7 ms·

Fields medalist Tim Gowers: Elsevier — my part in its downfall

287 points by randomwalker 15y ago

rotskoff 15y ago
Another reason the arxiv should pursue a serious refereeing system. Perhaps it should work something like Hacker News--high quality work could be measured by community support.
- cperciva 15y ago
  high quality work could be measured by community support. Absolutely not. Assessing the quality and correctness of groundbreaking research requires a large amount of both talent and effort; a reddit or HN style voting system would swamp the signal with uninformed noise.
  - raphman 15y ago
    Absolutely agree. It seems to be really hard even for experienced researchers to assess which papers will be seen as important in the future [1]. However, maybe something like PageRank might work out well. The more citations your papers get, the more weight your reviews will have. Certainly, there are problems, like people learning how to game the ranking system. On the other hand, the current system is certainly worse in this regard. [1] http://www.bartneck.de/publications/2009/scientometricAnalysisOfTheCHI/index.html http://www.bartneck.de/publications/2009/scientometricAnalys...
    - cperciva 15y ago
      That would certainly help. But more than anything else, I think what we need (at least in computer science) is a mechanism to penalize people who publish the exact same research at half a dozen conferences. Running pagerank on authors with an unnormalized weighting function of "how many papers does author X have which cite something written by author Y" (so that if author Y publishes the same paper multiple times it doesn't have any effect even if both copies get cited, while author X publishing the same paper several times downweights all of his outgoing links equally) could work, though.
      - raphman 15y ago
        Don't search engines already penalize duplicate content? Maybe it would suffice to 'just' put all papers online, convert all references to hyperlinks, and let Google sort out what is important and what not. Actually, (at least in computer science) I don't think that stretching one's research across several publications is being done widely - at least when looking at 'top' conferences.
losethos 15y ago
I should get a fields medal. Tri() triangle waveform zero to one FullTri() triangle wave form, -one to one Saw() sawtooth waveform Sin() version FullSaw() Caw() sawtooth waveform Cos() version I have invented new transendental functions!
6ren 15y ago
Wouldn't a more effective boycott be of citation of articles in Elsevier journals? Rough on those articles, and will leave (some) gaps in your references, but that is Elsevier's actual source of power.
- luchak 15y ago
  That's not really something I would want to try. Omitting references can lead to accusations that you are trying to claim as your own novel contributions things that others have already done.
  - 6ren 15y ago
    You could reference another paper that discusses it (assuming there is one), perhaps one that references the paper in question, ideally by the original authors. It's common for authors to write a series of papers on some topic. This doesn't give the ideal credit, but it addresses the concern you raise.
- raphman 15y ago
  That would mean sacrificing basic scientific principles - "cite at least the most relevant stuff" - for political reasons. I don't think this is a good way for improving scientific publishing.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    In some cases that can be true, but with the current shotgun approach to academic publishing, the authors have often republished variations on a paper, covering slightly different aspects with different framing, in 3 or 4 different venues, so sometimes there'd be scope to choose to cite a non-Elsevier one.
    - raphman 15y ago
      Ok. This means that even more authors might republish the same research in different venues - just in order to avoid their research being ignored because of their choice of journal. Seems like another danger of an Elsevier boycot to me.
Gatsky 15y ago
This whole situation is doubly absurd when you consider clinical trials, where patients have risked their helath or died to prove that certain treatments work or do not work. That data then gets locked down by these shameless monopolising profiteers. I think it is completely unethical that such a patient cannot access the final report about the trial they participated in without paying $31 to Elsevier, or just settling for an abstract.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
randomwalker 15y ago
Summary: Gowers outlines the extraordinarily oppressive business practices of academic publisher Elsevier, explains why they are able to continue to do so in spite of widespread anger amongst the community (collective action problem), and goes on to explain how we might be able to solve this problem by publicizing the actions of people who've taken a stand.
zerostar07 15y ago
Shouldn't someone suggest credible OA journals to use instead of Elsevier's?
nohat 15y ago
