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Sweden ends contract with Elsevier, moving for open access for science articles
- aurizon 8y agoGood, now the Nobel Committee should say it will only consider science published in open source journals for future Nobel prizes...
- mirimir 8y agoExcellent idea. Wish I'd thought of that :) It's arguable that stuff isn't actually in the public record if access requires payments.
- aurizon 8y agoElsevier is a criminal enterprise, nothing more, nothing less...
- rreichman 8y agoWe gotta stop enabling them. If we demand that publicly funded universities adopt open access Elsevier will be gone in a few years. And of course I'm not recommending Sci-Hub because it's illegal but worth mentioning it...
- damontal 8y agoHow will Elsevier be gone if it controls so much of the content used in citations?
- rreichman 8y agoOver time I believe more content will be published in open access journals. In Machine Learning this is already quite common and it's amazing.
- dagw 8y agoIf we demand that publicly funded universities adopt open access Elsevier will be gone in a few years. Elsevier will happily publish your papers as open access (for a small service fee).
- Vinnl 8y agoUnfortunately, funders don't want to restrict where researchers can publish the work (in order to prevent themselves from being able to silence results they might not like, i.e. hinder "academic freedom"). This means that this demand is implemented by simply paying hugely disproportionate publishing fees ("article processing charges") to the same old journals to make the individual articles they funded available as open access.
- ademup 8y agoI would appreciate an explanation of this assertion. What makes them criminal?
- mirimir 8y agoAs far as I know, they're not breaking any laws, so they're not criminals. Basically, over the years, they acquired a bunch of academic publishers that were effectively not-for-profit. And since, they've been raising prices. Harvesting market position. Sure, that's not illegal. But it's arguably immoral.
- aurizon 8y agoWell, not criminal, nor is Disney, but people who bribe law makers to extend copyright to defeat the purpose of copyright seem criminal to me. Remember, copyright was made to give authors a period of monopoly, then open source. What if Microsoft bribed law makers to extend patents for 100 years? or drug makers?
- creddit 8y agoExtreme hyperbole like this rarely helps your case. Please try to elevate your discussion. Elsevier is a significant drain on public benefit relative to free/open journals but that doesn't make them criminal.
- belorn 8y agoResearch that is funded by the public for the public is being put in the hand of for-profit organizations like Elsevier and then held private unless someone pays. Its not criminal but it is also more than just a drain on public benefit relative to free/open journals. Its like if we paid taxes to build and maintain roads and bridges, only to have the constructor give the rights of the finished result to a toll-both company in order so they could evaluate and rate how good the individual construction workers are and make it easier to promote and hire them in the future. It make no sense for any practical profession to behave like this, and yet thats how academia has operated for ages. It is time that the public get what it paid for.
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- s0rce 8y agoUnless you think you are really likely to win one its still going to be important for your more immediate-term career to publish in high impact journals, of which most aren't open access (ex. Nature/Science).
- evrydayhustling 8y agoLove this. GenBank had a similar tactic - got Journals where people published sequencing papers to say they won't publish any results that haven't been uploaded to GenBank. Created an anchor resource that led to computational biologists having world class shared datasets and evolving the field much faster.
- Vinnl 8y agoI think the Nobel prize is not what drives most researchers. Rather, tenure track and grant application committees should only consider open access research. However, obviously their main concern is finding the "best" applicants, not changing the scholarly publishing ecosystem, and doing so would help the former but arguably hinder the latter.
- PeterisP 8y agoIf research grant funding calls would require the results to be published in open access journals, the field would switch pretty much overnight.
- Vinnl 8y agoI made this point elsewhere as well, but: > Unfortunately, funders don't want to restrict where researchers can publish the work (in order to prevent themselves from being able to silence results they might not like, i.e. hinder "academic freedom"). This means that this demand is implemented by simply paying hugely disproportionate publishing fees ("article processing charges") to the same old journals to make the individual articles they funded available as open access.
