[HN Gopher] Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to mak... ___________________________________________________________________ Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free Author : cyrksoft Score : 617 points Date : 2021-08-08 11:31 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.sciencemag.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencemag.org) | AlbertCory wrote: | Another point about peer review: | | It sounds good but has become hopelessly corrupted in many | fields. Cronyism ("I'll pass your paper if you pass mine"), | conformity ("This isn't what the Cool Kids have agreed to, so you | can't publish it") and also "This is too readable. Needs more | jargon!" have taken over. Does this mean it should be thrown out | altogether, or just reformed? I'm not sure. | bishoprook2 wrote: | question. | | Do peer reviewed papers make the reviewers public? | | That would be an interesting angle if not. Allow anyone to | publish, but they compete for high-status reviewers. Also, the | reviewers have some skin in the game so far as correctness. | bearbin wrote: | Seemingly as part of the same push, the UKRI announced funding | for an open research project I've worked on before: Dr Alex | Freeman's Octopus [0], a more radical software platform that | splits research projects into smaller components. It's good to | see that the openess of research is finally getting to be a | priority of the funding bodies. | | [0]: https://science-octopus.org/ | Vinnl wrote: | Alex has been working on that for so long; it was really | gratifying to see that she finally got some traction and | serious funding to get it to go somewhere. Really looking | forward to seeing what will come out of it. | | Funding announcement: https://www.ukri.org/news/funding-agreed- | for-a-platform-that... | cheese_van wrote: | A remarkable thing about the COVID crisis is the unprecedented | close cooperation and data sharing by widely disparate scientific | communities. | | The obvious global benefits may also be driving cooperation and | sharing in other fields, including (and perhaps especially) | publishing. Closed data has no beneficiaries except commerce - | it's being seen as a dead model. Finally. | chmod775 wrote: | > "When versions of articles are made available too soon, this | undermines the need to subscribe [to journals]," wrote a | spokesperson, Amy Price, in an email to Science. | | Yes, Ms. Price, _that is the point_. | systemBuilder wrote: | This is so right. It used to be theoretically justified to charge | a cost for editing, reviewing management, and printing costs of a | paper journal but most paper journals have disappeared and the | paper format is useless today. High tech has made these journal | companies giant vampire squids poking their blood funnels into | academia to suck the life out of mankind's progress! | | But down the road I can see that academic research publication | will become like Facebook - loaded with bullshit promoted by | hypesters - wasting time and killing thousands - and no one to | enforce sanity in that lunatic wilderness! | | If the 19th century journals would get with a program they would | become science repos with a much smaller stuff and light fees | (enough to support one staff managing editor per journal) for the | review process! Publishing a paper in this model should probably | cost about $1000 - $2,000, about the same as it cost the last | time I was in academia... | a_bonobo wrote: | A good development - depositing papers in OA journals is | extremely expensive and internationally, most funding bodies | requiring OA don't give you money to publish OA. For example, | Nature Communications charges around $5,000 for a single paper; I | can send a student to an overseas conference for that kind of | money! | | Public repositories like arxiv or biorxiv are free. | arcanus wrote: | I could not agree more: this is a good thing. Studies funded by | public money should be freely available by default. This is a | great decision and I hope major funding agencies in the USA | follow this example. | | As a practicing scientist, I ostensibly have access to a rich | variety of journals from my employer. However, I've found | journal access to be difficult during WFH/COVID. My default is | to look for an open access paper, before jumping to the digital | library. I've also had a few cases where the digital access | seemed not to be working, which only put up barriers to my | work. | laurent92 wrote: | The supposed advantage of commercial archiving is duration, | where as self-hosted tends to depend on the author; But we | could create solutions where, if works are being used by | clients (hospitals, research), the client would be in charge | of automatically downloading all the dependencies. Like a | Maven repository, but with P2P resharing. | | In similar vein, software used by public institutions should | be required to be made open-source. Open source is already | the VIIth marvel of humanity, and needs consolidation. | cs702 wrote: | Slowly and almost imperceptibly if you look at it day-to-day, | public research repositories like arxiv and biorxiv, along with | public code repositories like github and gitlab, are becoming or | maybe already are _the world 's most important academic | "journals."