15 ms·

The comparison with Napster is troubling, because it gives the impression that the balance of right and wrong is the same for science and for music. The main d

by a3_nm 10y ago

The comparison with Napster is troubling, because it gives the impression that the balance of right and wrong is the same for science and for music. The main difference with Napster is that, in the case of music, there was some argument to be made that piracy was harmful to music, because some (tiny) part of music sales benefited the artists (and, as we all know, every pirate download was a lost sale...). In the case of science publishers, the money simply never goes from publishers to researchers. Scientists are paid by entirely different actors (who ironically also end up paying publishers, for subscription fees to access papers). So the only possible argument left is that publishers are somehow beneficial to the science publishing process, which is a much weaker argument. Imagine if music sales did not bring any money to artists at all, but the music industry argued: "sure, music would get composed and recorded without us, but how could it be distributed without us?" This is the situation science is currently into. The only explanation to the current state of affairs is history (pre-Internet science distribution was complicated) and the unimaginable inertia of prestige.

toyg 10y ago
To be fair, publishers also act as gatekeepers in a good sense, filtering out the worst crackpots by arranging peer review. That's the only reason they might have to survive in the web age. Music labels make a difference by marketing bands. Science publishers make a difference by formalizing peer-review. If these actors concentrated on their core differentiators, nobody would grudge them the money they make. The problem is, they don't; because the most vulturish and redundant aspects of their businesses are also the most profitable. For all the techno-utopianism in the world, this state of thing will not correct itself.
- bloaf 10y ago
  It is true that they do currently provide that service, and that science should employ peer review, but to really defend the publishers you need to say that publishers are the only way that peer review can be arranged. I do not believe that is true.
- a3_nm 10y ago
  Publishers oversee peer review, but they are not the one performing it: unpaid researchers do. It is incredible, but, by and large, scientific publishers today are utterly ignorant about the science that they publish. (To my knowledge, the only exception to this rule is situations where scientific publishers pay small amounts of money to a scientist to act as an editor: but this only concerns some journals, and still the editor delegates peer review to unpaid reviewers.) In the music world: "Oh, but we are also necessary, because we choose which music to promote! Or rather, we arrange a room where unpaid critics tell us which ones to pick." (And of course, peer review can organize without scientific publishers. For instance, many conferences use EasyChair <http://www.easychair.org/> http://www.easychair.org/>, which is not perfect but at least does not claim copyright on articles. For such conferences, the only role of the publisher (if any) is to obtain a peer-reviewed body of articles, ask authors to sign copyright forms, and sometimes take care of formatting issues.)
- Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
  Peer review is arranged by each journal's editorial board, which is unpaid in a large majority of the cases. The editor-in-chief is chosen by the publisher at some point, but anyway publishers have a full range of journals from prestigious to total crap. It's not like they only choose the best as editors-in-chief. I don't think "arranging peer review" is a differentiator, in fact there are free society journals and grassroots journals that work just fine.
  - chriskanan 10y ago
    Are there any journals that do pay for peer review? I always hear people say that in the majority of cases reviewers are unpaid, but that makes it sound like some actually do pay. I've never received any benefit from a journal for reviewing paper, not even a free access (I usually decline review offers from non-open journals now).
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  You don't need publishers for peer review; publishers do not pay reviewers. There are also completely open access electronic journals (like Discrete Analysis in mathematics), that charge a nominal fee ($10-15) for publishing, but these are merely processing costs. Everything else is free, but you get the complete benefit of peer review.
bloaf 10y ago
The other difference is that you can make a much better argument that free and open access to the scientific literature is a public good. Music piracy could be argued to be obtaining a luxury item for free, and that people have no right to do this. However, you can make a case that the public has some right to access the scientific literature, especially when that literature is funded in part by their tax dollars.
- ChristianBundy 10y ago
  > Music piracy could be argued to be obtaining a luxury item for free, and that people have no right to do this. The obvious counter-argument being that there's absolutely no moral or philosophical justification for the ownership of information. Intellectual property is nothing but a racket.
  - stdbrouw 10y ago
    So obvious that you don't even feel the need to make the actual argument, it seems.
  - colejohnson66 10y ago
    > Intellectual property is nothing but a racket. It's easy to diregard IP when you don't own any, but if IP didn't exist the big, bad, evil corporations could steal ideas from people with no recourse. In fact, that's exactly what happened with Robert Kearns[0]. He invented the intermittent windshield wiper and attempted to license it to motor companies. They told him no and later implemented intermittent wipers themselves. Sure, you can disregard it as "why does Kearns need to own that idea?" But if it werent for Kearns, we probably wouldn't have intermittenent wipers nowadays. Also, if companies could just steal ideas from other people instead of investing in R&D, why wouldn't they? Sure, IP can be abused, but like the majority of laws, was created with good intentions. Killing IP instead of closing loopholes that allow abuse is attacking the problem, not the cause. Without getting too political, that's the problem the left has with guns and the right has with encryption. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns
duaneb 10y ago
Doesn't peer review—in its current form—require funding? How would you recommend replacing that institution?
- bloaf 10y ago
  The "peers" in "peer review" are not employees of the publishers.
  - thisisdave 10y ago
    Right. And to be even more specific, they are not compensated in any way (except occasionally by perks with zero marginal cost, like a free online subscription). Some editors, who manage peer review, do get paid, but the reviewers don't.
    - bbctol 10y ago
      On the other hand, peer reviewers are generally paid by the same people who pay scientific journals--academic and research institutions--with contributing to peer review usually being an understood part of their duty.
      - richardw 10y ago
        Therefore peer review could continue even if the journals didn't exist. And since both are funded by the same source there might be more money for research and review if none went to journals.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  Peer review is done by researchers not affiliated with the publisher. They are not paid for their service.
- lvs 10y ago
  Reviewers are unpaid. Editors and administrative costs exist, but these don't justify the total extraction of copyrights from the authors or the public.
swiley 10y ago
I know it's not exactly "science" but ACM is part of the general culture. The other day I was looking for an article my dad had written for the Linux journal and could only find bits and pieces of it (some as gists on github) before I was able to find it on linuxjournal.com I found a page from ACM.org trying to sell it for something like $15. He was completely unaware this had even happened.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  What rights did he retain as the author? Could he/you have published it in a different place?
  - auxym 10y ago
    Some journals allow you to post the manuscript copy (not edited or typeset by the journal) on your personal page. Some give you no rifts at all.
posterboy 10y ago
The second paragraph is a strawman. It's not necessarily about the artists. Therefore your conclusion is flawed: > So the only possible argument left is that publishers are somehow beneficial If that argument would turn out to be strong enough, wouldn't it apply to the music industry as well? The comparison of napster and sci-hub would be as just as the comparison of the publishers.
- icebraining 10y ago
  It's not a strawman, it was and is the main argument used, and that's exactly because it's the most meritorious. In fact, I've never seen the argument about protecting the publishers (ie, themselves). For example, from RIAA's website: Music theft happens everywhere, and it’s important for fans to help look out for illegal activity that damages the creative freedom of the artists you love. If you see pirated music—either online or in person—let us know here so we can better protect artists from illegal music sales.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    Except, traditionally, it's publishers who have screwed artists.
  - posterboy 10y ago
    But that quote is the strawman that you reverberate. It's not a strawman as much as the selection of artists to publish is creative and artistic in its own right. Then the relative distribution in relation to artistic input is still debatable, but out of scope if the question is, whether the publishers compensation should absolutely be forgone, and whether the publishers compensation alone is blown out of proportion compared to their work.
stcredzero 10y ago
the unimaginable inertia of prestige. How about, "the entirely imagined inertia of prestige?"
- a3_nm 10y ago
  It is not "imagined", it has very real consequences. If you have no publications in the venues that the scientific community considers "prestigious", you have essentially no hope to ever get a job as a tenured researcher.
  - auxym 10y ago
    Or any job at all. It's going to be tough finding a good post doc position if you didn't publish during your phd. Hell, in Canada you have to do a master's before applying for a PhD, and you won't be getting the good scholarships and will have a hard time convincing the best researchers to take you on if you didn't publish during your master's.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    It is not "imagined", it has very real consequences. Just because the consequences are real, doesn't mean the predicates or hypothesis on which those consequences are based are real. For much of the history of the US, opportunities for men of African descent to fight in the armed forces were limited, justified by various notions of racial inferiority. This is not to make a moral equivalence in the two situations. However, it does point out that the reality of the underlying predicate is different from the reality of the consequences. (i.e. "The Map is not the Territory!") Just because the prestige exists doesn't mean that the prestige itself is based on something real. Prestige is a social construct. A different and better system of disseminating scientific publications could exist. There are a number of compelling reasons to believe a more modern system would serve the public interest far better.
aaron695 10y ago
Fact: Science needs peer review. (well...kinda fact, there's arguments against) Fact: This costs money Fact: Private industry doing things works well in many markets Fact: It's arguable art is a human right. It's why we live, compared to science that allows us to live. Napster and science are similar. You can argue in a better world the markets could be better done, but you seem to me to be denying things we know.... Someone has to pay to organise peer review. Is it crazy the 'cost' of this is so high, perhaps. But it's not "Science isn't Napster".
- pessimizer 10y ago
  Fact: Journals don't pay for peer review
  - auxym 10y ago
    Playing devils advocate here: Reviewers themselves aren't paid, but the publishers do pay editors to do preliminary filtering, select reviewers, collect their comments and decide what to do with them. Now that is relatively little work for the comparatively extortionate prices they charge.
    - ska 10y ago
      I'm pretty sure that is inconsistent also (i.e. editor is not necessarily a paid position). Furthermore, in the cases I know of where the editorial work is paid, it is only a nominal amount - there is no sense in which the time involved is actually covered by the fees.
    - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
      Editors are paid a pittance, at most.

