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I just don't see things changing in bio sciences because the people who benefit from it don't want it to change, and the people who want it to change (labs with

I just don't see things changing in bio sciences because the people who benefit from it don't want it to change, and the people who want it to change (labs without a lot of money, grad students, post-docs) have the least power change it. Scihub is at least levelling the playing field and forcing the conversation to happen.

mattkrause 5y ago
I'm surprised to hear that, because from my perspective (neuro), things are changing fairly fast. Bioarxiv is seven years old, and when it started, it was tiny niche service with a few dozen new papers each month. People were skeptical of the contents of preprints and journals were reluctant to accept (or cite) work posted there. Now, it gets thousands of submissions a month and is a de rigueur part of many researchers' (and some journals') workflow. In parallel, governments and funders have put some weight behind open access. An open version needs to be available within a year for all US-funded work from 2013 onward; Canada's similar tri-council policy took effect in 2016(?). It's true that there aren't draconian penalties, but there are some small nudges towards compliance. The NIH wants a PubMed Central ID for any paper you're claiming credit for on a grant. Google Scholar nags about non open-access papers on your profile. Many journals (even initially-closed ones) even handle the whole open access deposition thing for you now. As a result, I find I need the library VPN a lot less these days. On the other hand, I agree that supplanting the publishers is tough. A Cell, Science, or Nature paper still carries a ton of cachet and its associated career impact; ELife isn't quite there yet.
xtracto 5y ago
The way I see it, publications like Elsevier and similar should change their business models to be "curators" of public papers. All scientific papers should be submitted to arXiv or a similar public facing service, so that they are available for everyone. Then, Elsevier, Springer, SAGE , et al. should spend their money making ToC / abstract lists of the best of the best papers in the different subjects. That´s the main value of these editorials, they should super specialize in that and leave the distribution/editing to others (they kind of already do, they just want to have control). I may not want to pay ANY money once I am looking for a specific article that I know it exists. But I will pay good money for a "push" type of listing/abstract and maybe analysis of the best articles in certain subjects (its kind of what Feedly does but without any analysis/editorial but just dumb grouping).

mattkrause 5y ago

I'm surprised to hear that, because from my perspective (neuro), things are changing fairly fast. Bioarxiv is seven years old, and when it started, it was tiny niche service with a few dozen new papers each month. People were skeptical of the contents of preprints and journals were reluctant to accept (or cite) work posted there. Now, it gets thousands of submissions a month and is a de rigueur part of many researchers' (and some journals') workflow. In parallel, governments and funders have put some weight behind open access. An open version needs to be available within a year for all US-funded work from 2013 onward; Canada's similar tri-council policy took effect in 2016(?). It's true that there aren't draconian penalties, but there are some small nudges towards compliance. The NIH wants a PubMed Central ID for any paper you're claiming credit for on a grant. Google Scholar nags about non open-access papers on your profile. Many journals (even initially-closed ones) even handle the whole open access deposition thing for you now. As a result, I find I need the library VPN a lot less these days. On the other hand, I agree that supplanting the publishers is tough. A Cell, Science, or Nature paper still carries a ton of cachet and its associated career impact; ELife isn't quite there yet.

xtracto 5y ago

The way I see it, publications like Elsevier and similar should change their business models to be "curators" of public papers. All scientific papers should be submitted to arXiv or a similar public facing service, so that they are available for everyone. Then, Elsevier, Springer, SAGE , et al. should spend their money making ToC / abstract lists of the best of the best papers in the different subjects. That´s the main value of these editorials, they should super specialize in that and leave the distribution/editing to others (they kind of already do, they just want to have control). I may not want to pay ANY money once I am looking for a specific article that I know it exists. But I will pay good money for a "push" type of listing/abstract and maybe analysis of the best articles in certain subjects (its kind of what Feedly does but without any analysis/editorial but just dumb grouping).