This is quite important. The main lock in effect of a Elsevier journal is the impact factor. Researchers careers are made on the regard for their papers, and the most visible component of that is the citation rate. The academics who can afford to refuse to publish in Elsevier journals are the well known and well regarded ones. So getting the top academics - such as Gowers - to publicly disavow Elsevier is the first step.
zyfo 15y ago
Tim Gowers is also the editor of the extraordinary mathematics companion Princeton Companion to Mathematics (http://www.amazon.com/Princeton-Companion-Mathematics-Timothy-Gowers/dp/0691118809/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327179503&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Princeton-Companion-Mathematics-Timoth...)
rd108 15y ago
The currently pending Research Works Act is a SOPA-like debacle that seeks to impede the free flow of scientific information to a degree previously unheard of. Thank you for lending your voice to stop this counter-productive madness. http://publishing.umich.edu/2012/01/05/more-legislative/ http://publishing.umich.edu/2012/01/05/more-legislative/ http://www.opencongress.org/contact_congress_letters/24541-H-R-3699-Research-Works-Act http://www.opencongress.org/contact_congress_letters/24541-H...
- billswift 15y ago
  Derek Lowe wrote a good post about the RWA last Thursday, http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/01/19/the_research_works_act_one_two_against_and_one_for.php http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/01/19/the_research...
toyg 15y ago
Considering the entire system of journals and papers is about reputation rather than profit (from what I understand, nobody in academia gets money from the publishing process), it’s a prime candidate for disruption. If a small group of universities started publishing all their papers on an official website (maybe with an opportune system of ranking, to somehow reflect quality of the reviewing process and make it really equivalent to traditional journal publishing), then the incentives to publish in an Elsevier paper would disappear. The system could then grow as more universities join. I’m surprised nobody has done it yet, there must be some stumbling block I’m not aware of.
- jedbrown 15y ago
  A record of publishing in prestigious journals (many of which are run by the major publishers) is generally good for tenure review and grant proposals. Starting a new publication is challenging because you have to attract the best quality work in order to gain prestige. The current publishing model is a frequent topic of conversation among my colleagues. We share and discuss papers (formerly on Google Reader, now using substitutes like G+) from many sources. I would like to see http://arXiv.org http://arXiv.org acquire a public review process.
  - MaysonL 15y ago
    I wonder if a prestigious department could start a practice of ignoring Elsevier-published articles in tenure decisions?
    - toyg 15y ago
      That's the main problem I see, really: buy-in from high-profile institutions. If a decent number of them started to publicize that they see papers published with New-Uber-Journal-System.XYZ as "preferred" over traditional papers, then people would queue up to publish there, and would force others to follow suit or be seen as "2nd rate". To do that though, NUJS better be have a bombproof method to produce quality reviewing (high-profile reviewers, a system of incentives targeted on quality not quantity etc etc).
saurabhnanda 15y ago
Okay, so where's the Reddit/Digg for scientific research papers and articles? There could be some sort of "dual voting system" where against each article two vote counts are maintained -- one set of votes by the editorial team ("peer review") and the other set of votes by the community at large. The editorial team could be selected through a semi-democratic process, if required. Is it that tough? How many big names in science are required to pull this through? The technology is dead-simple - the main problem is to cross the critical threshold of number of articles submitted and number of editors.
- jks 15y ago
  There's http://www.peerageofscience.org/ http://www.peerageofscience.org/ which is trying to fix the problem of peer-review quality and speed: instead of submitting to a sequence of journals and waiting for reviews from each one before you can submit to the next one, you would first get your paper properly reviewed and then offer it to journal editors. There would be some kind of peer control of review quality, so reviewers would have an incentive to do a good job. That company is explicitly not trying to do anything about evil publishing houses, but if it takes off, it will move one part of the publishing process out of the control of publishers, into the hands of scientists. If reviews through this system get to be known for high quality, then maybe a good review from them for your open-access paper will be more prestigious than getting it published in an Elsevier journal.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- rdouble 15y ago
  http://arxiv.org http://arxiv.org
- JS_startup 15y ago
  The technology isn't the hurdle here, it's the prestige. The academic publishing world is all about who you are, what institutes you belong to, etc. To put it bluntly, a Reddit-like journal site just wouldn't have enough "cred" to attract decent content.
saurabhnanda 15y ago
