4 ms·

I sometimes wonder if companies like Elsevier are the patent trolls of the research publishing industry - with the same chilling effect on the spread of innovat

I sometimes wonder if companies like Elsevier are the patent trolls of the research publishing industry - with the same chilling effect on the spread of innovation. [1] It will be interesting to see how this affects the quality of reviewing. I think the defendants of the current system (who usually say someone has to bear the cost of the review process) are going to be rudely surprised when the academic community embraces this with gusto. The parallel with OSS is interesting - somewhat in the same spirit as the programming community embraced open source, I think the benefit of open access is that the researcher evaluates the tradeoff between 'capturing value' vs 'making a difference', without worrying about the external factor of 'what does this external entity, which provided very little in terms of constructive input when the work was being done, allow me to do (with regards to publishing openly)?'. But then again, I could be completely wrong, especially in domains like the physical sciences where I don't know how the incentives align. I hope it works out well, and that soon this is the just the norm in all countries. [1] http://blogoftheisotopes.blogspot.in/2012/01/elsevier-backlash.html http://blogoftheisotopes.blogspot.in/2012/01/elsevier-backla...

a3_nm 10y ago
> someone has to bear the cost of the review process Maybe you are aware of it, but this argument is bogus in any case, because reviewing is unpaid labor. You can make an argument that someone has to organize the review process, but publishers usually don't pay for that process (except paying token amounts to an editor for some journals).
- thr0waway1239 10y ago
  The cost of the review process in this particular two sided marketplace (which publishing is - how do you decide which journal to send your paper to?) is not just the unpaid labor of the reviewers, but rather the establishment of the credentials and authority which the journals build up over time, which basically drove down the cost of reviewing to be much smaller than if it were simply a free for all. To see this in action: Many OSS software projects have trouble attracting quality contributions because they are simply not well known. To the community as a whole, the cost of soliciting contributions is not merely the difficulty of modifying the software, but in addition the promotion of the project itself to the point where the only costs have to do with making said modifications. I could have worded it better (maybe cost of the review + credentialing process), but I think this is going to be the pain point in open access, just like even folks here on HN say that OSS sometimes resembles the wild west.
  - amelius 10y ago
    Isn't that exactly what search engines are for? I.e., ranking work based on a complex mix of both content value and authority?
    - thr0waway1239 10y ago
      Yes, improvements in search will help, but the costs won't go down that easily. In Google's case, the initial seeding of page rank was quite manual. And then think of the cost of upkeep - people are trying to game search engines continuously, Google has to update its algorithms on a consistent basis, content farms have profited enormously at various points of time and needed to be literally programmed against, and finally Google guards the actual search algorithm closely. In the research domain, solving these problems would actually be even harder (in my view). How do you know if you found the best paper, or just the paper which is the best match for your keywords? At least Google has a feedback mechanism - someone stays a long time on a given webpage if it is very relevant to what they are looking for. This is not a good metric obviously, it might happen on a research paper simply because it is too obscure :-)
      - amelius 10y ago
        Well, you could always look at citations. And I don't think they are as easy to game as links between general websites, because in research at least the authors publish using their own names (and you don't want to get a bad rep for gaming the system).
        thr0waway1239 10y ago
