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Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals

experimental-history.com

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Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals

#41

Post by D-Machine »

MarkusQ wrote: post #40
D-Machine wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know why you are being downvoted, you are largely correct. I've provided plenty of evidence in another post in this thread showing that journal-based peer review is highly farcical. EDIT: I still want review from a community of scientific peers. I just don't want this review to be in the hands of a tiny number of gatekeepers entangled with journals that largely just slow things down.

Because a lot of people are deeply invested in the present system perhaps? As the article pointed out, there's a lot of money involved, and there are a lot of people who've built their lives around flourishing in the existing system, cut-throat as it may be.

> Because a lot of people are deeply invested in the present system perhaps?

I mean, right, yes, of course. Much of the downvotes are cognitive dissonance, obviously. I suppose I meant the question rhetorically.

Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals

#42

Post by snowwrestler »

D-Machine wrote: post #24
snowwrestler wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of the problem is we got tricked into thinking "peer reviewed" meant "true," or at least something like it. No actual working scientist thinks this. “Glitchc” has it right elsewhere in this thread: the motivating force behind journals is prominence and reputation, not truth.

Ah, but the naive public still broadly believes in peer review, and that high profile journals do good review. And the prominence and reputation that comes from these journals arguably then relies on this (increasingly false) public perception. Would scientists feel the same if the public was more educated about how bad journals and peer review are? Not so easy to disentangle IMO.

The naive public does not believe anything in particular about peer review. They think new scientific results are significant when they read about them in the popular media, that’s it.

People who do need to work professionally with peer review, do understand what it actually does and its limitations.

You seem stuck somewhere in the middle, caring deeply about a system you don’t seem to fully understand.

Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals

#43

Post by tokai »

glitchc wrote: post #10

We already have open-access publications: Just put it on arXiV. Most researchers I work with do this already. The problem isn't access, it's citations. arXiV is not considered a credible citation source since anyone can publish anything. TPCs don't use it in their list of citations, neither do grant funding agencies or government institutions. The current academic enterprise relies heavily on third-party gatekeeping.…

Just putting it on arXiv does not automatically make it OA. It needs a permissive license.

Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals

#44

Post by D-Machine »

vladms wrote: post #38
D-Machine wrote: post #14

The other factor preventing a fix is that people with no actual serious experience of academic publishing and peer review will defend these journals, because they still think that (journal-based) peer review acts like some kind of meaningful quality filter. But, it really doesn't. Because someone is surely going to try to defend journals via peer review in this thread, I want to provide a counter to the arguments tha…

> higher-profile journals in general have more retractions and research misconduct [1-2] Given that reviews are not a mechanism to check for truth but soundness, the higher profile the thing I would imagine there would be more misconduct. I mean would one risk prison to steal 10$ or to steal 1 million $? > lower research quality [3] To cite exactly from your link "the evidence is mixed about whether they are strongly…

Oh, I agree this is all super complex and delicate. If I had more time, I'd love to write a more nuanced, many-thousands-of-words blog post going into which journals and fields actually have good peer review and can be more / less trusted.

I just wanted to make a strong rhetorical case by highlighting some things that might be surprising to people making more naive defenses of journals via peer-review-based arguments.

Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals

#45

Post by eykanal »

bsoles wrote: post #22

> So the solution here is straightforward: every government grant should ... People who write such sentences have no idea what they are talking about or are being intentionally naive for whatever reason. Just because your one-sentence solution reads simple doesn't make the actual solution simple. Because such a solution involves changes to laws, changes to entrenched interests, changes to distribution of money involv…

This comment seems to confuse _straightforward_ with _easy_. On the merits, this proposal is well argued and has good points, and his solution—essentially extend the Biden approach with more strict requirements—makes sense.

Everything you mention will also have to happen, which means that doing this will definitely not be _easy_. That said, it is still a very _straightforward_ solution.

Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals

#46

Post by D-Machine »

snowwrestler wrote: post #42
D-Machine wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, but the naive public still broadly believes in peer review, and that high profile journals do good review. And the prominence and reputation that comes from these journals arguably then relies on this (increasingly false) public perception. Would scientists feel the same if the public was more educated about how bad journals and peer review are? Not so easy to disentangle IMO.

The naive public does not believe anything in particular about peer review. They think new scientific results are significant when they read about them in the popular media, that’s it. People who do need to work professionally with peer review, do understand what it actually does and its limitations. You seem stuck somewhere in the middle, caring deeply about a system you don’t seem to fully understand.

> The naive public does not believe anything in particular about peer review

You'd need to provide evidence or an argument for this. The media reports on things in part based on journal prestige, and likely when questioned, people will say they can trust such things because good scientists have looked at the work and say it is good. This would be an implicit belief that peer review is generally working well, even if they don't use the term "peer review".

> You seem stuck somewhere in the middle, caring deeply about a system you don’t seem to fully understand.

Extremely presumptuous, as I work in this system, and have provided plenty of evidence for my claims. You've provided only sneers.

Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals

#47

Post by alpaca128 »

alexwebb2 wrote: post #35

> Robert Maxwell, one of the architects of the for-profit scientific publishing scheme. When he later went into debt, he plundered hundreds of millions of pounds from his employees’ pension funds. You may be familiar with his daughter and lieutenant Ghislaine Maxwell, who went on to have a successful career in child trafficking. Wow! Surprised that hasn't been mentioned here already. Jumped out to me immediately as a…

That reminds me of the recent term "Epstein class". It seems more and more fitting.

Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals

#48

Post by butILoveLife »

glitchc wrote: post #10

We already have open-access publications: Just put it on arXiV. Most researchers I work with do this already. The problem isn't access, it's citations. arXiV is not considered a credible citation source since anyone can publish anything. TPCs don't use it in their list of citations, neither do grant funding agencies or government institutions. The current academic enterprise relies heavily on third-party gatekeeping.…

>The first thing an academic does is check where a paper is published, before even reading it. It's a crutch.

This is actually what ruined my respect for Academia.

My Science PhD buddy looked at the journal title and the claim, then said: "Its true!"

I look at him with horror. Who cares about the journal, I want to know data and methodology.

I've basically never forgiven Academia since this. I see even Ivys put out bad research and journals will publish bad research (Replication crisis and the ivy fake psychology studies)

For outsiders, there is a prestige to being a PhD or working as a professor. Now that I'm mid career and lived through the previous events I mentioned + seeing who stuck with academia... These are your C grade performers. They didnt get hired by industry, so they stayed in school. They are so protective of their artificial rank because they cannot compete in Industry. Its like being the cool person on the tennis team. They are locally cool, but not globally cool.

Re: Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals

#50

Post by the__alchemist »

glitchc wrote: post #10

We already have open-access publications: Just put it on arXiV. Most researchers I work with do this already. The problem isn't access, it's citations. arXiV is not considered a credible citation source since anyone can publish anything. TPCs don't use it in their list of citations, neither do grant funding agencies or government institutions. The current academic enterprise relies heavily on third-party gatekeeping.…

Check out the "Collective action problem" described in this article. It describes why "Just publish on arXiV" isn't a practical solution. It doesn't lead to the problem being fixed, because of inertia against any individual breaking out of the system.
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