_ | | All research and code posted on them gets a quick once-over; good | work gets the attention it deserves; bad work is quickly ignored. | Reviews take place over the Internet via both public and private | forums. | | Gatekeeping power lies more and more in the hands of a global, | distributed scientific community open to anyone willing and | capable of doing and reviewing the work. It's fabulous IMHO. | sfgweilr4f wrote: | I'm idly curious: | | does arxiv show who reviewed it? credentials etc? | | Is there a trust scoring mechanism or some such? | | is there some way to show a graph of reviewing? | | Is there a restriction on who can post a paper? | | (I'm not saying any of these are needed to make it | "respectable" or even that they should be... just wondering how | arxiv does its thing) | | Personally I like the overall concept of arxiv. Even with no | one necessarily reviewing a paper, which is probably unlikely, | the fact its even _accessible_ for later review when necessary | is worthwhile. | tempay wrote: | As far as I know the moderator isn't shown, but that's | probably a good thing as things get approved on a ~overnight | schedule so publicly shaming them for mistakes seems counter | productive. Additionally the moderation is very light, "April | fools" papers are common and I've never heard of something | being rejected. | | For submitting you need to be approved by someone who already | has several submissions in that field. | Vinnl wrote: | Speaking of which, if anyone knows someone at arXiv, would be | great if you could prod someone to get back to me about this | PR or the associated email I sent them about it: | https://github.com/arXiv/arxiv-browse/pull/197 | | It would add the ability for people to state that they have | reviewed a given work. Might not be the direction they want | to go in, or it might not be - but so far I'm not even sure | if someone's seen it, unfortunately. | wolverine876 wrote: | > All research and code posted on them gets a quick once-over; | good work gets the attention it deserves; bad work is quickly | ignored. | | What is the basis for all these claims? Who is giving it the | quick once-over? | | Crowd-sourced review and information, despite some strengths | and high initial hopes, has a record of extraordinary | misinformation and disinformation. Why would we want to use | that system for scientific research? | | I prefer careful peer review, standards for announcing funders, | etc. | oakfr wrote: | The problem is that _careful_ (conference) reviews don't | scale. Large conferences end up suffering from a highly | stochastic behavior where excellent work is borderline | rejected on a regular basis while mediocre /incorrect work | gets accepted every so often. github/arxiv are no silver | bullet but offer an interesting alternative (with their own | set of challenges, though). | wolverine876 wrote: | Every solution has flaws, as you say. The careful reviews | have worked very well - science is one of the great | triumphs of humanity. | | That doesn't mean we shouldn't look for improvements, of | course. | mjn wrote: | > good work gets the attention it deserves | | I'm not sure I'd go that far with the optimism, at least in | my field (artificial intelligence). Some obviously bad work | does immediately fade into obscurity, and better work | probably does _on average_ get more attention, but the | variation is huge. There is so much stuff on arXiv, that to | get attention you need some kind of PR push so people notice | it in the firehose, or a dice-roll around a viral tweet or | science journalist noticing it. Some of the better funded | university and corporate research groups have actual | professional PR and science-comm teams doing coordinated | social-media blitzes, press releases, and blog posts around | new arXiv papers! That 's a huge factor in determining | whether a given paper gets attention. | wolverine876 wrote: | Thanks for the perspectives. One important nitpick: | | > Some obviously bad work does immediately fade into | obscurity, and better work probably does on average get | more attention | | You don't know what you haven't seen, which is just a | restatement of the core problem. You'd need a study of the | entire population to know about the correlation between | paper 'quality' and outcomes. | treesprite82 wrote: | > Who is giving it the quick once-over? | | arXiv has 200 expert moderators spread through different | fields to filter out papers that are blatantly misleading, | unoriginal, non-substantive, or in need of significant review | and revision. It's not a peer-review, but it's not a | _complete_ free-for-all either. | wolverine876 wrote: | Thanks! I will look that up (but if you happen to have any | links ...). | gzer0 wrote: | Here you go! | | [1] https://arxiv.org/moderators/ | | [2] https://arxiv.org/help/moderation | wolverine876 wrote: | Thank you. And I found this one too: | | https://blog.arxiv.org/2019/08/29/our-moderation-process/ | light_hue_1 wrote: | This is completely false! Please stop telling people that | arXiv moderators judge the technical content of papers. | That's not their role and it leads to people trusting arXiv | when they should not. | | It's