5 ms·

You mean you want journals to exist only for peer review, but that's not their actual function today. They actually exist today to prop up an academic research

You mean you want journals to exist only for peer review, but that's not their actual function today. They actually exist today to prop up an academic research industry driven by cash and reputation. If they disappeared tomorrow, there would be a breakdown in institutional funding, there would be chaos in editing, publishing, discovering and vetting information, and it would actually be harder to access information. Sci-Hub distributes information that paid journals have already done the work to curate. Once paid journals go away, Sci-Hub will end up like GitHub: a million random repositories maintained by random people with no index. Only there's a whole host of new problems that scientific research needs to solve that is more complicated than some poorly written lines of code. The stakes are different; the errors lead to worse outcomes, rigor is much more important, and finding relevant information in the vast array of available research is much more important. I'm not saying publishing today is great. It very much isn't. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't a better solution. It's like saying, this government is corrupt, let's throw out the government! Look how well that works for countries that don't have a new government prepared to replace the old one.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
> They actually exist today to prop up an academic research industry driven by cash and reputation. Just yet another problem with academia that needs to be solved. This system leads to all sorts of academic dishonesty such as reviewing rings. It's at least partially responsible for the sheer number of bad papers being published today. Disrupting it is a good thing. > If they disappeared tomorrow, there would be a breakdown in institutional funding, there would be chaos in editing, publishing, discovering and vetting information, and it would actually be harder to access information. It's okay. Just let the whole thing break down. Eventually it'll sort itself out. > Sci-Hub distributes information that paid journals have already done the work to curate. This curation is just gatekeeping done by peer reviewers. All they need to do is set up a blog and start gatekeeping it. Good papers get posted there, bad papers don't. I really don't see why it has to be any more complicated than that. > But throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't a better solution. It's certainly better than sitting around waiting for a multi-billion dollar industry of copyright monopolists to get even richer and powerful.
- cucumb3rrelish 5y ago
  > It's okay. Just let the whole thing break down. Eventually it'll sort itself out. This seems like one of the worst ideas ever
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Can't be worse than allowing this archaic copyright industry to go on.
    - rrdharan 5y ago
      Said the Iranian students as they overthrew the Shah…
    - toofy 5y ago
      It could be much worse. Much much much much much much worse. Some things are incredibly complicated and messy. And not just with the current publishing issues–even getting them to the imperfect stages they reside in now was game changing on an absolutely massive worldwide scale. With some things, expecting perfection is not only ridiculous, but it leads to thinking such as “it can’t get worse…” and that’s the point at which the _thing_ says “oh yeah? can’t get worse? hold my beer.” In my experience, when discussing things which are this complicated, on this level, anyone who doesn’t already know a dozen ways things can actually get much worse I immediately recommend they take some time to understand the actual subject better, because this means they have little actual understanding of the topic. I’m not saying this to shame you, I promise, I’m really really not. But if this is something you’re passionate about, then you owe it to yourself to have a better grasp on what the terrifying outcomes look like. Does any of the above mean things can’t be improved? Of Course Not. There are serious problems with many things, but serious problems means it can have very serious outcomes. We should always look for ways to improve. But only with an accurate understanding. And to be very clear, there are very serious problems in the academic publishing world, no question.
      - botverse 5y ago
jjeaff 5y ago
So if Journals don't pay the reviewers and the reviewers are what filters out the garbage, then what necessary function are the journals filling? Do they vet the reviewers? Index the studies? I've never had much trouble finding what I need on GitHub or scihub. Seems to be indexed pretty well. And if there is a conflict of interest for reviewers to be paid, then isn't their a conflict of interest for those selecting and vetting the reviewers?
- Fomite 5y ago
  A couple things: 1) They do indeed vet reviewers, both their reviewers and also who ends up on their editorial boards, which for most people on them is just "Yeah, you're going to get more review requests." Editors should - but often don't - also evaluate the quality of the reviews themselves. 2) Some journals do copyediting and layout. Several times this has markedly improved the paper, including one that remade a figure. 3)They also handle some backend stuff. For example, for most medical journals, you just have to check a box saying "This was funded by the NIH" and they'll handle putting it in the appropriate repositories, etc.
- evandijk70 5y ago
  Actually, an editor once told me that a lot of papers (50%) are rejected without consulting reviewers. So the garbage is already filtered by the journals. Reviewers can often disagree with each other as well, so a judgement call is needed in those cases. I agree with your point that payment does not necessarily mean conflict of interest.
vimy 5y ago
Preprints and blogs should be the default. Instead of peer review, which sometimes (often?) turns into gatekeeping or dismissing new ideas, we’ll judge research on reproducibility. The github model for science sounds better than what we have now. Journals to curate research is pre-internet tech, it’s outdated.
canjobear 5y ago
You're right that journals have many important functions beyond peer review, but you're wrong that this has anything to do with their closed-access paid nature. Fields such as computational linguistics have a healthy ecosystem of journals and conference proceedings, all free and open access.
- Texaner 5y ago
  What ways are better?
robbedpeter 5y ago
The baby is dead. It's time to bury it and mourn its passing. There are better tools and technology to "curate" science - the only reason for these journals is rent extraction and gatekeeping.
arpa 5y ago
> Once paid journals go away, Sci-Hub will end up like GitHub more like we get arxiv.org?
type0 5y ago
> But throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't a better solution. It is not a baby, it's a teratoma eating scientific world and society from inside, the time to cut it out is now!

