4 ms·

This is a side effect of academia never taking open accessibility to papers and journals seriously. If all these papers were not gatekept by journals, it would

This is a side effect of academia never taking open accessibility to papers and journals seriously. If all these papers were not gatekept by journals, it would be trivially easy to validate at least the existence of cited papers and quotes.

nhinck2 3mo ago
It is trivially easy to validate the existence of a cited paper.
- jsrozner 3mo ago
  I'm sympathetic to the idea: we should have an open, publicly queryable citation graph. Google scholar could very easily offer this at marginal cost near zero, but they won't.
  - AlotOfReading 3mo ago
    I'd almost rather Google scholar not offer that, because it might draw attention from the eye of sauron and deliver them to the Google graveyard.
  - Kaethar 3mo ago
    https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api Of course, you do need an API key and it took quite a while to get it last time I needed it, but it's there.
  - asdff 3mo ago
    see pubmed
- dghlsakjg 3mo ago
  Where can I do that? Do I have to manually extract each citation from a paper and then individually look each up? Can I validate quoted text without a subscription? Is it the same system for every paper in every journal or do I have to have fluency in multiple databases. Yeah. It’s trivial to do for one paper while sitting at a computer in a university library. How trivial is it to validate the hundreds of sources and quotes that appear in any given volume of a journal?
WarOnPrivacy 3mo ago
> This is a side effect of academia never taking open accessibility to papers and journals seriously. From my perspective, it's a clear manifestation of humanity's most pervasive failing - the one that defines every group, eventually. No One Anywhere Wants To Clean Their Own House.
- touisteur 3mo ago
  And yet the automation we pour trillions in, is the one that will do anything, including everything I find interesting and will never clean my own house.
  - lazide 3mo ago
    Truly passing the real Turing test.
crote 3mo ago
Validating existence should already be trivial: virtually all journal already have publicly-available indices which contain at least author information and an abstract. Combine that with DOI citations and you're basically done - even with closed-access journals. Checking the content is of course a lot more difficult, but that doesn't magically become trivial with open-access journals: you still need to read and interpret what is being said in the paper and compare it to the claims being made in the citation. Granted, these days you could use AI for a first pass, but it's still going to be incredibly tedious work.
podocarp 3mo ago
I don't think it's academia not taking it seriously, more like these publishers are just coasting on brand name and trying to milk every cent out of it. Peer review is essentially being a Reddit mod or something, you get nothing out of it but karma or a sticker, and the platform/publisher gets all the benefit. Imagine being an author and paying to publish your novel. Also btw the editor is another author but has to proofread your book for free. Many academics will publish preprints or their more popular papers on their own websites etc. It's just common sense because to academics they don't get paid a single cent by the publisher (and instead have to pay the publishers instead) and more publicity for them is always better than less.
- thaumasiotes 3mo ago
  > Imagine being an author and paying to publish your novel. That is... completely normal. > Also btw the editor is another author but has to proofread your book for free. That would be weirder; if you're paying for your own publication, you don't get an editor at all unless you hire them yourself.
  - BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago
    > That is... completely normal Only at vanity presses. Money flows towards the author, as they say.
- ModernMech 3mo ago
  > you get nothing out of it but karma or a sticker, and the platform/publisher gets all the benefit. Peer review means 3 people spend their time to review your work and you don’t have to pay them a cent, so you review others' work for free. The compensation for reviewing is reviews. They’re not always great (sometimes they’re downright nasty), but I’ve gotten enough high quality reviews over the years that I’m willing to say the time I’ve spent reviewing others’ work has been fairly compensated.
asdff 3mo ago
At least in biomedical research most everything is either open access on day 1 or open access after 1 year.

nhinck2 3mo ago

It is trivially easy to validate the existence of a cited paper.

jsrozner 3mo ago
I'm sympathetic to the idea: we should have an open, publicly queryable citation graph. Google scholar could very easily offer this at marginal cost near zero, but they won't.
- AlotOfReading 3mo ago
  I'd almost rather Google scholar not offer that, because it might draw attention from the eye of sauron and deliver them to the Google graveyard.
- Kaethar 3mo ago
  https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api Of course, you do need an API key and it took quite a while to get it last time I needed it, but it's there.
- asdff 3mo ago
  see pubmed
dghlsakjg 3mo ago
Where can I do that? Do I have to manually extract each citation from a paper and then individually look each up? Can I validate quoted text without a subscription? Is it the same system for every paper in every journal or do I have to have fluency in multiple databases. Yeah. It’s trivial to do for one paper while sitting at a computer in a university library. How trivial is it to validate the hundreds of sources and quotes that appear in any given volume of a journal?

WarOnPrivacy 3mo ago

> This is a side effect of academia never taking open accessibility to papers and journals seriously. From my perspective, it's a clear manifestation of humanity's most pervasive failing - the one that defines every group, eventually. No One Anywhere Wants To Clean Their Own House.

touisteur 3mo ago
And yet the automation we pour trillions in, is the one that will do anything, including everything I find interesting and will never clean my own house.
- lazide 3mo ago
  Truly passing the real Turing test.

crote 3mo ago

Validating existence should already be trivial: virtually all journal already have publicly-available indices which contain at least author information and an abstract. Combine that with DOI citations and you're basically done - even with closed-access journals. Checking the content is of course a lot more difficult, but that doesn't magically become trivial with open-access journals: you still need to read and interpret what is being said in the paper and compare it to the claims being made in the citation. Granted, these days you could use AI for a first pass, but it's still going to be incredibly tedious work.

podocarp 3mo ago

I don't think it's academia not taking it seriously, more like these publishers are just coasting on brand name and trying to milk every cent out of it. Peer review is essentially being a Reddit mod or something, you get nothing out of it but karma or a sticker, and the platform/publisher gets all the benefit. Imagine being an author and paying to publish your novel. Also btw the editor is another author but has to proofread your book for free. Many academics will publish preprints or their more popular papers on their own websites etc. It's just common sense because to academics they don't get paid a single cent by the publisher (and instead have to pay the publishers instead) and more publicity for them is always better than less.

thaumasiotes 3mo ago
> Imagine being an author and paying to publish your novel. That is... completely normal. > Also btw the editor is another author but has to proofread your book for free. That would be weirder; if you're paying for your own publication, you don't get an editor at all unless you hire them yourself.
- BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago
  > That is... completely normal Only at vanity presses. Money flows towards the author, as they say.
ModernMech 3mo ago
> you get nothing out of it but karma or a sticker, and the platform/publisher gets all the benefit. Peer review means 3 people spend their time to review your work and you don’t have to pay them a cent, so you review others' work for free. The compensation for reviewing is reviews. They’re not always great (sometimes they’re downright nasty), but I’ve gotten enough high quality reviews over the years that I’m willing to say the time I’ve spent reviewing others’ work has been fairly compensated.

asdff 3mo ago

At least in biomedical research most everything is either open access on day 1 or open access after 1 year.