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The open letter says that "open access" would "[threaten the] financial stability that enables us to support peer review that ensures the quality and integrity

The open letter says that "open access" would "[threaten the] financial stability that enables us to support peer review that ensures the quality and integrity of the research enterprise." Fact: peer reviewers are mostly unpaid. Journals might have some paid staff, but the way peer review works is academics are expected to do the actual reviewing work for free. Doing this a lot and being famous in your field gets you a fancy title like "editor", but that doesn't usually come with money attached. Peer review itself would work just as well in an arXiv + easyChair model like some of STEM does it, replicating the value of journals for a much lower cost (and saving some trees in the process). Public access to publicly funded research is long overdue.

ProllyInfamous 3y ago
>Public access to publicly-funded research is long overdue. RIP Aaron Schwarz... he wasn't wrong [in his attempts to share publicly-funded research], just early.
- bumby 3y ago
  I may not know the particulars of his actions, but I think there may be an important and subtle distinction here. Did Schwartz limit his actions to only releasing publically funded research?
  - ProllyInfamous 3y ago
    IIRC: Schwarz "never got that far," being apprehended quite quickly [while he was still mid-DL on-campus]... because a trap had been set for him after the massive datatransfer was first observed. BUT I personally support lib-gen, so I absolutely do not respect the concept of "Intellectual Property." I have contracted for several opensource projects which still find ways to become profitable (usually by distributing code with hardware). "Privatize profits, subsidize losses" == take taxpayer funds, charge taxpayers for access IMHO
    - bumby 3y ago
      >I absolutely do not respect the concept of "Intellectual Property." I think it's perfectly fine to selecting to work on open source projects based a principle of not respecting intellectual property rights. But it's another think to flaunt those laws and not be expected to be held accountable. What you can't expect IMO is think your lack of respect for a law somehow means you're above it. (That's not saying the govt didn't overreach in the Schwartz case; I'm not familiar enough with all the details to form a strong opinion.)
      - ProllyInfamous 3y ago
        My ultimate "take" on the entire US v Schwarz is one of Misunderstanding. Thank you for this discussion in fostering better understandings [e.g. your perspective]. ---- One of my sick optimisms about generative AI being trained upon all this human creation, is that it may actually lead to the disolution of IP ownership... one can dream =P PyratB
godelski 3y ago
> Peer review itself would work just as well in an arXiv + easyChair model like some of STEM does I've been advocating for a model where we publish to OpenReview. It supports revisions, comments, links to GitHub, link to community implementations, tags/keywords, data linking, and more. It seems like the most complete platform for migrating to a system of true peer review. Where peer review actually refers to review from peers and not "3-5 random people in your field incentivized to reject your work adversarially complaining about your work who may or may not know anything about your subdomain." Venue reviewing is a joke and our methods don't scale, as they depend entirely on good faith efforts and consideration of nuance. People see service and reviewing as a chore and there's little to no incentive to provide quality reviews. There are still things I think need work to make this model successful. I think it is a bit silly that we require our communication system to be printed on a piece of paper. We should have ways to embed media like videos and demonstrations (even if it is an API call to hugging face). But the current system feels like we're still in the 1700's with a sprinkling of 21st century because now we don't have to hand draw figures.
ipnon 3y ago
The arXiv model worked well for LK-99. The preprint went up. It got some buzz from authoritative sources. Different labs tried to reproduce, some succeeded but some failed. Through this process we've learned much more about the object in question, and what else but this learning itself is the point of the scientific endeavor? How does an anonymous and inscrutable committee help in this process?

ProllyInfamous 3y ago

>Public access to publicly-funded research is long overdue. RIP Aaron Schwarz... he wasn't wrong [in his attempts to share publicly-funded research], just early.

bumby 3y ago
I may not know the particulars of his actions, but I think there may be an important and subtle distinction here. Did Schwartz limit his actions to only releasing publically funded research?
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  IIRC: Schwarz "never got that far," being apprehended quite quickly [while he was still mid-DL on-campus]... because a trap had been set for him after the massive datatransfer was first observed. BUT I personally support lib-gen, so I absolutely do not respect the concept of "Intellectual Property." I have contracted for several opensource projects which still find ways to become profitable (usually by distributing code with hardware). "Privatize profits, subsidize losses" == take taxpayer funds, charge taxpayers for access IMHO
  - bumby 3y ago
    >I absolutely do not respect the concept of "Intellectual Property." I think it's perfectly fine to selecting to work on open source projects based a principle of not respecting intellectual property rights. But it's another think to flaunt those laws and not be expected to be held accountable. What you can't expect IMO is think your lack of respect for a law somehow means you're above it. (That's not saying the govt didn't overreach in the Schwartz case; I'm not familiar enough with all the details to form a strong opinion.)
    - ProllyInfamous 3y ago
      My ultimate "take" on the entire US v Schwarz is one of Misunderstanding. Thank you for this discussion in fostering better understandings [e.g. your perspective]. ---- One of my sick optimisms about generative AI being trained upon all this human creation, is that it may actually lead to the disolution of IP ownership... one can dream =P PyratB

godelski 3y ago

> Peer review itself would work just as well in an arXiv + easyChair model like some of STEM does I've been advocating for a model where we publish to OpenReview. It supports revisions, comments, links to GitHub, link to community implementations, tags/keywords, data linking, and more. It seems like the most complete platform for migrating to a system of true peer review. Where peer review actually refers to review from peers and not "3-5 random people in your field incentivized to reject your work adversarially complaining about your work who may or may not know anything about your subdomain." Venue reviewing is a joke and our methods don't scale, as they depend entirely on good faith efforts and consideration of nuance. People see service and reviewing as a chore and there's little to no incentive to provide quality reviews. There are still things I think need work to make this model successful. I think it is a bit silly that we require our communication system to be printed on a piece of paper. We should have ways to embed media like videos and demonstrations (even if it is an API call to hugging face). But the current system feels like we're still in the 1700's with a sprinkling of 21st century because now we don't have to hand draw figures.

ipnon 3y ago

The arXiv model worked well for LK-99. The preprint went up. It got some buzz from authoritative sources. Different labs tried to reproduce, some succeeded but some failed. Through this process we've learned much more about the object in question, and what else but this learning itself is the point of the scientific endeavor? How does an anonymous and inscrutable committee help in this process?