Okay, so where's the Reddit/Digg for scientific research papers and articles? There could be some sort of "dual voting system" where against each article two vote counts are maintained -- one set of votes by the editorial team ("peer review") and the other set of votes by the community at large. The editorial team could be selected through a semi-democratic process, if required. Is it that tough? How many big names in science are required to pull this through? The technology is dead-simple - the main problem is to cross the critical threshold of number of articles submitted and number of editors.
lhnz 15y ago
Is the peer review process explained in enough depth anywhere for a non-academic to try to build a tool to support it into some kind of publication web app? edit; It turns out there is something worth taking a look at on the front page right now: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494395 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494395
- wbhart 15y ago
  There are web apps that do this already. The process itself is straightforward (at least for mathematics). An editor-in-chief and a group of associate editors (who are always top academics in related fields) accept publications, sometimes to their email addresses, other times through some automated system. The papers are then assigned to the appropriate associate editor who is handling that particular subfield. The paper is then sent to a referee (sometimes two or three, especially if the first review is not satisfactory). The referee will be an expert in the field capable of evaluating the work. The referee (after some months, or more) will return a written report. Part of the report will be for the editor, the other part for the author of the paper. Some journals also request that the reviewer fill out some additional details, such as scores on how important, correct, appropriate the paper is, etc. The decision is passed on to the editor and if the editor agrees the author is informed of the outcome, along with perhaps an edited version of the author comments. They may be required to amend some minor problems in the paper, rework it substantially and resubmit or it may just be rejected. Publication itself can be complex. It often involves journal style files, professional typesetters, sending page proofs to the authors for approval, getting transfer of copyright forms signed, dealing with diagrams and so on. This side of things is the side that fewer mathematicians actually care about. Much of it is not relevant for web-only publications.
impendia 15y ago
I am an academic mathematician (albeit one with significantly less clout than Gowers). A few comments on both the article and some of the other comments: (1) I wish I could upvote this article 100 times. I am in complete agreement with Gowers. I published a couple of articles in Elsevier journals in grad school, because my advisor thought it would be important to get my first job, but I'm pretty confident I can avoid this from now on. (2) There are free online-only journals, e.g. http://www.integers-ejcnt.org/ http://www.integers-ejcnt.org/, unfortunately they are not very prestigious. I don't know what can be done to remedy this. (3) One commenter suggested that peer reviewers should be compensated, but I disagree. First of all, you don't really "sign up" to do it; typically editors pick someone they know and just ask them to referee. I do a fair bit of this. It is not an unproductive use of time, as keeping up with research literature and thinking critically about it is already part of our job. In addition, we are paid in a somewhat unusual way; we get flat salaries (plus grants) and are expected to do "service" in addition to research and teaching. If refereeing paid substantial money, where other informal methods of participating in the mathematical community do not, I think this would lead to an odd system of incentives. For example, for me a referee report might well take anywhere between five minutes and twenty hours. What amount of compensation would be fair? And would there be pressure for more favorable reviews? (Note that "informal methods of participating in the mathematical community do not pay" is only mostly true.) Feel free to ask me questions.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- Natsu 15y ago
  > There are free online-only journals, e.g. http://www.integers-ejcnt.org/ http://www.integers-ejcnt.org/, unfortunately they are not very prestigious. I don't know what can be done to remedy this. Maybe some of the top tier folks who hate this can band together to publish their own research under some prestigious journal, then expand to include other worthy research and create an open and free rival?
- teyc 15y ago
  Technically, what is required to overtake Elsevier is to retain the same level of editorial oversight, and then to provide more quality signals. Sadly, none of the business roles of Elsevier can be replaced by an academic, whose schedule is busy enough. What I'd like to see is more "republishing", like "reblogging" where instead of a journal being a one-shot affair, it is gradually cited up, and then eventually meets a threshold to be republished in a more important journal.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

