5 ms·

I wish billionaire do-gooders like Gates or Buffet buy Elsevier etc. set the knowledge free and restructure how they do business. Sadly this would cost a fortun

I wish billionaire do-gooders like Gates or Buffet buy Elsevier etc. set the knowledge free and restructure how they do business. Sadly this would cost a fortune. RELX, the owner of Elsevier has a market cap of $42 billion. Can a 51% owner a company torpedo its business model without being sued by the other 49%?

qwerty456127 8y ago
Gates is a billionaire and generally benevolent yet opposing "intellectual property" and giving things away for free for everyone doesn't sound like something about him at all.
0815test 8y ago
They would get a lot more done for the price by just contributing to existing Open-Access-focused efforts. Mind you, there is a lot of "IP" (or even just tacit know-how!) floating around, that could be "ransomed" out for cheap from its current holders and then set free, with huge society-wide benefits; but the cheapest is probably held by failing businesses, not ones that are still successful on their own terms.
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
I think evaluating Gates as a do-gooder is somewhat inaccurate. His charitable actions all seem to align to increase his stock portfolio. And not only would open-sourcing scientific knowledge not likely help his stock portfolio, but it is antithetical to everything he has ever done in the software world. What really needs to be done is more and more editors and editorial boards of Elsevier-owned journals revolting, as happened with Lingua, the prominent linguistics journal, where the entire editorial board resigned and started the Open Access journal Glossa. (Lingua lingers on as a 'zombie journal', filled with articles of very dubious quality. But everyone in the field knows this.)
- syshum 8y ago
  What really needs to be done is the government needs to require all research that is funded at all with tax payer money (which is the vast majority of research) must be open access to all
  - radus 8y ago
    This is a very half-baked idea, but perhaps a compromise would be to make the text content free to access and reserve PDF downloads for subscribers or paying customers. Ideally the content would be presented through something like eLife's Lens project. [1] [1]: https://github.com/elifesciences/lens https://github.com/elifesciences/lens
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      Tax-payers are surely already subscribers/paying customers.
  - mattkrause 8y ago
    They already do. Here are links to the major US funding agency's policies. NIH Public Access Policy: https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm NSF: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/public_access/ https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/public_access/ DOE: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/08/f18/DOE_Public_Access%20Plan_FINAL.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/08/f18/DOE_Publ... DoD: https://discover.dtic.mil/products-services/ https://discover.dtic.mil/products-services/ PubMedCentral (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/) hosts full-text for biomedical journals that don't automatically provide un-paywalled access to covered articles, as does DTIC. The one caveat is that there is an optional one year embargo for journals that aren't open access. You can often find PDFs on researchers' home pages, and preprints are increasingly common too.
    - killjoywashere 8y ago
      Wait, on at least one axis, the DoD is less evil than the Elsevier? Oh, how the tables turn...
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    Well, all governments would have to do that, and actively enforce that. Many do already, few enforce it. Alternatively, there is now a coalition of funders that is taken an even stronger stance: not only must research they fund be published as open access, but the journals they are published in may not hide other research behind paywalls either. If enforced (big if), this could give an important push to making open access the default, even for places where the government does not demand it that strongly yet. However, it would help to have some more big hitters explicitly sign up, most notably the US. [1] https://www.coalition-s.org/ https://www.coalition-s.org/
- schoen 8y ago
  > Lingua, the prominent linguistics journal, where the entire editorial board resigned and started the Open Access journal Glossa In case any readers aren't aware, "lingua" is Latin for 'tongue'/'language', while "glossa" (γλῶσσα) is Greek for 'tongue'/'language'. (We also have English words that come from the Attic dialect form "glotta" (γλῶττα); for Ancient Greek dialectal variation between σ and τ, see https://lucianofsamosata.info/TrialInTheCourtOfVowels.html. https://lucianofsamosata.info/TrialInTheCourtOfVowels.html.)
- Vinnl 8y ago
  Yet, the Gates Foundation is one of the most important driving forces towards Open Access.
agumonkey 8y ago
how much is Elsevier ?
userbinator 8y ago
I think "do-gooder" is usually a negative connotation applied to someone who advocates for existing authority, by e.g. reporting others for copyright violations. This is the exact opposite. I'd say "rebel" would be a better description of the type of person to "set the knowledge free" --- Elbakyan fitting that description too.

qwerty456127 8y ago

Gates is a billionaire and generally benevolent yet opposing "intellectual property" and giving things away for free for everyone doesn't sound like something about him at all.

