5 ms·

I don't completely disagree (although I feel like there have been a lot of naive and overly simplistic CD "thoughts" posted on HN recently that rubbed me the w

I don't completely disagree (although I feel like there have been a lot of naive and overly simplistic CD "thoughts" posted on HN recently that rubbed me the wrong way). But consider on one hand the "fake news" / misinformation problem or whatever people want to call it, and the legacy academic publishing industry on the other. I'm looking at this from the perspective of an academic, the target audience of the publications, not a layperson for whom they are not designed. Like it or not, big concentrated power in academic publishing largely addresses trust in the quality of the publications. Good faculty want to review or serve as editor for good publications, and researchers will follow and rely on the quality of reputable, high impact factor publications. I know it's not always as simple as that, but I liked opening a new issue of my go-to journal and knowing that what I was reading had gone through a good review and was curated to be stuff that was relevant to me. I'm glad my university paid for it. Not saying there are not other ways, but that these "scams" are providing a valuable service. (And I'm aware of examples of bad research, retracted papers, etc, these are mostly issues for laypeople and the media, they have almost no impact on researchers and occur with insignificant frequency) (And there are lots of real scams and rent seeking in the industry, but not what is covered in the twitter posts)

richardatlarge 5y ago
Yes, some of the most important moments in my life were getting a paper accepted in a prestigious publication. Standing has such importance. Still some (medical) journals have nevertheless lost reputation by publishing work by shill authors
malloryerik 5y ago
Why is a thoughtful and good-willed comment like this being downvoted?
- hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
  FYI the Hacker News Guidelines page addresses this kind of comment thusly: >Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - malloryerik 5y ago
    Fair enough ^^.
- usmannk 5y ago
  Because it is irrelevant. The concentration of power is one thing, but the complaints here are against the shameless rent-seeking. Open access publishing would not take away from anything the OP is extolling the values of.
  - version_five 5y ago
    Couldn't you just post your own thoughts instead of downvoting my comment then? Or if you find it irrelevant just ignore it? What does downvoting add? Personally I don't care if you want to downvote, but your justification doesn't make any sense.
    - usmannk 5y ago
      I suppose, but I didn’t vote on it either way.
josephg 5y ago
> I'm glad my university paid for it. Does the journal pay for the academics’ time in reviewing articles? No. Does it pay for the articles themselves? Also no. What service, exactly, is the university paying all that money for? It seems to me that the core service journals offer is as a central place for people to submit articles. And some organisation around requesting and collecting reviews. And that sounds like the sort of thing you could replace with a website. The workflows we use for modern software development (eg on GitHub) are far more complex, maximally automated and free. And the result is source code anyone can browse, without needing any of the code to have its copyright handed over to a rent seeking middleman. It’s crazy that academics of all people live in such a primitive ecosystem.
- krastanov 5y ago
  The editors of good journals (APS Physical Review Letters for instance) provide significant service and it is reasonable to pay for it: from simple things like significantly improving the quality of the prose and typesetting to more crucial stuff like properly moderating the review process (picking appropriate reviewers, controlling for conflict of interest, filtering out superfluous submissions).
- version_five 5y ago
  I think you're missing the point. Researchers literally could upload their work to github if they wanted to right now. They choose to publish in journals because the reputation means their work will get seen and will have credibility with other researchers. It's a bit like Big-4 auditing in a sense. They don't do anything particularly special, but their size and reputation give credibility to their audits that wouldn't otherwise be possible. And like journals, they have had some spectacular failures that are dwelt upon, but in general they make vetting much easier.
  - indrax 5y ago
    They're paying for credibility, but assigning the credibility to an organization instead of an open and understood process of vetting. This confuses me.
btrettel 5y ago
> (And I'm aware of examples of bad research, retracted papers, etc, these are mostly issues for laypeople and the media, they have almost no impact on researchers and occur with insignificant frequency) I think these issues occur far more frequently than is appreciated. To me, peer review is more of a facade than a filter. The vast majority of the time, the review is superficial. I think most researchers have false confidence in the quality of the reviews, and should be more skeptical of published papers. During my PhD I spent a fair amount of time working through various papers in my field and I was surprised by how many of them had serious flaws that were unnoticed. Even highly cited papers could have major issues. For example, see this comment I put on PubPeer on a paper that is very well cited in my field: https://pubpeer.com/publications/95455FA4147A9CBD5EAA5185D21DAC https://pubpeer.com/publications/95455FA4147A9CBD5EAA5185D21... These errors I noticed in this paper are quite basic and I'm disappointed to apparently be the first one to notice. You don't need to do a deep analysis to notice the errors. Now, I'm not arguing that we should eliminate peer review or anything like that. This is mostly a response to the view that bad research is uncommon and does not have a major impact on science. I personally think that peer review should be reformed, though I don't have clear ideas about how yet.
JanisL 5y ago
There's an important distinction to be made between fake news which is deliberately misleading and the concept of fiat news which is when information is passed along with no checks and balances in environments where people explicitly assume that there are checks and balances. We see this in the media but now also increasingly in academia as journals seem to be performing the review function less effectively than before. There's an article that I think explains the difference between these two problems that is worth reading: https://www.epsilontheory.com/fiat-money-fiat-news/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/fiat-money-fiat-news/
- btrettel 5y ago
  Thanks for posting. "Fiat news" is a nice term. I've said before that certain things in science are "canonized" and then rarely questioned. What you wrote describes that exactly.

