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MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

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Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#51

Post by devit »

enriquto wrote: post #20
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #11

Here is the MIT Framework for Publisher Contracts: https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/publishing/framework/ It requires that: 1. No author will be required to waive any institutional or funder open access policy to publish in any of the publisher’s journals. 2. No author will be required to relinquish copyright, but instead will be provided with options that enable publication while also providing authors with gener…

> What was surprising was the number of institutions which had signed onto the framework - my alma mater included. I'm curious how many of these still have an Elsevier contract. If you ever tried to dig deep into the internals of a large organization, you will notice that they are perfectly capable of managing a set of self-contradictory rules. It is actually an amazing power. At least, this was my experience. For a…

It's easy to make this non-contradictory by making the rules apply only to future contracts, or only when the decision maker wants them to apply.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#52

Post by sitkack »

Vinnl wrote: post #35
underdeserver wrote: post #22

I honestly don't understand why JSTOR, Elsevier and others like them still need to exist. Top universities should just found a non-profit, per subject, with a single paid facilitator and a single paid editor (per journal) to find peer reviewers and edit the papers into a monthly journal. Modern tech has made it ridiculously easy to type, edit and publish such a thing if the inputs are LaTeX, Word, Markdown files or a…

Then you'll have replaced the problem of making research results actually available somewhere. But what it doesn't solve, is the problems of a) deciding what research to read and b) deciding which researchers to hire. Note that the current system, which relies on the brand name of the journals in which works (or an author's works) are published, is very flawed, but it's what people use, and is therefore what's making…

I love the idea of plaudit, it wold be interesting to tie into dlbp or semanticscholar. As it is now, I have to see if a researcher tweets paper recommendations. Are you working with either?

I am sure you are aware, posting for the wider audience.

Availability is the hard part, formats, indexing, a handle so that it can be referenced. We already have an awesome model for this with the e-print archives [2..=4].

As for what to read, this is what overlay journals are for! [1]. By splitting the mechanics of submission, serving, basic vetting, etc. any other group of people can create as many overlay journals as they deem necessary. Sorting, ranking and clustering of the research now is not coupled to getting the knowledge recorded.

This excellent article [5] linked from the wikipedia entry has the perfect description of the concept,

>>> The Open Journal of Astrophysics works in tandem with manuscripts posted on the pre-print server arXiv. Researchers submit their papers from arXiv directly to the journal, which evaluates them by conventional peer review. Accepted versions of the papers are then re-posted to arXiv and assigned a DOI, and the journal publishes links to them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlay_journal

[2] https://arxiv.org/

[3] https://www.biorxiv.org/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Eprint_archives

[5] https://www.nature.com/news/open-journals-that-piggyback-on-...

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#53

Post by underdeserver »

abhv wrote: post #39
underdeserver wrote: post #22

I honestly don't understand why JSTOR, Elsevier and others like them still need to exist. Top universities should just found a non-profit, per subject, with a single paid facilitator and a single paid editor (per journal) to find peer reviewers and edit the papers into a monthly journal. Modern tech has made it ridiculously easy to type, edit and publish such a thing if the inputs are LaTeX, Word, Markdown files or a…

I'm an academic. For years, my academic niche has tried to break free from the likes of Springer/Elsevier. Here are the bottlenecks: * There are wonderful "pre-print" servers like arxiv and eprint.iacr.org. However, these do not maintain the "archival quality" document storage that is needed for academic scientific literature. In day-to-day, all researchers use these to stay informed on recent results. But how to gua…

I'm a random industry software engineer. :)

> In day-to-day, all researchers use these to stay informed on recent results. But how to guarantee that nobody hacks in and figures out how to change a few bytes in one paper that is 10years old?

Printed versions + digitally signed and timestamped PDFs. This is a solved problem in the world, at least up to the level that Springer can solve it.

> How to guarantee that these documents are available 75 years from now?

I trust MIT and Harvard to keep PDFs and printed versions available much more than I trust Elsevier or Springer to be around in 75 years.

> Many academics need publications in prestigious journals with "high impact factors" in order to get tenure because the upper-level tenure committees in older institutions use these metrics to evaluate cases. These people are not stupid: it is just hard to evaluate cases across a university when you are not an expert. Instead, you assume that certain journals represent "the highest quality work" and thus use the presence of those publications to judge researchers. This means that the top papers still end up in Elsevier/Springer journals.

I don't disagree. This is why the change and the first wave of papers will likely come from already-tenured professors, who still publish high impact papers.

> When I was a grad student at MIT, it was easy to read papers; if your IP was from MIT, every paper was 1 click away. I wonder how it is going to work now that Elsevier's catalog won't work this way...

Now imagine the same situation, except you don't need your IP to be from MIT.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#54

Post by meej »

pfortuny wrote: post #43
underdeserver wrote: post #22

I honestly don't understand why JSTOR, Elsevier and others like them still need to exist. Top universities should just found a non-profit, per subject, with a single paid facilitator and a single paid editor (per journal) to find peer reviewers and edit the papers into a monthly journal. Modern tech has made it ridiculously easy to type, edit and publish such a thing if the inputs are LaTeX, Word, Markdown files or a…

Oh dear, the burden of organizing peer-review and of consolidating some sort of "quality" stamp (I said "some sort of") is much more expensive than "nothing". I am not pro-Elsevier, I am just stating a fact.

