4 ms·

Open access is being increasingly thought of as inevitable and the only ethical option for publishing academic research. What I believe we will end up with even

Open access is being increasingly thought of as inevitable and the only ethical option for publishing academic research. What I believe we will end up with eventually is a situation where nearly all new publications are open access, and a good deal of older twentieth century (and earlier) research is publicly available as well due to ongoing digitalisation and expired copyrights. In between, there will be a significant body of research kept locked away behind paywalls by publishers trying to hold on to those cash cows and the inertia copyright on a work has once granted. At the same time, 'piracy' on a massive scale (like Sci-Hub) will only get easier due to technological advances and increasing amounts of bandwidth available to consumers worldwide. Combine that with an utter lack of sympathy for (academic) paywalls and publishers, and a widespread believe that sharing these works is ethically just, and you have a situation that simply cannot be contained. I expect that in twenty years time you will be able to download almost the complete library of published academic works from the twentieth and twenty first centuries in the time it takes to make a pot of coffee — legally or illegally. So publishers will have to learn to deal with this new reality and reinvent themselves in an open access world, or perish.

return0 11y ago
Journal publishing itself is awkward. It's bad use of experimental data - often you have to look at printed graphs to figure out data values not reported in the paper. Statistic power is almost never mentioned. Tons of data that could be useful to other researchers is discarded. Discussion sections tend to be overly biased. There is so much research output, it's almost impossible to refute anything and possibel to support almost anything. And so on and so on. What we need is accurate databases of research results, not more publishing. We should be rewarding scientists for the volume, integrity and significance of their data output, not for what they claim themselves in their papers.
- msellout 11y ago
  Not all science is statistics. That's just the current paradigm and not applicable in all cases. I agree the reward system is flawed, but it ain't so easy to improve it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
morgante 11y ago
> I expect that in twenty years time you will be able to download almost the complete library of published academic works from the twentieth and twenty first centuries in the time it takes to make a pot of coffee — legally or illegally. I hope and suspect it won't take twenty years. Academic journals are an anachronism and moreover an unethical anachronism.
- WildUtah 11y ago
  Closed access academic journals were an unethical anachronism twenty years ago. And yet we've made little progress against them.
userbinator 11y ago
will only get easier due to technological advances and increasing amounts of bandwidth available to consumers worldwide. Not if some of those "technological advances" are acting against this movement: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html
- csense 11y ago
  I thought it was interesting that in 1997 RMS said: > free kernels, even entire free operating systems...had existed around the turn of the century...you could not install one if you had one, without knowing your computer's root password Sounds a lot like UEFI. Submitted as a new article here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11560191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11560191
tremon 11y ago
In between, there will be a significant body of research kept locked away behind paywalls by publishers trying to hold on to those cash cows and the inertia copyright on a work has once granted. I think the best way to shorten that period is if we stop citing papers that aren't publicly available.

return0 11y ago

Journal publishing itself is awkward. It's bad use of experimental data - often you have to look at printed graphs to figure out data values not reported in the paper. Statistic power is almost never mentioned. Tons of data that could be useful to other researchers is discarded. Discussion sections tend to be overly biased. There is so much research output, it's almost impossible to refute anything and possibel to support almost anything. And so on and so on. What we need is accurate databases of research results, not more publishing. We should be rewarding scientists for the volume, integrity and significance of their data output, not for what they claim themselves in their papers.

msellout 11y ago
Not all science is statistics. That's just the current paradigm and not applicable in all cases. I agree the reward system is flawed, but it ain't so easy to improve it.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

morgante 11y ago

> I expect that in twenty years time you will be able to download almost the complete library of published academic works from the twentieth and twenty first centuries in the time it takes to make a pot of coffee — legally or illegally. I hope and suspect it won't take twenty years. Academic journals are an anachronism and moreover an unethical anachronism.

WildUtah 11y ago
Closed access academic journals were an unethical anachronism twenty years ago. And yet we've made little progress against them.

userbinator 11y ago

will only get easier due to technological advances and increasing amounts of bandwidth available to consumers worldwide. Not if some of those "technological advances" are acting against this movement: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html

csense 11y ago
I thought it was interesting that in 1997 RMS said: > free kernels, even entire free operating systems...had existed around the turn of the century...you could not install one if you had one, without knowing your computer's root password Sounds a lot like UEFI. Submitted as a new article here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11560191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11560191

tremon 11y ago

In between, there will be a significant body of research kept locked away behind paywalls by publishers trying to hold on to those cash cows and the inertia copyright on a work has once granted. I think the best way to shorten that period is if we stop citing papers that aren't publicly available.