13 ms·
Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free
- a_bonobo 5y agoA good development - depositing papers in OA journals is extremely expensive and internationally, most funding bodies requiring OA don't give you money to publish OA. For example, Nature Communications charges around $5,000 for a single paper; I can send a student to an overseas conference for that kind of money! Public repositories like arxiv or biorxiv are free.
- arcanus 5y agoI could not agree more: this is a good thing. Studies funded by public money should be freely available by default. This is a great decision and I hope major funding agencies in the USA follow this example. As a practicing scientist, I ostensibly have access to a rich variety of journals from my employer. However, I've found journal access to be difficult during WFH/COVID. My default is to look for an open access paper, before jumping to the digital library. I've also had a few cases where the digital access seemed not to be working, which only put up barriers to my work.
- laurent92 5y agoThe supposed advantage of commercial archiving is duration, where as self-hosted tends to depend on the author; But we could create solutions where, if works are being used by clients (hospitals, research), the client would be in charge of automatically downloading all the dependencies. Like a Maven repository, but with P2P resharing. In similar vein, software used by public institutions should be required to be made open-source. Open source is already the VIIth marvel of humanity, and needs consolidation.
- aurizon 5y agoNow we need to get the Nobel Committee to say they will only read open source papers - this is a valid option as the paywalls have denied most of the world's 'second tier' countries access for their scientists (to say nothing of interested science readers wherever they are) so going open source will only add to the common pool of knowledge
- sprafa 5y agoIt’s truly horrific that as an interested layman I am completely UNABLE to read most scientific papers. And to think about what they did to Aaron Schwartz…
- chrisseaton 5y ago> It’s truly horrific that as an interested layman I am completely UNABLE to read most scientific papers. You can usually find a pre-print by Googling the title. Or ask the author for a copy. (You shouldn't have to do this, but you can until all papers are open access anyway.)
- andi999 5y agoWhy is it legal for the author to send you a copy (asking as an author)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- chrisseaton 5y agoThey usually send you a 'pre-print' which (in their opinion - I'm not a lawyer) is not subject to the same copyright as the final reversion which was sent to review.
- andi999 5y agoThanks. Any sources for their opinion? Probably I shd read the copyright release form in more detail, but if you think terms of copyright this won't fly.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> but if you think terms of copyright this won't fly Wooah there I'm not giving any legal advice. Ask a lawyer.
- bearbin 5y agoSeemingly as part of the same push, the UKRI announced funding for an open research project I've worked on before: Dr Alex Freeman's Octopus [0], a more radical software platform that splits research projects into smaller components. It's good to see that the openess of research is finally getting to be a priority of the funding bodies. [0]: https://science-octopus.org/ https://science-octopus.org/
- Vinnl 5y agoAlex has been working on that for so long; it was really gratifying to see that she finally got some traction and serious funding to get it to go somewhere. Really looking forward to seeing what will come out of it. Funding announcement: https://www.ukri.org/news/funding-agreed-for-a-platform-that-will-change-research-culture/ https://www.ukri.org/news/funding-agreed-for-a-platform-that...
- cs702 5y agoSlowly and almost imperceptibly if you look at it day-to-day, public research repositories like arxiv and biorxiv, along with public code repositories like github and gitlab, are becoming or maybe already are the world's most important academic "journals." All research and code posted on them gets a quick once-over; good work gets the attention it deserves; bad work is quickly ignored. Reviews take place over the Internet via both public and private forums. Gatekeeping power lies more and more in the hands of a global, distributed scientific community open to anyone willing and capable of doing and reviewing the work. It's fabulous IMHO.
- SQueeeeeL 5y agoIf you want to have to read 5,000 poorly written error riddled works to find a single gem I guess it's okay. Unfortunately, I'm not an immortal
- ajkjk 5y agoIt's really much better than that. At least for the subfields I've followed.
- mdp2021 5y agoThen we will also have to find a decentralized rating/sorting system that works. Finally. ( = Let us devise it for the publications, then let us export it to the many, uttermostly crucial, contexts that can use it).
- beowulfey 5y agoGood thing you aren’t the only one looking!
