6 ms·

Are you claiming that most research is already freely available and yet everyone is, for some unspecified reason, still paying publishers for an extraneous serv

Are you claiming that most research is already freely available and yet everyone is, for some unspecified reason, still paying publishers for an extraneous service? The NIH site links right to PubMed Central from which it seems like it'd be 'easy' to find a paper for which I know the title. None of the pages on the NSF site ever seemed to be intended for someone that's not contributing to the 'public access repository'. Would you demonstrate your claim and provide a link, for an article published in Nature, to the same freely available version that "must be made"? It seems pretty fantastic that libraries would spend taxpayer money for access to journals containing papers that are already freely available. I'm very confused why that would be.

gowld 8y ago
Can you give an example of a publicly-funded paper that you couldn't find on PubMed or another server, but a Nature or another closed journal offers for sale?
- aeorgnoieang 8y ago
  No. I usually assume that a paywalled article is just not (legitimately) available for free. But for the last paper I did want to read, I was able to find a free version.
- cjlars 8y ago
  I don't have the time to dig up an example, but it is a fairly common problem to run into. I went through the exercise of reviewing everything I could find related to a relatively specific business problem (marketing attribution) a few years ago and there were several papers that were locked behind a paywall without a free version available.
- nonbel 8y ago
  Sure, go to Nature Medicine: https://www.nature.com/nm/ https://www.nature.com/nm/ Click the first research article they show. It has various public funding sources: "The collection of the ELC and genetic data for the American samples was supported by direct funding from the Intramural Research Program of the NIMH to the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch (D.R.W., PI, protocol 95-M-0150, NCT00001486, annual report number: ZIA MH002942-05), with supplemental analytic support from the Clinical and Translational Neuroscience Branch (K.F.B., PI). G.U. received partial support from P50MH094268." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0021-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0021-y Check that other site: https://par.nsf.gov/search/term:%22Convergence%20of%20placenta%20biology%20and%20genetic%20risk%20for%20schizophrenia%22 https://par.nsf.gov/search/term:%22Convergence%20of%20placen...
  - nonbel 8y ago
    And here is the pubmed link (only abstract available): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29808008 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29808008
stilley2 8y ago
I picked an article that's about a year old in case there was an embargo before the free one could be made available. Paywalled nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature22040 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature22040 Free version: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5712493/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5712493/
- gowld 8y ago
  "embargo" is a bit of a weasel word -- a few weeks embargo, maybe OK. 6-months embargo paralyzes progress.
  - stilley2 8y ago
    Agreed. For the NIH it looks like the maximum is 12 months.
  - nonbel 8y ago
    >"6-months embargo paralyzes progress." As long as they put the code on github or a blog or whatever then who really cares? Do people really get that much out of these academic style papers in this field? They are more like a press release. Or are you saying this embargo also actively prevents them from sharing stuff beyond the document, like the code?
- aeorgnoieang 8y ago
  Thanks for the demo! That papers will eventually (and mostly) be freely available is good and I am surprised that that seems to be the case. Thanks for sharing this info! But an embargo or delay in publishing to the free access sites is probably sufficient for the existing closed-access journals to maintain their value. I can't imagine researchers, and thus universities, forgoing access to current research.
  - stilley2 8y ago
    I should point out that I believe these policies are relatively recent, so old articles may be paywalled for a while...
adventured 8y ago
The parent very clearly was not saying that most research is already freely available. You're incorrectly claiming that. The parent said in most cases regarding US taxpayer funded research, right here: > in most cases I know of (NSF and NIH funded research) US taxpayer funded research must be made freely available Besides that, you'd be surprised that people and organizations spend money on things they don't actually need to? In my experience that happens constantly in both business and government.
- aeorgnoieang 8y ago
  I didn't incorrectly claim anything about the parent. I was asking them if they were claiming what I thought they were claiming. Did you miss the question mark at the end of my first sentence? And it's pretty aggravating for you to quote the comment to which I directly replied. It's not even that long! I was surprised by the implied claim, or what I thought was being implied, because I'd suspect "US taxpayer funded research" would include almost all research done in the U.S. and yet I'm pretty sure that in fact lots of people struggle to find freely available papers and articles and that lots of academic organizations pay lots of money for journal access. The parent seemed to imply that 'everything' really was freely available.
jly 8y ago
> None of the pages on the NSF site ever seemed to be intended for someone that's not contributing to the 'public access repository'. I had this issue, too, but there is a simple search engine at this URL: https://par.nsf.gov https://par.nsf.gov
- aeorgnoieang 8y ago
  Thanks! That looks like exactly what I was missing.
Vinnl 8y ago
> Are you claiming that most research is already freely available and yet everyone is, for some unspecified reason, still paying publishers for an extraneous service? I'm not sure about the NSF, however: this is what is happening in some disciplines. ArXiv is the default method of sharing research in some fields, and also the default method of actually reading and reviewing those articles, yet people still submit their research to the traditional publishers, and people still either pay publishing or subscription charges to those publishers. That's because the service those publishers provide is not the publishing or making accessible of research, but the academic credentials one needs to advance their academic career. That's the "unspecified reason", and it's an incredible waste of money.
- aeorgnoieang 8y ago
  I'm with you on all of what you wrote and that is my understanding too. But you didn't explain, relative to how I interpreted the comment to which I initially replied, why, e.g. libraries, are paying so much money to access journals. If the default method for reading those articles is ArXiv, what's the point of paying a subscription to the other journals? My model of academia isn't that it's that dysfunctional. I'd expect enough internal pressure to re-allocate those funds if ('read') access was really unnecessary.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    Right, that's an interesting observation as well. The number of journals is huge. What this means is that libraries usually do not buy individual subscriptions. Instead, what happens is that they negotiate so-called "Big Deals" with the big traditional publishers. In other words, they pay a large sum of money for a package of subscriptions to a large number of journals from a single publisher. Typically, these packages contain a few of the really big name journals, and a really long tail of journals of varying relevance. Publishers also own many journals which presumably mainly exist to boost those numbers in order to negotiate a higher price, and also has the effect of removing downwards price pressure by decreasing transparency in the market. Theoretically, the per-journal price is a lot lower in such a big deal than individual subscriptions would have been, but it's not quite clear how many of those subscriptions you really need. Of course, "need" is already a vague term - preferably, all publicly funded research would be available in the first place, but that's not the world we currently live in. Unfortunately, that's both the reason why adding a subscription journal instead of an Open Access one is bad, as well as why a boycott doesn't affect much change other than that resulting of its publicity. On the scale of those big deals, saying "we don't need that specific ML journal since interesting research hardly gets submitted there" doesn't drive the collective price down that much. (In fact, I'd wager that those prices are mostly driven by how far librarians managed to stretch their budgets, rather than by the value provided by the specific included journals or the cost spent producing them.)