- smaddox 8y agoThat's an absurd rationalization, and I don't believe it. First, it's an absurd rationalization because all the finding agencies need to do is say "starting Jan 2019, all research papers funded by this fund must be open access; each violation results in $1k reduction in the grant", and any journals that don't yet have the option would provide a ~$1k open access publishing option. Second, I don't believe the rationalization is what's really going on. I think there just aren't any/enough people at the funding agencies that care.
- Vinnl 8y agoAs for your first point: that is in fact what is happening. It's somewhat of a "loophole" in that is has allowed funders to mandate open access without restricting academic freedom, by simply making money available to publish those single articles as open access. The downside then is that it still leads to public funds being wasted: rather than paying money to access research, it is paid to publish it. The costs are then still disproportionate to the actual service provided, and it's still a barrier to inclusivity in academia (e.g. towards researchers in developing countries or in industry). I expanded on this in more detail at https://medium.com/flockademic/to-fix-scholarly-publishing-decouple-credentialing-from-publishing-29b211f49acc https://medium.com/flockademic/to-fix-scholarly-publishing-d... As for your second point: obviously there are many funding agencies, and surely people don't care at some. I was mostly referring to those who do want to promote the adoption of open access, such as the Gates Foundation or the Wellcome Trust (and many national funding bodies). They have absolutely come out making the above argument. They're really hesitant about this (although without a doubt also due to lobbying by the traditional publishers), which is laudable but also exacerbates the problem. (Note also that they do have reason to be hesitant: science has seen a lot of pushback in the past, so these lessons have been hard-won and are ingrained in their DNA. Any movement that appears to go in the direction of the times when the catholic church could limit the adoption of scientific theories is met with heavy scepticism.)
- mirimir 8y agoAnd with Sci-Hub still alive, Sweden etc have more leverage.
- lokedhs 8y agoThe article links to this page about how to find articles: http://openaccess.blogg.kb.se/openaccess-definition/hitta-oppna-artiklar/ http://openaccess.blogg.kb.se/openaccess-definition/hitta-op... (in Swedish) Neither that page nor any of the linked pages mention sci-hub. I can see why they don't, but I guess all researchers know about it already.
- igravious 8y agoI had trouble getting to Sci-Hub and LibGen at my uni (this was about a month ago) and I don't know if it was my uni's firewall or the recent court ruling smack-downs in earlier this month[0] and last November[1]. I just checked from home and I found https://sci-hub.tw/ https://sci-hub.tw/ and http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ work okay for me so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [0] https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-pirate-bay-for-science-security-certs-revoked-by-comodo-ca-180503/ https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-pirate-bay-for-science-secu... [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/23/sci_hubs_become_inactive_following_court_order/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/23/sci_hubs_become_ina...
- plopilop 8y agoSci-Hub's DNSs often change due to ISP blacklisting and such. However Wikipedia has a pretty reliable list of still alive DNS/IPs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
- Cenk 8y agoI try to keep this list up to date with the latest links: https://citationsy.com/blog/download-research-papers-scientific-articles-free-sci-hub/ https://citationsy.com/blog/download-research-papers-scienti... Citationsy also has a similar feature built-in: https://citationsy.com/blog/new-feature-citationsy-archives/ https://citationsy.com/blog/new-feature-citationsy-archives/
- digitalmaster 8y agoThe more democratic you are as a nation, the more time elected officials spend thinking about ways to improve the lives of ordinary people (not just those in power). Been considering moving to one of the countries high on the democracy index to work/code and pay taxes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
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- halflings 8y agoI've got to say, political debates in Scandinavia have nothing to do with what you see in the US. People are debating the real problems (education, housing, healthcare, etc.) instead of focusing on inter-party rivalries.
- vladTheInhaler 8y agoI watched the debate between the party leaders recently and the level of conversation really struck me. That's not to say that there aren't problems - the Sweden Democrats have basically succeeded in wedging immigration into every single conversation. But there seems to still be an appreciation for serious policy and statesmanship.
- adventured 8y agoYou see the same thing in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, etc. In the US, on average if you want to see a better form of political discourse, you have to move toward more local politics (whether state, county, city, town). Sweden = local politics. It's a small nation. 25% of their population lives in just four cities. Directly comparing the whole of the US to Sweden is absurdity. One would expect a dramatic increase in messy national politics if you took 33 Swedens and put them under a Federal authority.