287 points by randomwalker 15y ago

Another reason the arxiv should pursue a serious refereeing system. Perhaps it should work something like Hacker News--high quality work could be measured by community support.

cperciva 15y ago
high quality work could be measured by community support. Absolutely not. Assessing the quality and correctness of groundbreaking research requires a large amount of both talent and effort; a reddit or HN style voting system would swamp the signal with uninformed noise.
- raphman 15y ago
  Absolutely agree. It seems to be really hard even for experienced researchers to assess which papers will be seen as important in the future [1]. However, maybe something like PageRank might work out well. The more citations your papers get, the more weight your reviews will have. Certainly, there are problems, like people learning how to game the ranking system. On the other hand, the current system is certainly worse in this regard. [1] http://www.bartneck.de/publications/2009/scientometricAnalysisOfTheCHI/index.html http://www.bartneck.de/publications/2009/scientometricAnalys...
  - cperciva 15y ago
    That would certainly help. But more than anything else, I think what we need (at least in computer science) is a mechanism to penalize people who publish the exact same research at half a dozen conferences. Running pagerank on authors with an unnormalized weighting function of "how many papers does author X have which cite something written by author Y" (so that if author Y publishes the same paper multiple times it doesn't have any effect even if both copies get cited, while author X publishing the same paper several times downweights all of his outgoing links equally) could work, though.
    - raphman 15y ago
      Don't search engines already penalize duplicate content? Maybe it would suffice to 'just' put all papers online, convert all references to hyperlinks, and let Google sort out what is important and what not. Actually, (at least in computer science) I don't think that stretching one's research across several publications is being done widely - at least when looking at 'top' conferences.

losethos 15y ago

I should get a fields medal. Tri() triangle waveform zero to one FullTri() triangle wave form, -one to one Saw() sawtooth waveform Sin() version FullSaw() Caw() sawtooth waveform Cos() version I have invented new transendental functions!

6ren 15y ago

Wouldn't a more effective boycott be of citation of articles in Elsevier journals? Rough on those articles, and will leave (some) gaps in your references, but that is Elsevier's actual source of power.

luchak 15y ago
That's not really something I would want to try. Omitting references can lead to accusations that you are trying to claim as your own novel contributions things that others have already done.
- 6ren 15y ago
  You could reference another paper that discusses it (assuming there is one), perhaps one that references the paper in question, ideally by the original authors. It's common for authors to write a series of papers on some topic. This doesn't give the ideal credit, but it addresses the concern you raise.
raphman 15y ago
That would mean sacrificing basic scientific principles - "cite at least the most relevant stuff" - for political reasons. I don't think this is a good way for improving scientific publishing.
- _delirium 15y ago
  In some cases that can be true, but with the current shotgun approach to academic publishing, the authors have often republished variations on a paper, covering slightly different aspects with different framing, in 3 or 4 different venues, so sometimes there'd be scope to choose to cite a non-Elsevier one.
  - raphman 15y ago
    Ok. This means that even more authors might republish the same research in different venues - just in order to avoid their research being ignored because of their choice of journal. Seems like another danger of an Elsevier boycot to me.