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> They actually exist today to prop up an academic research industry driven by cash and reputation. Just yet another problem with academia that needs to be solved. This system leads to all sorts of academic dishonesty such as reviewing rings. It's at least partially responsible for the sheer number of bad papers being published today. Disrupting it is a good thing. > If they disappeared tomorrow, there would be a breakdown in institutional funding, there would be chaos in editing, publishing, discovering and vetting information, and it would actually be harder to access information. It's okay. Just let the whole thing break down. Eventually it'll sort itself out. > Sci-Hub distributes information that paid journals have already done the work to curate. This curation is just gatekeeping done by peer reviewers. All they need to do is set up a blog and start gatekeeping it. Good papers get posted there, bad papers don't. I really don't see why it has to be any more complicated than that. > But throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't a better solution. It's certainly better than sitting around waiting for a multi-billion dollar industry of copyright monopolists to get even richer and powerful.

cucumb3rrelish 5y ago
> It's okay. Just let the whole thing break down. Eventually it'll sort itself out. This seems like one of the worst ideas ever
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Can't be worse than allowing this archaic copyright industry to go on.
  - rrdharan 5y ago
    Said the Iranian students as they overthrew the Shah…
  - toofy 5y ago
    It could be much worse. Much much much much much much worse. Some things are incredibly complicated and messy. And not just with the current publishing issues–even getting them to the imperfect stages they reside in now was game changing on an absolutely massive worldwide scale. With some things, expecting perfection is not only ridiculous, but it leads to thinking such as “it can’t get worse…” and that’s the point at which the _thing_ says “oh yeah? can’t get worse? hold my beer.” In my experience, when discussing things which are this complicated, on this level, anyone who doesn’t already know a dozen ways things can actually get much worse I immediately recommend they take some time to understand the actual subject better, because this means they have little actual understanding of the topic. I’m not saying this to shame you, I promise, I’m really really not. But if this is something you’re passionate about, then you owe it to yourself to have a better grasp on what the terrifying outcomes look like. Does any of the above mean things can’t be improved? Of Course Not. There are serious problems with many things, but serious problems means it can have very serious outcomes. We should always look for ways to improve. But only with an accurate understanding. And to be very clear, there are very serious problems in the academic publishing world, no question.
    - botverse 5y ago

jjeaff 5y ago

So if Journals don't pay the reviewers and the reviewers are what filters out the garbage, then what necessary function are the journals filling? Do they vet the reviewers? Index the studies? I've never had much trouble finding what I need on GitHub or scihub. Seems to be indexed pretty well. And if there is a conflict of interest for reviewers to be paid, then isn't their a conflict of interest for those selecting and vetting the reviewers?

Fomite 5y ago
A couple things: 1) They do indeed vet reviewers, both their reviewers and also who ends up on their editorial boards, which for most people on them is just "Yeah, you're going to get more review requests." Editors should - but often don't - also evaluate the quality of the reviews themselves. 2) Some journals do copyediting and layout. Several times this has markedly improved the paper, including one that remade a figure. 3)They also handle some backend stuff. For example, for most medical journals, you just have to check a box saying "This was funded by the NIH" and they'll handle putting it in the appropriate repositories, etc.
evandijk70 5y ago
Actually, an editor once told me that a lot of papers (50%) are rejected without consulting reviewers. So the garbage is already filtered by the journals. Reviewers can often disagree with each other as well, so a judgement call is needed in those cases. I agree with your point that payment does not necessarily mean conflict of interest.

vimy 5y ago

Preprints and blogs should be the default. Instead of peer review, which sometimes (often?) turns into gatekeeping or dismissing new ideas, we’ll judge research on reproducibility. The github model for science sounds better than what we have now. Journals to curate research is pre-internet tech, it’s outdated.

canjobear 5y ago

You're right that journals have many important functions beyond peer review, but you're wrong that this has anything to do with their closed-access paid nature. Fields such as computational linguistics have a healthy ecosystem of journals and conference proceedings, all free and open access.

Texaner 5y ago
What ways are better?

robbedpeter 5y ago

The baby is dead. It's time to bury it and mourn its passing. There are better tools and technology to "curate" science - the only reason for these journals is rent extraction and gatekeeping.

arpa 5y ago

> Once paid journals go away, Sci-Hub will end up like GitHub more like we get arxiv.org?

type0 5y ago

> But throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't a better solution. It is not a baby, it's a teratoma eating scientific world and society from inside, the time to cut it out is now!