7 ms·

What Is a Sustainable Path to Open Access?

32 points by lelf 6y ago

sigwinch28 6y ago
"Cows make milk. They milk themselves. Other cows check the milk (for free). Cows - get this - PAY THE FARMER to take the milk away. Then the farmer (you won't believe this, honestly) sells the milk back to the cows. Sometimes the farmer lets the cow drink a tiny bit of its own milk. The farmer calls it 'longstanding commitment to Open Access'." https://www.ned-potter.com/blog/how-to-explain-academic-publishing-to-a-five-year-old https://www.ned-potter.com/blog/how-to-explain-academic-publ... I have a rough upper bound on the costs of collecting, hosting, distributing, archiving, and indexing academic papers across the world: arXiv. The publishers provide no real value to the publishing process except their prestigious conference and/or journal names and the conference events themselves. The latter should be decoupled from the publishing process (and they charge through the nose for conference attendance, anyway).
- vaylian 6y ago
  Yes. All of this is based on a completely outdated publishing model. Because back in the day, publishing scientific results in a distributable medium actually required a dedicated industry (typesetting, printing, distributing). Nowadays this has become completely obsolete thanks to the internet and digital documents. Reputation of journals exists only so that cheap metrics can be calculated. This way the funding bodies do not actually have to read the papers, but can simply judge them by a summary statistic. But plenty of times it is only a crude approximation of the value of scientific work.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    > publishing scientific results actually required a dedicated industry (typesetting, printing, distributing) I’d say that many scholars still want that dedicated industry. Everyone appreciates having a proofreader and editor who is trained in the subject, but now working full-time professionally in editing services, so that this burden doesn’t fall on actual scholars who are already overworked. And in many fields high-quality typesetting is still appreciated (and a quick visual way to distinguish reputable publications from less reputable ones). The complaint is that mercenary publishers like Springer and Elsevier aren’t even providing that industry any more. They no longer provide proofreading, cutglass typesetting, and all the other benefits which, once upon a time, they used to convince learned societies to hand the running of the journals over to them. Instead, the big publishers put all the grunt work onto the scholarly community and they simply expect authors to simply provide a camera-ready .doc or PDF for publication. These for-profit publishers simply collect charges without providing any value.
    - musicale 6y ago
      > they simply expect authors to simply provide a camera-ready .doc or PDF for publication. ^This: the research, writing and editorial work is provided to the academic publisher at no cost. The publisher prints paper copies which they sell at outrageous markup, and usually hosts the PDFs behind an obnoxious paywall (again with outrageous markup over the hosting, indexing, and distribution costs.) > These for-profit publishers simply collect charges without providing any value. For-profit academic publishers often provide negative value by making publications harder to access by polluting search results with links to their paywalls vs. links to author sites and free digital libraries like arXiv or sci-hub, and doing their best to shut down the latter. This is harmful to authors and readers alike.
musicale 6y ago
I am extremely disappointed that ACM opposes open access for federally funded research. Sorry, ACM - taxpayers paid for the research, and the authors and editors provided the camera-ready copy to you at no cost.
musicale 6y ago
> the calculations of the “cost” that is proposed to mutualise seem to include much more than the publication process alone This is the basic problem. Publication charges should pay for publication and no more; they should not be a slush fund for the rest of ACM.
olodus 6y ago
If it is the hosting cost that is the factor here then aren't there quite good distributed options (Bittorrent, Dat, IPFS) out here nowadays that would simply leave hosting up to who ever wanted to store the paper. Then all you need is a frontend for the hosting. Arxiv or whatever could serve that nicely. After that you can include these in whatever journal you want. Sorry maybe I am missing something. I've never really felt like I understand scientific publishing, neither the traditional journal model or the Arxiv model.

32 points by lelf 6y ago

"Cows make milk. They milk themselves. Other cows check the milk (for free). Cows - get this - PAY THE FARMER to take the milk away. Then the farmer (you won't believe this, honestly) sells the milk back to the cows. Sometimes the farmer lets the cow drink a tiny bit of its own milk. The farmer calls it 'longstanding commitment to Open Access'." https://www.ned-potter.com/blog/how-to-explain-academic-publishing-to-a-five-year-old https://www.ned-potter.com/blog/how-to-explain-academic-publ... I have a rough upper bound on the costs of collecting, hosting, distributing, archiving, and indexing academic papers across the world: arXiv. The publishers provide no real value to the publishing process except their prestigious conference and/or journal names and the conference events themselves. The latter should be decoupled from the publishing process (and they charge through the nose for conference attendance, anyway).

vaylian 6y ago
Yes. All of this is based on a completely outdated publishing model. Because back in the day, publishing scientific results in a distributable medium actually required a dedicated industry (typesetting, printing, distributing). Nowadays this has become completely obsolete thanks to the internet and digital documents. Reputation of journals exists only so that cheap metrics can be calculated. This way the funding bodies do not actually have to read the papers, but can simply judge them by a summary statistic. But plenty of times it is only a crude approximation of the value of scientific work.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > publishing scientific results actually required a dedicated industry (typesetting, printing, distributing) I’d say that many scholars still want that dedicated industry. Everyone appreciates having a proofreader and editor who is trained in the subject, but now working full-time professionally in editing services, so that this burden doesn’t fall on actual scholars who are already overworked. And in many fields high-quality typesetting is still appreciated (and a quick visual way to distinguish reputable publications from less reputable ones). The complaint is that mercenary publishers like Springer and Elsevier aren’t even providing that industry any more. They no longer provide proofreading, cutglass typesetting, and all the other benefits which, once upon a time, they used to convince learned societies to hand the running of the journals over to them. Instead, the big publishers put all the grunt work onto the scholarly community and they simply expect authors to simply provide a camera-ready .doc or PDF for publication. These for-profit publishers simply collect charges without providing any value.
  - musicale 6y ago
    > they simply expect authors to simply provide a camera-ready .doc or PDF for publication. ^This: the research, writing and editorial work is provided to the academic publisher at no cost. The publisher prints paper copies which they sell at outrageous markup, and usually hosts the PDFs behind an obnoxious paywall (again with outrageous markup over the hosting, indexing, and distribution costs.) > These for-profit publishers simply collect charges without providing any value. For-profit academic publishers often provide negative value by making publications harder to access by polluting search results with links to their paywalls vs. links to author sites and free digital libraries like arXiv or sci-hub, and doing their best to shut down the latter. This is harmful to authors and readers alike.

musicale 6y ago

I am extremely disappointed that ACM opposes open access for federally funded research. Sorry, ACM - taxpayers paid for the research, and the authors and editors provided the camera-ready copy to you at no cost.

musicale 6y ago

> the calculations of the “cost” that is proposed to mutualise seem to include much more than the publication process alone This is the basic problem. Publication charges should pay for publication and no more; they should not be a slush fund for the rest of ACM.

olodus 6y ago

If it is the hosting cost that is the factor here then aren't there quite good distributed options (Bittorrent, Dat, IPFS) out here nowadays that would simply leave hosting up to who ever wanted to store the paper. Then all you need is a frontend for the hosting. Arxiv or whatever could serve that nicely. After that you can include these in whatever journal you want. Sorry maybe I am missing something. I've never really felt like I understand scientific publishing, neither the traditional journal model or the Arxiv model.