Gatsky 15y ago

This whole situation is doubly absurd when you consider clinical trials, where patients have risked their helath or died to prove that certain treatments work or do not work. That data then gets locked down by these shameless monopolising profiteers. I think it is completely unethical that such a patient cannot access the final report about the trial they participated in without paying $31 to Elsevier, or just settling for an abstract.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

randomwalker 15y ago

Summary: Gowers outlines the extraordinarily oppressive business practices of academic publisher Elsevier, explains why they are able to continue to do so in spite of widespread anger amongst the community (collective action problem), and goes on to explain how we might be able to solve this problem by publicizing the actions of people who've taken a stand.

zerostar07 15y ago

Shouldn't someone suggest credible OA journals to use instead of Elsevier's?

nohat 15y ago

This is quite important. The main lock in effect of a Elsevier journal is the impact factor. Researchers careers are made on the regard for their papers, and the most visible component of that is the citation rate. The academics who can afford to refuse to publish in Elsevier journals are the well known and well regarded ones. So getting the top academics - such as Gowers - to publicly disavow Elsevier is the first step.

zyfo 15y ago

Tim Gowers is also the editor of the extraordinary mathematics companion Princeton Companion to Mathematics (http://www.amazon.com/Princeton-Companion-Mathematics-Timothy-Gowers/dp/0691118809/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327179503&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Princeton-Companion-Mathematics-Timoth...)

rd108 15y ago

The currently pending Research Works Act is a SOPA-like debacle that seeks to impede the free flow of scientific information to a degree previously unheard of. Thank you for lending your voice to stop this counter-productive madness. http://publishing.umich.edu/2012/01/05/more-legislative/ http://publishing.umich.edu/2012/01/05/more-legislative/ http://www.opencongress.org/contact_congress_letters/24541-H-R-3699-Research-Works-Act http://www.opencongress.org/contact_congress_letters/24541-H...

billswift 15y ago
Derek Lowe wrote a good post about the RWA last Thursday, http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/01/19/the_research_works_act_one_two_against_and_one_for.php http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/01/19/the_research...

toyg 15y ago

Considering the entire system of journals and papers is about reputation rather than profit (from what I understand, nobody in academia gets money from the publishing process), it’s a prime candidate for disruption. If a small group of universities started publishing all their papers on an official website (maybe with an opportune system of ranking, to somehow reflect quality of the reviewing process and make it really equivalent to traditional journal publishing), then the incentives to publish in an Elsevier paper would disappear. The system could then grow as more universities join. I’m surprised nobody has done it yet, there must be some stumbling block I’m not aware of.

jedbrown 15y ago
A record of publishing in prestigious journals (many of which are run by the major publishers) is generally good for tenure review and grant proposals. Starting a new publication is challenging because you have to attract the best quality work in order to gain prestige. The current publishing model is a frequent topic of conversation among my colleagues. We share and discuss papers (formerly on Google Reader, now using substitutes like G+) from many sources. I would like to see http://arXiv.org http://arXiv.org acquire a public review process.
- MaysonL 15y ago
  I wonder if a prestigious department could start a practice of ignoring Elsevier-published articles in tenure decisions?
  - toyg 15y ago
    That's the main problem I see, really: buy-in from high-profile institutions. If a decent number of them started to publicize that they see papers published with New-Uber-Journal-System.XYZ as "preferred" over traditional papers, then people would queue up to publish there, and would force others to follow suit or be seen as "2nd rate". To do that though, NUJS better be have a bombproof method to produce quality reviewing (high-profile reviewers, a system of incentives targeted on quality not quantity etc etc).

saurabhnanda 15y ago

Okay, so where's the Reddit/Digg for scientific research papers and articles? There could be some sort of "dual voting system" where against each article two vote counts are maintained -- one set of votes by the editorial team ("peer review") and the other set of votes by the community at large. The editorial team could be selected through a semi-democratic process, if required. Is it that tough? How many big names in science are required to pull this through? The technology is dead-simple - the main problem is to cross the critical threshold of number of articles submitted and number of editors.

