It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals • Hacker News Board

Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals

#91

Post by piombisallow » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 1:29 PM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #78

rjurney wrote: post #66

It is time to burn traditional academic publishing to the ground and rebuild it from the ground up, or else let's rebel against the government, give Alexandra Elbakyan citizenship and put her in charge of the Department of Energy to make all computer science research open domain for all the world to see. Requesting $48 for to read a paper funded by your taxes before you even know it is useful to your work will result…

The way forward is for government research-funding bodies (ideally all of them) to insist that funded works only be published under open access. This appears to already be well underway in the UK. [0][1] The article isn't about open access though, so this isn't strictly on topic. [0] https://www.ukri.org/manage-your-award/publishing-your-resea... [1] https://www.nihr.ac.uk/about-us/who-we-are/our-policies-and-...

This already happens. You can find all US NIH funded research for free on pubmed.

Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals

#92

Post by jvanderbot » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #78

rjurney wrote: post #66

It is time to burn traditional academic publishing to the ground and rebuild it from the ground up, or else let's rebel against the government, give Alexandra Elbakyan citizenship and put her in charge of the Department of Energy to make all computer science research open domain for all the world to see. Requesting $48 for to read a paper funded by your taxes before you even know it is useful to your work will result…

The way forward is for government research-funding bodies (ideally all of them) to insist that funded works only be published under open access. This appears to already be well underway in the UK. [0][1] The article isn't about open access though, so this isn't strictly on topic. [0] https://www.ukri.org/manage-your-award/publishing-your-resea... [1] https://www.nihr.ac.uk/about-us/who-we-are/our-policies-and-...

Just a data point: Google scholar regularly reminds me of any publications of mine that list US gov funding that do not have a publicly accessible PDF.

You are already allowed to (at least in tech) provide a preprint and public PDF on personal (non commercial) or educational web sites.

And Google scholar does associate those with the publishers links, as an alternative source.

So, it's not like we couldn't provide all R&D for free already. At least in tech.

Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals

#93

Post by jvanderbot » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

piombisallow wrote: post #91

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way forward is for government research-funding bodies (ideally all of them) to insist that funded works only be published under open access. This appears to already be well underway in the UK. [0][1] The article isn't about open access though, so this isn't strictly on topic. [0] https://www.ukri.org/manage-your-award/publishing-your-resea... [1] https://www.nihr.ac.uk/about-us/who-we-are/our-policies-and-...

This already happens. You can find all US NIH funded research for free on pubmed.

Well, that just shows it happens in the US, but it's the same for most tech journals and Google scholar/arxiv

Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals

#94

Post by jvanderbot » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 1:41 PM UTC

cies wrote: post #79

rjurney wrote: post #66

It is time to burn traditional academic publishing to the ground and rebuild it from the ground up, or else let's rebel against the government, give Alexandra Elbakyan citizenship and put her in charge of the Department of Energy to make all computer science research open domain for all the world to see. Requesting $48 for to read a paper funded by your taxes before you even know it is useful to your work will result…

Let's remember Aaron Swartz died fighting for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz He helped Assange who is now facing the same fate. And "the west" loves to point fingers that countries for their flawed justices systems. Hypocrisy to the max.

You can fight for a good cause and still break the law. A system of law that selectively enforces laws is inherently flawed. The laws need changing. It was lopsided power against him. The law was still broken.

I wish Aaron Swartz had not committed suicide ahead of his many charges. I wish he had had his day in court to argue the illegitimacy of those laws in these cases in the first place. It wouldn't be the first time that produces a change in laws. We will never know, and must change the laws asap.

Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals

#95

Post by markhahn » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 1:50 PM UTC

journal "monogamy" is the problem.

modest proposal: always publish to arxiv, which assigns the permanent DOI. journals can be offered the article - one at a time if the authors desire, or in more of an auction format. when published in a journal, the arxiv entry is simply updated (new revision findable and attached to the original DOI).

this would make research works first-class, rather than journal byproducts.

internet/telecom providers don't want to be dumb-fat-pipes; journals don't want to be editing and review-coordination services. so what?

Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals

#96

Post by markhahn » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 1:54 PM UTC

JR1427 wrote: post #87

Speaking as a former scientist, it's worth remembering that peer review is not just about ensuring quality by preventing poor research being published. It also leads to good research being improved, in a very similar way to how code review can improve good code. So doing away with peer review would have some negative consequences. It's also worth remembering that journals are really not very different to newspapers,…

more-open publishing does not necessarily do away with peer review.

the really interesting part is that sometimes review benefits from anonymity and even blinding. doing that in a more-public publishing process would be interesting. (but not impossible - there are tricks to providing authentic anonymous identities.)

Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals

#97

Post by dbingham » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 2:14 PM UTC

cpncrunch wrote: post #35

sxg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound like that poster operates as a journal, and that makes sense. Academic researchers need to publish papers in long-standing and highly respected journals in order to be promoted and eventually gain tenure. Journals do not add value by simply providing space for researchers to publish their work—they add value by existing as a reputable brand that can endow select researchers with academic and social c…

As mentioned in my other comment, crappy peer-review is a big problem for most journals, so a solution to that needs to be found.

Yeah, before I pivoted to trying to flip journals, I spent a year exploring crowd sourcing with an eye on improving peer review. After building a beta and collecting a bunch of user feedback, my conclusion is that academics on the whole aren't ready to crowd source. Journal editors are still necessary facilitators and community organizers. So that lead to exploring flips.

However, I think there's a lot that software can do to nudge towards better peer review. And once we have journals using a platform we can build lots of experimental features and make them easy to use and adopt to work towards improving it.

I've kept crowd sourcing preprint review in the platform - though I removed the reputation system since UX research suggested it was an active deterrent to people using the platform - to enable continued experimentation with it. And the platform makes it easy for preprint review to flow naturally into journal review and for the two to live comfortably alongside each other. The idea being that this should help enable people to experiment with preprint review with out having to take a risk by giving up journal publishing.

And the platform has crowdsourced post-publication review as well.

My thought is that if we can get the journals using the platform, that will get authors and reviewers in the platform and since preprint and post-publish review are really easy to do in the platform that will drastically increase the usage of both forms of review. Then folks can do metascience on all of the above and compare the three forms to see which is most effective. Hopefully that can then spur movement to better review.

I also want to do work to ensure all the artifacts (data, supplementary material, etc) of the paper live alongside it and are easily accessed during review. And work to better encourage, rewards, and recognize replications. I think there's a lot we can explore once we have a large portion of the scholarly community using a single platform.

The trick is getting there.

Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals

#98

Post by azan_ » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 2:15 PM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #78

rjurney wrote: post #66

It is time to burn traditional academic publishing to the ground and rebuild it from the ground up, or else let's rebel against the government, give Alexandra Elbakyan citizenship and put her in charge of the Department of Energy to make all computer science research open domain for all the world to see. Requesting $48 for to read a paper funded by your taxes before you even know it is useful to your work will result…

The way forward is for government research-funding bodies (ideally all of them) to insist that funded works only be published under open access. This appears to already be well underway in the UK. [0][1] The article isn't about open access though, so this isn't strictly on topic. [0] https://www.ukri.org/manage-your-award/publishing-your-resea... [1] https://www.nihr.ac.uk/about-us/who-we-are/our-policies-and-...

That doesn't solve the problem of funneling public money to elsevier/springer nature. The model in which volunteers perform 95% of editorial work yet private publishing companies charge abhorrent prices for OA is absolutely disgusting.

Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals

#99

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 2:17 PM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #94

cies wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's remember Aaron Swartz died fighting for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz He helped Assange who is now facing the same fate. And "the west" loves to point fingers that countries for their flawed justices systems. Hypocrisy to the max.

You can fight for a good cause and still break the law. A system of law that selectively enforces laws is inherently flawed. The laws need changing. It was lopsided power against him. The law was still broken. I wish Aaron Swartz had not committed suicide ahead of his many charges. I wish he had had his day in court to argue the illegitimacy of those laws in these cases in the first place. It wouldn't be the first ti…

> A system of law that selectively enforces laws is inherently flawed.

A system that seeks to inflict all the penalty it can is a system that is doing harm; it has fully lost site of it's original purpose to promote a specific good. Having lost it's way, it is fixating on fairness and outputting damage.

Re: It’s time to allow researchers to submit manuscripts to multiple journals

#100

Post by cies » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 2:23 PM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #94

cies wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's remember Aaron Swartz died fighting for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz He helped Assange who is now facing the same fate. And "the west" loves to point fingers that countries for their flawed justices systems. Hypocrisy to the max.

You can fight for a good cause and still break the law. A system of law that selectively enforces laws is inherently flawed. The laws need changing. It was lopsided power against him. The law was still broken. I wish Aaron Swartz had not committed suicide ahead of his many charges. I wish he had had his day in court to argue the illegitimacy of those laws in these cases in the first place. It wouldn't be the first ti…

I easily assume that many laws were broken in what lead to his suicide. And equally for Assange. Law is a stretchable concept nowadays: Hunter's laptop turned out to be not "Russian disinfo" as some three letter agencies illegally made us believe. And the laptop is full of evidence of breaking the law, but he got a sweetheart deal.

Laws created+pushed by Joe that put many in jail for drugs, were violated by Hunter, and he walks.

Law is a fluid concept in this day and age. Same like this "rules based international order".

Please remember that hiding "undersireables" in WW2 Germany was against the law, or freeing slaves was against the law.