gowld 8y ago

Can you give an example of a publicly-funded paper that you couldn't find on PubMed or another server, but a Nature or another closed journal offers for sale?

aeorgnoieang 8y ago
No. I usually assume that a paywalled article is just not (legitimately) available for free. But for the last paper I did want to read, I was able to find a free version.
cjlars 8y ago
I don't have the time to dig up an example, but it is a fairly common problem to run into. I went through the exercise of reviewing everything I could find related to a relatively specific business problem (marketing attribution) a few years ago and there were several papers that were locked behind a paywall without a free version available.
nonbel 8y ago
Sure, go to Nature Medicine: https://www.nature.com/nm/ https://www.nature.com/nm/ Click the first research article they show. It has various public funding sources: "The collection of the ELC and genetic data for the American samples was supported by direct funding from the Intramural Research Program of the NIMH to the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch (D.R.W., PI, protocol 95-M-0150, NCT00001486, annual report number: ZIA MH002942-05), with supplemental analytic support from the Clinical and Translational Neuroscience Branch (K.F.B., PI). G.U. received partial support from P50MH094268." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0021-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0021-y Check that other site: https://par.nsf.gov/search/term:%22Convergence%20of%20placenta%20biology%20and%20genetic%20risk%20for%20schizophrenia%22 https://par.nsf.gov/search/term:%22Convergence%20of%20placen...
- nonbel 8y ago
  And here is the pubmed link (only abstract available): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29808008 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29808008

stilley2 8y ago

I picked an article that's about a year old in case there was an embargo before the free one could be made available. Paywalled nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature22040 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature22040 Free version: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5712493/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5712493/

