6 ms·

Maybe the silver lining is that a large scale uproar could incline more people to publish in open access journals in the first place (so-called "gold" open acce

by RK 15y ago

Maybe the silver lining is that a large scale uproar could incline more people to publish in open access journals in the first place (so-called "gold" open access). </wishful thinking>

jedbrown 15y ago
Counter-point: http://scienceinthesands.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-defense-of-submission-in-scientific.html http://scienceinthesands.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-defense-of-...
- obtu 15y ago
  Researchers are already paying to get their articles published. Given how much journal subscription costs, that cost is a fraction of the taxpayer money that is spent buying back the articles for the university libraries the same researchers use.
  - jedbrown 15y ago
    It depends what institution you are at and how much research funding you have. If you are a professor at a small teaching university (even in the US), a few publications per year in open access journals is the same cost as supporting a student for a year. Depending on the field and how established you, obtaining research funding can take a lot of time that might be better spent doing actual science. (This is true at all levels, but in high-profile fields, the grant sizes are large enough that publishing costs are almost negligible.) Although I am friends with David (the author of this blog post), I do not agree that open access is fundamentally the wrong model, but his argument is not without merit.
    - abrahamsen 15y ago
      How much does a "small teaching university" pay for access to scientific journals? I'd guess that a "teaching university" would have nearly the same need for access (if the teaching is any good), but much less need for submission, compared to a "research university", so the teaching university should benefit from shifting cost from access to submission.
- scott_s 15y ago
  In many areas of computer science, conference proceedings are where most people publish. (See the CRA's best practices memo: http://www.cra.org/resources/bp-view/evaluating_computer_scientists_and_engineers_for_promotion_and_tenure/ http://www.cra.org/resources/bp-view/evaluating_computer_sci...) Publishing in ACM and IEEE conferences are essentially author-pay. Technically, you don't pay to publish in the conference, but you must pay to register for the conference. And most conferences have a rule that if you don't register, you can't publish. There are many objections to the ACM and IEEE practices about maintaining paywalls, but I think that as professional societies, their policies can change. The for-profit journals, on the other hand, probably cannot survive if they allowed such open access. And nor should they: their business model is no longer valid.
  - jedbrown 15y ago
    I prefer the CS model in some ways, but there are issues. * The review process for conferences is necessarily compressed relative to journals. This usually lowers the quality of reviews and also limits paper length. * It is difficult to "grow" a highly selective conference, so the acceptance rate is usually quite high. This means that archaic tenure review committees evaluating on where you publish instead of what you publish will ascribe little weight to your conference papers. If people are not submitting their best work to a conference, it can't afford to be overly selective. This is much the same problem that new journals have, but worse because conferences usually have to reach a critical number of people to be considered a success.
    - scott_s 15y ago
      The conference versus journal issue is orthogonal to professional society versus for-profit entity, since the ACM and IEEE have journals. This means that archaic tenure review committees evaluating on where you publish instead of what you publish will ascribe little weight to your conference papers. Not in CS, in my experience. People in CS know which are the highly selective (what I have always heard called "top tier") conferences. In my experience in industry and academia, conferences are our primary consideration and journals are an afterthought. (Sometimes not even a thought.) The CRA memo is from 1999. I think most people have caught on by now.

by RK 15y ago

Maybe the silver lining is that a large scale uproar could incline more people to publish in open access journals in the first place (so-called "gold" open access). </wishful thinking>

jedbrown 15y ago

Counter-point: http://scienceinthesands.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-defense-of-submission-in-scientific.html http://scienceinthesands.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-defense-of-...

obtu 15y ago
Researchers are already paying to get their articles published. Given how much journal subscription costs, that cost is a fraction of the taxpayer money that is spent buying back the articles for the university libraries the same researchers use.
- jedbrown 15y ago
  It depends what institution you are at and how much research funding you have. If you are a professor at a small teaching university (even in the US), a few publications per year in open access journals is the same cost as supporting a student for a year. Depending on the field and how established you, obtaining research funding can take a lot of time that might be better spent doing actual science. (This is true at all levels, but in high-profile fields, the grant sizes are large enough that publishing costs are almost negligible.) Although I am friends with David (the author of this blog post), I do not agree that open access is fundamentally the wrong model, but his argument is not without merit.
  - abrahamsen 15y ago
    How much does a "small teaching university" pay for access to scientific journals? I'd guess that a "teaching university" would have nearly the same need for access (if the teaching is any good), but much less need for submission, compared to a "research university", so the teaching university should benefit from shifting cost from access to submission.
scott_s 15y ago
In many areas of computer science, conference proceedings are where most people publish. (See the CRA's best practices memo: http://www.cra.org/resources/bp-view/evaluating_computer_scientists_and_engineers_for_promotion_and_tenure/ http://www.cra.org/resources/bp-view/evaluating_computer_sci...) Publishing in ACM and IEEE conferences are essentially author-pay. Technically, you don't pay to publish in the conference, but you must pay to register for the conference. And most conferences have a rule that if you don't register, you can't publish. There are many objections to the ACM and IEEE practices about maintaining paywalls, but I think that as professional societies, their policies can change. The for-profit journals, on the other hand, probably cannot survive if they allowed such open access. And nor should they: their business model is no longer valid.
- jedbrown 15y ago
  I prefer the CS model in some ways, but there are issues. * The review process for conferences is necessarily compressed relative to journals. This usually lowers the quality of reviews and also limits paper length. * It is difficult to "grow" a highly selective conference, so the acceptance rate is usually quite high. This means that archaic tenure review committees evaluating on where you publish instead of what you publish will ascribe little weight to your conference papers. If people are not submitting their best work to a conference, it can't afford to be overly selective. This is much the same problem that new journals have, but worse because conferences usually have to reach a critical number of people to be considered a success.
  - scott_s 15y ago
    The conference versus journal issue is orthogonal to professional society versus for-profit entity, since the ACM and IEEE have journals. This means that archaic tenure review committees evaluating on where you publish instead of what you publish will ascribe little weight to your conference papers. Not in CS, in my experience. People in CS know which are the highly selective (what I have always heard called "top tier") conferences. In my experience in industry and academia, conferences are our primary consideration and journals are an afterthought. (Sometimes not even a thought.) The CRA memo is from 1999. I think most people have caught on by now.