And yet much of the work of peer review is done on a volunteer basis.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#55

Post by underdeserver »

pfortuny wrote: post #43
underdeserver wrote: post #22

I honestly don't understand why JSTOR, Elsevier and others like them still need to exist. Top universities should just found a non-profit, per subject, with a single paid facilitator and a single paid editor (per journal) to find peer reviewers and edit the papers into a monthly journal. Modern tech has made it ridiculously easy to type, edit and publish such a thing if the inputs are LaTeX, Word, Markdown files or a…

Oh dear, the burden of organizing peer-review and of consolidating some sort of "quality" stamp (I said "some sort of") is much more expensive than "nothing". I am not pro-Elsevier, I am just stating a fact.

OK, maybe I exaggerated when I said nothing.

Per subject, per journal, the same person who edits a journal today at Elsevier could do the same thing for the same salary at a university consortium-backed non-profit.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#56

Post by meej »

whatshisface wrote: post #15

An interesting side-effect of the shift to open access will be that anyone who's still publishing in closed-access journals will be at a severe disadvantage in getting cited compared to people who publish open access and make preprints available.

This is already happening! Not quite "severe" disadvantage, but OA papers are getting cited more often.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/home/open-access-papers...

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#57

Post by JackFr »

Nextgrid wrote: post #32
enriquto wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What was surprising was the number of institutions which had signed onto the framework - my alma mater included. I'm curious how many of these still have an Elsevier contract. If you ever tried to dig deep into the internals of a large organization, you will notice that they are perfectly capable of managing a set of self-contradictory rules. It is actually an amazing power. At least, this was my experience. For a…

> they are perfectly capable of managing a set of self-contradictory rules This is caused by managers' and middle-managers' performance metrics being tied to the wrong outcomes. The top layer of management's target is the desired outcome. The bottom layer's (the worker) target is also clear, it's to do whatever their manager says to do. In the middle is where it often breaks down; their objectives are short-sighted a…

> At best, it introduces a large inefficiency, waste of resources and unnecessary busywork ("bullshit jobs" becomes relevant here)

If the COVID-19 lockdown has taught us anything, it's that probably a full third of our economy is bullshit jobs. We're at best self-perpetuating economic 'nice-to-haves', at worst parasitic rent seekers, probably somewhere in between, whose real role is simply to distribute GDP more widely, while pretending to add value to society.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#58

Post by foepys »

pfortuny wrote: post #43
underdeserver wrote: post #22

I honestly don't understand why JSTOR, Elsevier and others like them still need to exist. Top universities should just found a non-profit, per subject, with a single paid facilitator and a single paid editor (per journal) to find peer reviewers and edit the papers into a monthly journal. Modern tech has made it ridiculously easy to type, edit and publish such a thing if the inputs are LaTeX, Word, Markdown files or a…

Oh dear, the burden of organizing peer-review and of consolidating some sort of "quality" stamp (I said "some sort of") is much more expensive than "nothing". I am not pro-Elsevier, I am just stating a fact.

The only people getting paid in the reviewing process are the journals that are only coordinating the reviews. Actual reviewers (aka other researchers in the same field as the paper) are working for free.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#59

Post by nerdponx »

supernova87a wrote: post #31
underdeserver wrote: post #22

I honestly don't understand why JSTOR, Elsevier and others like them still need to exist. Top universities should just found a non-profit, per subject, with a single paid facilitator and a single paid editor (per journal) to find peer reviewers and edit the papers into a monthly journal. Modern tech has made it ridiculously easy to type, edit and publish such a thing if the inputs are LaTeX, Word, Markdown files or a…

Well, despite the parasitic nature of the modern commercial journal world (and originally they did come from more benevolent aims, but got consumed by corporations) -- they do serve an important filtering and quality control mechanism. A 100% open and free journal cannot achieve selectivity without having some judgement and bias applied. One that's hard for an intrepid band of volunteers to recreate without funding a…

A 100% open and free journal cannot achieve selectivity without having some judgement and bias applied.

How does this follow? "Open" doesn't mean "anyone can publish", it means "anyone can read".

Funding for editors and webhosting should come from the universities themselves. Replace Elsevier with a nonprofit consortium funded directly by universities, and a lot of these problems just go away.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#60

Post by bonoboTP »

mcv wrote: post #49
abhv wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an academic. For years, my academic niche has tried to break free from the likes of Springer/Elsevier. Here are the bottlenecks: * There are wonderful "pre-print" servers like arxiv and eprint.iacr.org. However, these do not maintain the "archival quality" document storage that is needed for academic scientific literature. In day-to-day, all researchers use these to stay informed on recent results. But how to gua…

> Many academics need publications in prestigious journals with "high impact factors" It wouldn't surprise me if this is a massive part of the problem. Any new system to replace Elsevier may be perfect in lots of ways, but it doesn't count as prestigious, which means everybody will still want/need to publish with Elsevier. How do you magically grant a new publishing platform this 'prestige'?

When the prestigious expert editorial board resigns at the same time and creates a new journal. It has happened several times, e. g. Glossa for linguistics.

Also JMLR in machine learning is independent and still well regarded.

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