gowld 8y ago
"embargo" is a bit of a weasel word -- a few weeks embargo, maybe OK. 6-months embargo paralyzes progress.
- stilley2 8y ago
  Agreed. For the NIH it looks like the maximum is 12 months.
- nonbel 8y ago
  >"6-months embargo paralyzes progress." As long as they put the code on github or a blog or whatever then who really cares? Do people really get that much out of these academic style papers in this field? They are more like a press release. Or are you saying this embargo also actively prevents them from sharing stuff beyond the document, like the code?
aeorgnoieang 8y ago
Thanks for the demo! That papers will eventually (and mostly) be freely available is good and I am surprised that that seems to be the case. Thanks for sharing this info! But an embargo or delay in publishing to the free access sites is probably sufficient for the existing closed-access journals to maintain their value. I can't imagine researchers, and thus universities, forgoing access to current research.
- stilley2 8y ago
  I should point out that I believe these policies are relatively recent, so old articles may be paywalled for a while...

adventured 8y ago

The parent very clearly was not saying that most research is already freely available. You're incorrectly claiming that. The parent said in most cases regarding US taxpayer funded research, right here: > in most cases I know of (NSF and NIH funded research) US taxpayer funded research must be made freely available Besides that, you'd be surprised that people and organizations spend money on things they don't actually need to? In my experience that happens constantly in both business and government.

aeorgnoieang 8y ago
I didn't incorrectly claim anything about the parent. I was asking them if they were claiming what I thought they were claiming. Did you miss the question mark at the end of my first sentence? And it's pretty aggravating for you to quote the comment to which I directly replied. It's not even that long! I was surprised by the implied claim, or what I thought was being implied, because I'd suspect "US taxpayer funded research" would include almost all research done in the U.S. and yet I'm pretty sure that in fact lots of people struggle to find freely available papers and articles and that lots of academic organizations pay lots of money for journal access. The parent seemed to imply that 'everything' really was freely available.

jly 8y ago

> None of the pages on the NSF site ever seemed to be intended for someone that's not contributing to the 'public access repository'. I had this issue, too, but there is a simple search engine at this URL: https://par.nsf.gov https://par.nsf.gov

aeorgnoieang 8y ago
Thanks! That looks like exactly what I was missing.

Vinnl 8y ago

> Are you claiming that most research is already freely available and yet everyone is, for some unspecified reason, still paying publishers for an extraneous service? I'm not sure about the NSF, however: this is what is happening in some disciplines. ArXiv is the default method of sharing research in some fields, and also the default method of actually reading and reviewing those articles, yet people still submit their research to the traditional publishers, and people still either pay publishing or subscription charges to those publishers. That's because the service those publishers provide is not the publishing or making accessible of research, but the academic credentials one needs to advance their academic career. That's the "unspecified reason", and it's an incredible waste of money.

aeorgnoieang 8y ago
I'm with you on all of what you wrote and that is my understanding too. But you didn't explain, relative to how I interpreted the comment to which I initially replied, why, e.g. libraries, are paying so much money to access journals. If the default method for reading those articles is ArXiv, what's the point of paying a subscription to the other journals? My model of academia isn't that it's that dysfunctional. I'd expect enough internal pressure to re-allocate those funds if ('read') access was really unnecessary.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  Right, that's an interesting observation as well. The number of journals is huge. What this means is that libraries usually do not buy individual subscriptions. Instead, what happens is that they negotiate so-called "Big Deals" with the big traditional publishers. In other words, they pay a large sum of money for a package of subscriptions to a large number of journals from a single publisher. Typically, these packages contain a few of the really big name journals, and a really long tail of journals of varying relevance. Publishers also own many journals which presumably mainly exist to boost those numbers in order to negotiate a higher price, and also has the effect of removing downwards price pressure by decreasing transparency in the market. Theoretically, the per-journal price is a lot lower in such a big deal than individual subscriptions would have been, but it's not quite clear how many of those subscriptions you really need. Of course, "need" is already a vague term - preferably, all publicly funded research would be available in the first place, but that's not the world we currently live in. Unfortunately, that's both the reason why adding a subscription journal instead of an Open Access one is bad, as well as why a boycott doesn't affect much change other than that resulting of its publicity. On the scale of those big deals, saying "we don't need that specific ML journal since interesting research hardly gets submitted there" doesn't drive the collective price down that much. (In fact, I'd wager that those prices are mostly driven by how far librarians managed to stretch their budgets, rather than by the value provided by the specific included journals or the cost spent producing them.)