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"You can still go to a university and access papers for free" Yes. I don't understand why you mentioned that. I even pointed out that I could do that. "In fac

by dalke 11y ago

"You can still go to a university and access papers for free" Yes. I don't understand why you mentioned that. I even pointed out that I could do that. "In fact, you can log on to their wifi anonymously" No, I cannot. The local college and the 1-hour-away university do not have anonymous wifi. I have signed up for a library card for non-anonymous access to the local college. It does not carry postgraduate journals in chemistry. The university does, but I am only allowed to read them from dedicated terminals. I am not allowed to copy the articles and I do not have wifi access. (Why do you think you know more about my local academic library policies than I do?) BTW, I can make InterLibrary Loan requests if I really want a copy. I believe it's about US$10/copy. "... would matter for current ethical questions" I was attempting to demonstrate how your scenario was not a good metaphor for describing the situation with scientific publications, so could not be used to clarify the ethical issues. You can stretch the metaphor to try to compensate, as you did, but there are several other factor which are also not captured: 1) people get jobs and tenure based in part on the significance of their work. Part of that is often based on where one publishes, eg, "Cell", which is an Elsevier journal, is considered to be a prestigious place to publish. Thus, short-term personal goals of advertising one's work may be at odds with long-term community goals of easy access to scientific data. 2) peer review is almost entirely done on a volunteer basis. Thus, to be useful, we would also have to posit that people's jobs depend in part on running their code on the Amazon cloud and no other cloud provider, and that most people are expected to volunteer their time to support AWS. Perhaps this is something that Bezos dreams about, but it is not the current reality. This, your AWS metaphor concerns only a part of one facet of the issue. Ethics is very clear cut when there is tunnel vision.

ikeboy 11y ago
It sounded like you were complaining that there's less access than there used to be. I seem to have misunderstood you, then. Re your other points: AWS relies in part on open source software, which arguably corresponds to free peer review. There's no direct analogue to prestige, but that's something the publisher arguably deserves payment for. Prestige doesn't come out of nowhere, it takes a long time to build up a reputation, etc.
- dalke 11y ago
  "which arguably corresponds to free peer review" No, it doesn't. They are remarkably different. If I distribute free package X, which Amazon uses, then there's nothing to prevent anyone else from using X. Both can benefit the same way. If I spend 6 hours to do a peer review on paper X, which is then accepted, then Elsevier benefits financially, because they have a new paper to sell, but no other archive can benefit that way. There is also a gain in prestige to Elsevier from having published a higher quality paper. If the paper is not accepted, then the reviewer gets feedback from my review, but no one else does. (I am supposed to benefit in the future from a favor-in-kind by peer reviewers.) While it's true that much open source software is at no cost, I sell free software, exactly as described at https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html . While AWS might purchase said software from me, Elsevier/ACS/etc. will never purchase my peer review.

by dalke 11y ago

ikeboy 11y ago

It sounded like you were complaining that there's less access than there used to be. I seem to have misunderstood you, then. Re your other points: AWS relies in part on open source software, which arguably corresponds to free peer review. There's no direct analogue to prestige, but that's something the publisher arguably deserves payment for. Prestige doesn't come out of nowhere, it takes a long time to build up a reputation, etc.

dalke 11y ago
"which arguably corresponds to free peer review" No, it doesn't. They are remarkably different. If I distribute free package X, which Amazon uses, then there's nothing to prevent anyone else from using X. Both can benefit the same way. If I spend 6 hours to do a peer review on paper X, which is then accepted, then Elsevier benefits financially, because they have a new paper to sell, but no other archive can benefit that way. There is also a gain in prestige to Elsevier from having published a higher quality paper. If the paper is not accepted, then the reviewer gets feedback from my review, but no one else does. (I am supposed to benefit in the future from a favor-in-kind by peer reviewers.) While it's true that much open source software is at no cost, I sell free software, exactly as described at https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html . While AWS might purchase said software from me, Elsevier/ACS/etc. will never purchase my peer review.