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Don't Publish with IEEE (2005)

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Re: Don't Publish with IEEE (2005)

#91

Post by jampekka »

michaelmior wrote: post #88
jampekka wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peer review and editing is done free by academics. Publishers "facilitate" this by having horrible unusable sofware platforms from the 90's for this. These are actually worse than nothing, as review would be a lot easier to organize and conduct via e-mail. Publishers don't add value, they subtract it. People probably have hard time undersanding this because the system is so absurd and so obvious racket they don't thi…

I am an academic who spends a nontrivial amount of time reviewing papers. My experience has been that the platforms used for submitting reviews are perfectly fine. Often outdated, sure, but I've never really found this to be a significant barrier. I would personally find it more challenging to manage reviews via email.

For reviewers they are usually least bad, but still bad. For example Manuscript Central still requires pop-ups and can be more or less impossible to use with mobile devices. It also has separate login for all journals and password rules that makes it very common for people (including me) to have to reset the password every time they need to log in.

For editors they tend to be a lot worse. E.g. with Editorial Manager adding reviewers is really painful and the search is totally useless. The process to add and be added as a reviewer takes multiple messages in a quite confusing process. Decision letters are sent with bizarre template hacks that are really easy to mess up.

Some submission systems still require formatting of images etc to some arcane formats like tiff and eps. Or to have figures and captions as separate pages. These cause significant work for submitters and are a disaster to review.

Compared to typical enterprise systems they could be even worse, but I'd say still worse than average in that class too.

Don't know if these are a significant barrier. For me they have been and I've resigned as an editor due to the unusability. But I find that they easily cause enough loss in time and nerves of authors, reviewers and editors to be of negative value.

Re: Don't Publish with IEEE (2005)

#92

Post by michaelmior »

jampekka wrote: post #91
michaelmior wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an academic who spends a nontrivial amount of time reviewing papers. My experience has been that the platforms used for submitting reviews are perfectly fine. Often outdated, sure, but I've never really found this to be a significant barrier. I would personally find it more challenging to manage reviews via email.

For reviewers they are usually least bad, but still bad. For example Manuscript Central still requires pop-ups and can be more or less impossible to use with mobile devices. It also has separate login for all journals and password rules that makes it very common for people (including me) to have to reset the password every time they need to log in. For editors they tend to be a lot worse. E.g. with Editorial Manager…

I will admit that MC is pretty annoying. Particularly the issue of having separate login/passwords for all journals. I haven't been in the position of Editor at this point, so I can't speak from that perspective.

I haven't yet run into submissions systems as arcane as those you mention in terms of format requirements, but that does indeed sound very messy and I hope I never see it.

Re: Don't Publish with IEEE (2005)

#93

Post by jampekka »

michaelmior wrote: post #89
fanf2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peer review is done for free by academics. The publisher does not contribute to peer review.

The publisher does often assist with coordinating the peer review process which is a nontrivial task. I'm not saying this in itself necessitates everything else surrounding the publishing ecosystem, but I don't think it's accurate to say the publisher does not contribute.

In my editor experience the assistance is minimal at best. Editors (almost all upaid) assess suitability of manuscripts, find the reviewers and handle all communication.

Re: Don't Publish with IEEE (2005)

#94

Post by smsm42 »

coliveira wrote: post #90
smsm42 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists can choose to publish in open access journals though. But they don't.

No, scientists in general don't choose the journals they publish on. They publish in the journals that accept the kind of research they do and frequently there is no open access option. Even if there is, your paper may not be accepted there, so you need to apply to the next available option.

Journals are not some natural resource that is only found in certain places but not others. People create journals. With current technology, a barrier for establishing a journal is quite low. Nothing prevents people in academia from creating journals and from making them open access. If they prefer the easier option - using existing structure with gatekeepers and rent seekers - it's certainly not capitalism's fault.

Re: Don't Publish with IEEE (2005)

#95

Post by coliveira »

smsm42 wrote: post #94
coliveira wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, scientists in general don't choose the journals they publish on. They publish in the journals that accept the kind of research they do and frequently there is no open access option. Even if there is, your paper may not be accepted there, so you need to apply to the next available option.

Journals are not some natural resource that is only found in certain places but not others. People create journals. With current technology, a barrier for establishing a journal is quite low. Nothing prevents people in academia from creating journals and from making them open access. If they prefer the easier option - using existing structure with gatekeepers and rent seekers - it's certainly not capitalism's fault.

> If they prefer the easier option - using existing structure with gatekeepers and rent seekers - it's certainly not capitalism's fault.

You must be joking. Academics already have huge amounts of work just to stay afloat in their fields. Now you're accusing them of not using their precious time to create new journals, so capitalism can save face. It is just nonsense like all nonsense coming from people who subscribe to capitalist ideology.

Re: Don't Publish with IEEE (2005)

#96

Post by coliveira »

littlestymaar wrote: post #86
coliveira wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you truly considered capitalism a form of totalitarianism, you wouldn't be advocating for it, nor suggesting that people who love democracy would be interested in such a system.

Maybe you should try understanding the comments you respond to before jumping to conclusions, just saying.

People like you should stop using nonsensical arguments when writing, just saying.

Re: Don't Publish with IEEE (2005)

#97

Post by littlestymaar »

coliveira wrote: post #96
littlestymaar wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should try understanding the comments you respond to before jumping to conclusions, just saying.

People like you should stop using nonsensical arguments when writing, just saying.

Maybe it seems nonsensical because you didn't make the effort to make sense of it? You are interpreting my comment literally in the opposite way of what I'm saying which kinda baffles me because in reality we are (mostly at least) in agreement on the topic!
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