        With the disclaimer that this is an anecdote and not data: You would be surprised at how easily a winners win situation happens in research. The citation based search would reinforce it. And while the gaming may not be search engine focused, I think getting the best papers via algorithmic methods can omit the crown jewels through less insidious (but quite common) issues such as citation graphs which orient in the direction of the flow of funding. But you say, maybe winners win for a reason. This is only personal experience, but the single most profound, creative paper I ever read during my years of research was written by a lone wolf (i.e. no collaborators) in a somewhat unknown institution who turned out to be a sort of one hit wonder. This person's h-index may very well have been exactly 1 at that time. I honestly think algorithmic methods of searching for literature would have skipped past that paper. You could make the case, though, that a thorough literature survey should be as exhaustive as possible and not omit ANYTHING. Well, very few people are that thorough - and even when they are, there is a tendency of reading papers from the most popular authors first. I am just glad I did my work before the days of Google Scholar becoming the de facto starting point, and I did not have the bias of a pre-ranked list. I think that is the actual fear: I was able to find this crown jewel precisely because the publishing process at that period was more centralized (although quite likely also less competitive), and that paper was eventually published at a pre-eminent conference - which is how it came to my attention. With a search-engine driven open access, I think this lone wolf would have had a harder time getting that fantastic piece of work in front of a big audience because many of the common signals would have been too weak. With all that said, when open access becomes more pervasive, great search technology will be a big part of the cost reduction and I definitely look forward to that.
- sevensor 10y ago
  Seriously, everyone from the reviewer to the AE to the editor is doing this for free in almost every case. Or not for free exactly, but not for money either. For academics, reputation is the coin of the realm. Academic publishers have tried (quite successfully, until the last couple of years) to corner the market on prestige. This means they can get academics to do all kind of work, without spending any actual dollars.
- 08-15 10y ago
  > because reviewing is unpaid labor Indeed, and that's a strange situation. I submit that it is immoral to review for a for-profit journal without receiving appropriate compensation[1]. Doing so and then complaining about the extortionist behavior of the established publishers is also hypocritical and/or stupid. Attempts to boycott a publisher or two have happened before, but they are useless. Scientists are hurting themselves by not publishing in the high ranking journals or by not reading them. Boycotting their exploitative review process, however, would hit them where it hurts and cost very little. [1] Uncompensated review services for any non-traditional journal are equally immoral, but that's another topic.
adzicg 10y ago
> I sometimes wonder if companies like Elsevier are the patent trolls of the research publishing industry I assume that 50 years ago the cost of getting information out to people was quite significant. printing, distribution, logistics... a single researcher wouldn't be able to deal with lots and lots of publishing institutions efficiently, and a single institution (except for the largest ones) wouldn't be able to publish efficiently. at my uni school, they had 2 geometry professors, and they perhaps published something every few years. no need for the school to publish its own geometry journal. middle-men such as Elsevier emerged to provide a useful service, achieving efficiencies of scale on both ends, providing a publishing channel for smaller schools and a discovery service for researchers. kind of the same as why travel agents existed. it was too difficult for a single person to deal with all the hotels and airlines in the world, and they didn't even know where to go and ask about that stuff. Today, the cost of getting the information out to people being insignificant, they are an obstacle instead of being an enabler, adding very little value to what people can do directly. On the other hand, as long as they can keep the effective monopoly going, they can milk the market. Travel agents didn't have a chokehold on a market, and got easily disrupted by web sites. Elsevier requires regulators to step in.
ig1 10y ago
It's not just the cost of reviews though. Most new journals take decades to become break-even, they're typically subsidized by cashcow journals (big names with good reputations which bring in solid revenue). Launching a new journal is a non-trivial process, you have to convince people to publish in it, you have to convince peer reviewers that it's worth their effort, etc. You have to have a marketing and sales teams that gets it into the hands and minds of researchers/libraries/etc. Then follows several decades of brand building before you make any real money. Many journals don't make it and die and publishers have to swallow the losses. In practice OA has other solutions (author pays) to fund this, but it's far from a free lunch.