a complete-free-for-all. | | arXiv moderators do not judge the technical content. They | don't filter misleading submissions. They don't filter work | in need of revision. This is literally described on the | arXiv website: https://arxiv.org/help/moderation "What | policies guide moderation before public announcement? " | | They filter spammers, check for total obvious nutjobs ("My | grilled cheese said P=NP"), for crazy formatting, for | blatant copyright violations. | | Publishing junk on arXiv is trivial if you're not too crazy | and know a little bit how to use the right words. You can | publish anything. | treesprite82 wrote: | > They don't filter work in need of revision. This is | literally described on the arXiv website: | https://arxiv.org/help/moderation "What policies guide | moderation before public announcement? " | | The page you're linking backs up what I've listed. The | third subheader in that section for example: | | > A submission may be declined if the moderators | determine it _lacks originality, novelty, or | significance_. | | > Submissions that _do not contain original or | substantive research_ , including undergraduate research, | course projects, and research proposals, news, or | information about political causes (even those with | potential special interest to the academic community) may | be declined. | | > Papers that contain inflammatory _or fictitious | content_ , papers that use _highly dramatic and | misrepresentative titles /abstracts/introductions_, _or | papers in need of significant review and revision_ may be | declined. | | --- | | > it leads to people trusting arXiv when they should not | | I'm only claiming that their moderation is a quick once- | over to filter out papers blatantly in violation of those | policies (like the _" total obvious nutjobs"_ you | describe), while being clear that it's not a peer review. | SQueeeeeL wrote: | If you want to have to read 5,000 poorly written error riddled | works to find a single gem I guess it's okay. Unfortunately, | I'm not an immortal | mdp2021 wrote: | Then we will also have to find a decentralized rating/sorting | system that works. | | Finally. ( = Let us devise it for the publications, then let | us export it to the many, uttermostly crucial, contexts that | can use it). | beowulfey wrote: | Good thing you aren't the only one looking! | kekebo wrote: | Github stars / number of forks can act as coarse initial | quality indicators for foss, why not for academic papers? | sxg wrote: | The current publication system doesn't necessarily avoid that | problem either. Many papers are accepted due to the prestige | of certain authors and conformity to other papers in the same | field. Filters like these can lead to a false sense of | security in the quality of the work. | ajkjk wrote: | It's really much better than that. At least for the subfields | I've followed. | dcolkitt wrote: | I much prefer a system where connected insiders push through | un-replicatable papers in an opaque quid pro quo system so | they can pad each others' tenure committee packets! | YetAnotherNick wrote: | Are there any incentive for the researcher to not make the | research paper free? AFAIK most prestigious journals allows | researchers to publish their preprint papers in arxiv/the | researcher's site. | CraftingLinks wrote: | "Pay journals for "gold" open access, which makes a paper free to | read on the publisher's website, or choose the "green" route, | which allows them to deposit a near-final version of the paper on | a public repository, after a waiting period of up to 1 year." | | yeah, that kind of free huh. Sick. | ectopod wrote: | That is the old policy. | | > But starting in April 2022, that yearlong delay will no | longer be permitted: Researchers choosing green open access | must deposit the paper immediately when it is published. | jeremyjh wrote: | If you read further you would come to understand that is the | _current_ state of things, and the significance of the | submitted article is that a new policy means the papers must be | immediately made free. | wolverine876 wrote: | In case someone has some direct knowledge or credible sources: | I'm not sure what is stopping reform at a political level. Who is | the political constituency that obstructs open access? The | publishers seem too small, and the science and higher ed | constituency too large. | cycomanic wrote: | I can't give you direct links, but I know that large | scientific/engineering organisations have not been pushing for | free open access. For example the IEEE has been part of an open | letter (which included Elsivier) lobbying against Plan S. These | organisations derive a lot of their money from publishing, so | while many (most) of the members are strongly in favor of OA, | the buerocratics in the organisations often are not. Which | gives mixed messages to politicians. | | On top of that I believe that non-scientific publishers have | also been part of the lobby campaign as they see OA as | weakening copyright. | Vinnl wrote: | Funders have been relying on publishers to tell them (by means | of who they publish) what researchers are worth funding. This | is keeping up the pressure for academics to keep publishing in | paywalled journals. | | There is