- kekebo 5y agoGithub stars / number of forks can act as coarse initial quality indicators for foss, why not for academic papers?
- sxg 5y agoThe current publication system doesn't necessarily avoid that problem either. Many papers are accepted due to the prestige of certain authors and conformity to other papers in the same field. Filters like these can lead to a false sense of security in the quality of the work.
- CraftingLinks 5y ago"Pay journals for “gold” open access, which makes a paper free to read on the publisher’s website, or choose the “green” route, which allows them to deposit a near-final version of the paper on a public repository, after a waiting period of up to 1 year." yeah, that kind of free huh. Sick.
- ectopod 5y agoThat is the old policy. > But starting in April 2022, that yearlong delay will no longer be permitted: Researchers choosing green open access must deposit the paper immediately when it is published.
- jeremyjh 5y agoIf you read further you would come to understand that is the current state of things, and the significance of the submitted article is that a new policy means the papers must be immediately made free.
- andi999 5y agoImmediately means the time span between publication and open access, not the rule, which starts April 2022.
- cheese_van 5y agoA remarkable thing about the COVID crisis is the unprecedented close cooperation and data sharing by widely disparate scientific communities. The obvious global benefits may also be driving cooperation and sharing in other fields, including (and perhaps especially) publishing. Closed data has no beneficiaries except commerce - it's being seen as a dead model. Finally.
- adam0c 5y agoCan we get ISO to make all papers free next...? You know since moat industries need to abide by their standards but they refuse to freely make available these standards...
- elmo2you 5y agoIt might even be argued that the de facto mandatory nature of their standards constitute a form of (international) competitiveness, because their prices sure aren't just trivial to particularly smaller businesses. Especially when you take into account that in other economies (outside the USA), their prices can be downright show-stoppers. But then, it isn't particularly a new thing for larger economies to abuse standards and intellectual property regulations, to "compete" with smaller economies in ways that diametrically oppose the supposed (or at least often hailed) purpose and goals of both standards and intellectual property regulations.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoYes!! Why do these things even cost money to begin with? It's like they want people to not follow the standards.
- shapefrog 5y agoISO666 sets the acceptable limits on how much you should charge people to get a copy of the standards. /s
- kfprt 5y agoI guessed they would have skipped it but no... ISO 666:2006 Machine tools — Mounting of grinding wheels by means of hub flanges https://www.iso.org/standard/35748.html https://www.iso.org/standard/35748.html
- tialaramex 5y agoISO exists at the whim of the sovereign entities. You are most likely a citizen of one (or perhaps even more) of the entities that ensure ISO continues to exist, and could ask them to get ISO to give away the standards documents. Of course if the money does not come from ISO selling documents, it would need to come from tax revenue. In reality however it was scheduled the real money comes from the richest countries, as they're most able to afford it, your politicians may have the opinion that even a modest sum expended in this way would be justified by their opponents as profligate...
- wolverine876 5y agoIn case someone has some direct knowledge or credible sources: I'm not sure what is stopping reform at a political level. Who is the political constituency that obstructs open access? The publishers seem too small, and the science and higher ed constituency too large.
- cycomanic 5y agoI can't give you direct links, but I know that large scientific/engineering organisations have not been pushing for free open access. For example the IEEE has been part of an open letter (which included Elsivier) lobbying against Plan S. These organisations derive a lot of their money from publishing, so while many (most) of the members are strongly in favor of OA, the buerocratics in the organisations often are not. Which gives mixed messages to politicians. On top of that I believe that non-scientific publishers have also been part of the lobby campaign as they see OA as weakening copyright.
- Vinnl 5y agoFunders have been relying on publishers to tell them (by means of who they publish) what researchers are worth funding. This is keeping up the pressure for academics to keep publishing in paywalled journals. There is some pressure to both make research not paywalled (Plan S is the strongest) and less costly. However, given that most of the funders' researchers can access most relevant research (albeit rather clumsily, thanks to the access mechanisms, and not 100%, hence Sci-Hub even being popular among those who do have access), and that the extracted rent on the scale of a country budget isn't that much, the pressure isn't particularly strong. Additionally, it's hard for a single funder/country to move on its own without ruining their academics' careers (hence Plan S's focus on signing on more funders).