by a3_nm 10y ago

toyg 10y ago

To be fair, publishers also act as gatekeepers in a good sense, filtering out the worst crackpots by arranging peer review. That's the only reason they might have to survive in the web age. Music labels make a difference by marketing bands. Science publishers make a difference by formalizing peer-review. If these actors concentrated on their core differentiators, nobody would grudge them the money they make. The problem is, they don't; because the most vulturish and redundant aspects of their businesses are also the most profitable. For all the techno-utopianism in the world, this state of thing will not correct itself.

bloaf 10y ago
It is true that they do currently provide that service, and that science should employ peer review, but to really defend the publishers you need to say that publishers are the only way that peer review can be arranged. I do not believe that is true.
a3_nm 10y ago
Publishers oversee peer review, but they are not the one performing it: unpaid researchers do. It is incredible, but, by and large, scientific publishers today are utterly ignorant about the science that they publish. (To my knowledge, the only exception to this rule is situations where scientific publishers pay small amounts of money to a scientist to act as an editor: but this only concerns some journals, and still the editor delegates peer review to unpaid reviewers.) In the music world: "Oh, but we are also necessary, because we choose which music to promote! Or rather, we arrange a room where unpaid critics tell us which ones to pick." (And of course, peer review can organize without scientific publishers. For instance, many conferences use EasyChair <http://www.easychair.org/> http://www.easychair.org/>, which is not perfect but at least does not claim copyright on articles. For such conferences, the only role of the publisher (if any) is to obtain a peer-reviewed body of articles, ask authors to sign copyright forms, and sometimes take care of formatting issues.)
Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
Peer review is arranged by each journal's editorial board, which is unpaid in a large majority of the cases. The editor-in-chief is chosen by the publisher at some point, but anyway publishers have a full range of journals from prestigious to total crap. It's not like they only choose the best as editors-in-chief. I don't think "arranging peer review" is a differentiator, in fact there are free society journals and grassroots journals that work just fine.
- chriskanan 10y ago
  Are there any journals that do pay for peer review? I always hear people say that in the majority of cases reviewers are unpaid, but that makes it sound like some actually do pay. I've never received any benefit from a journal for reviewing paper, not even a free access (I usually decline review offers from non-open journals now).
Ar-Curunir 10y ago
You don't need publishers for peer review; publishers do not pay reviewers. There are also completely open access electronic journals (like Discrete Analysis in mathematics), that charge a nominal fee ($10-15) for publishing, but these are merely processing costs. Everything else is free, but you get the complete benefit of peer review.

bloaf 10y ago

The other difference is that you can make a much better argument that free and open access to the scientific literature is a public good. Music piracy could be argued to be obtaining a luxury item for free, and that people have no right to do this. However, you can make a case that the public has some right to access the scientific literature, especially when that literature is funded in part by their tax dollars.

ChristianBundy 10y ago
> Music piracy could be argued to be obtaining a luxury item for free, and that people have no right to do this. The obvious counter-argument being that there's absolutely no moral or philosophical justification for the ownership of information. Intellectual property is nothing but a racket.
- stdbrouw 10y ago
  So obvious that you don't even feel the need to make the actual argument, it seems.
- colejohnson66 10y ago
  > Intellectual property is nothing but a racket. It's easy to diregard IP when you don't own any, but if IP didn't exist the big, bad, evil corporations could steal ideas from people with no recourse. In fact, that's exactly what happened with Robert Kearns[0]. He invented the intermittent windshield wiper and attempted to license it to motor companies. They told him no and later implemented intermittent wipers themselves. Sure, you can disregard it as "why does Kearns need to own that idea?" But if it werent for Kearns, we probably wouldn't have intermittenent wipers nowadays. Also, if companies could just steal ideas from other people instead of investing in R&D, why wouldn't they? Sure, IP can be abused, but like the majority of laws, was created with good intentions. Killing IP instead of closing loopholes that allow abuse is attacking the problem, not the cause. Without getting too political, that's the problem the left has with guns and the right has with encryption. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns

duaneb 10y ago

Doesn't peer review—in its current form—require funding? How would you recommend replacing that institution?

