4 ms·

Chiming in from Bio: Yep, this is true here too. I can't find the citations right now, but there was a recent study done through Elsiver's website. The group g

by Balgair 10y ago

Chiming in from Bio: Yep, this is true here too. I can't find the citations right now, but there was a recent study done through Elsiver's website. The group got a hold of the servers for Elsiver and took a look at page views. They wanted to know what the rates of papers being read was. It was... disheartening. They found that ~46% (again, not sure here as I can't find the source) of papers will never be looked at outside of the authors, reviewers, and the editors. The articles are not only never downloaded, but the pages are never even loaded. The stats were, to me, confusing, but hey that is what peer review is for. Still, if you take this paper (that I can't find now) to be true, ~half of all papers are effectively lecturing into the void. I admit, I drank a bit after reading that one.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
IIRC a lot of that has to do with spammy 'publication mill' journals. If you just look at 'decent' journals, the situation doesn't look nearly as dire.
- FabHK 10y ago
  Elsevier is a despicable firm, but their journals are hardly publication mills, so not sure that response holds water.
  - Balgair 10y ago
    Yes, Elsevier is far from a journal mill designed to H-index hack your way up the credential ladder. They are scum, yes, but they are at least truthful.
    - nocoder 10y ago
      Maybe if Elsevier was open source & easily accessible more people would read it. I have tried reading many journal papers as a layman but in most cases got blocked by a pay wall. I dont like to rely on newspaper headline but like to go the source and because of paywall I get thwarted.
      - MichaelMoser123 10y ago
        sci-hub should be your friend.
        Balgair 10y ago
        In addition, you can just email the authors too. Most, if not all, are very happy to send you a copy and help explain things too. Most scientists do want to talk about their work!
        FabHK 10y ago
        Elsevier used to demand you sign over all copyright, which would make that illegal (think about it...!!) They've also sent takedown notices to academics that posted their own articles on their own website. Oh, and by the way, Elsevier also sued Sci-hub and LibGen... The Wikipedia article has a long section of criticism of Elsevier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Criticism_and_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Criticism_and_controv...
        Balgair 10y ago
        All true! But that said, I don't know of any author that wouldn't give you a gratis copy, oh, ok, maybe an old 'draft' that is 'close' to the publication.
justinpombrio 10y ago
In CS, most authors host "preprint" copies of their papers on their own website, and most views are of those versions. So I wouldn't be surprised if Elsiver's defunct distribution system isn't getting used much (at least in this field).
- Balgair 10y ago
  Yes, but roughly half of all papers will never even be page-loaded from the 'official' source (if you believe my recollection). I am not a CS researcher, but I would imagine that of 10 people that cite a paper, at least one will bother to download the original paper or look up the source. Hell, even 'vanity' page-views of your own work would have been counted in the paper that I mentioned, and that is with many authors on a single paper too. I honestly don't know what to make of it really. I at least bother to look at my papers once, if only to show my family on the Holidays, and I have a lot of so-authors that may be doing the same. Are most researchers so fed-up with their own work as to not even bother looking at it again? What is going through their minds concerning their efforts? It's just ... heartbreaking. At least half of researchers don't seem to care at all, not even the people that put all that time and effort to get their research out there. Like, what are we doing with our lives?
  - kakarot 10y ago
    We're just sitting here masturbating
  - JamesBarney 10y ago
    To be fair most papers are written for readers that have the exact same viewpoint and specialty. So they are incredibly difficult to parse for people in the same field but a different sub specialty. I think many more papers would be read if authors invested more time in learning how to write.
- conjectures 10y ago
  Depends if they're counting abstract html views or full pdf hits. I'd expect the former to be 10x the latter at least.
jayajay 10y ago
> "lecturing the void" This seems, at first, to be a problem in academia, but, at further glance, is really a problem with education.
- fuck_google 10y ago
  In my experience at least 90 % of documentation produced in any organization is just archived without practically anyone other than the authors reading it. Even expensive reports produced by external consultants seem to be used mainly to validate that the work has been done and discarded quickly thereafter.
- Balgair 10y ago
  Yes, even ideas exist in a marketplace.
fsloth 10y ago
Isn't that plausibly the result of publish or perish? I would imagine it would lead to people publish at the cadence of their typing rate (to be cruel), not at the rate which they can generate good ideas. Higgs said he could have not been able to operate in todays academia. Not everyone needs to have John von Neumann performance levels to do valuable work.
- Balgair 10y ago
  Yes, but to have ~half of the papers not ever be at least page-loaded? If that is what PoP has done to us, then we are really lost!
  - fsloth 10y ago
    Perhaps people skim through the abstract in a way that does not register as a page-load?
doejon 10y ago
Is there a way ppl is reading papers using sci-hub nowadays instead of accessing the official pages (especially students I'd assume)? :)
- Balgair 10y ago
  My own experience: When I have been on a University campus' wifi and needed to look at a paper, I could download and see the entire article, not just the abstracts. This has been true for all of the limited number of times I have tried this. I have also done the same at some, but not all, conferences; typically the very large ones only. I would then doubt that the numbers are being skewed towards the scihub and other 'rebellious' forms of paper acquisition. However, this is only my experience.

by Balgair 10y ago

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago

IIRC a lot of that has to do with spammy 'publication mill' journals. If you just look at 'decent' journals, the situation doesn't look nearly as dire.