jks 15y ago
There's http://www.peerageofscience.org/ http://www.peerageofscience.org/ which is trying to fix the problem of peer-review quality and speed: instead of submitting to a sequence of journals and waiting for reviews from each one before you can submit to the next one, you would first get your paper properly reviewed and then offer it to journal editors. There would be some kind of peer control of review quality, so reviewers would have an incentive to do a good job. That company is explicitly not trying to do anything about evil publishing houses, but if it takes off, it will move one part of the publishing process out of the control of publishers, into the hands of scientists. If reviews through this system get to be known for high quality, then maybe a good review from them for your open-access paper will be more prestigious than getting it published in an Elsevier journal.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
rdouble 15y ago
http://arxiv.org http://arxiv.org
JS_startup 15y ago
The technology isn't the hurdle here, it's the prestige. The academic publishing world is all about who you are, what institutes you belong to, etc. To put it bluntly, a Reddit-like journal site just wouldn't have enough "cred" to attract decent content.

saurabhnanda 15y ago

lhnz 15y ago

Is the peer review process explained in enough depth anywhere for a non-academic to try to build a tool to support it into some kind of publication web app? edit; It turns out there is something worth taking a look at on the front page right now: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494395 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494395

wbhart 15y ago
There are web apps that do this already. The process itself is straightforward (at least for mathematics). An editor-in-chief and a group of associate editors (who are always top academics in related fields) accept publications, sometimes to their email addresses, other times through some automated system. The papers are then assigned to the appropriate associate editor who is handling that particular subfield. The paper is then sent to a referee (sometimes two or three, especially if the first review is not satisfactory). The referee will be an expert in the field capable of evaluating the work. The referee (after some months, or more) will return a written report. Part of the report will be for the editor, the other part for the author of the paper. Some journals also request that the reviewer fill out some additional details, such as scores on how important, correct, appropriate the paper is, etc. The decision is passed on to the editor and if the editor agrees the author is informed of the outcome, along with perhaps an edited version of the author comments. They may be required to amend some minor problems in the paper, rework it substantially and resubmit or it may just be rejected. Publication itself can be complex. It often involves journal style files, professional typesetters, sending page proofs to the authors for approval, getting transfer of copyright forms signed, dealing with diagrams and so on. This side of things is the side that fewer mathematicians actually care about. Much of it is not relevant for web-only publications.

impendia 15y ago

I am an academic mathematician (albeit one with significantly less clout than Gowers). A few comments on both the article and some of the other comments: (1) I wish I could upvote this article 100 times. I am in complete agreement with Gowers. I published a couple of articles in Elsevier journals in grad school, because my advisor thought it would be important to get my first job, but I'm pretty confident I can avoid this from now on. (2) There are free online-only journals, e.g. http://www.integers-ejcnt.org/ http://www.integers-ejcnt.org/, unfortunately they are not very prestigious. I don't know what can be done to remedy this. (3) One commenter suggested that peer reviewers should be compensated, but I disagree. First of all, you don't really "sign up" to do it; typically editors pick someone they know and just ask them to referee. I do a fair bit of this. It is not an unproductive use of time, as keeping up with research literature and thinking critically about it is already part of our job. In addition, we are paid in a somewhat unusual way; we get flat salaries (plus grants) and are expected to do "service" in addition to research and teaching. If refereeing paid substantial money, where other informal methods of participating in the mathematical community do not, I think this would lead to an odd system of incentives. For example, for me a referee report might well take anywhere between five minutes and twenty hours. What amount of compensation would be fair? And would there be pressure for more favorable reviews? (Note that "informal methods of participating in the mathematical community do not pay" is only mostly true.) Feel free to ask me questions.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
Natsu 15y ago
> There are free online-only journals, e.g. http://www.integers-ejcnt.org/ http://www.integers-ejcnt.org/, unfortunately they are not very prestigious. I don't know what can be done to remedy this. Maybe some of the top tier folks who hate this can band together to publish their own research under some prestigious journal, then expand to include other worthy research and create an open and free rival?
teyc 15y ago
Technically, what is required to overtake Elsevier is to retain the same level of editorial oversight, and then to provide more quality signals. Sadly, none of the business roles of Elsevier can be replaced by an academic, whose schedule is busy enough. What I'd like to see is more "republishing", like "reblogging" where instead of a journal being a one-shot affair, it is gradually cited up, and then eventually meets a threshold to be republished in a more important journal.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]