Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

news.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 269 posts

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#71

Post by Vinnl »

nomercy400 wrote: post #42

I'm curious (playing devil's advocate): Does this mean that MIT can now do research and not be required to publish this anywhere, not even journals? And, if somebody from MIT does publish something under this framework, can they claim copyright and disallow any use of the contents of the papers if so convenient? Move away from patents and straight into copyright. We all know how well the US copyright system works, ri…

I don't really get your questions. Elsevier was never the one who demanded that MIT published research, so this shouldn't change anything there.

When a researcher publishes with Elsevier, the common practice when not transferring copyright is to give them a perpetual licence to publish the work.

Additionally, presumably MIT requires their researchers to publish their work as Open Access, i.e. with a licence that allows re-use and distribution for everyone - so they cannot disallow use of the contents of the papers arbitrarily. Elsevier is not needed for that.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#72

Post by bogomipz »

>"MIT has long been a leader in open access. Adopted in 2009, the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy was one of the first and most far-reaching initiatives of its kind in the United States. Forty-seven percent of faculty journal articles published since the adoption of the policy are freely available to the world.

Could someone comment on the figure of 47%? What are the reasons this wouldn't be higher than this given that the policy has been in effect well over a decade now?

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#73

Post by czzr »

When thinking about the cost of providing the services journals provide, I’m always struck by the example of PloS - non-profit, set up with the mission of promoting open access, and just about surviving by charging authors $2000-$3000 per article.

I can only conclude that managing journals is not as cost free as most people in this thread seem to think, for whatever reason.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#74

Post by olau »

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…

Just about the bandwidth costs: You can rent a server at Hetzner.de for 40 EUR with 1 Gbit/s. Let's say each PDF is around 100 kb, then you can serve 1000 PDFs per second. Say there are 50 million active research students in the world, then the single 40 EUR server can serve them about 10 PDFs/week on average.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#75

Post by skywhopper »

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…

I mean, the reality of any large institution (or even a single human being) is that there will inevitably exist many contradictory "rules" that must be handled. I'm not sure how it is amazing. It's a fundamental necessity for their existence.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#76

Post by lozaning »

underdeserver wrote: post #53
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…

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…

I don't have to imagine it: https://scihub.wikicn.top/

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#77

Post by setgree »

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…

> 2. No author will be required to relinquish copyright, but instead will be provided with options that enable publication while also providing authors with generous reuse rights.

I've published a few papers (and have worked closely with Elsevier in a business context). When we published in a paywalled journal, we had the option of paying an APC [0] to make the particular article open access. So in that sense, we were not 'required' to relinquish copyright. It was just costly to retain it.

I suspect this is how some publishers argue that their contracts do not violate these maxims, because an APC option is fairly common, even at Elsevier, I think. Many journals also permit authors to post pre-edited versions of their papers on their personal websites.

I also think that, in line with what a commenter below, a large organization like MIT is not a coherent actor. There are political battles and compromises we don't see. So publishing this list could be someone's tactic for winning the internal struggle against negotiating with Elsevier.

Chris Bourg, who is a prominent advocate for open access at MIT, is my best bet for the driving force behind this:

https://twitter.com/mchris4duke/status/1271094535297339399

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_processing_charge

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#78

Post by manquer »

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.

Why though? It is not like you don’t have access to high quality cheap talent in the form of RAs/TAs etc why cannot that part be done by students ? It will also actually help them learn their subjects

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#79

Post by oefrha »

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…

Digital archival of PDFs weighing a few hundred KBs to a few MBs is definitely a solved problem. And there are already arXiv overlay journals out there, and platforms supporting them. Tim Gowers' (Fields medalist) blog posts on this topic are quite informative:

https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an...

https://gowers.wordpress.com/2019/10/30/advances-in-combinat...

Highlights: $10 per submission, plus some fixed costs, including archival with CLOCKSS. No Elsevier extortion ring needed.

Impact factors are of course kind of a chicken and egg problem. Need to have enough high profile journals move off Big Publishing, or have enough high profile ones started.

> 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.

When I was a grad student at , or an undergrad at , accessing papers was rather painful off campus. One either has to use EZproxy, which might decide to block you if it doesn't like your IP range (say in a foreign country), or use some godawful proprietary VPN client that I would stay the hell away from unless necessary.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#80

Post by vegetablepotpie »

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 they mess up is when it changes. When you look at old institutions and powerful people, sometimes their rule ends abruptly because of scandal, bad decisions, or corruption. Bear Sterns, Enron, and Nixon are examples of this. For a new publishing platform to succeed, the old one needs die. For an organization built on prestige to die, it needs to be mired in scandal wrapped up and packaged in the political zeitgeist at that moment that not only affects its small community but also develops the ire of the entire society. At that point a new platform will emerge, likely backed by, and inheriting its prestige from, another institution.

Edit: I realize, unfortunately, this post doesn’t give anything actionable that anyone can enact. It at least offers hope that things can change.

Post reply on HN