richardatlarge 5y ago

Yes, some of the most important moments in my life were getting a paper accepted in a prestigious publication. Standing has such importance. Still some (medical) journals have nevertheless lost reputation by publishing work by shill authors

malloryerik 5y ago

Why is a thoughtful and good-willed comment like this being downvoted?

hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
FYI the Hacker News Guidelines page addresses this kind of comment thusly: >Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- malloryerik 5y ago
  Fair enough ^^.
usmannk 5y ago
Because it is irrelevant. The concentration of power is one thing, but the complaints here are against the shameless rent-seeking. Open access publishing would not take away from anything the OP is extolling the values of.
- version_five 5y ago
  Couldn't you just post your own thoughts instead of downvoting my comment then? Or if you find it irrelevant just ignore it? What does downvoting add? Personally I don't care if you want to downvote, but your justification doesn't make any sense.
  - usmannk 5y ago
    I suppose, but I didn’t vote on it either way.

josephg 5y ago

> I'm glad my university paid for it. Does the journal pay for the academics’ time in reviewing articles? No. Does it pay for the articles themselves? Also no. What service, exactly, is the university paying all that money for? It seems to me that the core service journals offer is as a central place for people to submit articles. And some organisation around requesting and collecting reviews. And that sounds like the sort of thing you could replace with a website. The workflows we use for modern software development (eg on GitHub) are far more complex, maximally automated and free. And the result is source code anyone can browse, without needing any of the code to have its copyright handed over to a rent seeking middleman. It’s crazy that academics of all people live in such a primitive ecosystem.

krastanov 5y ago
The editors of good journals (APS Physical Review Letters for instance) provide significant service and it is reasonable to pay for it: from simple things like significantly improving the quality of the prose and typesetting to more crucial stuff like properly moderating the review process (picking appropriate reviewers, controlling for conflict of interest, filtering out superfluous submissions).
version_five 5y ago
I think you're missing the point. Researchers literally could upload their work to github if they wanted to right now. They choose to publish in journals because the reputation means their work will get seen and will have credibility with other researchers. It's a bit like Big-4 auditing in a sense. They don't do anything particularly special, but their size and reputation give credibility to their audits that wouldn't otherwise be possible. And like journals, they have had some spectacular failures that are dwelt upon, but in general they make vetting much easier.
- indrax 5y ago
  They're paying for credibility, but assigning the credibility to an organization instead of an open and understood process of vetting. This confuses me.

btrettel 5y ago

> (And I'm aware of examples of bad research, retracted papers, etc, these are mostly issues for laypeople and the media, they have almost no impact on researchers and occur with insignificant frequency) I think these issues occur far more frequently than is appreciated. To me, peer review is more of a facade than a filter. The vast majority of the time, the review is superficial. I think most researchers have false confidence in the quality of the reviews, and should be more skeptical of published papers. During my PhD I spent a fair amount of time working through various papers in my field and I was surprised by how many of them had serious flaws that were unnoticed. Even highly cited papers could have major issues. For example, see this comment I put on PubPeer on a paper that is very well cited in my field: https://pubpeer.com/publications/95455FA4147A9CBD5EAA5185D21DAC https://pubpeer.com/publications/95455FA4147A9CBD5EAA5185D21... These errors I noticed in this paper are quite basic and I'm disappointed to apparently be the first one to notice. You don't need to do a deep analysis to notice the errors. Now, I'm not arguing that we should eliminate peer review or anything like that. This is mostly a response to the view that bad research is uncommon and does not have a major impact on science. I personally think that peer review should be reformed, though I don't have clear ideas about how yet.

JanisL 5y ago

There's an important distinction to be made between fake news which is deliberately misleading and the concept of fiat news which is when information is passed along with no checks and balances in environments where people explicitly assume that there are checks and balances. We see this in the media but now also increasingly in academia as journals seem to be performing the review function less effectively than before. There's an article that I think explains the difference between these two problems that is worth reading: https://www.epsilontheory.com/fiat-money-fiat-news/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/fiat-money-fiat-news/

btrettel 5y ago
Thanks for posting. "Fiat news" is a nice term. I've said before that certain things in science are "canonized" and then rarely questioned. What you wrote describes that exactly.