- sebcat 8y ago
- foo101 8y agoI am surprised that it took so long after the invention of the Internet. In the pre-Internet era, these journals used to play a significant role in distributing research papers in physical paper form. It made sense then. There was no way to copy a 10 page research paper from Germany to China with a few finger taps at low cost. But with the advent of the Internet and its pervasiveness, it no longer makes sense to rely on a costly media based on physical printing, distribution, and centralized organizations milking money out of it. I remember Timothy Gowers calling for a boycott of Elsevier back in 2012. It's 6 years since then and Elsevier is still alive. Influential researchers still submit their work to Elsevier! It took less time (a few weeks?) for everyone to boycott Digg! It's surprising how the Internet has been used to distribute cat videos, advertisements, time-draining, and attention-draining content to a sickening degree but it is still underutilized to distribute good content like research papers such that the Internet becomes the primary and de facto media for such content.
- Iv 8y agoBecause as techies we fail to recognize that some things are the way they are not for lack of a better alternative, but because of entrenched interests. I am still amazed that the record industry managed to shut down what was likely to be the next iteration of internet: P2P exchanges. Now we have a centralized youtube solving in a bad way what eDonkey+VLC could have solved for two decades already.
- Razengan 8y ago> P2P exchanges. Now we have a centralized youtube solving in a bad way what eDonkey+VLC could have solved for two decades already. Hey, that can still happen..
- netheril96 8y agoHere in China, where privacy is rampant, P2P dies because of lack of public IPs.
- snovv_crash 8y ago
- Ma8ee 8y agoSome more details for those of us who would like to know who “Sweden” is in these circumstances. This kind of decisions are usually not taken on the level of the national government. http://openaccess.blogg.kb.se/2018/05/16/sweden-stands-up-for-open-access-cancels-agreement-with-elsevier/ http://openaccess.blogg.kb.se/2018/05/16/sweden-stands-up-fo...
- gforge 8y agoCool, odd that I as a Swedish researcher haven't heard of this... Maybe they ment Switzerland - people have major difficulties discerning the two. Tack, ha en bra dag!
- Vinnl 8y agoNope, it's Sweden :) Much is still unclear though, as these negotiations were done on the level of the universities, so even academic librarians don't fully know what this might mean to e.g. their budgets, and whether they can invest the money saved in open research infrastructure.
- makecheck 8y agoAs with other online transfers, actually publishing/reading material has become the easy part and a whole pile of issues with security cropped up instead. (You don’t even really need a publisher to help with notoriety, if your stuff already shows up easily on Google.) I wish that Elsevier was being paid to solve a bunch of hard security problems but they seem to just be an expensive paywall. For example, do they provide a block chain or other trusted time stamp solution to make it easy to prove that a publication was “first” (no matter who decides to steal a file and copy/paste their own name as author instead)? I’d really like to see those kinds of things become mainstream defaults for publishing. Right now the main downside to just throwing files on random web sites is that they don’t typically have those security elements, making it easy to steal and hard to authenticate what you’re seeing.
- Vinnl 8y agoJournals do usually list the submission date, I believe. Otherwise, submitting your work to a preprint server can prove that you were first (assuming you trust the preprint server), although in some fields, journal publication is still the only thing recognised as planting the pole. You'd only need blockchain if you don't trust the preprint servers, but I don't think there's reason not to.
- Radim 8y agoI worked in the scientific publishing industry. Not directly for Elsevier, but we had dealings with them too. Many people here view Elsevier as this evil nebulous entity. Leaving "evil" aside, like every large business, Elsevier is composed to people, some of them very smart. Which is to say Elsevier has seen this "open access" movement coming for a better part of a decade now, just like everyone else. As far back as 2011 the industry has been inventing ways to make "open access" as profitable as the current system (ideally, even more). Green open access, gold open access, diamond and hybrid; moving walls, paywalls, article processing charges… Having seen the sausage made, I guess I'm a little cynical about "open access". I see it devoid of the idealistic "stick it to the man" connotations, and more like another feel-good buzzword scam.
