9 ms·

The alternative business model that the world is moving to is Open Access. The difference being that instead of paying to access the journal or paper, the resea

The alternative business model that the world is moving to is Open Access. The difference being that instead of paying to access the journal or paper, the researcher or institution that wishes to publish pays up front to have the paper published. Open Access has its own problems, such as predatory journals, where researchers who don't know better or who are desperate to publish are more or less lied to as to the reach and validity of a journal. It has become an area ripe for a new kind of scammers. This has prompted efforts such as Think, Check, Submit[1]. There's also the problem with raising the funds to publish something as Open Access. It's not always the case that the researcher actually has the means to pay for Open Access. Nevertheless, Open Access is clearly the way where the research community is headed, and we're going to see a steady growth in percentage of research published as such over the next decade or so. But it does come with its own set of problems to solve. 1: https://thinkchecksubmit.org/ https://thinkchecksubmit.org/

dramaking 9y ago
Yup. PLOS was founded partially to do just that - prove that Open Access can work as a business model.
denzil_correa 9y ago
> The alternative business model that the world is moving to is Open Access. That's one of the possible alternative, not the only alternative. Another alternative would be to have peer review as done today where authors pay for PDF hosting, server maintenance costs etc. and not the cost of "publishing" as in the traditional sense.
- fnordsensei 9y ago
  Agreed, clearly not the only model. But it's the one that seems to be gathering the most momentum at the moment.
jfaucett 9y ago
I'm going to be honest. IMHO publishing a paper should be like doing a PR on github and there is no reason it shouldn't be. You do your research, read the "PR" i.e. submission guidelines and submit it, - sure let the committer and reviewers be anonymized until the PR has been accepted - then just pull it into a "Repo" aka journal and be done. How can this process cost tons of money?
- philipodonnell 9y ago
  How would you incentivize peer review with your approach?
  - codelord 9y ago
    Do you think Springer pays for reviewing? No publisher does. It's all voluntary work by the same people who write the papers. It's the modern day slavery.
    - philipodonnell 9y ago
      The parent comment implied that reviewers would be anonymized with this Github-based approach unless the PR was approved, which seems like it would lead to more acceptances so that the reviewers could get credit.
  - jfaucett 9y ago
    First, I'd question that you really need to incentivize it. People - myself included - are doing research in a topic because they are passionate about it and most are more than happy to look at new research and ideas about things they are passionate about. Will you really need incentivization to get people to interact with the topic they have devoted their life towards studying? Let's say however that you need incentivization, I suppose one approach would be at a legislative level where you require all researchers publish on a decentralized open access platform where every citizen - they are the one's funding the research after all - can freely and uninhibitedly access the information.
    - philipodonnell 9y ago
      > Will you really need incentivization to get people to interact with the topic they have devoted their life towards studying? Perhaps not. But people keep telling me in this thread that reviewers work because the journals expect them to or they will get future papers rejected/lose conference access, not for the love of the topic or because they get paid or otherwise any kind of special visibility for it. I wonder whether an approach that promised only publicity for having done reviews or relying on altruism would really produce the quality of reviews necessary. > I suppose one approach would be at a legislative level where you require all researchers publish on a decentralized open access platform where every citizen - they are the one's funding the research after all - can freely and uninhibitedly access the information. That's not really incentivizing the _reviewers_, though, right?
a3_nm 9y ago
It is not true that all open-access venues require authors to pay article processing charges (APCs) to publish with them. For instance, in my field, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Methods_in_Computer_Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Methods_in_Computer_Sc... is a reputable journal which is free to read and free to publish; it is hosted by the Épisciences platform which is managed by a French public agency (CCSD). People usually use the name "diamond open access" to refer to such journals, which I believe are the best direction for scholarly publishing. By contrast, we talk of "gold open access" to refer to the situation where traditional publishers charge APCs: as you point out, this approach has several problems, in particular the fact that the APCs are often extortionate (e.g., $2000 for a 12-page PDF provided by the authors in a completely typeset and publishable form). However it's not correct to say that open access is expensive -- that's only the case if one stays with traditional publishers. It's also important to keep in mind that "Think, Check, Submit" is an initiative backed by traditional publishers (of the "gold open access" kind), and I think they are making this a bigger problem than it actually is. In my area, everyone knows which conferences/journals are reputable, and everyone knows that all others are essentially scams (especially if they have APCs). I have never seen anyone make the mistake of publishing valuable material with a scam publisher.
- jokla 9y ago
  This. Besides "diamond open access" some in the open access community try to establish the "fair open access principles" [1]. For a journal to comply to these principles means that they are owned by the scholarly community, free for authors and readers, authors retain copyright, and any other costs paid by the journal to a publisher are low and reasonable. We have started to put up a network for journals that follow these principles with the "Free Journal Network" [2] to promote and support each other. Concerning other comments on funding, I wanted to add that some journals don't need much money (hosting is basically free, workload shared well by editorial board). On the other hand funding can and does come from universities and their libraries (money not spend on subscriptions), research institutions, museums, and donations (sometimes seen as volountary APCs by those who have the money from grants). [1] https://www.fairopenaccess.org https://www.fairopenaccess.org [2] http://freejournals.org/ http://freejournals.org/
- 9y ago
lotophage 9y ago
> the researcher or institution that wishes to publish pays up front to have the paper published Isn't this the case with the subscription-based model as well?
- javitury 9y ago
  Yes, many top journals charge for both subscription and publishing. The only thing that open access journals lack is reputation in many fields (low number of good citations). Hopefully this will change in the next few years.
hatmatrix 9y ago
I am curious who/what administration is impressed by publications in predatory journals when listed on a researcher's CV. P.S. Jeffrey Beall kept a list of predatory publishers but was shut down. > In January 2017, Beall shut down his blog and removed all its content, citing pressure from his employer.[] Beall's supervisor wrote a response stating that he did not pressure Beall to discontinue his work, or threaten his employment; and had tried hard to support Beall's academic freedom.[]
aaron695 9y ago
> such as predatory journals, where researchers who don't know better Not so sure I want to read their research if they know so little about the literature they want to publish in? How on earth can they know if it's old news? How on earth can they know if it's plain wrong? How on earth can they know basic standards to allow correct publishing of their data?
dmitriz 9y ago
> The alternative business model that the world is moving to is Open Access. The difference being that instead of paying to access the journal or paper, the researcher or institution that wishes to publish pays up front to have the paper published. Open Access is not a business model. It is about the Access, as the name says. The author pays is a business model, not the best one, and is the one with many problems. See the Fair Open Access Principles https://www.fairopenaccess.org/ https://www.fairopenaccess.org/ and the Publishing Reform Discussion Forum https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues > Open Access has its own problems, such as predatory journals, where researchers who don't know better or who are desperate to publish are more or less lied to as to the reach and validity of a journal. This is not specific to Open Access, there are low quality subscription journals as well. No serious scientist would send articles to unknown journals without checking their credentials, whether the journals are open access or not.

