9 ms·

Best of luck. Elsevier and other giants are putting significant resources in mimicking free and open structures in their portfolio to hide the infamy of their b

Best of luck. Elsevier and other giants are putting significant resources in mimicking free and open structures in their portfolio to hide the infamy of their business model (selling a few bytes of publicly funded research over and over again). To the average decision maker these "new models" will sound perfectly fine. The EU want to make all research public by 2020? Elsevier and other have very deep pockets, so my guess would be 2025 at the earliest.

karllager 9y ago
> so my guess would be 2025 at the earliest. And since we are in guessing mode, here is another one: In a few years we will have multiple sci-hubs and pirate edu sites so by the time the public arrives at completely free research, it won't even be a victory any more - just a symbol of the wretchedness of their fight - which, by then, will make everybody wonder, why it took so long.
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  While SciHub etc. will help to liberate research for individuals, it won't stop university libraries from spending a lot of money on legacy journal subscriptions just yet.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Maybe, but: > Gowers hopes that German negotiators and Elsevier will both ‘refuse to budge’ and that contract talks break with no agreement. Under such a scenario he believes it will become clear that Germany’s researchers have not suffered any serious inconvenience. ‘This, I believe, is what would truly embolden other countries and lead to a collapse of the current system.’
denzil_correa 9y ago
> Elsevier and other giants are putting significant resources in mimicking free and open structures in their portfolio to hide the infamy of their business model (selling a few bytes of publicly funded research over and over again) This is the key aspect here which everyone needs to address. Just moving from a subscription model to "open access" where you still pay 2000$ per article won't solve or alleviate the problem.
- chestervonwinch 9y ago
  Doesn't "open access" usual mean free-of-charge access the articles (but perhaps at the expense of an open access, publishing fee to the author)? If not, in what sense are they using the term "open access"? Could you link to an example of what you or the parent commenter are referring to?
  - StreamBright 9y ago
    Why do you need to pay for? What is the service being rendered? I do not think that Elsevier provides any value here.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      Advocates of the existing system say that they provide a) the good name of their journal which stems from b) the selection that they're doing, i.e. prestigious papers pride themselves with only publishing the best works of their field. EDIT: If I had to build a publishing system for research papers, I'd probably have something like Arxiv as a basis, i.e. a site with huge storage capacity where everyone can upload papers given that some basic quality criteria are met (formatting etc.). Then, the role of journals would be performed by reviewers that curate a collection of interesting papers for their readers. It could be integrated right into the same site, similar to how reviewers work e.g. on Steam.
      - jasode 9y ago
        >Then, the role of journals would be performed by reviewers that curate a collection of interesting papers for their readers. You're skipping a step. The journals' editorial staff performs a quality filter on the submissions before any reviewers/referees even see it. E.g. see the process of a prestigious journal like Nature.[1] With your proposal, the reviewers with specialized knowledge (e.g. theoretical physicist that understands the bleeding edge of string theory) would have to wade through 1000 papers about "aliens from outer space prove that flat Earth is real." Or mathematicians would waste time with endless crackpot papers that supposedly proved "P=NP". Since no rational referee with limited time would suffer through that for free, the platform would inevitably require a filter of some sort. Since it's human nature to not want to do something for free ... voila ... you end up recreating another "Elsevier" as middleman again. If an intermediary becomes good at filtering papers for referees and sets a consistent quality bar for readers (subscribers), its human nature to want to be paid for that effort. Some people wonder why journals exist. They exist because people want them to exist even though they don't realize it. The accumulation of prestige and reputation for curating quality is not free. Instead of questioning the legitimacy of intermediaries, it's more productive to accept them as a natural emergence of humans' finite time that prevents both reviewers & readers from slogging through an infinite sea of worthless material. If we acknowledge that something like Elsevier must exist in some form, this lets us concentrate on the recreating the curation platform in a more cost-efficient manner. (You can't do it for free... because charging $0 will not work for the reviewers nor the readers -- even though some in this thread think it does. Sturgeon's Law is applicable here.[2]) [1] e.g. Nature's submission and approval process: http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/get_published/index.html?foxtrotcallback=true http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/get_published/index.htm... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

karllager 9y ago

> so my guess would be 2025 at the earliest. And since we are in guessing mode, here is another one: In a few years we will have multiple sci-hubs and pirate edu sites so by the time the public arrives at completely free research, it won't even be a victory any more - just a symbol of the wretchedness of their fight - which, by then, will make everybody wonder, why it took so long.

