5 ms·

Sci-hub has been critical to me as I developed the idea for my current startup. If it didn't exist, I could have gotten most of the papers from friends in acade

by entee 7y ago

Sci-hub has been critical to me as I developed the idea for my current startup. If it didn't exist, I could have gotten most of the papers from friends in academia, but it would have been dramatically harder and slower. I use it, I support the concept. I'll make a slight counterpoint however. It costs between $1-$5k (very rough numbers) to publish in open access journals usually. That's not nothing, but it defrays the management costs that come with a run-of-the-mill journal operation. For more flashy/fancy journals those costs are claimed to be higher (Nature asserts $40k). Maybe that's inflated, Nature certainly has some incentive to fudge the numbers. Still, I don't think it's that far off considering the volume of submissions (hence # editors), the general press coverage work they do and just putting out a magazine every week with usually about a dozen publications and two dozen original articles. If we take it at 1/2 that cost, clearly the average lab can't afford $20K to publish. How do we solve that particular issue? Seems we're back to the "how do you finance good journalism/short-turnaround publications?" question. Don't have answers, but want to get opinions. EDIT: To clarify, I think most publications would be fine under a fairly small contribution, I'm more curious about the very select, super expensive marquee journals.

neonate 7y ago
What is your startup and what research are you relying on? It sounds interesting.
- entee 7y ago
  We're combining a technology called DNA encoded libraries (DEL) with machine learning. DELs let you make very large numbers of compounds without losing track of each in a large mixture (1 million to 1 billion compounds in one tube). This means you can run a whole lot of experiments in parallel (basically 1e6-1e9 per tube). We believe this is a very promising way to generate large volumes of labelled data, which we know is what ML loves. The trick is to structure both the biochemistry and the ML properly so as to avoid artifacts and generate useful molecules reliably. Happy to talk about it in more detail, give me a shout at ntilmans at anagenex.com!
- Calloutman 7y ago
  He's not going to reveal the name of his startup after admitting to copyright violations...
  - Calloutman 7y ago
    I guess I'm wrong.
frede 7y ago
The research institutions would of course save money on the journal descriptions that could then be used to pay for open access submissions.
- entee 7y ago
  Fair. I guess there could be a different model too: I pay a "subscription" which means I get x submissions per year for the institution or something along those lines.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> If it didn't exist, I could have gotten most of the papers from friends in academia, but it would have been dramatically harder and slower. r/scholar (on Reddit) was the precursor to sci-hub, and made most things available.
rlayton2 7y ago
Academics write the paper for free, academics review the paper for free. I've published quite a bit and never had worthwhile input from a non-academic editor. A journal's only real cost would be in hosting costs, which I'm sure would be minimal for static content. While the big-ticket journals have a value from being so picky, often this is at the expense of some things. For instance, it is hard to get replication studies published, as journals like Nature want every article to be "front-page news" if they can. I'd like to see some weighted reputation system used instead, where academics can give their "vote" to papers they like, giving it a total weight, however such systems have been proposed in the past and haven't got much traction. I don't think there is an answer in the above, but I'm not sure that the substantial costs are justified.
- Someone 7y ago
  ”where academics can give their "vote" to papers they like” That would be gamed, just as there are “citation rings” (I cite you if you cite me) and “peer review rings” now. So, you’ll need an authority to decide on what votes are unbiased. That’s the role publishers have now. Are they doing it perfectly? No. Could others do it better or cheaper? Who knows?
  - rlayton2 7y ago
    Yeah, that's sort of what I was trying to say. It will be gamed like the current system, but reputation networks are a studied problem with lots of options of things like this. just nothing thats taken off.
- devurand 7y ago
  > I'd like to see some weighted reputation system used instead, where academics can give their "vote" to papers they like, giving it a total weight, however such systems have been proposed in the past and haven't got much traction. A reddit-clone with strong verification/validation of user accounts seems like it would fit the bill. I can imagine a system with a small monthly fee to participate, subreddits with paid moderators (read: reviewers), voting system that would float good papers to the top, and of course comments. The pay-to-participate barrier would hopefully keep the quality high but at a minimum cover the hosting costs. And run by a non-profit foundation.
gyuserbti 7y ago
Editor and former professor here. Pay to publish imho always seemed to have a perverse incentive structure to me. Reminds me of the "advertisement" journals you used to see. The way I see this headed is academic nonprofit orgs self publishing using open source software etc. and recouping costs through membership fees. Journals are already often closely affiliated with orgs, and the members do all the work except copyediting and editorial portals. Academics are also used to paying academic org membership fees for other reasons. I've already had conversations in this direction with colleagues. It's either this or eventually things like the preprint services, maybe with sugar on top. The killer app in this area would be an open source service / server software for running a journal imho. If it were done well it would be hard to beat. That said, I think traditional publication models are going to be around for awhile, maybe with much more open access or lower pub charges, just because the publishers do provide a service, even if access and price are distorted, and there isn't a uniformly better model at the moment (maybe too big a conversation for typing on my phone).