dramaking 9y ago

Yup. PLOS was founded partially to do just that - prove that Open Access can work as a business model.

denzil_correa 9y ago

> The alternative business model that the world is moving to is Open Access. That's one of the possible alternative, not the only alternative. Another alternative would be to have peer review as done today where authors pay for PDF hosting, server maintenance costs etc. and not the cost of "publishing" as in the traditional sense.

fnordsensei 9y ago
Agreed, clearly not the only model. But it's the one that seems to be gathering the most momentum at the moment.

jfaucett 9y ago

I'm going to be honest. IMHO publishing a paper should be like doing a PR on github and there is no reason it shouldn't be. You do your research, read the "PR" i.e. submission guidelines and submit it, - sure let the committer and reviewers be anonymized until the PR has been accepted - then just pull it into a "Repo" aka journal and be done. How can this process cost tons of money?

philipodonnell 9y ago
How would you incentivize peer review with your approach?
- codelord 9y ago
  Do you think Springer pays for reviewing? No publisher does. It's all voluntary work by the same people who write the papers. It's the modern day slavery.
  - philipodonnell 9y ago
    The parent comment implied that reviewers would be anonymized with this Github-based approach unless the PR was approved, which seems like it would lead to more acceptances so that the reviewers could get credit.
- jfaucett 9y ago
  First, I'd question that you really need to incentivize it. People - myself included - are doing research in a topic because they are passionate about it and most are more than happy to look at new research and ideas about things they are passionate about. Will you really need incentivization to get people to interact with the topic they have devoted their life towards studying? Let's say however that you need incentivization, I suppose one approach would be at a legislative level where you require all researchers publish on a decentralized open access platform where every citizen - they are the one's funding the research after all - can freely and uninhibitedly access the information.
  - philipodonnell 9y ago
    > Will you really need incentivization to get people to interact with the topic they have devoted their life towards studying? Perhaps not. But people keep telling me in this thread that reviewers work because the journals expect them to or they will get future papers rejected/lose conference access, not for the love of the topic or because they get paid or otherwise any kind of special visibility for it. I wonder whether an approach that promised only publicity for having done reviews or relying on altruism would really produce the quality of reviews necessary. > I suppose one approach would be at a legislative level where you require all researchers publish on a decentralized open access platform where every citizen - they are the one's funding the research after all - can freely and uninhibitedly access the information. That's not really incentivizing the _reviewers_, though, right?

