4 ms·

Why not a low cost subscription app like Spotify that rewards the publishers (and I hope, by conseguence Authors and Reviewers)? This would be appetible to more

by fbn79 7y ago

Why not a low cost subscription app like Spotify that rewards the publishers (and I hope, by conseguence Authors and Reviewers)? This would be appetible to more general academy world (even low grade schools) and even small business that do research and development. And could create a more virtuose author/reviewers gratification.

Tepix 7y ago
Spotify uses DRM. Scientific papers should not be encumbered by DRM.
jononor 7y ago
I think the ability to pay a monthly fee, as an individual, to sponsor research would be great. But if you allow the publishers to continue to be the middleman, they will continue to be in power and will take most of the cut. I would not buy such a product, on principle. The authors and reviewers are the ones that provide the vast majority of the value. So the monetary (and social) reward structure should be centered on them. The platform facilitating this would need funding too, but their cut should be more akin to a payment processor, say 2-5%. So more like Patreon than Spotify.
- fbn79 7y ago
  I think publishers are important in the review system giving authorities to publications. Without publishers (with the platform being the only publisher) we loose the "authority system". Without publishers we will be in a system more like wikipedia. We can base it on peer reviewer authority, but the platform and scientific comunity will need to fix rules to when recognize a pubblication as "reviewed and accepted". Thinking more about it, we are in the field of blockchains tecnologies. Every university or similar institution can be a node, when more then ...% of nodes acccept the reviewed pubblication (manual work of check the paper and the peer review) it can be considered "officially approved" and added to the blockchain.
  - elcritch 7y ago
    “Publishers” really should be “journal”. In the past many journals were run and published by professional societies. They had to deal with printing costs. The reviewing and editing is largely volunteer work still. Nowadays a professional society could easily handle the costs of a couple of staff editors and provide only digital copies. But it seems many/most professional societies sold out their journals to Elsevier. The idea of a traceable blockchain scoring and journal would be great. Journals and professional societies are largely about informal relationships in a research community for better or worse. Being able to track this in a blockchain could be helpful in bringing scrutiny and transparency in cases like the “Alzheimer’s Plaque Cabal” which is currently hidden from scrutiny.
  - jononor 7y ago
    The publishers are a fake authority, any legitimacy comes from the peer review. To underline and accentuate this I think one should make the review process public (with anonymous reviewers). And at publication time, also publish the name of the reviewers (possibly just a list, unconnected to the review comments). This way reviewers actually have a personal stake in the quality of a paper. Don't want your name associated with the recommendation of a bad/flawed paper. And on good papers, its nice to get actually some credit for doing the tedious review work.
michaelt 7y ago
University of California terminated a $10 million / year subscription to Elsevier [1] but $10 million per year divided between 21k academics and 280k students [2] is only $2.76 per person per month. Of course, how you square that with the journals that charge $30+ for a single paper and $600+ a year for an individual subscription is, perhaps, your point... [1] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/3/1/18245235/university-of-california-elsevier-subscription-open-access https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/3/1/18245235/uni... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California
- Terretta 7y ago
  Is there a single commercial source with the same or more coverage as sci-hub for $600/yr or less? I’ve got a half dozen subs in a kind of Venn diagram and still am missing things. I’m in a position to pay for convenience, but while paying, am constantly annoyed it’s worse for the user. Same story in film/tv.
  - wrycoder 7y ago
    Deep Dyve?
DrJaws 7y ago
why they should earn more from those papers when they are already paid to research them? It's knowledge, it should be free and open to help the humanity to advance and push new boundaries.

by fbn79 7y ago

Tepix 7y ago

Spotify uses DRM. Scientific papers should not be encumbered by DRM.

jononor 7y ago

I think the ability to pay a monthly fee, as an individual, to sponsor research would be great. But if you allow the publishers to continue to be the middleman, they will continue to be in power and will take most of the cut. I would not buy such a product, on principle. The authors and reviewers are the ones that provide the vast majority of the value. So the monetary (and social) reward structure should be centered on them. The platform facilitating this would need funding too, but their cut should be more akin to a payment processor, say 2-5%. So more like Patreon than Spotify.

fbn79 7y ago
I think publishers are important in the review system giving authorities to publications. Without publishers (with the platform being the only publisher) we loose the "authority system". Without publishers we will be in a system more like wikipedia. We can base it on peer reviewer authority, but the platform and scientific comunity will need to fix rules to when recognize a pubblication as "reviewed and accepted". Thinking more about it, we are in the field of blockchains tecnologies. Every university or similar institution can be a node, when more then ...% of nodes acccept the reviewed pubblication (manual work of check the paper and the peer review) it can be considered "officially approved" and added to the blockchain.
- elcritch 7y ago
  “Publishers” really should be “journal”. In the past many journals were run and published by professional societies. They had to deal with printing costs. The reviewing and editing is largely volunteer work still. Nowadays a professional society could easily handle the costs of a couple of staff editors and provide only digital copies. But it seems many/most professional societies sold out their journals to Elsevier. The idea of a traceable blockchain scoring and journal would be great. Journals and professional societies are largely about informal relationships in a research community for better or worse. Being able to track this in a blockchain could be helpful in bringing scrutiny and transparency in cases like the “Alzheimer’s Plaque Cabal” which is currently hidden from scrutiny.
- jononor 7y ago
  The publishers are a fake authority, any legitimacy comes from the peer review. To underline and accentuate this I think one should make the review process public (with anonymous reviewers). And at publication time, also publish the name of the reviewers (possibly just a list, unconnected to the review comments). This way reviewers actually have a personal stake in the quality of a paper. Don't want your name associated with the recommendation of a bad/flawed paper. And on good papers, its nice to get actually some credit for doing the tedious review work.

michaelt 7y ago

University of California terminated a $10 million / year subscription to Elsevier [1] but $10 million per year divided between 21k academics and 280k students [2] is only $2.76 per person per month. Of course, how you square that with the journals that charge $30+ for a single paper and $600+ a year for an individual subscription is, perhaps, your point... [1] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/3/1/18245235/university-of-california-elsevier-subscription-open-access https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/3/1/18245235/uni... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California

Terretta 7y ago
Is there a single commercial source with the same or more coverage as sci-hub for $600/yr or less? I’ve got a half dozen subs in a kind of Venn diagram and still am missing things. I’m in a position to pay for convenience, but while paying, am constantly annoyed it’s worse for the user. Same story in film/tv.
- wrycoder 7y ago
  Deep Dyve?

DrJaws 7y ago

why they should earn more from those papers when they are already paid to research them? It's knowledge, it should be free and open to help the humanity to advance and push new boundaries.