5 ms·
Basically, the publishers asked for this. Denying open access to old papers from humanitys point of view is wastefull. The planet is full of hungry minds. Who k
by fsloth 9y ago
Basically, the publishers asked for this. Denying open access to old papers from humanitys point of view is wastefull. The planet is full of hungry minds. Who knows where the next Ramanujan comes from and which discipline he or she chooses but given the non existent transaction cost of reading an old paper it would be beyond silly if they could not do it for free.
- LeifCarrotson 9y agoPublishers can provide value, and should not be forced to do so at a loss. Peer review, curating for quality, editing, typesetting, and creating physical copies could be expensive. True, current publishers don't compensate peer reviewers, limit curation to the set of people who will pay their submission fee, force editing and typesetting back on the authors, and charge egregious fees disproportionate to the cost of distribution. But the concept of the business isn't invalid.
- infogulch 9y agoNobody cares if publishers could theoretically add value in some alternate universe. In practice, none of them do. This isn't throwing the baby out with the bath water, this is people trying to stop this nasty ass bath water from being thrown out because there used to be a baby in it.
- paulgb 9y agoWonderfully said.
- Aeolun 9y agoWorking at one, I have to say I don't think this is true for all publishers. Prices are a different thing, but I'm definitely spending my day here adding value.
- fsloth 9y agoSome think anything can be open sourced but that does not work in the current world where we live. For an obvious example SpaceX could not have been an open source project. I suppose the general notion is that the only problem publishers solve is the distribution which is kinda non-value-adding nowadays, but don't think about the editorial process, which needs actual work. Sure, I think you guys add value. My critique was towards the cost of old papers and the ownership which journals take for published work. You guys need to get paid but the world also needs it's open access to the scientific corpus. The papers which have very little value adding editorial input do have a harder time legitimizing their slice of the pie, though.
- Mathnerd314 9y agoMaybe not open source, but an open hardware project. The particular problem for SpaceX is that a lot of the IP is covered by ITAR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_... See this FAQ entry: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/faq/company#wiki_what_patents_do_spacex_hold.3F_would_they_consider_releasing_them_like_tesla_motors_did.3F https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/faq/company#wiki_what_p... But in theory it's possible, e.g. Facebook's Open Compute Project, it just needs the right kind of funding model.
- Aeolun 9y agoTo be honest, there's a lot of things that could be done differently. It's just a matter of finding a way to do it that doesn't jeopardize the entire business.
- soVeryTired 9y agoHonest question: what is it you do that adds value?
- Aeolun 9y agoI personally work on the Nature Index
- moyix 9y agoYeah, just to spell out how things work in CS for the things you mentioned: > Peer review Organized and performed by volunteers. > curating for quality Ditto. > editing, typesetting Done by authors (LaTeX isn't perfect, but it gets you "good enough" typesetting. And the last time a journal edited a paper of mine they mangled it because the person editing wasn't familiar with technical topics & jargon). > creating physical copies No one needs these any more; they just print the PDF if necessary.
- fsloth 9y agoSure, I think organizing the peer review process has some merit. I don't have an opinion if that's the optimal way to do it. Thus I wrote that older papers should be available for free. If not hosted on the journal servers then available free of copy right issues elsewhere.
- mirimir 9y agoSure, they can. If they don't extract monopoly-level rents.
- 4bpp 9y agoNobody is talking about forcing publishers to do anything, though. If demanding free access to electronic copies of papers actually makes their business untenable as they claim, they should put their money where their mouth is and shut it down; at that point, based on what will replace it, we will see how much value they actually added to society.
- Ar-Curunir 9y agoThey do none of that now; they provide nothing of value; they only ride on the coattails of prestigious venues and on the backs of reviewers' hard work.
- Thriptic 9y agoI disagree. Journal publishers provide value by crafting in house editorials and industry news pieces, soliciting review papers on pertinent topics, suggesting editorials for controversial works, and by filtering out obviously crappy manuscripts. High quality, higher impact journals (Science, Nature, NEJM, JAMA etc) do these things and I believe they add a lot of value. Lower impact journals are basically glorified FTP front ends. They don't create content, validate that content, editorialize that content, or even select that content. They just host and charge an enormous premium for it.
- taneq 9y ago> Publishers can provide value [...] That's like saying that dictatorships can be a superior form of government, because they provide centralized planning and decision making at a much lower overall cost. True, current dictatorships don't do so... but the concept isn't invalid.
- icelancer 9y ago>Publishers can provide value, and should not be forced to do so at a loss. Yes, they can. But they don't. >Peer review, Free. Volunteers. >curating for quality, editing, typesetting, They don't do this. You are expected to do it all. Your papers are sent back for revisions and/or rejected by peer review editors and reviewers, who again, work for free. >and creating physical copies could be expensive. Physical copies cost additional money to acquire anyway.
- yladiz 9y ago> Free. Volunteers. I don't think this is a good solution, because in reality reviewing these papers is complicated work for people who have spent years, often times decades, in their field. They do deserve to be paid. I do think publishers provide tangible, real value, but often the value they provide is significantly outweighed by the problems that arise from the way they run their businesses.
- icelancer 9y ago>I don't think this is a good solution, because in reality reviewing these papers is complicated work for people who have spent years, often times decades, in their field. They do deserve to be paid. I absolutely agree. But this is not how it works and suggestions to pay reviewers is usually met with haughty academic nonsense. Publishers in academia (and in the normal book industry, to boot) add near zero value while extracting huge fees.
- rumcajz 9y agoEasy. Make raw articles public, then let publishers do the the value-add and sell the result.
- mirimir 9y agoYes, they priced themselves out of their market.