a3_nm 9y ago

It is not true that all open-access venues require authors to pay article processing charges (APCs) to publish with them. For instance, in my field, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Methods_in_Computer_Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Methods_in_Computer_Sc... is a reputable journal which is free to read and free to publish; it is hosted by the Épisciences platform which is managed by a French public agency (CCSD). People usually use the name "diamond open access" to refer to such journals, which I believe are the best direction for scholarly publishing. By contrast, we talk of "gold open access" to refer to the situation where traditional publishers charge APCs: as you point out, this approach has several problems, in particular the fact that the APCs are often extortionate (e.g., $2000 for a 12-page PDF provided by the authors in a completely typeset and publishable form). However it's not correct to say that open access is expensive -- that's only the case if one stays with traditional publishers. It's also important to keep in mind that "Think, Check, Submit" is an initiative backed by traditional publishers (of the "gold open access" kind), and I think they are making this a bigger problem than it actually is. In my area, everyone knows which conferences/journals are reputable, and everyone knows that all others are essentially scams (especially if they have APCs). I have never seen anyone make the mistake of publishing valuable material with a scam publisher.

jokla 9y ago
This. Besides "diamond open access" some in the open access community try to establish the "fair open access principles" [1]. For a journal to comply to these principles means that they are owned by the scholarly community, free for authors and readers, authors retain copyright, and any other costs paid by the journal to a publisher are low and reasonable. We have started to put up a network for journals that follow these principles with the "Free Journal Network" [2] to promote and support each other. Concerning other comments on funding, I wanted to add that some journals don't need much money (hosting is basically free, workload shared well by editorial board). On the other hand funding can and does come from universities and their libraries (money not spend on subscriptions), research institutions, museums, and donations (sometimes seen as volountary APCs by those who have the money from grants). [1] https://www.fairopenaccess.org https://www.fairopenaccess.org [2] http://freejournals.org/ http://freejournals.org/
9y ago

lotophage 9y ago

> the researcher or institution that wishes to publish pays up front to have the paper published Isn't this the case with the subscription-based model as well?

javitury 9y ago
Yes, many top journals charge for both subscription and publishing. The only thing that open access journals lack is reputation in many fields (low number of good citations). Hopefully this will change in the next few years.

hatmatrix 9y ago

I am curious who/what administration is impressed by publications in predatory journals when listed on a researcher's CV. P.S. Jeffrey Beall kept a list of predatory publishers but was shut down. > In January 2017, Beall shut down his blog and removed all its content, citing pressure from his employer.[] Beall's supervisor wrote a response stating that he did not pressure Beall to discontinue his work, or threaten his employment; and had tried hard to support Beall's academic freedom.[]

aaron695 9y ago

> such as predatory journals, where researchers who don't know better Not so sure I want to read their research if they know so little about the literature they want to publish in? How on earth can they know if it's old news? How on earth can they know if it's plain wrong? How on earth can they know basic standards to allow correct publishing of their data?

dmitriz 9y ago

> The alternative business model that the world is moving to is Open Access. The difference being that instead of paying to access the journal or paper, the researcher or institution that wishes to publish pays up front to have the paper published. Open Access is not a business model. It is about the Access, as the name says. The author pays is a business model, not the best one, and is the one with many problems. See the Fair Open Access Principles https://www.fairopenaccess.org/ https://www.fairopenaccess.org/ and the Publishing Reform Discussion Forum https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues > Open Access has its own problems, such as predatory journals, where researchers who don't know better or who are desperate to publish are more or less lied to as to the reach and validity of a journal. This is not specific to Open Access, there are low quality subscription journals as well. No serious scientist would send articles to unknown journals without checking their credentials, whether the journals are open access or not.