7 ms·

I don't understand what value traditional publishers of scientific journals offer? With the current web it's so easy to setup the required infrastructure. No w

by xupybd 5y ago

I don't understand what value traditional publishers of scientific journals offer? With the current web it's so easy to setup the required infrastructure. No way can the cost of articles be justified.

threatofrain 5y ago
The infrastructure to replace is not the publication part but the peer review and institutional credibility.
- tux3 5y ago
  Isn't peer review performed by authors, not by journals?
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    [Deleted for inaccuracy.]
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - adminprof 5y ago
    This comes up every time there's an article about academic publishing. Yes peer reviewers do the reviewing, but it's the long-term infrastructure and coordination that the journal provides. AirBnB's content is generated by users, but AirBnB itself requires software development, legal, customer support, HR, program managers, quality control, etc. Same with publishers. Note that this journal now has a publishing fee for authors to cover these costs, rather than a fee for the reader as before. The 2022 fee for each author is $1,705 according to the FAQ. So moving to open access it not about removing the costs (which many people on Hacker News seems to always assume), but changing who pays for it.
    - geofft 5y ago
      Before Airbnb there was Couchsurfing. I think academic publishers are a better argument against the unnecessity of Airbnb than Airbnb is an argument for the necessity of academic publishers.
    - discardable_dan 5y ago
      A few things: - AirBnB serves a significantly-larger infrastructure than a website hosting up PDFs. Github with Jekyll can do it. - Software development is really at a minimum for journals. Hosting can be a static blog, and review infrastructure could literally be replaced with e-mailing PDFs / text files back and forth, and often devolves to that anyway. - The editor of the JFP uses their university and external grant budgets to cover most, if not all, of their operating time and expenses. - Legal is likely the largest cost (ensuring the journal has sole publication rights, and contracts to that effect), but open access can also simplify this. - Without customers (e.g., open access), there is no need for customer support. HR and program management is a very small minimum, as well. - Nobody involved in the actual journal work (editing, reviewing, etc.) is paid. The cost of $1075 is, frankly, kind of absurd. What does it cost to host a PDF online forever? Volume 31 of the JFP published ~25 research articles, which would be ~$25k. When Github has the infrastructure to entirely eat the hosting cost, what justifies this much money?
      - adminprof 5y ago
        So I think your assumption that academic publishing is "a website hosting up PDFs" is the source of confusion for "what justifies this much money." Just like AirBnB isn't just a website hosting JPEGs, while being worth 129 billion dollars. Hosting PDFs can already be done by arXiv or Google Drive or Github as you said. Customer support is for peer reviewers who can't log into their account, for managing issues dealing with misconduct, for handling issues with payments, for post-publishing corrections and errata, for passing accounts from editors who become non-responsive to other editors, etc. Not just dealing with readers or subscribers.
        discardable_dan 5y ago
  - coldacid 5y ago
    Peer review is performed by other experts in the same field, and the journal has to arrange that for the authors.
    - pasquinelli 5y ago
      as a complete outsider to peer reviewing and academic journals, this sounds like that scene from "office space", the "what is it you'd you do here?", one.
