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> Many academic publishers have had trouble finding a sustainable business model I would say they have trouble finding an ethical business model. Most big acad

by avian 9y ago

> Many academic publishers have had trouble finding a sustainable business model I would say they have trouble finding an ethical business model. Most big academic publishers are printing money. Reviewers, many times also editors are unpaid while the publishers rack in publication fees from authors and/or subscriptions from readers. I fail to see how blockchain solves this issue.

IanCal 9y ago
Disclaimer: work for Digital Science, don't speak for them, all my own thoughts, have started on my beer advent calendar, etc I think many publishers really are having trouble finding a sustainable long term business model. That doesn't mean many aren't making money now, but there is a complex and difficult transition happening. There's a huge push towards open access, and "preprints" (a concept I can never really understand in a time when they don't actually print things). What can be charged for, where are the margins and most complicated of all: how do they get there from here? Where should the payment come from to build and host the infrastructure, manage the data quality, do the admin, etc? What out of those should even be done any more? > I fail to see how blockchain solves this issue. There are at least a few things I can think of: * Registering an experiment, like a clinical trial * Registering results * Having some evidence you've registered a method and proposal before gathering the results, all data in the open * Register, in the open, facts or results tied to you for credit when they're used * More, since I'm not really working on this side of things. I do work with bibliographic data though and I'd love and append only log of publication data people pushed to. But then if everything was clear, it wouldn't be useful to offer a bit of money to gather ideas and try something out, would it? Worst case, the company loses some money but makes some contacts for people with interesting ideas in the field.

by avian 9y ago

IanCal 9y ago

Disclaimer: work for Digital Science, don't speak for them, all my own thoughts, have started on my beer advent calendar, etc I think many publishers really are having trouble finding a sustainable long term business model. That doesn't mean many aren't making money now, but there is a complex and difficult transition happening. There's a huge push towards open access, and "preprints" (a concept I can never really understand in a time when they don't actually print things). What can be charged for, where are the margins and most complicated of all: how do they get there from here? Where should the payment come from to build and host the infrastructure, manage the data quality, do the admin, etc? What out of those should even be done any more? > I fail to see how blockchain solves this issue. There are at least a few things I can think of: * Registering an experiment, like a clinical trial * Registering results * Having some evidence you've registered a method and proposal before gathering the results, all data in the open * Register, in the open, facts or results tied to you for credit when they're used * More, since I'm not really working on this side of things. I do work with bibliographic data though and I'd love and append only log of publication data people pushed to. But then if everything was clear, it wouldn't be useful to offer a bit of money to gather ideas and try something out, would it? Worst case, the company loses some money but makes some contacts for people with interesting ideas in the field.