Freak_NL 9y ago
While SciHub etc. will help to liberate research for individuals, it won't stop university libraries from spending a lot of money on legacy journal subscriptions just yet.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Maybe, but: > Gowers hopes that German negotiators and Elsevier will both ‘refuse to budge’ and that contract talks break with no agreement. Under such a scenario he believes it will become clear that Germany’s researchers have not suffered any serious inconvenience. ‘This, I believe, is what would truly embolden other countries and lead to a collapse of the current system.’

denzil_correa 9y ago

> Elsevier and other giants are putting significant resources in mimicking free and open structures in their portfolio to hide the infamy of their business model (selling a few bytes of publicly funded research over and over again) This is the key aspect here which everyone needs to address. Just moving from a subscription model to "open access" where you still pay 2000$ per article won't solve or alleviate the problem.

chestervonwinch 9y ago
Doesn't "open access" usual mean free-of-charge access the articles (but perhaps at the expense of an open access, publishing fee to the author)? If not, in what sense are they using the term "open access"? Could you link to an example of what you or the parent commenter are referring to?
- StreamBright 9y ago
  Why do you need to pay for? What is the service being rendered? I do not think that Elsevier provides any value here.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Advocates of the existing system say that they provide a) the good name of their journal which stems from b) the selection that they're doing, i.e. prestigious papers pride themselves with only publishing the best works of their field. EDIT: If I had to build a publishing system for research papers, I'd probably have something like Arxiv as a basis, i.e. a site with huge storage capacity where everyone can upload papers given that some basic quality criteria are met (formatting etc.). Then, the role of journals would be performed by reviewers that curate a collection of interesting papers for their readers. It could be integrated right into the same site, similar to how reviewers work e.g. on Steam.
    - jasode 9y ago
      >Then, the role of journals would be performed by reviewers that curate a collection of interesting papers for their readers. You're skipping a step. The journals' editorial staff performs a quality filter on the submissions before any reviewers/referees even see it. E.g. see the process of a prestigious journal like Nature.[1] With your proposal, the reviewers with specialized knowledge (e.g. theoretical physicist that understands the bleeding edge of string theory) would have to wade through 1000 papers about "aliens from outer space prove that flat Earth is real." Or mathematicians would waste time with endless crackpot papers that supposedly proved "P=NP". Since no rational referee with limited time would suffer through that for free, the platform would inevitably require a filter of some sort. Since it's human nature to not want to do something for free ... voila ... you end up recreating another "Elsevier" as middleman again. If an intermediary becomes good at filtering papers for referees and sets a consistent quality bar for readers (subscribers), its human nature to want to be paid for that effort. Some people wonder why journals exist. They exist because people want them to exist even though they don't realize it. The accumulation of prestige and reputation for curating quality is not free. Instead of questioning the legitimacy of intermediaries, it's more productive to accept them as a natural emergence of humans' finite time that prevents both reviewers & readers from slogging through an infinite sea of worthless material. If we acknowledge that something like Elsevier must exist in some form, this lets us concentrate on the recreating the curation platform in a more cost-efficient manner. (You can't do it for free... because charging $0 will not work for the reviewers nor the readers -- even though some in this thread think it does. Sturgeon's Law is applicable here.[2]) [1] e.g. Nature's submission and approval process: http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/get_published/index.html?foxtrotcallback=true http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/get_published/index.htm... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law