      - amatic 5y ago
        Journals don't "do" anything, but the professors, PIs, postdocs, etc are evaluated for jobs or promotions based on the "quality" of their work approximated by the "quality" of the journals they were able to publish in. A Nature or a Science paper gets you a lot more than an arxiv preprint (in most fields, anyway). My best bet is we need a new way of evaluating scientific work, without relying on proxies like journal impact factors. Not sure what those might be, probably depends on the field.
  - discardable_dan 5y ago
    Yes. I have peer reviewed for JFP. I have never been paid for it.
- snicker7 5y ago
  Except that institutional credibility is literally a made-up resource that tax payers like myself are subsidizing.
  - culi 5y ago
    What's the alternative? I wouldn't really trust something like reddit to just upvote the most credible papers Kidding, but I am genuinely really interested in alternatives
  - jancsika 5y ago
    > Except that institutional credibility is literally a made-up resource Not really. That kind of hyperbole is how we get low-value conversations full of super-duper adjective combo moves: "OMG this fake online journal's editorial board is totally the most literally made-up resource in the whole wide world"
- d0mine 5y ago
  It is not about it: some people are greedy and they don't care who the need to hurt to make a buck. For example, linux publishes its source code and manages reputation of the commit authors without the help of the publishers that take billions for the honer.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
globalise83 5y ago
The most prestigious journals are the place where researchers find the most impactful research, and therefore academic libraries are willing to pay for expensive subscriptions. For researchers with high-impact research results, the publication venue which will maximise their own personal prestige and attract future funding streams are the most prestigious journals. And so their position is continually reinforced in perpetuity. It has nothing to do with the underlying technology, but is rooted in academic network effects.
- mjn 5y ago
  You can break out of the network effects with some effort. One of the top journals in machine learning nowadays is a community-run open-access journal that does not charge authors, JMLR (https://www.jmlr.org/ https://www.jmlr.org/). There's a bit about its model here: https://blogs.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-journal/ https://blogs.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-j... (previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15280736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15280736)
- TaXaZ 5y ago
  I think open science movement slowly erode their grip on the industry. It's perpetual theoretically, but not in practice. Though, It needs a collaborative effort and the main factor is awareness.
Vinnl 5y ago
They offer publishing authors the credentials of having published with then, which is useful for e.g. getting tenure. And since they have a monopoly on those credentials, they can charge good money for that.
HWR_14 5y ago
> I don't understand what value traditional publishers of scientific journals offer? The best papers try to get published in the best journals. The academics get more professional credit for better journals. Then, the best journals can charge more money for access to the best papers. If you have a couple of Nobel laureates from the same subfield, they may be able to create a newly prestigious journal, but it's pretty much going to take that and time. It's similar to MIT/CalTech/Stanford/the Ivy League. Sure, there may be a way to get similar instruction quality elsewhere, but the value they offer is based on they're elite reputation.