bloaf 10y ago
The "peers" in "peer review" are not employees of the publishers.
- thisisdave 10y ago
  Right. And to be even more specific, they are not compensated in any way (except occasionally by perks with zero marginal cost, like a free online subscription). Some editors, who manage peer review, do get paid, but the reviewers don't.
  - bbctol 10y ago
    On the other hand, peer reviewers are generally paid by the same people who pay scientific journals--academic and research institutions--with contributing to peer review usually being an understood part of their duty.
    - richardw 10y ago
      Therefore peer review could continue even if the journals didn't exist. And since both are funded by the same source there might be more money for research and review if none went to journals.
Ar-Curunir 10y ago
Peer review is done by researchers not affiliated with the publisher. They are not paid for their service.
lvs 10y ago
Reviewers are unpaid. Editors and administrative costs exist, but these don't justify the total extraction of copyrights from the authors or the public.

swiley 10y ago

I know it's not exactly "science" but ACM is part of the general culture. The other day I was looking for an article my dad had written for the Linux journal and could only find bits and pieces of it (some as gists on github) before I was able to find it on linuxjournal.com I found a page from ACM.org trying to sell it for something like $15. He was completely unaware this had even happened.

voltagex_ 10y ago
What rights did he retain as the author? Could he/you have published it in a different place?
- auxym 10y ago
  Some journals allow you to post the manuscript copy (not edited or typeset by the journal) on your personal page. Some give you no rifts at all.

posterboy 10y ago

The second paragraph is a strawman. It's not necessarily about the artists. Therefore your conclusion is flawed: > So the only possible argument left is that publishers are somehow beneficial If that argument would turn out to be strong enough, wouldn't it apply to the music industry as well? The comparison of napster and sci-hub would be as just as the comparison of the publishers.

icebraining 10y ago
It's not a strawman, it was and is the main argument used, and that's exactly because it's the most meritorious. In fact, I've never seen the argument about protecting the publishers (ie, themselves). For example, from RIAA's website: Music theft happens everywhere, and it’s important for fans to help look out for illegal activity that damages the creative freedom of the artists you love. If you see pirated music—either online or in person—let us know here so we can better protect artists from illegal music sales.
- mirimir 10y ago
  Except, traditionally, it's publishers who have screwed artists.
- posterboy 10y ago
  But that quote is the strawman that you reverberate. It's not a strawman as much as the selection of artists to publish is creative and artistic in its own right. Then the relative distribution in relation to artistic input is still debatable, but out of scope if the question is, whether the publishers compensation should absolutely be forgone, and whether the publishers compensation alone is blown out of proportion compared to their work.

stcredzero 10y ago

the unimaginable inertia of prestige. How about, "the entirely imagined inertia of prestige?"

a3_nm 10y ago
It is not "imagined", it has very real consequences. If you have no publications in the venues that the scientific community considers "prestigious", you have essentially no hope to ever get a job as a tenured researcher.
- auxym 10y ago
  Or any job at all. It's going to be tough finding a good post doc position if you didn't publish during your phd. Hell, in Canada you have to do a master's before applying for a PhD, and you won't be getting the good scholarships and will have a hard time convincing the best researchers to take you on if you didn't publish during your master's.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  It is not "imagined", it has very real consequences. Just because the consequences are real, doesn't mean the predicates or hypothesis on which those consequences are based are real. For much of the history of the US, opportunities for men of African descent to fight in the armed forces were limited, justified by various notions of racial inferiority. This is not to make a moral equivalence in the two situations. However, it does point out that the reality of the underlying predicate is different from the reality of the consequences. (i.e. "The Map is not the Territory!") Just because the prestige exists doesn't mean that the prestige itself is based on something real. Prestige is a social construct. A different and better system of disseminating scientific publications could exist. There are a number of compelling reasons to believe a more modern system would serve the public interest far better.

aaron695 10y ago

Fact: Science needs peer review. (well...kinda fact, there's arguments against) Fact: This costs money Fact: Private industry doing things works well in many markets Fact: It's arguable art is a human right. It's why we live, compared to science that allows us to live. Napster and science are similar. You can argue in a better world the markets could be better done, but you seem to me to be denying things we know.... Someone has to pay to organise peer review. Is it crazy the 'cost' of this is so high, perhaps. But it's not "Science isn't Napster".

pessimizer 10y ago
Fact: Journals don't pay for peer review
- auxym 10y ago
  Playing devils advocate here: Reviewers themselves aren't paid, but the publishers do pay editors to do preliminary filtering, select reviewers, collect their comments and decide what to do with them. Now that is relatively little work for the comparatively extortionate prices they charge.
  - ska 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure that is inconsistent also (i.e. editor is not necessarily a paid position). Furthermore, in the cases I know of where the editorial work is paid, it is only a nominal amount - there is no sense in which the time involved is actually covered by the fees.
  - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
    Editors are paid a pittance, at most.