The best thing you've ever done, Bill! Thank you.
Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles
71–80 of 154 posts
Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
yes, tax payers should fund publishers for free. plonk.
Tax payers aren't funding publishers. Don't like it? Go publish it on your blog.
"publishers should work for free. plonk"
We expect peer reviewers to work for free. We expect the authors of the papers to work for free. But no, we don't expect the publishers to work for free.
As p4bl0 wrote, "But there is that actual cost, and then there is the prices demanded by publishers, which looks more like violent theft than it looks like the actual cost." That means p4bl0 think the prices should be reduced, not that the prices should be zero, as you somehow concluded.
"Go publish it on your blog."
See, I've actually done that. I can tell you what happens. A large subset of people don't believe something has been published unless it's in the scientific literature. People end up writing papers which say things like "the first comparison between X and Y". I write to them pointing out several previous blog publications which report the analysis, to be told that they knew about one of them, but didn't consider it sufficiently academic to count as a real publication.
Publishers make their profits because a lot of people, including those who hire or fund academics, believe that a publisher's imprimatur is essential to being a publication.
This is not completely invalid. Google's standard search engine, good as it is for search, is lousy for searching the academic literature. Google Scholar is better, but it only manages it because it only indexes the academic journals.
So if you publish on your blog, it's not likely that people will know about your work.
If you want to advance career in science that has a strong academic orientation, then it's very hard to do so by only publishing blog posts.
Therefore, if you don't like it, change the system. Which is what this debate has been about for the last 15+ years.
Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
The detail link elaborates: > to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication This new policy removes the 12 month embargo.
Thank you for bringing this up -- this is a HUGE point. Publishers getting 12 months exclusivity really hurts in our connected era. The fact that this provision exists suggests to me that publishers have all their value crammed into the first days, weeks and months of a paper's reporting. After that, might as well give it away. Thus the kudos for the Gates Foundation. Access now versus 1 year from now is a big deal f…
With open access on publication dates, there's no incentive for university to pay the extortionate subscription fees.
All that's left is the upfront author's cost. That's often north of 1000$ now.
Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's where the remaining problem is. Funding agencies should really stop kneeling in front of publishers and refuse to pay for this, or at least fix themselves a maximum price per publication. Currently publishers ask for $1000 to $5000 in some cases, which is completely insane. I'm not denying the cost of publication. But there is that actual cost, and then there is the prices demanded by publishers, which looks m…
I think there is some confusion here. Some open access journals charge authors. But these open access journals are not the publishers we hear about (such as Elsevier). In some ways, it's accurate to say that the old model with publishers is "reader pays", and the open access model is "author pays". The good thing about open access journals is that they are typically not a for-profit endeavor. This means that what the…
When was the last time you published in a traditional journal? Last I saw an invoice was 4 years ago and we paid to be published in journals that were pay-only.
Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's where the remaining problem is. Funding agencies should really stop kneeling in front of publishers and refuse to pay for this, or at least fix themselves a maximum price per publication. Currently publishers ask for $1000 to $5000 in some cases, which is completely insane. I'm not denying the cost of publication. But there is that actual cost, and then there is the prices demanded by publishers, which looks m…
Yes, publishers should work for free. plonk
"plonk"??? usenet's been dead for years.
Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles
#76Whilst I feel this is a step in the right direction, some have already argued[0] that it goes too far and sets up the wrong incentives.
[0] http://www.digitopoly.org/2014/11/24/the-gates-foundations-o...
Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you imagine if every scientist sent Wikipedia 20% of their journal fees? What would they do with that much money?
Wikipedia is notoriously poor on science, particularly cutting edge. That's the wrong model.
That's surprising, since their math and CS stuff is usually pretty good.
Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles
#78Whilst I feel this is a step in the right direction, some have already argued[0] that it goes too far and sets up the wrong incentives. [0] http://www.digitopoly.org/2014/11/24/the-gates-foundations-o...
Which incentives are wrong?
The post you link seems a bit confused about, for example, why it's important to publish a finding only once. (Hint: So lazy people can't keep regurgitating their old results to seem productive in the eyes of grant-givers.) It also says the Gates decision goes too far, and then suggests something even farther: that the paper would need to be written twice, separately, for public and commercial consumption.
"Would this change undermine the business academic journals are in? The answer is only if they add no value above the raw knowledge an academic could make available themselves."
And the argument is that they are not adding nearly as much value as they are extracting from the system.
Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles
#79> "The Gates Foundation will also pay the author fees charged by many open-access journals."
This is important, but what would be interesting is whether they will pay open access fees on top of your grant, or let you pay open access fees with your grant. The first option would obviously be preferable, especially since you can easily be publishing work after using up your direct grant money.
Essentially it's the same thing, it's just about who is responsible for what part of the budgeting. E.g. You get $100k of which $4k can only be used towards publishing expenses vs you get $100k and promise to publish open access and figure out the alotment on your own.
Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Little trick: You can access every can't-access article by posting it to http://www.reddit.com/r/scholar and waiting a couple hours for someone with subscription access to go fetch it for you. This is also a deliciously fun debate, because it calls into question our most fundamental assumptions about the idea of "illegal." For example, is Reddit facilitating illegal activity due to that subreddit? Should anything be…
No way is it fair use since they are doing entire articles. Reddit will get DCMA safe harbor protection as long as they aren't aware of the specifics. The users requesting and providing the papers are probably infringing copyright. Not that I blame them. I'm an IP attorney and I think the pricing and availability of articles to those outside of academia is total shit. I was trying to do some prior art research and it…
A use doesn't have to fall under all four factors to be "fair". Educational, noncommercial use can certainly be fair use.