FabHK 10y ago
Elsevier is a despicable firm, but their journals are hardly publication mills, so not sure that response holds water.
- Balgair 10y ago
  Yes, Elsevier is far from a journal mill designed to H-index hack your way up the credential ladder. They are scum, yes, but they are at least truthful.
  - nocoder 10y ago
    Maybe if Elsevier was open source & easily accessible more people would read it. I have tried reading many journal papers as a layman but in most cases got blocked by a pay wall. I dont like to rely on newspaper headline but like to go the source and because of paywall I get thwarted.
    - MichaelMoser123 10y ago
      sci-hub should be your friend.
      - Balgair 10y ago
        In addition, you can just email the authors too. Most, if not all, are very happy to send you a copy and help explain things too. Most scientists do want to talk about their work!
        FabHK 10y ago
        Elsevier used to demand you sign over all copyright, which would make that illegal (think about it...!!) They've also sent takedown notices to academics that posted their own articles on their own website. Oh, and by the way, Elsevier also sued Sci-hub and LibGen... The Wikipedia article has a long section of criticism of Elsevier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Criticism_and_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Criticism_and_controv...
        Balgair 10y ago
        All true! But that said, I don't know of any author that wouldn't give you a gratis copy, oh, ok, maybe an old 'draft' that is 'close' to the publication.

justinpombrio 10y ago

In CS, most authors host "preprint" copies of their papers on their own website, and most views are of those versions. So I wouldn't be surprised if Elsiver's defunct distribution system isn't getting used much (at least in this field).

Balgair 10y ago
Yes, but roughly half of all papers will never even be page-loaded from the 'official' source (if you believe my recollection). I am not a CS researcher, but I would imagine that of 10 people that cite a paper, at least one will bother to download the original paper or look up the source. Hell, even 'vanity' page-views of your own work would have been counted in the paper that I mentioned, and that is with many authors on a single paper too. I honestly don't know what to make of it really. I at least bother to look at my papers once, if only to show my family on the Holidays, and I have a lot of so-authors that may be doing the same. Are most researchers so fed-up with their own work as to not even bother looking at it again? What is going through their minds concerning their efforts? It's just ... heartbreaking. At least half of researchers don't seem to care at all, not even the people that put all that time and effort to get their research out there. Like, what are we doing with our lives?
- kakarot 10y ago
  We're just sitting here masturbating
- JamesBarney 10y ago
  To be fair most papers are written for readers that have the exact same viewpoint and specialty. So they are incredibly difficult to parse for people in the same field but a different sub specialty. I think many more papers would be read if authors invested more time in learning how to write.
conjectures 10y ago
Depends if they're counting abstract html views or full pdf hits. I'd expect the former to be 10x the latter at least.

jayajay 10y ago

> "lecturing the void" This seems, at first, to be a problem in academia, but, at further glance, is really a problem with education.

fuck_google 10y ago
In my experience at least 90 % of documentation produced in any organization is just archived without practically anyone other than the authors reading it. Even expensive reports produced by external consultants seem to be used mainly to validate that the work has been done and discarded quickly thereafter.
Balgair 10y ago
Yes, even ideas exist in a marketplace.

fsloth 10y ago

Isn't that plausibly the result of publish or perish? I would imagine it would lead to people publish at the cadence of their typing rate (to be cruel), not at the rate which they can generate good ideas. Higgs said he could have not been able to operate in todays academia. Not everyone needs to have John von Neumann performance levels to do valuable work.

Balgair 10y ago
Yes, but to have ~half of the papers not ever be at least page-loaded? If that is what PoP has done to us, then we are really lost!
- fsloth 10y ago
  Perhaps people skim through the abstract in a way that does not register as a page-load?

doejon 10y ago

Is there a way ppl is reading papers using sci-hub nowadays instead of accessing the official pages (especially students I'd assume)? :)

Balgair 10y ago
My own experience: When I have been on a University campus' wifi and needed to look at a paper, I could download and see the entire article, not just the abstracts. This has been true for all of the limited number of times I have tried this. I have also done the same at some, but not all, conferences; typically the very large ones only. I would then doubt that the numbers are being skewed towards the scihub and other 'rebellious' forms of paper acquisition. However, this is only my experience.