some pressure to both make research not paywalled | (Plan S is the strongest) and less costly. However, given that | most of the funders' researchers _can_ access most relevant | research (albeit rather clumsily, thanks to the access | mechanisms, and not 100%, hence Sci-Hub even being popular | among those who do have access), and that the extracted rent on | the scale of a country budget isn 't _that_ much, the pressure | isn 't particularly strong. Additionally, it's hard for a | single funder/country to move on its own without ruining their | academics' careers (hence Plan S's focus on signing on more | funders). | adam0c wrote: | Can we get ISO to make all papers free next...? You know since | moat industries need to abide by their standards but they refuse | to freely make available these standards... | elmo2you wrote: | It might even be argued that the de facto mandatory nature of | their standards constitute a form of (international) | competitiveness, because their prices sure aren't just trivial | to particularly smaller businesses. | | Especially when you take into account that in other economies | (outside the USA), their prices can be downright show-stoppers. | | But then, it isn't particularly a new thing for larger | economies to abuse standards and intellectual property | regulations, to "compete" with smaller economies in ways that | diametrically oppose the supposed (or at least often hailed) | purpose and goals of both standards and intellectual property | regulations. | tialaramex wrote: | ISO exists at the whim of the sovereign entities. You are most | likely a citizen of one (or perhaps even more) of the entities | that ensure ISO continues to exist, and could ask them to get | ISO to give away the standards documents. | | Of course if the money does not come from ISO selling | documents, it would need to come from tax revenue. In reality | however it was scheduled the real money comes from the richest | countries, as they're most able to afford it, your politicians | may have the opinion that even a modest sum expended in this | way would be justified by their opponents as profligate... | matheusmoreira wrote: | Yes!! Why do these things even cost money to begin with? It's | like they want people to not follow the standards. | shapefrog wrote: | ISO666 sets the acceptable limits on how much you should | charge people to get a copy of the standards. /s | andi999 wrote: | Immediately means the time span between publication and open | access, not the rule, which starts April 2022. | aurizon wrote: | Now we need to get the Nobel Committee to say they will only read | open source papers - this is a valid option as the paywalls have | denied most of the world's 'second tier' countries access for | their scientists (to say nothing of interested science readers | wherever they are) so going open source will only add to the | common pool of knowledge | sprafa wrote: | It's truly horrific that as an interested layman I am | completely UNABLE to read most scientific papers. And to think | about what they did to Aaron Schwartz... | chrisseaton wrote: | > It's truly horrific that as an interested layman I am | completely UNABLE to read most scientific papers. | | You can usually find a pre-print by Googling the title. | | Or ask the author for a copy. | | (You shouldn't have to do this, but you can until all papers | are open access anyway.) | andi999 wrote: | Why is it legal for the author to send you a copy (asking | as an author) | [deleted] | chrisseaton wrote: | They usually send you a 'pre-print' which (in their | opinion - I'm not a lawyer) is not subject to the same | copyright as the final reversion which was sent to | review. | andi999 wrote: | Thanks. Any sources for their opinion? Probably I shd | read the copyright release form in more detail, but if | you think terms of copyright this won't fly. | Someone wrote: | With at least some of the major publishers, it nowadays | is even legal to put the final paper on a public web site | or the Archiv. | | https://www.springernature.com/gp/authors/how-to-share: | | _"Authors publishing via subscription models may also | self-archive a copy of the accepted version of their | manuscript (post-peer review, but prior to copy-editing | and typesetting) in an institutional or subject | repository, where it can be made openly accessible after | an embargo period, in accordance with the relevant | Springer Nature self-archiving policy (Nature, Springer, | or Palgrave Macmillan)"_ | | (More info at https://www.nature.com/nature- | portfolio/editorial-policies/s...) | | https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing: | | "Accepted Manuscript | | Authors can share their accepted manuscript: | | Immediately | | - via their non-commercial personal homepage or blog | | - by updating a preprint in arXiv or RePEc with the | accepted manuscript | | - via their research institute or institutional | repository for internal institutional uses or as part of | an invitation-only research collaboration work-group | | - directly by providing copies to their students or to | research collaborators for their personal use | | - for private scholarly sharing as part of an invitation- | only work group on commercial sites with which Elsevier | has an agreement | | After the embargo period | | - via non-commercial hosting platforms such as their | institutional repository | | - via commercial sites with which Elsevier has an | agreement"* | | (Seems a bit less constrained than SpringerNature) | chrisseaton wrote: | > but if you think terms of copyright this won't fly | | Wooah there I'm not giving any legal advice. Ask a | lawyer. | gmueckl wrote: | Even if it is potentially technically illegal, I don't | know about anyone who tried to stop it. Note that _some_ | release forms explicitly allow author 's versions of the | covered work for download on the author's website. | There's usually a stipulation that they need to be | different in some way, for example by not using the same | formatting template as the journal/conference version of | the paper. | aurizon wrote: | The journals always want their 'pound of flesh' as | Shakespeare spins in his grave.... Some insights:- | https://www.editage.com/insights/what-are-the- | differences-be... | gmueckl wrote: | I don't see any new insights on the page that you linked. | I personally signed copyright transfer forms that allowed | for author's versions. There were some conditions that I | don't remember in detail. But the gist is that a | commercial publisher still allowed me to have a version | of the article text online. | bidirectional wrote: | Well you are, if you're willing to pay. Or just use Sci-Hub | as it seems even many professional researchers do. | CraftingLinks wrote: | Each article priced as much as a textbook... | baltoo wrote: | think you can email most researchers and get a copy. doesn't | count as publishing | jszymborski wrote: | It is truly awful that publishers do this, however there is a | certain website-that-shalt-not-be-named that is papering over | that gap while we researchers get our shit together. | Vinnl wrote: | It's called Sci-Hub. | infogulch wrote: | That would be a good step. | AlbertCory wrote: | One point to my others and pretty orthogonal to them: | | I was a tech assistant in Google Patent Litigation. Part of my | job was to bust patents (a dream job, right?), and for that, I | would scour the Internet for literature to invalidate a patent | being asserted against us. | | I would _constantly_ see articles behind some paywall, and I | would never, never click through. There are reasons you can | imagine, like (1) I didn 't want the hassle of justifying the | expense, and (2) I hate those publishers. Both true. | | However, the biggest reason was: | | _I don 't know if it's any good until I read it._ | | The vast majority of articles are not helpful for my purpose. I | can't tell if they really are until I read them. If it turns out | that some article is the killer, then of course Google would pay | for it. But for the 1000's that are not -- well, why waste the | money? I can almost always find the same information somewhere | else, for free. | AlbertCory wrote: | Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. | | That said: in the legal world, where PACER extracts $0.10 per | "page" even now that you get things electronically and the cost | is near zero: | | There's a service RECAP (PACER spelled backwards), where you can | install a browser extension which automatically copies anything | you download from PACER to a free archive. So one person pays, | and the rest get it free. | | It is amazingly complete, much more than you would think. For | instance, here's the entry for the Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos) | trial: | | https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7185174/united-states-v... | ipaddr wrote: | Curious if the backup service is legal? | AlbertCory wrote: | It's been going on for years, I know that. I don't know if | the rent-seekers have ever tried to shut it down. The fact | that it's _so_ complete tells me that a huge number of | mainstream law firms look the other way when their employees | use the browser extension. | erhk wrote: | Lots of illicit things go on for years | AlbertCory wrote: | True. This is, almost by definition, a very litigious | sector though. | syshum wrote: | In the case of PACER, they are public records, and have no | copy right attached to them as they are government documents, | the government can not hold copyrights by definition | everything the US government produces public domain. | throwaway984393 wrote: | > Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to | live. | | Listen to me, HN. Stop listening to this meme. You aren't using | your brains. | | Everyone has a hard-on for Elsevier, and no other publisher. | Why is that? Because they don't know anything about publishing. | They've just heard the name Elsevier (and it kind of _looks | evil_ ) and so they just parrot it ad-nauseam. What about | Springer? Taylor & Francis? Wiley-Blackwell? And what about the | hundreds of smaller publishers that control major journals? | Everyone gives Elsevier shit about suing Sci-Hub, but nobody | gives the American Chemical Society shit for suing Sci-Hub. The | fact is that people only hold up Elsevier as the great evil | because people are tying to over-simplify a complex problem by | finding a "single evil", because then they don't have to think | about a more