0815test 8y ago

They would get a lot more done for the price by just contributing to existing Open-Access-focused efforts. Mind you, there is a lot of "IP" (or even just tacit know-how!) floating around, that could be "ransomed" out for cheap from its current holders and then set free, with huge society-wide benefits; but the cheapest is probably held by failing businesses, not ones that are still successful on their own terms.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago

I think evaluating Gates as a do-gooder is somewhat inaccurate. His charitable actions all seem to align to increase his stock portfolio. And not only would open-sourcing scientific knowledge not likely help his stock portfolio, but it is antithetical to everything he has ever done in the software world. What really needs to be done is more and more editors and editorial boards of Elsevier-owned journals revolting, as happened with Lingua, the prominent linguistics journal, where the entire editorial board resigned and started the Open Access journal Glossa. (Lingua lingers on as a 'zombie journal', filled with articles of very dubious quality. But everyone in the field knows this.)

syshum 8y ago
What really needs to be done is the government needs to require all research that is funded at all with tax payer money (which is the vast majority of research) must be open access to all
- radus 8y ago
  This is a very half-baked idea, but perhaps a compromise would be to make the text content free to access and reserve PDF downloads for subscribers or paying customers. Ideally the content would be presented through something like eLife's Lens project. [1] [1]: https://github.com/elifesciences/lens https://github.com/elifesciences/lens
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    Tax-payers are surely already subscribers/paying customers.
- mattkrause 8y ago
  They already do. Here are links to the major US funding agency's policies. NIH Public Access Policy: https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm NSF: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/public_access/ https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/public_access/ DOE: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/08/f18/DOE_Public_Access%20Plan_FINAL.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/08/f18/DOE_Publ... DoD: https://discover.dtic.mil/products-services/ https://discover.dtic.mil/products-services/ PubMedCentral (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/) hosts full-text for biomedical journals that don't automatically provide un-paywalled access to covered articles, as does DTIC. The one caveat is that there is an optional one year embargo for journals that aren't open access. You can often find PDFs on researchers' home pages, and preprints are increasingly common too.
  - killjoywashere 8y ago
    Wait, on at least one axis, the DoD is less evil than the Elsevier? Oh, how the tables turn...
- Vinnl 8y ago
  Well, all governments would have to do that, and actively enforce that. Many do already, few enforce it. Alternatively, there is now a coalition of funders that is taken an even stronger stance: not only must research they fund be published as open access, but the journals they are published in may not hide other research behind paywalls either. If enforced (big if), this could give an important push to making open access the default, even for places where the government does not demand it that strongly yet. However, it would help to have some more big hitters explicitly sign up, most notably the US. [1] https://www.coalition-s.org/ https://www.coalition-s.org/
schoen 8y ago
> Lingua, the prominent linguistics journal, where the entire editorial board resigned and started the Open Access journal Glossa In case any readers aren't aware, "lingua" is Latin for 'tongue'/'language', while "glossa" (γλῶσσα) is Greek for 'tongue'/'language'. (We also have English words that come from the Attic dialect form "glotta" (γλῶττα); for Ancient Greek dialectal variation between σ and τ, see https://lucianofsamosata.info/TrialInTheCourtOfVowels.html. https://lucianofsamosata.info/TrialInTheCourtOfVowels.html.)
Vinnl 8y ago
Yet, the Gates Foundation is one of the most important driving forces towards Open Access.

agumonkey 8y ago

how much is Elsevier ?

userbinator 8y ago

I think "do-gooder" is usually a negative connotation applied to someone who advocates for existing authority, by e.g. reporting others for copyright violations. This is the exact opposite. I'd say "rebel" would be a better description of the type of person to "set the knowledge free" --- Elbakyan fitting that description too.