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Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free

sciencemag.org

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Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free

#51

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #49
AlbertCory wrote: post #36

Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. That said: in the legal world, where PACER extracts $0.10 per "page" even now that you get things electronically and the cost is near zero: There's a service RECAP (PACER spelled backwards), where you can install a browser extension which automatically copies anything you download from PACER to a free archive. So one person pays, and the rest get it free…

> Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. Listen to me, HN. Stop listening to this meme. You aren't using your brains. Everyone has a hard-on for Elsevier, and no other publisher. Why is that? Because they don't know anything about publishing. They've just heard the name Elsevier (and it kind of looks evil ) and so they just parrot it ad-nauseam. What about Springer? Taylor & Francis? Wiley-Bl…

[deleted]

Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free

#52

Post by nlitened »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #49
AlbertCory wrote: post #36

Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. That said: in the legal world, where PACER extracts $0.10 per "page" even now that you get things electronically and the cost is near zero: There's a service RECAP (PACER spelled backwards), where you can install a browser extension which automatically copies anything you download from PACER to a free archive. So one person pays, and the rest get it free…

> Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. Listen to me, HN. Stop listening to this meme. You aren't using your brains. Everyone has a hard-on for Elsevier, and no other publisher. Why is that? Because they don't know anything about publishing. They've just heard the name Elsevier (and it kind of looks evil ) and so they just parrot it ad-nauseam. What about Springer? Taylor & Francis? Wiley-Bl…

Can’t tell if the parent comment is sarcastic or not.

Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free

#53

Post by da39a3ee »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #49
AlbertCory wrote: post #36

Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. That said: in the legal world, where PACER extracts $0.10 per "page" even now that you get things electronically and the cost is near zero: There's a service RECAP (PACER spelled backwards), where you can install a browser extension which automatically copies anything you download from PACER to a free archive. So one person pays, and the rest get it free…

> Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. Listen to me, HN. Stop listening to this meme. You aren't using your brains. Everyone has a hard-on for Elsevier, and no other publisher. Why is that? Because they don't know anything about publishing. They've just heard the name Elsevier (and it kind of looks evil ) and so they just parrot it ad-nauseam. What about Springer? Taylor & Francis? Wiley-Bl…

Yes, that’s how it worked. The rather major point you are missing is that things change.

Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free

#54

Post by AlbertCory »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #49
AlbertCory wrote: post #36

Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. That said: in the legal world, where PACER extracts $0.10 per "page" even now that you get things electronically and the cost is near zero: There's a service RECAP (PACER spelled backwards), where you can install a browser extension which automatically copies anything you download from PACER to a free archive. So one person pays, and the rest get it free…

> Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. Listen to me, HN. Stop listening to this meme. You aren't using your brains. Everyone has a hard-on for Elsevier, and no other publisher. Why is that? Because they don't know anything about publishing. They've just heard the name Elsevier (and it kind of looks evil ) and so they just parrot it ad-nauseam. What about Springer? Taylor & Francis? Wiley-Bl…

as for Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley-Blackwell: yeah, them too. Forgot to mention those.

The paid journals take research which is mostly paid for with public or non-profit money, and hide it behind paywalls. You can't avoid this fact.

Their "reputation" is mostly just a legacy, like the New York Times'. At one time they sent out paper journals, which was the only way information could be disseminated, and charged libraries reasonable fees. There was a manageable number of such journals so a library could get most or all of them. That world is gone.

Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free

#55

Post by robertlagrant »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #49
AlbertCory wrote: post #36

Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. That said: in the legal world, where PACER extracts $0.10 per "page" even now that you get things electronically and the cost is near zero: There's a service RECAP (PACER spelled backwards), where you can install a browser extension which automatically copies anything you download from PACER to a free archive. So one person pays, and the rest get it free…

> Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. Listen to me, HN. Stop listening to this meme. You aren't using your brains. Everyone has a hard-on for Elsevier, and no other publisher. Why is that? Because they don't know anything about publishing. They've just heard the name Elsevier (and it kind of looks evil ) and so they just parrot it ad-nauseam. What about Springer? Taylor & Francis? Wiley-Bl…

> Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers

I don't think your fundamental thesis of "only Elsevier is blamed" holds up to the post you replied to.

Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free

#56

Post by AlbertCory »

erhk wrote: post #48
AlbertCory wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been going on for years, I know that. I don't know if the rent-seekers have ever tried to shut it down. The fact that it's so complete tells me that a huge number of mainstream law firms look the other way when their employees use the browser extension.

Lots of illicit things go on for years

True. This is, almost by definition, a very litigious sector though.

Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free

#57

Post by manquer »

franga2000 wrote: post #50
AlbertCory wrote: post #36

Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. That said: in the legal world, where PACER extracts $0.10 per "page" even now that you get things electronically and the cost is near zero: There's a service RECAP (PACER spelled backwards), where you can install a browser extension which automatically copies anything you download from PACER to a free archive. So one person pays, and the rest get it free…

Reading this comment, I assumed PACER was a private provider who sells access to otherwise freely available material which originally might be scattered and unorganised as government things usually are. Charging for access would therefore be reasonable. But a quick search reveals that this is in fact a government-provided service. So your government charges you 10 cents per page to download PDFs from a glorified file…

Going down the cost rabbit hole is problematic, the costs are not just for the service infra. Even for the service you need project managers , product owners, devs, SREs, QAs and data entry operators who collate or atleast update the DB . Easily costs that can run in millions/year.

Typically such revenue streams cover other holes in the budget not related to this service as well, and there is indirect overhead costs like Contracts, control structures, HR, vendors etc harder to amortize.

Any costs for what should be free public access in not right. The argument should be that we pay already tax, this information public should have free and easily .

Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free

#58

Post by turbinerneiter »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #49
AlbertCory wrote: post #36

Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. That said: in the legal world, where PACER extracts $0.10 per "page" even now that you get things electronically and the cost is near zero: There's a service RECAP (PACER spelled backwards), where you can install a browser extension which automatically copies anything you download from PACER to a free archive. So one person pays, and the rest get it free…

> Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. Listen to me, HN. Stop listening to this meme. You aren't using your brains. Everyone has a hard-on for Elsevier, and no other publisher. Why is that? Because they don't know anything about publishing. They've just heard the name Elsevier (and it kind of looks evil ) and so they just parrot it ad-nauseam. What about Springer? Taylor & Francis? Wiley-Bl…

Good point, but I think the opposite is true: scientific research is already broken, and blowing up the publishers would force us to rebuild it proper.

I co-authored a peer reviewed paper. Because our English is bad and our context is different, we called a system operating at 100Hz a "high frequency sensor" instead of a "fast sample rate (context) sensor". They gave that paper to an HF (radio) engineer to review it. He said "I think I was given this paper by mistake, this is not HF. Anyway, nice paper, change the color of this graph please."

Pair that with the general replication problem (no one has the money, time or incentive to replicate anything), that publish or perish mentality, the idiotic bias against publishing negative results - jeez, the situation is baaad.

Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free

#59

Post by oakfr »

wolverine876 wrote: post #31
cs702 wrote: post #9

Slowly and almost imperceptibly if you look at it day-to-day, public research repositories like arxiv and biorxiv, along with public code repositories like github and gitlab, are becoming or maybe already are the world's most important academic "journals." All research and code posted on them gets a quick once-over; good work gets the attention it deserves; bad work is quickly ignored. Reviews take place over the Int…

> All research and code posted on them gets a quick once-over; good work gets the attention it deserves; bad work is quickly ignored. What is the basis for all these claims? Who is giving it the quick once-over? Crowd-sourced review and information, despite some strengths and high initial hopes, has a record of extraordinary misinformation and disinformation. Why would we want to use that system for scientific resear…

The problem is that careful (conference) reviews don’t scale. Large conferences end up suffering from a highly stochastic behavior where excellent work is borderline rejected on a regular basis while mediocre/incorrect work gets accepted every so often. github/arxiv are no silver bullet but offer an interesting alternative (with their own set of challenges, though).

Re: Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free

#60

Post by tempay »

sfgweilr4f wrote: post #40
cs702 wrote: post #9

Slowly and almost imperceptibly if you look at it day-to-day, public research repositories like arxiv and biorxiv, along with public code repositories like github and gitlab, are becoming or maybe already are the world's most important academic "journals." All research and code posted on them gets a quick once-over; good work gets the attention it deserves; bad work is quickly ignored. Reviews take place over the Int…

I'm idly curious: does arxiv show who reviewed it? credentials etc? Is there a trust scoring mechanism or some such? is there some way to show a graph of reviewing? Is there a restriction on who can post a paper? (I'm not saying any of these are needed to make it "respectable" or even that they should be... just wondering how arxiv does its thing) Personally I like the overall concept of arxiv. Even with no one neces…

As far as I know the moderator isn’t shown, but that’s probably a good thing as things get approved on a ~overnight schedule so publicly shaming them for mistakes seems counter productive. Additionally the moderation is very light, “April fools” papers are common and I’ve never heard of something being rejected.

For submitting you need to be approved by someone who already has several submissions in that field.

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