8 ms·

Correct. These stories always make it sound like it's the big bad private journals that are trying to steal all the taxpayer-funded research which should belon

Correct. These stories always make it sound like it's the big bad private journals that are trying to steal all the taxpayer-funded research which should belong to the people. But the scientists are the ones that are (still) sending their results to private journals for publications. They could instead chose to send it to OA journals, and some do.

xaedes 9y ago
"A grad student or an assistant professor isn't going to put his/her career on the line for ideals." It is not like the choice is for free..
a3_nm 9y ago
> But the scientists are the ones that are (still) sending their results to private journals for publications Most importantly, from the parent comment, senior scientists are the ones that are still volunteering their reviewing efforts to private, closed-access journals, for free. Given that the career penalty for doing less reviews is very small (it might even be negative), to me this is even more puzzling.
- Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
  The thing (at least for me) is that it feels hypocritical to refuse to review after having benefitted from many other people's reviews when submitting to those same journals.
  - a3_nm 9y ago
    I have heard this argument and I don't think it's valid. We are stuck in a broken system where researchers are pressured to publish in closed-access venues. It's hard to act against this at the publication level, because you may need to publish in such venues (for career reasons), and (more importantly, at least for me) you often co-author papers with other people who may not share your dislike of closed access. By contrast, acting at the review level is your own choice, it carries little penalty, and it is just as effective (closed-access journals would not be sustainable if no one reviewed for them). I don't think it's hypocritical to admit that you publish in closed-access journals because of career pressure or coauthor pressure, but you would prefer if such journals didn't exist so you act against them at the review level. This looks like it violates the golden rule, but in fact it does not: if everything followed this policy, closed-access journals would disappear. :)
- vanviegen 9y ago
  Systematically refusing to do reviews really doesn't help your changes of getting your own papers (and those of your grad students) accepted in the future. Editors have a lot of freedom in deciding what's on topic for their journal.
  - a3_nm 9y ago
    In my field (theoretical CS), I have never heard about a journal refusing papers from authors that have declined to review for the journal. In fact I would consider this extremely shady: journals shouldn't handle papers differently depending on the identity of the authors, no matter the reason.
    - hueving 9y ago
      Well they wouldn't make it obvious. It would be rejected for other reasons.
- tnecniv 9y ago
  Tenure isn't the end of the road and tenured researchers don't work alone. Tenured professors are often not the primary authors on papers -- their students and post-docs are and they need to get their papers into good (paywalled) venues. Moreover, they still need to convince people to give them money to hire students and postdocs. If you are a big kahuna, maybe you can get away with taking a moral stand and publishing in OA journals, but it's way easier to sell yourself and maintain your status if you publish where everyone else publishes.
  - a3_nm 9y ago
    I agree with what you say, but I do not understand why it is related to my comment. I was trying to say that refusing to publish in closed-access journals is hard, but refusing to review for them is easy.
- DaveWalk 9y ago
  What motivates the senior scientists to do this? Is it because they want to guide the latest research in high-impact journals, oblivious of any profit motive? In the life sciences, many top researchers are actually editors or on the board of journals in their field. From my experience, there is no doubt that relationships with editors help a scientist publish in better journals. And sour relationships make it harder -- not impossible, but harder. This system is pure meritocracy only in our minds.
  - roel_v 9y ago
    I get voted into oblivion every time I post this when this topic comes up (which is like, every other day), but the fact of the matter is that nobody cares about 'open access' in academia (well, not 'nobody' in the pedantic nerd sense, but 'nobody' as in 'only a vocal but ultimately insignificant minority', mostly very junior researchers - who usually don't even have their PhD's yet; the number of senior faculty staff who spends time on writing blog posts about this is minute). In fields where there are elevated numbers of dogmatic purists who don't see the value of interpersonal relations (but, of course, who call themselves 'principled' and 'not corrupted by money' and that sort of spin on it) like CS and physics the proportion is higher, but still not enough to make a real difference. The thing is that everybody who 'needs' access to research papers (as opposed to the 'open access' 'advocates' who like to make up scenarios of how many papers they'd read if only all research was downloadable without logging in anywhere) has it through their universities, or you send a quick email to the authors and get papers that way. The vast majority of all published papers is read only by the reviewers. People jump at the chance of sending their papers to that one person in the world (besides their parents) who actually cares enough to ask about it. So there is no practical incentive for most people to care enough to put effort into changing the status quo, and the current situation is maybe not optimal but well, neither is the quality of the coffee in the staff room, and if given the choice, most researchers would choose a better coffee machine over all journals being open access. Note that I don't care one way or another; I don't gain in any way from papers not being publicly accessible. If tomorrow everything is open access, or all open access journals stop existing, won't make one bit of difference to my life. But what I do find annoying is the incessant whining about this topic from people for whom 9 times out of 10 this makes no difference to their lives whatsoever, but who will take any opportunity to declare how big bad faceless 'them' is the personification of evil and how everybody else should change to make the world fit their worldview better, while those who are actually affected by this have many other things to worry about and don't care as long at doesn't cause extra work (or change for the sake of it).
davidgerard 9y ago
> make it sound like it's the big bad private journals that are trying to steal all the taxpayer-funded research which should belong to the people Research Works Act, where Elsevier et al tried to do literally this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Works_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Works_Act

xaedes 9y ago

"A grad student or an assistant professor isn't going to put his/her career on the line for ideals." It is not like the choice is for free..

a3_nm 9y ago

> But the scientists are the ones that are (still) sending their results to private journals for publications Most importantly, from the parent comment, senior scientists are the ones that are still volunteering their reviewing efforts to private, closed-access journals, for free. Given that the career penalty for doing less reviews is very small (it might even be negative), to me this is even more puzzling.

Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
The thing (at least for me) is that it feels hypocritical to refuse to review after having benefitted from many other people's reviews when submitting to those same journals.
- a3_nm 9y ago
  I have heard this argument and I don't think it's valid. We are stuck in a broken system where researchers are pressured to publish in closed-access venues. It's hard to act against this at the publication level, because you may need to publish in such venues (for career reasons), and (more importantly, at least for me) you often co-author papers with other people who may not share your dislike of closed access. By contrast, acting at the review level is your own choice, it carries little penalty, and it is just as effective (closed-access journals would not be sustainable if no one reviewed for them). I don't think it's hypocritical to admit that you publish in closed-access journals because of career pressure or coauthor pressure, but you would prefer if such journals didn't exist so you act against them at the review level. This looks like it violates the golden rule, but in fact it does not: if everything followed this policy, closed-access journals would disappear. :)
vanviegen 9y ago
Systematically refusing to do reviews really doesn't help your changes of getting your own papers (and those of your grad students) accepted in the future. Editors have a lot of freedom in deciding what's on topic for their journal.
- a3_nm 9y ago
  In my field (theoretical CS), I have never heard about a journal refusing papers from authors that have declined to review for the journal. In fact I would consider this extremely shady: journals shouldn't handle papers differently depending on the identity of the authors, no matter the reason.
  - hueving 9y ago
    Well they wouldn't make it obvious. It would be rejected for other reasons.
tnecniv 9y ago
Tenure isn't the end of the road and tenured researchers don't work alone. Tenured professors are often not the primary authors on papers -- their students and post-docs are and they need to get their papers into good (paywalled) venues. Moreover, they still need to convince people to give them money to hire students and postdocs. If you are a big kahuna, maybe you can get away with taking a moral stand and publishing in OA journals, but it's way easier to sell yourself and maintain your status if you publish where everyone else publishes.
- a3_nm 9y ago
  I agree with what you say, but I do not understand why it is related to my comment. I was trying to say that refusing to publish in closed-access journals is hard, but refusing to review for them is easy.
DaveWalk 9y ago
What motivates the senior scientists to do this? Is it because they want to guide the latest research in high-impact journals, oblivious of any profit motive? In the life sciences, many top researchers are actually editors or on the board of journals in their field. From my experience, there is no doubt that relationships with editors help a scientist publish in better journals. And sour relationships make it harder -- not impossible, but harder. This system is pure meritocracy only in our minds.
- roel_v 9y ago
  I get voted into oblivion every time I post this when this topic comes up (which is like, every other day), but the fact of the matter is that nobody cares about 'open access' in academia (well, not 'nobody' in the pedantic nerd sense, but 'nobody' as in 'only a vocal but ultimately insignificant minority', mostly very junior researchers - who usually don't even have their PhD's yet; the number of senior faculty staff who spends time on writing blog posts about this is minute). In fields where there are elevated numbers of dogmatic purists who don't see the value of interpersonal relations (but, of course, who call themselves 'principled' and 'not corrupted by money' and that sort of spin on it) like CS and physics the proportion is higher, but still not enough to make a real difference. The thing is that everybody who 'needs' access to research papers (as opposed to the 'open access' 'advocates' who like to make up scenarios of how many papers they'd read if only all research was downloadable without logging in anywhere) has it through their universities, or you send a quick email to the authors and get papers that way. The vast majority of all published papers is read only by the reviewers. People jump at the chance of sending their papers to that one person in the world (besides their parents) who actually cares enough to ask about it. So there is no practical incentive for most people to care enough to put effort into changing the status quo, and the current situation is maybe not optimal but well, neither is the quality of the coffee in the staff room, and if given the choice, most researchers would choose a better coffee machine over all journals being open access. Note that I don't care one way or another; I don't gain in any way from papers not being publicly accessible. If tomorrow everything is open access, or all open access journals stop existing, won't make one bit of difference to my life. But what I do find annoying is the incessant whining about this topic from people for whom 9 times out of 10 this makes no difference to their lives whatsoever, but who will take any opportunity to declare how big bad faceless 'them' is the personification of evil and how everybody else should change to make the world fit their worldview better, while those who are actually affected by this have many other things to worry about and don't care as long at doesn't cause extra work (or change for the sake of it).

davidgerard 9y ago

> make it sound like it's the big bad private journals that are trying to steal all the taxpayer-funded research which should belong to the people Research Works Act, where Elsevier et al tried to do literally this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Works_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Works_Act