complex, nuanced problem. | | The fact is that there is a reason that paid journals keep | existing, and it's not the profit margins of the Big Four. It's | the academic research industry. Every single academic research | institute in the world that publishes papers _depends on the | reputation of journals_. Getting your paper published in a | "prestigious journal" is literally the only way to progress a | researcher's career, and thus get more funding. Without | funding, there is no research! And the journals _are_ providing | real due diligence happening in the process of creating those | journals, and _somebody_ has to pay for that process. | | If the paid journals went away tomorrow, researchers would be | fucked, and academic institutions would have no idea what to do | with themselves. So please stop with this ridiculous meme that | Elsevier is The Great Satan holding back science. Sure, they | should profit a lot less! But getting rid of them entirely with | no system to replace them will be destructive to scientific | research. | AlbertCory wrote: | as for Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley-Blackwell: yeah, | them too. Forgot to mention those. | | The paid journals take research which is mostly paid for with | public or non-profit money, and hide it behind paywalls. You | can't avoid this fact. | | Their "reputation" is mostly just a legacy, like the New York | Times'. At one time they sent out paper journals, which was | the _only_ way information could be disseminated, and charged | libraries reasonable fees. There was a manageable number of | such journals so a library could get most or all of them. | That world is gone. | Someone wrote: | > The paid journals take research which is mostly paid for | with public or non-profit money, and hide it behind | paywalls. You can't avoid this fact. | | Commercial publishers have paywalls, but for new research | they no longer have to be the only source for publications. | | Nowadays, I think it's often the | indifference/laziness/whatever of the _authors_ that | prevent accepted manuscripts (same text, but different | layout) from also being freely accessible. | | For example https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing | allows putting accepted manuscripts on arXiv. | | The way I read it, the main limitations are: | | - you can't put your paper on a commercial site. | | - you have to mention the DOI, which, I guess, resolves to | Elsevier's site. | | Reading https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/hosting ( | _"Sites or repositories that provide a service to other | organizations or agencies, even if those other | organizations or agencies are themselves non-commercial | entities, are considered to be providing a commercial | service, and this service activity will also require a | commercial arrangement with Elsevier"_ ), they make special | exceptions for arXiv and RePEc. | | So, that's not optimal, but ( _for new papers_ ) also not | as bleak as it typically is described. | throwaway984393 wrote: | Who is paying and who has access is only one part of the | puzzle. Most people only care about access, but they don't | understand why that access continues to be limited. | | Why do journals exist? It's not to provide information. | Ever since the Internet was invented, we can distribute | information virtually for free. Everybody knows this. Yet | the journals persist for decades. So their purpose is not | to provide information. | | Yes, of course, their reputation is invented and legacy. | It's been shown time and again that papers published in | "reputable journals" can be quite problematic. But | everybody knows this too. It's not like academic institutes | are completely brainless. They know they could have | somebody "less reputable" publish their information and it | would have the same scientific merit, or that they could | even publish it themselves on a blog. But they don't; they | publish on the "reputable journals", even though the | reputation is clearly not impacting the research results. | | So why do these publishers exist? The true purpose of paid, | "reputable" journals is to provide an excuse for research | institutions to dole out money to people who meet a quasi- | arbitrary barrier to the money. They know they don't have | any good system of how to assign money, or who to promote, | because in general it's hard to quantify. So they hide | behind "the reputable journal" and thus the "reputation" of | their researchers. This way they can receive more money | (because "our scientists are published by reputable | journals") and they can dole it out just as easily. | | Opening access and reducing cost is a great idea. But | shunting money away from journals will result in the entire | research industry scrambling to put together a replacement | that will allow them to continue being funded, determine | how to dole out that funding, organize journals "for free", | and retain some sort of rigor/due-diligence/quality from | the publishing process. Can this be done? Sure! But we | should make _that_ our goal and not ignore the big pink | elephant in the room, which is that journals are still a | necessary evil for research funding. If we want to get rid | of paid journals, let 