- AlbertCory 5y agoReed Elsevier and the other rent seekers got no reason to live. That said: in the legal world, where PACER extracts $0.10 per "page" even now that you get things electronically and the cost is near zero: There's a service RECAP (PACER spelled backwards), where you can install a browser extension which automatically copies anything you download from PACER to a free archive. So one person pays, and the rest get it free. It is amazingly complete, much more than you would think. For instance, here's the entry for the Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos) trial: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7185174/united-states-v-holmes/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7185174/united-states-v...
- ipaddr 5y agoCurious if the backup service is legal?
- AlbertCory 5y agoIt's been going on for years, I know that. I don't know if the rent-seekers have ever tried to shut it down. The fact that it's so complete tells me that a huge number of mainstream law firms look the other way when their employees use the browser extension.
- erhk 5y agoLots of illicit things go on for years
- AlbertCory 5y agoTrue. This is, almost by definition, a very litigious sector though.
- syshum 5y agoIn the case of PACER, they are public records, and have no copy right attached to them as they are government documents, the government can not hold copyrights by definition everything the US government produces public domain.
- AlbertCory 5y agoAnother point about peer review: It sounds good but has become hopelessly corrupted in many fields. Cronyism ("I'll pass your paper if you pass mine"), conformity ("This isn't what the Cool Kids have agreed to, so you can't publish it") and also "This is too readable. Needs more jargon!" have taken over. Does this mean it should be thrown out altogether, or just reformed? I'm not sure.
- AlbertCory 5y agoOne point to my others and pretty orthogonal to them: I was a tech assistant in Google Patent Litigation. Part of my job was to bust patents (a dream job, right?), and for that, I would scour the Internet for literature to invalidate a patent being asserted against us. I would constantly see articles behind some paywall, and I would never, never click through. There are reasons you can imagine, like (1) I didn't want the hassle of justifying the expense, and (2) I hate those publishers. Both true. However, the biggest reason was: I don't know if it's any good until I read it. The vast majority of articles are not helpful for my purpose. I can't tell if they really are until I read them. If it turns out that some article is the killer, then of course Google would pay for it. But for the 1000's that are not -- well, why waste the money? I can almost always find the same information somewhere else, for free.
- systemBuilder 5y agoThis is so right. It used to be theoretically justified to charge a cost for editing, reviewing management, and printing costs of a paper journal but most paper journals have disappeared and the paper format is useless today. High tech has made these journal companies giant vampire squids poking their blood funnels into academia to suck the life out of mankind's progress! But down the road I can see that academic research publication will become like Facebook - loaded with bullshit promoted by hypesters - wasting time and killing thousands - and no one to enforce sanity in that lunatic wilderness! If the 19th century journals would get with a program they would become science repos with a much smaller stuff and light fees (enough to support one staff managing editor per journal) for the review process! Publishing a paper in this model should probably cost about $1000 - $2,000, about the same as it cost the last time I was in academia...
- chmod775 5y ago> “When versions of articles are made available too soon, this undermines the need to subscribe [to journals],” wrote a spokesperson, Amy Price, in an email to Science. Yes, Ms. Price, that is the point.
- YetAnotherNick 5y agoAre there any incentive for the researcher to not make the research paper free? AFAIK most prestigious journals allows researchers to publish their preprint papers in arxiv/the researcher's site.
- bishoprook2 5y agoquestion. Do peer reviewed papers make the reviewers public? That would be an interesting angle if not. Allow anyone to publish, but they compete for high-status reviewers. Also, the reviewers have some skin in the game so far as correctness.
- f0ff 5y agoFINALLY!
- OJFord 5y agoI know it's in the original title, so I'm not criticising OP the submitter, but this has to be the first time I've ever seen 'U.K.' as dotted intials like that! Seems oddly funny, I don't know why really. Wiktionary notes it's customary in legal case notes, but gives no other usage, which I suppose supports it being a first for me.