- petepete 8y ago> As far back as 2011 the industry has been inventing ways to make "open access" as profitable as the current system If that's what they were doing, nothing could better demonstrate that they missed the point entirely and misunderstand the word 'open'.
- mijamo 8y agoMany companies fell despite having many smart people working for them. I would say every semi-big company probably has many smart people working for them. That does not prevent them from doing very stupid/bad/evil things, and sometimes disappearing. The fact that they anticipated the move does not mean anything regarding their future, just like Kodak with digital photography for instance. Taken differently, maybe you see a tsunami coming from very far away and are able to even calculate how strong it is and when it will come, but that does not mean you will be able to save your house in the seafront ;)
- Radim 8y agoSure. My point was not only did Elsevier see the "tsunami" coming, they also prepared for it profusely. Using a combination of legislation, regulation, lobbying and technology. Obviously any company can fail. I'm just offering a little inside information that pushes back against the notion that Elsevier is a static, dumb, backward-facing entity, taken completely by surprise by this new-fangled thing called "open access". Not the case.
- unicornporn 8y agoBlog spam. Go here: http://openaccess.blogg.kb.se/2018/05/16/sweden-stands-up-for-open-access-cancels-agreement-with-elsevier/ http://openaccess.blogg.kb.se/2018/05/16/sweden-stands-up-fo...
- igravious 8y agoYes. Just came here to say that the linked to site appears to be a content aggregator and that the original article is here: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/sweden-cancels-elsevier-contract-open-access-dispute-spreads https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/sweden-cancels-els... Superb news though, couldn't happen to a nicer company.
- dang 8y agoURL belatedly changed from https://www.snip.today/post/sweden-ends-contract-with-science-publisher-elsevier-moving-for-open-access-for-scientific-articles/ https://www.snip.today/post/sweden-ends-contract-with-scienc.... I'm sorry we missed this earlier. All: it's helpful to email hn@ycombinator.com in cases like this because then we see it, and can act, quickly.
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- stevespang 8y agoHmmm, isn't there some way to reverse GDPR back on Elsevier ?
- kqr 8y ago> Starting June 30, Swedish researchers will no longer be publishing in Elsevier and will not have access to Elsevier magazines. Legality aside, given how high the usability of Sci-Hub is these days, I have no doubt in my mind about who got the short end of this stick...
- mistrial9 8y agolong ago, while working at a science software company, I was casually told by a co-worker that in Japan, science publishing is run by their mafia.. The scientists I saw were so busy, so intent and so disciplined, that no management topics were ever discussed. So I went to a US business school library and looked up some management-side statistics about profit-per-employee.. and saw that the science companies of the time had less than half the number of employees, typically, with large revenue. Some number of people are just predatory over profits, whatever the level of intelligence, legality and social status. Whatever the origins of this science conglomorate, you can bet that over the years, a crude extraction of profits via control of players, emerged.
- hokus 8y agoHere is a dumb thought I just had. What if in stead of a giant stack of hard to nav papers... ...what if in stead each discipline would aim to publish a book????! Each chapter would highlight the most important components of which the full version would be.... another book? tier 2 of the books would simply refer to papers to provide even more additional reading. The whole thing would keep it self up to date using version control and the closer to the front page of tier 1 the more extremely critical the review would be. An as-large-as-possible crowd sourced budget should be dedicated to reviewing and rewriting each of the book. Each would be freely available online but every self respecting nerd would want a copy on his bookshelves. A strict less is more policy would keep the books portable. Technicality of the tier 1 books should be limited as much as possible in order to fit in a little encyclopedia of terms and methods. By exposing the most important parts of a field to an audience as large as possible scientists would finally get the recognition they deserve which in turn would stimulate allocation of public funds. A truly absurd idea, there, I said so myself.
- AtomicOrbital 8y agoKnowledge will eventually be communicated by adding new information to a universal network which represents all known truths ... the act of ~publishing~ will be to add new nodes and/or edges ... this network will get launched by seeding it from culling all existing published papers however once it goes live the very idea of publishing research to any journal will become obsolete and counterproductive