by entee 7y ago

neonate 7y ago

What is your startup and what research are you relying on? It sounds interesting.

entee 7y ago
We're combining a technology called DNA encoded libraries (DEL) with machine learning. DELs let you make very large numbers of compounds without losing track of each in a large mixture (1 million to 1 billion compounds in one tube). This means you can run a whole lot of experiments in parallel (basically 1e6-1e9 per tube). We believe this is a very promising way to generate large volumes of labelled data, which we know is what ML loves. The trick is to structure both the biochemistry and the ML properly so as to avoid artifacts and generate useful molecules reliably. Happy to talk about it in more detail, give me a shout at ntilmans at anagenex.com!
Calloutman 7y ago
He's not going to reveal the name of his startup after admitting to copyright violations...
- Calloutman 7y ago
  I guess I'm wrong.

frede 7y ago

The research institutions would of course save money on the journal descriptions that could then be used to pay for open access submissions.

entee 7y ago
Fair. I guess there could be a different model too: I pay a "subscription" which means I get x submissions per year for the institution or something along those lines.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> If it didn't exist, I could have gotten most of the papers from friends in academia, but it would have been dramatically harder and slower. r/scholar (on Reddit) was the precursor to sci-hub, and made most things available.

rlayton2 7y ago

Academics write the paper for free, academics review the paper for free. I've published quite a bit and never had worthwhile input from a non-academic editor. A journal's only real cost would be in hosting costs, which I'm sure would be minimal for static content. While the big-ticket journals have a value from being so picky, often this is at the expense of some things. For instance, it is hard to get replication studies published, as journals like Nature want every article to be "front-page news" if they can. I'd like to see some weighted reputation system used instead, where academics can give their "vote" to papers they like, giving it a total weight, however such systems have been proposed in the past and haven't got much traction. I don't think there is an answer in the above, but I'm not sure that the substantial costs are justified.

Someone 7y ago
”where academics can give their "vote" to papers they like” That would be gamed, just as there are “citation rings” (I cite you if you cite me) and “peer review rings” now. So, you’ll need an authority to decide on what votes are unbiased. That’s the role publishers have now. Are they doing it perfectly? No. Could others do it better or cheaper? Who knows?
- rlayton2 7y ago
  Yeah, that's sort of what I was trying to say. It will be gamed like the current system, but reputation networks are a studied problem with lots of options of things like this. just nothing thats taken off.
devurand 7y ago
> I'd like to see some weighted reputation system used instead, where academics can give their "vote" to papers they like, giving it a total weight, however such systems have been proposed in the past and haven't got much traction. A reddit-clone with strong verification/validation of user accounts seems like it would fit the bill. I can imagine a system with a small monthly fee to participate, subreddits with paid moderators (read: reviewers), voting system that would float good papers to the top, and of course comments. The pay-to-participate barrier would hopefully keep the quality high but at a minimum cover the hosting costs. And run by a non-profit foundation.

gyuserbti 7y ago

Editor and former professor here. Pay to publish imho always seemed to have a perverse incentive structure to me. Reminds me of the "advertisement" journals you used to see. The way I see this headed is academic nonprofit orgs self publishing using open source software etc. and recouping costs through membership fees. Journals are already often closely affiliated with orgs, and the members do all the work except copyediting and editorial portals. Academics are also used to paying academic org membership fees for other reasons. I've already had conversations in this direction with colleagues. It's either this or eventually things like the preprint services, maybe with sugar on top. The killer app in this area would be an open source service / server software for running a journal imho. If it were done well it would be hard to beat. That said, I think traditional publication models are going to be around for awhile, maybe with much more open access or lower pub charges, just because the publishers do provide a service, even if access and price are distorted, and there isn't a uniformly better model at the moment (maybe too big a conversation for typing on my phone).