3 ms·

As an observation, I think "If you're not paying for it, you're the product" applies here. In traditional publishing, the people writing the papers are the pro

As an observation, I think "If you're not paying for it, you're the product" applies here. In traditional publishing, the people writing the papers are the product. Journals compete to get the best papers, and those that got the best papers in the immediate past tend to get the best paper submissions in the future. In open-access publishing, the readers are the product. Having good papers is only one way to build your product base, On the other side, there are a number of ways to market your product (pay-to-play, for example.) While I like open-access in principle, I also like the filtering from the traditional pubs to help me narrow a reading list.

dbingham 4y ago
How would you apply that observation to Wikipedia? That's the business model we're aiming to take - crowdsourced, crowdfunded, non-profit, and community governed. And the reason for that is precisely because of the mis-aligned incentives in both the pay to access and pay to publish models. The filtering here would be accomplished by the tagging system and the voting system.
- jpmattia 4y ago
  > How would you apply that observation to Wikipedia? I would notice that the Wikipedia reader base is a multiple of peer-reviewed scientific-paper base. While I don't know what the multiple is, I would guess the range is 1-2 orders of magnitude. Wikipedia claims its average donation is $15 [1], so a rough guess will imply $100-$1000 average donation for a sci pub model. That's on the income side. On the spending side: I would guess the major difference in costs would be the scientific editors, which exist in the traditional science publication model. There are probably large initial marketing costs associated with 1. finding the right target authors and convincing them to send a valuable contribution to the new site, 2. finding serious editors to manage peer review and separate the wheat from the chaff. (edit: I assume this is still part of the process. I think about something like Einstein's special relativity paper, and I'd have to guess it would have been widely downvoted as an internet crank trying to publish crazy ideas -- he did not have a reputation yet.) I see this as potentially expensive: The level of the first papers will determine how likely it is to succeed. Said differently: If the new site starts by publishing lame work, it's not like someone is going to want to publish there afterward. In any case: I think it is a tough and worthwhile problem to solve, and I wish you good luck. [1] https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/FAQ https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/FAQ
- CJefferson 4y ago
  The problem is wikipedia is explictly rejecting what you want to accept -- original research. It takes minutes to check someone's reference says what that it claims they say. It takes days to check if a new piece of independant research is correct.

dbingham 4y ago

How would you apply that observation to Wikipedia? That's the business model we're aiming to take - crowdsourced, crowdfunded, non-profit, and community governed. And the reason for that is precisely because of the mis-aligned incentives in both the pay to access and pay to publish models. The filtering here would be accomplished by the tagging system and the voting system.

jpmattia 4y ago
> How would you apply that observation to Wikipedia? I would notice that the Wikipedia reader base is a multiple of peer-reviewed scientific-paper base. While I don't know what the multiple is, I would guess the range is 1-2 orders of magnitude. Wikipedia claims its average donation is $15 [1], so a rough guess will imply $100-$1000 average donation for a sci pub model. That's on the income side. On the spending side: I would guess the major difference in costs would be the scientific editors, which exist in the traditional science publication model. There are probably large initial marketing costs associated with 1. finding the right target authors and convincing them to send a valuable contribution to the new site, 2. finding serious editors to manage peer review and separate the wheat from the chaff. (edit: I assume this is still part of the process. I think about something like Einstein's special relativity paper, and I'd have to guess it would have been widely downvoted as an internet crank trying to publish crazy ideas -- he did not have a reputation yet.) I see this as potentially expensive: The level of the first papers will determine how likely it is to succeed. Said differently: If the new site starts by publishing lame work, it's not like someone is going to want to publish there afterward. In any case: I think it is a tough and worthwhile problem to solve, and I wish you good luck. [1] https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/FAQ https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/FAQ
CJefferson 4y ago
The problem is wikipedia is explictly rejecting what you want to accept -- original research. It takes minutes to check someone's reference says what that it claims they say. It takes days to check if a new piece of independant research is correct.