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Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

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Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#91

Post by StableAlkyne »

Artoooooor wrote: post #56

Do I understand correctly that publishing the same paper in multiple journals is considered self-plagiarism? Who in the name of the great monopoly invented such name for that?

Academics base their careers around citation numbers. You need publications and a high H-index to make it anywhere. Self-plagiarism reduces the effectiveness of that metric, which makes it harder to evaluate the actual impact of a researcher.

It should be no surprise that republishing in multiple journals was accepted in the pre-computer era, where citations were inherently harder to track (and thus less valuable as a metric).

Quoting Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#93

Post by PaulHoule »

jrumbut wrote: post #18
stncls wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh even if your org has a subscription, the fees are insane. You just don't see them. Things are slowly changing but I can't wait for this parasitic business model to collapse for good.

What's most bothersome is there is work for them to do. How about assigning a real copy editor with subject matter expertise? How about publishing open source libraries that automatically validate and output visualizations for their formats? How about hosting multimedia supplements? It would not be difficult at all to earn the money they charge. There is so much room for creativity and innovation and adding value in…

I was involved with arXiv when it first came to Cornell (blame me if you can't get an endorsement!) and we did plenty of analysis about the cost structure of academic publishing.

When we looked at well-run noncommercial journals, like The Physical Review, the cost was justified by exception handling in the peer review process. The average peer review case goes smoothly but if somebody has a complaint and there a lot of appeals and reviews the cost can skyrocket.

Our cost structure was $3-$5 a paper but we struggled to get even that. arXiv was unfunded at Los Alamos and I think Cornell never appreciated the value that it created for the world, had we found a way to capture a few percent of the value we created we would have been "sustainable" but I think that is incompatible with running it on a shoestring the way we did.

I am not enthusiastic about arXiv being independent, I don't have any problem with the high salary they want to pay the director, you are going to pay that for a good non-profit manager in NYC but you could just as easily pay that much for a bad non-profit manager.

I have nightmares though that had arXiv been independent in the 2000s somebody I know might have wound up at Epstein's island not because I think he's evil or perverse but rather because he's naive [1]. arXiv is a gem that would be attractive to somebody like Epstein and would be very possible for somebody like that to have funded it 100% back then. As it is it will be sucked into a somewhat corrupt NGO-industrial complex and end up spending $30-$50 a paper just on fundraising. It's sad.

[1] so many people who got in his circle strike me like children who were playing in the street and got hit by a car, and you'd hope people in those leadership positions should have better judgement

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#94

Post by fsckboy »

bborud wrote: post #75
Artoooooor wrote: post #56

Do I understand correctly that publishing the same paper in multiple journals is considered self-plagiarism? Who in the name of the great monopoly invented such name for that?

The same morons who think that re-using something you have written before in academic work without quoting yourself is (self-)plagiarism for which you should be sanctioned? (Yes, they are morons because no reasonable person would think this is fair. You need convoluted nonsense arguments to justify this)

plagiarism, with heavy sanctions, of self is of course ridiculous, but having as a standard that you should cite yourself when doing it is not a bad standard. As a reader, it might trigger a "where have I read this before" reaction which is akin to confusion; also having notice that there is another paper on this topic could be quite useful.

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#95

Post by yreg »

ACCount37 wrote: post #41
dpoloncsak wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar here, but if both the publishers and readers are unhappy, why do these services still exist? Is it the 'prestige' of being published with some of these guys? Or do you need to be published for xyz reasons? Seems like, in 2026, we can have direct publishing without the need of these services? Is it the infra, like query tools and such, that prevent a migration away? edit: I'm not going to reply to eve…

Publishing is how scientists get their street cred. Thus, the scientists themselves want to publish in big name journals to up their rep - hitting something like Nature is major coup. And then they can convert their standing in the big science gang to things like research grants, commercial projects, academic tenures, etc. If you don't care about how science street cred works, nothing stops you from just throwing you…

What I dont understand is why cant we get free open journals with high curation standards that would eventually get to the reputation level of Nature.

Hosting pdfs + paying out reviewers could be covered by donations.

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#96

Post by vladms »

rowanG077 wrote: post #89
MengerSponge wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bad manners and a waste of people's time and attention to present previously published work as novel. Repeating a phrase or two in a document's introduction isn't going to raise flags from any serious people, but copying data, analysis, or large swaths of text? That's a paddlin'.

That makes no sense, either people don't know about the previous work and thus it has clear value. Or they do and they can easily skip it. Beside for a lot of work it be great if you could just literally copy and paste fragments if your previous work to deepen out some reasoning.

Many forums have/had policies about not doing cross posting (in different categories). I find this similar.

Yes, maybe from the "plagiarism" angle is not very relevant, but I would prefer not to have a system in which people try to "flood" repositories (journals, etc) with the same thing over and over. People looking for new information, people reviewing will get most of the burden to "keep things clean" while for the poster that is not a problem.

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#97

Post by tanseydavid »

kurthr wrote: post #72
ashenke wrote: post #4

> Springer Nature deviated from the normal practice of merely slapping the word RETRACTED across the digital version of the paper while still allowing scholars to read the text. Instead, the publisher posted a blank white page with the cryptic phrase, “This article has been withdrawn due to article violation.” Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95. The system is broken

I am still suspicious that this has something to do with the relationship between Springer-Verlag and the Max Plank Digital Library (MPDL) which supports open access. In 2014 MPDL purchase 110k out-of-print and historically significant titles. In 2015 Springer acquired open-access journals from Max Plank Society. In 2022 There was an open-access book deal allowing Plank Institute members to more easily publish books.…

Planck's papers contained multiple em-dashes -- so, clearly he used ChatGPT to write these papers.

He should have known better.

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#98

Post by _exvi »

mmooss wrote: post #87
_exvi wrote: post #68

I wrote a whole chapter about Max Planck and his challenges and his legacy in my book "What is light? Wave theory of light and origins of ether in science" check it out if you are interested

I (and I'm sure others) would be interested in your thoughts on Planck and publishing. Otherwise, the comment is just an advertisement.

Everything is an advertisement and nothing is just an advertisement.

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#99

Post by [deleted] »

rowanG077 wrote: post #89
MengerSponge wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bad manners and a waste of people's time and attention to present previously published work as novel. Repeating a phrase or two in a document's introduction isn't going to raise flags from any serious people, but copying data, analysis, or large swaths of text? That's a paddlin'.

That makes no sense, either people don't know about the previous work and thus it has clear value. Or they do and they can easily skip it. Beside for a lot of work it be great if you could just literally copy and paste fragments if your previous work to deepen out some reasoning.

[deleted]

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#100

Post by monocasa »

GTP wrote: post #52
vitally3643 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds an awful lot like "costs" which seriously compromises the "free profit" model. Why pay money to make a better product when you can pay zero money for a worse product and no change in subscriptions? What are your customers gonna do, go get the paper somewhere else?

Yes, many students and researchers resort to piracy.

The students and researchers weren't the customers, but instead the large institutions they belong to. In a sense, they should be the same from this context, but the amount of consolidation that has occurred in the academic publishing space means that large institutions don't really have the same plausible deniability that their individual members do.
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