3 ms·

That is not true, because it is possible to get rid of the publishers entirely. The only thing that would be needed are people in charge of formatting and such

by p4bl0 11y ago

That is not true, because it is possible to get rid of the publishers entirely. The only thing that would be needed are people in charge of formatting and such, because some fields do not use LaTeX yet (this need concerns mostly biology, chemistry, and medicine). But that could be easily covered by small local businesses for a teeny tiny fraction of the costs of current subscriptions. The other thing that costs money already exists: archives that take care of making papers available and preserve them for the future. These services would need to be reinforced but that cost is also ridiculous compared to what is currently spent as subscription (the operational cost of arXiv for example are only a bit more than what a mid sized university pays for Elsevier subscription alone…).

ikeboy 11y ago
The large open access journals that don't have independent funding charge rates within the same order of magnitude. What evidence do you have that an order of magnitude reduction is actually possible at scale? How do you explain the expenses of both traditional publishers and open access ones, and how would you eliminate them?
- p4bl0 11y ago
  First, APCs have not been calculated with regard to the costs of publishing, but rather with the goal of maintaining the same level of profits for publishers' shareholders. Second, I know what I said is possible because some journals already do it, and there is no scale issues at all here. Journal management is entirely decentralized. One journal = one editorial board. Let me illustrate this with one of the possible models which is called "overlay journals". In an overlay journal, papers are uploaded for example to arXiv, and submitted for review by giving the link to the paper on arXiv. Then the editorial board (composed of researchers) does its job as it would in a traditional journal: it sends the papers to review to other researchers of the relevant field (well, at least they try). The reviewers also do their job as they would in traditional publishing. And papers are accepted as is, with modifications, or rejected, again, as usual. Now what constitutes an issue of the journal is a list of links to the accepted versions (repositories such as arXiv can keep track of the successive versions of a paper) of the paper in arXiv. There, same level of scientific requirements, no publishers, literaly no costs for anyone except arXiv (which is already paid for by public institutions), and researchers time, that is already spent and not paid for in the traditional system. If you really want double-blind peer reviews you can use one of the open journal systems free software or as people currently do, public services such as easychair or scienceconf to organize the reviewing phase. The only thing that is still necessary for some fields, as I already said, is the proper layout work. The ideal situation is that each university or group of university hires a few professional in charge of this work and who can do it in close contact with the authors of the paper. A few salaries costs less than the millions currently spend each year by each university for journal subscriptions, and the job would be done better than it currently is by publishers who often outsource it to low-salary regions of the world to increase their profits.
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  > How do you explain the expenses of both traditional publishers and open access ones, and how would you eliminate them? By not granting any copyright to publicly funded work. That doesn't actually prohibit a publisher from charging readers for access, but it would require them to charge the market price for publication of digital works out of copyright. Then we see if competition can significantly drive down costs. Which we all know perfectly well that it would.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    The result would be that publishers charge for publication, similar to current open access options. It could be that greater usage of open access would bring down the cost, but I'm not sure. Definitely the number of grants would go down as the cost of publishing starts being factored in, although this may be partly or fully outweighed by the reduction in universities' costs.
    - wizzard0 11y ago
      arXiv charges neither for reading nor for publication. And for-profit publishers have to be profitable to exist, which necessarily incurs costs on authors and readers.
      - ikeboy 11y ago
        Arxiv is not peer reviewed. If you think we should get rid of that, make that argument; but keeping the review model and getting rid of access fees would increase costs elsewhere. Regarding profit: sure, you could set up a nonprofit to do the same job. You'll end up reducing costs by 20-40%, even assuming you don't have higher costs because of lower scale/lack of experience/etc. For other essentials like food, I've seen stories about nonprofits that get large groups together and buy in bulk. Co-ops are basically the same idea. Using a non profit to reduce costs has been done.
    - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
      > Definitely the number of grants would go down as the cost of publishing starts being factored in, although this may be partly or fully outweighed by the reduction in universities' costs. Universities are paying essentially all of the cost one way or another now, how could it not be fully outweighed? It would be more than fully outweighed because the universities would no longer have to pay the publishers the amount that constitutes the monopoly rent from the copyright. Meanwhile the public gets free access to the research which increases its utility.

by p4bl0 11y ago

ikeboy 11y ago

The large open access journals that don't have independent funding charge rates within the same order of magnitude. What evidence do you have that an order of magnitude reduction is actually possible at scale? How do you explain the expenses of both traditional publishers and open access ones, and how would you eliminate them?

p4bl0 11y ago
First, APCs have not been calculated with regard to the costs of publishing, but rather with the goal of maintaining the same level of profits for publishers' shareholders. Second, I know what I said is possible because some journals already do it, and there is no scale issues at all here. Journal management is entirely decentralized. One journal = one editorial board. Let me illustrate this with one of the possible models which is called "overlay journals". In an overlay journal, papers are uploaded for example to arXiv, and submitted for review by giving the link to the paper on arXiv. Then the editorial board (composed of researchers) does its job as it would in a traditional journal: it sends the papers to review to other researchers of the relevant field (well, at least they try). The reviewers also do their job as they would in traditional publishing. And papers are accepted as is, with modifications, or rejected, again, as usual. Now what constitutes an issue of the journal is a list of links to the accepted versions (repositories such as arXiv can keep track of the successive versions of a paper) of the paper in arXiv. There, same level of scientific requirements, no publishers, literaly no costs for anyone except arXiv (which is already paid for by public institutions), and researchers time, that is already spent and not paid for in the traditional system. If you really want double-blind peer reviews you can use one of the open journal systems free software or as people currently do, public services such as easychair or scienceconf to organize the reviewing phase. The only thing that is still necessary for some fields, as I already said, is the proper layout work. The ideal situation is that each university or group of university hires a few professional in charge of this work and who can do it in close contact with the authors of the paper. A few salaries costs less than the millions currently spend each year by each university for journal subscriptions, and the job would be done better than it currently is by publishers who often outsource it to low-salary regions of the world to increase their profits.
AnthonyMouse 11y ago
> How do you explain the expenses of both traditional publishers and open access ones, and how would you eliminate them? By not granting any copyright to publicly funded work. That doesn't actually prohibit a publisher from charging readers for access, but it would require them to charge the market price for publication of digital works out of copyright. Then we see if competition can significantly drive down costs. Which we all know perfectly well that it would.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  The result would be that publishers charge for publication, similar to current open access options. It could be that greater usage of open access would bring down the cost, but I'm not sure. Definitely the number of grants would go down as the cost of publishing starts being factored in, although this may be partly or fully outweighed by the reduction in universities' costs.
  - wizzard0 11y ago
    arXiv charges neither for reading nor for publication. And for-profit publishers have to be profitable to exist, which necessarily incurs costs on authors and readers.
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      Arxiv is not peer reviewed. If you think we should get rid of that, make that argument; but keeping the review model and getting rid of access fees would increase costs elsewhere. Regarding profit: sure, you could set up a nonprofit to do the same job. You'll end up reducing costs by 20-40%, even assuming you don't have higher costs because of lower scale/lack of experience/etc. For other essentials like food, I've seen stories about nonprofits that get large groups together and buy in bulk. Co-ops are basically the same idea. Using a non profit to reduce costs has been done.
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    > Definitely the number of grants would go down as the cost of publishing starts being factored in, although this may be partly or fully outweighed by the reduction in universities' costs. Universities are paying essentially all of the cost one way or another now, how could it not be fully outweighed? It would be more than fully outweighed because the universities would no longer have to pay the publishers the amount that constitutes the monopoly rent from the copyright. Meanwhile the public gets free access to the research which increases its utility.