by xupybd 5y ago

threatofrain 5y ago

The infrastructure to replace is not the publication part but the peer review and institutional credibility.

tux3 5y ago
Isn't peer review performed by authors, not by journals?
- threatofrain 5y ago
  [Deleted for inaccuracy.]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- adminprof 5y ago
  This comes up every time there's an article about academic publishing. Yes peer reviewers do the reviewing, but it's the long-term infrastructure and coordination that the journal provides. AirBnB's content is generated by users, but AirBnB itself requires software development, legal, customer support, HR, program managers, quality control, etc. Same with publishers. Note that this journal now has a publishing fee for authors to cover these costs, rather than a fee for the reader as before. The 2022 fee for each author is $1,705 according to the FAQ. So moving to open access it not about removing the costs (which many people on Hacker News seems to always assume), but changing who pays for it.
  - geofft 5y ago
    Before Airbnb there was Couchsurfing. I think academic publishers are a better argument against the unnecessity of Airbnb than Airbnb is an argument for the necessity of academic publishers.
  - discardable_dan 5y ago
    A few things: - AirBnB serves a significantly-larger infrastructure than a website hosting up PDFs. Github with Jekyll can do it. - Software development is really at a minimum for journals. Hosting can be a static blog, and review infrastructure could literally be replaced with e-mailing PDFs / text files back and forth, and often devolves to that anyway. - The editor of the JFP uses their university and external grant budgets to cover most, if not all, of their operating time and expenses. - Legal is likely the largest cost (ensuring the journal has sole publication rights, and contracts to that effect), but open access can also simplify this. - Without customers (e.g., open access), there is no need for customer support. HR and program management is a very small minimum, as well. - Nobody involved in the actual journal work (editing, reviewing, etc.) is paid. The cost of $1075 is, frankly, kind of absurd. What does it cost to host a PDF online forever? Volume 31 of the JFP published ~25 research articles, which would be ~$25k. When Github has the infrastructure to entirely eat the hosting cost, what justifies this much money?
    - adminprof 5y ago
      So I think your assumption that academic publishing is "a website hosting up PDFs" is the source of confusion for "what justifies this much money." Just like AirBnB isn't just a website hosting JPEGs, while being worth 129 billion dollars. Hosting PDFs can already be done by arXiv or Google Drive or Github as you said. Customer support is for peer reviewers who can't log into their account, for managing issues dealing with misconduct, for handling issues with payments, for post-publishing corrections and errata, for passing accounts from editors who become non-responsive to other editors, etc. Not just dealing with readers or subscribers.
      - discardable_dan 5y ago
- coldacid 5y ago
  Peer review is performed by other experts in the same field, and the journal has to arrange that for the authors.
  - pasquinelli 5y ago
    as a complete outsider to peer reviewing and academic journals, this sounds like that scene from "office space", the "what is it you'd you do here?", one.
    - amatic 5y ago
      Journals don't "do" anything, but the professors, PIs, postdocs, etc are evaluated for jobs or promotions based on the "quality" of their work approximated by the "quality" of the journals they were able to publish in. A Nature or a Science paper gets you a lot more than an arxiv preprint (in most fields, anyway). My best bet is we need a new way of evaluating scientific work, without relying on proxies like journal impact factors. Not sure what those might be, probably depends on the field.
- discardable_dan 5y ago
  Yes. I have peer reviewed for JFP. I have never been paid for it.
snicker7 5y ago
Except that institutional credibility is literally a made-up resource that tax payers like myself are subsidizing.
- culi 5y ago
  What's the alternative? I wouldn't really trust something like reddit to just upvote the most credible papers Kidding, but I am genuinely really interested in alternatives
- jancsika 5y ago
  > Except that institutional credibility is literally a made-up resource Not really. That kind of hyperbole is how we get low-value conversations full of super-duper adjective combo moves: "OMG this fake online journal's editorial board is totally the most literally made-up resource in the whole wide world"
d0mine 5y ago
It is not about it: some people are greedy and they don't care who the need to hurt to make a buck. For example, linux publishes its source code and manages reputation of the commit authors without the help of the publishers that take billions for the honer.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

globalise83 5y ago

The most prestigious journals are the place where researchers find the most impactful research, and therefore academic libraries are willing to pay for expensive subscriptions. For researchers with high-impact research results, the publication venue which will maximise their own personal prestige and attract future funding streams are the most prestigious journals. And so their position is continually reinforced in perpetuity. It has nothing to do with the underlying technology, but is rooted in academic network effects.

mjn 5y ago
You can break out of the network effects with some effort. One of the top journals in machine learning nowadays is a community-run open-access journal that does not charge authors, JMLR (https://www.jmlr.org/ https://www.jmlr.org/). There's a bit about its model here: https://blogs.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-journal/ https://blogs.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-j... (previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15280736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15280736)
TaXaZ 5y ago
I think open science movement slowly erode their grip on the industry. It's perpetual theoretically, but not in practice. Though, It needs a collaborative effort and the main factor is awareness.

Vinnl 5y ago

They offer publishing authors the credentials of having published with then, which is useful for e.g. getting tenure. And since they have a monopoly on those credentials, they can charge good money for that.

HWR_14 5y ago

> I don't understand what value traditional publishers of scientific journals offer? The best papers try to get published in the best journals. The academics get more professional credit for better journals. Then, the best journals can charge more money for access to the best papers. If you have a couple of Nobel laureates from the same subfield, they may be able to create a newly prestigious journal, but it's pretty much going to take that and time. It's similar to MIT/CalTech/Stanford/the Ivy League. Sure, there may be a way to get similar instruction quality elsewhere, but the value they offer is based on they're elite reputation.