's actually think through the | resulting impact and build a resilient system to replace | them. Imploding them and "hoping for the best" is just | going to hurt research. | robertlagrant wrote: | > Reed Elsevier and the other rent seekers | | I don't think your fundamental thesis of "only Elsevier is | blamed" holds up to the post you replied to. | turbinerneiter wrote: | Good point, but I think the opposite is true: scientific | research is already broken, and blowing up the publishers | would force us to rebuild it proper. | | I co-authored a peer reviewed paper. Because our English is | bad and our context is different, we called a system | operating at 100Hz a "high frequency sensor" instead of a | "fast sample rate (context) sensor". They gave that paper to | an HF (radio) engineer to review it. He said "I think I was | given this paper by mistake, this is not HF. Anyway, nice | paper, change the color of this graph please." | | Pair that with the general replication problem (no one has | the money, time or incentive to replicate anything), that | publish or perish mentality, the idiotic bias against | publishing negative results - jeez, the situation is baaad. | [deleted] | nerdponx wrote: | > And the journals are providing real due diligence happening | in the process of creating those journals, and somebody has | to pay for that process. | | Both things can be true. They can be providing valuable due | diligence _and_ also sucking a lot of value (much of it | funded by public /taxpayer money) along the way. | matthewdgreen wrote: | With due respect, if Elsevier and Springer (and IEEE etc.) | went away tomorrow Science would not "be fucked". We would be | forced to sit down and work through a set of new open access | journals and conferences. It would be an annoying few months | and some publishing activities would be modestly disrupted. | But all of the reviewing and editing and conference chairing | is already run by volunteers. The only reason we don't | replace the journals now is because of (huge amounts of) path | dependence and because nobody can solve the coordination | problem of getting everyone to drop everything and _do_ it. | But if those publishers went away tomorrow, you'd solve both | those problems in an instant. | AlbertCory wrote: | Thanks, the question isn't "do they still provide a | service?" but "what would happen if they disappeared?" | | As you showed, research might be unsettled for a while, but | pretty soon they'd just be a bad memory. | nlitened wrote: | Can't tell if the parent comment is sarcastic or not. | da39a3ee wrote: | Yes, that's how it worked. The rather major point you are | missing is that things change. | franga2000 wrote: | Reading this comment, I assumed PACER was a private provider | who sells access to otherwise freely available material which | originally might be scattered and unorganised as government | things usually are. Charging for access would therefore be | reasonable. | | But a quick search reveals that this is in fact a government- | provided service. So your government charges you 10 cents per | page to download PDFs from a glorified file server. | | The US has around 1.5M people working in the legal field. Let's | say each of them does 10 document lookups every day. 15 million | requests in an 8 hour workday comes out to 500 requests per | second. Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure a modern | workstation could handle that, let alone a dedicated server or | ever a few of them with good caching and client-side load | balancing. SCOTUS spends 16M yearly just on building | maintenance, I think it's safe to assume they can afford a | handful of servers without having to resort to | microtransactions... | manquer wrote: | Going down the cost rabbit hole is problematic, the costs are | not just for the service infra. Even for the service you need | project managers , product owners, devs, SREs, QAs and data | entry operators who collate or atleast update the DB . Easily | costs that can run in millions/year. | | Typically such revenue streams cover other holes in the | budget not related to this service as well, and there is | indirect overhead costs like Contracts, control structures, | HR, vendors etc harder to amortize. | | Any costs for what should be free public access in not right. | The argument should be that we pay already tax, this | information public should have free and easily . | franga2000 wrote: | I generally agree and my estimates were of course the bare | minumum, but the "we already pay tax" argument doesn't | really work since, well, this service clearly isn't tax- | funded given the fact that it isn't free. It might be tax- | subsidised, which often makes sense for things that are | very expensive and have limited usefulness to individual | citizens (like many services governments render to | businesses are). If we consider accessing court records to | be something with very limited usefulness to most people | and primarily used by companies to make money (which I do, | despite having done it myself on a few occasions), how | expensive it actually is to run becomes very important when | convincing "the people" to fund it 100%. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-08 23:00 UTC)