs. me reading it out of curiosity.

For that reason, to me it makes sense to treat academic research as infrastructure and have free access to all funded via taxation.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#49

Post by chestervonwinch »

east2west wrote: post #23
pen2l wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that knowledge should be accessible to all. But, do realize that there most certainly is value being contributed by journals who are making you pay. For example, the editorial work, the typesetting, the selection, the whole system, etc. So they do need a paycheck from somewhere. So, I think this is actually like the common software/music/movies piracy situation... but a lot better! My (simplified) fe…

Journals do minimal typesetting, and practically no editorial work. Paper reviews are done by academics, free. Editors are mostly academics, not depending a paycheck from publishers. There is cost, like marketing cost, but none that justifies $35 per article to the general public.

Here's the breakdown of the current job postings at Elsevier (not to say that this reflects accurately how the $35 / article is divided up):

* 112 IT

* 10 customer service

* 3 data analysis

* 28 editorial

* 3 accounting

* 4 general MGMT

* 3 HR, 35 marketing

* 18 manufacturing

* 22 product MGMT

* 3 program MGMT

I would really like to see an official breakdown of the cost per article and especially the processing cost paid by authors.

edit: formatting.

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