a3_nm 10y ago

> someone has to bear the cost of the review process Maybe you are aware of it, but this argument is bogus in any case, because reviewing is unpaid labor. You can make an argument that someone has to organize the review process, but publishers usually don't pay for that process (except paying token amounts to an editor for some journals).

thr0waway1239 10y ago
The cost of the review process in this particular two sided marketplace (which publishing is - how do you decide which journal to send your paper to?) is not just the unpaid labor of the reviewers, but rather the establishment of the credentials and authority which the journals build up over time, which basically drove down the cost of reviewing to be much smaller than if it were simply a free for all. To see this in action: Many OSS software projects have trouble attracting quality contributions because they are simply not well known. To the community as a whole, the cost of soliciting contributions is not merely the difficulty of modifying the software, but in addition the promotion of the project itself to the point where the only costs have to do with making said modifications. I could have worded it better (maybe cost of the review + credentialing process), but I think this is going to be the pain point in open access, just like even folks here on HN say that OSS sometimes resembles the wild west.
- amelius 10y ago
  Isn't that exactly what search engines are for? I.e., ranking work based on a complex mix of both content value and authority?
  - thr0waway1239 10y ago
    Yes, improvements in search will help, but the costs won't go down that easily. In Google's case, the initial seeding of page rank was quite manual. And then think of the cost of upkeep - people are trying to game search engines continuously, Google has to update its algorithms on a consistent basis, content farms have profited enormously at various points of time and needed to be literally programmed against, and finally Google guards the actual search algorithm closely. In the research domain, solving these problems would actually be even harder (in my view). How do you know if you found the best paper, or just the paper which is the best match for your keywords? At least Google has a feedback mechanism - someone stays a long time on a given webpage if it is very relevant to what they are looking for. This is not a good metric obviously, it might happen on a research paper simply because it is too obscure :-)
    - amelius 10y ago
      Well, you could always look at citations. And I don't think they are as easy to game as links between general websites, because in research at least the authors publish using their own names (and you don't want to get a bad rep for gaming the system).
      - thr0waway1239 10y ago
        With the disclaimer that this is an anecdote and not data: You would be surprised at how easily a winners win situation happens in research. The citation based search would reinforce it. And while the gaming may not be search engine focused, I think getting the best papers via algorithmic methods can omit the crown jewels through less insidious (but quite common) issues such as citation graphs which orient in the direction of the flow of funding. But you say, maybe winners win for a reason. This is only personal experience, but the single most profound, creative paper I ever read during my years of research was written by a lone wolf (i.e. no collaborators) in a somewhat unknown institution who turned out to be a sort of one hit wonder. This person's h-index may very well have been exactly 1 at that time. I honestly think algorithmic methods of searching for literature would have skipped past that paper. You could make the case, though, that a thorough literature survey should be as exhaustive as possible and not omit ANYTHING. Well, very few people are that thorough - and even when they are, there is a tendency of reading papers from the most popular authors first. I am just glad I did my work before the days of Google Scholar becoming the de facto starting point, and I did not have the bias of a pre-ranked list. I think that is the actual fear: I was able to find this crown jewel precisely because the publishing process at that period was more centralized (although quite likely also less competitive), and that paper was eventually published at a pre-eminent conference - which is how it came to my attention. With a search-engine driven open access, I think this lone wolf would have had a harder time getting that fantastic piece of work in front of a big audience because many of the common signals would have been too weak. With all that said, when open access becomes more pervasive, great search technology will be a big part of the cost reduction and I definitely look forward to that.
sevensor 10y ago
Seriously, everyone from the reviewer to the AE to the editor is doing this for free in almost every case. Or not for free exactly, but not for money either. For academics, reputation is the coin of the realm. Academic publishers have tried (quite successfully, until the last couple of years) to corner the market on prestige. This means they can get academics to do all kind of work, without spending any actual dollars.
08-15 10y ago
> because reviewing is unpaid labor Indeed, and that's a strange situation. I submit that it is immoral to review for a for-profit journal without receiving appropriate compensation[1]. Doing so and then complaining about the extortionist behavior of the established publishers is also hypocritical and/or stupid. Attempts to boycott a publisher or two have happened before, but they are useless. Scientists are hurting themselves by not publishing in the high ranking journals or by not reading them. Boycotting their exploitative review process, however, would hit them where it hurts and cost very little. [1] Uncompensated review services for any non-traditional journal are equally immoral, but that's another topic.

adzicg 10y ago

> I sometimes wonder if companies like Elsevier are the patent trolls of the research publishing industry I assume that 50 years ago the cost of getting information out to people was quite significant. printing, distribution, logistics... a single researcher wouldn't be able to deal with lots and lots of publishing institutions efficiently, and a single institution (except for the largest ones) wouldn't be able to publish efficiently. at my uni school, they had 2 geometry professors, and they perhaps published something every few years. no need for the school to publish its own geometry journal. middle-men such as Elsevier emerged to provide a useful service, achieving efficiencies of scale on both ends, providing a publishing channel for smaller schools and a discovery service for researchers. kind of the same as why travel agents existed. it was too difficult for a single person to deal with all the hotels and airlines in the world, and they didn't even know where to go and ask about that stuff. Today, the cost of getting the information out to people being insignificant, they are an obstacle instead of being an enabler, adding very little value to what people can do directly. On the other hand, as long as they can keep the effective monopoly going, they can milk the market. Travel agents didn't have a chokehold on a market, and got easily disrupted by web sites. Elsevier requires regulators to step in.

ig1 10y ago

It's not just the cost of reviews though. Most new journals take decades to become break-even, they're typically subsidized by cashcow journals (big names with good reputations which bring in solid revenue). Launching a new journal is a non-trivial process, you have to convince people to publish in it, you have to convince peer reviewers that it's worth their effort, etc. You have to have a marketing and sales teams that gets it into the hands and minds of researchers/libraries/etc. Then follows several decades of brand building before you make any real money. Many journals don't make it and die and publishers have to swallow the losses. In practice OA has other solutions (author pays) to fund this, but it's far from a free lunch.