4 ms·

This would be nice but how is this going to be payed for? Research budgets are already being squeezed pretty tight given how much the sponsoring organization ta

This would be nice but how is this going to be payed for? Research budgets are already being squeezed pretty tight given how much the sponsoring organization takes(universities ...), research costs, and congressional attempts to cut funding I just don't see it happening anytime soon. It already costs quite a bit to publish. edit: Just to give an idea of the costs> http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_fees.html http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_fees.h...

jacoblyles 14y ago
PLoS and arxiv seem to have figured it out. Require federally funded research to be posted on a similar platform.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- af3 14y ago
  arxiv is not peer-reviewed.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    PLoS is.
    - streptomycin 14y ago
      And it costs thousands of dollars to publish a paper there.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        Yes, and? The price to publish with PLoS is not meant to be a barrier; they will wave the fee if you cannot afford it.
        streptomycin 14y ago
        Not many people waive the fee currently. If a lot of people did, it would be a huge problem for publishers like PLoS and they would have to change their practices. Assuming that won't happen, then if all publications were open access, there would be a lot more grant money that would have to be spent on publishing fees rather than research. That was the point the guy we originally replied to was making http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5052476 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5052476 so citing PLoS as an example isn't really meaningful. It's just an example of precisely the issue he was raising, not a rebuttal.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    Doesn't matter. Just require that peer-reviewed articles arising from publicly funded research also be posted on the arXiv. This is how it's done anyways in physics.
streptomycin 14y ago
All NIH-funded research must result in open access publications. How does it work? Basically.. the NIH set up a website and the journals submit NIH-funded papers there, where they are freely available.
RichardPrice 14y ago
The basic idea is that the research papers should be open access 6 months after publication. 6 months is enough for publishers to recoup their costs of publication. The reality is that publishers make all their money from site licenses. Harvard, e.g., will spend $15 million a year on subscriptions to various publishers like Elsevier, in return for access to all the new papers, and the back catalog. Most papers that are downloaded, around 80%, are from the back catalog anyway, meaning that universities are incredibly price insensitive with respect to site license subscriptions. Journals could offer the new papers for free, and still universities would pay for the site license subscription. This is what has happened with the arxiv: most new papers in theoretical physics are on there for free, and yet physics departments still subscribe to the theoretical physics journals. Why is that? It's because the departments need access to papers in the back catalog, which are not on the arxiv. The upshot of this is that site license revenue wouldn't be affected by requiring open access on research 6 months after publication (or even 3 months, or 0 months, in my view). There is enough price insensitivity in the system for existing revenues to be unaffected by a change like this. The reason the journal industry hates legislation like this, despite it not posing an economic danger to them, is that they are worried about the general trend of the government getting involved in changing the scientific publishing industry. The journal industry would like to freeze their business model in the form that it was in during the pre-internet days. They believe that it's in their interest to fight every piece of pro-change legislation that the government suggests, in order to slow down the rate of change.
amurmann 14y ago
It's expensive because the journals are leaches sucking money and IP out of the system. The research was funded by the people, so why should the journals get the rights? The same institutions that are paying big bugs are also the ones contributing all the content. All the reviewing is even done by researchers who end up paying for the journal and contribut to it. It's sickening how the scientific community and the public at large get exploited by those leaches!
smsm42 14y ago
Fees != costs. If all the work of preparing research for publication (getting it in the proper format, adding proper metadata, etc.) is done by the researcher, I don't see how it would cost that much to host it. Server/electricity/admin costs, of course, but given that scientific papers aren't exactly most high-traffic website on the planet, and marketing/etc. is not needed I don't see it as unmanageable costs. US government and various departments run hundreds of websites by now, getting one more there wouldn't be that great marginal cost.
VigUi7vv8G2 14y ago
What are you talking about? The requirement would be that the articles be published in open access journals, or else published elsewhere after being published initially in closed access journals. The high prices you linked too aren't an impediment, they are THE REASON TO DO IT. Also, when it comes to tax payer funded research, it's already, you know, funded.
- streptomycin 14y ago
  The high prices are the costs to publish articles in open access journals. Somebody has to pay the costs of publishing, and it's currently either subscribers (traditional journals) or authors (open access journals).
  - TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
    A mail server and website combination is cheap to build. Your only cost is bandwidth. The only real cost is bandwidth. That's when you have the schools host these cheap servers. "instead of 15 million USD, we want to colo. Deal?" And to completely trounce your idea, publishing is easy for journals. It's called "load page and press print". There's hardly any reason to print tomes that can easily loaded ip on a web page as needed. And if you need a bound book, go to lulu or other JIT publisher.
    - cmsmith 14y ago
      Publishing is not referring to printing the physical journals (no one is arguing that those should be free). Publishing refers to the work done by editors, copyeditors, typesetters, etc. Without those paid employees the quality of journals would drop significantly.
      - TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
        You mean all the work the grad students do when they write the content.... And all the work other grad students do when they typeset it? Sure. Apologist.
cheald 14y ago
Purchase 3 fewer Tomahawk missiles this year. Boom, program funded.

jacoblyles 14y ago

PLoS and arxiv seem to have figured it out. Require federally funded research to be posted on a similar platform.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
af3 14y ago
arxiv is not peer-reviewed.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  PLoS is.
  - streptomycin 14y ago
    And it costs thousands of dollars to publish a paper there.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Yes, and? The price to publish with PLoS is not meant to be a barrier; they will wave the fee if you cannot afford it.
      - streptomycin 14y ago
        Not many people waive the fee currently. If a lot of people did, it would be a huge problem for publishers like PLoS and they would have to change their practices. Assuming that won't happen, then if all publications were open access, there would be a lot more grant money that would have to be spent on publishing fees rather than research. That was the point the guy we originally replied to was making http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5052476 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5052476 so citing PLoS as an example isn't really meaningful. It's just an example of precisely the issue he was raising, not a rebuttal.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  Doesn't matter. Just require that peer-reviewed articles arising from publicly funded research also be posted on the arXiv. This is how it's done anyways in physics.

streptomycin 14y ago

All NIH-funded research must result in open access publications. How does it work? Basically.. the NIH set up a website and the journals submit NIH-funded papers there, where they are freely available.

RichardPrice 14y ago

The basic idea is that the research papers should be open access 6 months after publication. 6 months is enough for publishers to recoup their costs of publication. The reality is that publishers make all their money from site licenses. Harvard, e.g., will spend $15 million a year on subscriptions to various publishers like Elsevier, in return for access to all the new papers, and the back catalog. Most papers that are downloaded, around 80%, are from the back catalog anyway, meaning that universities are incredibly price insensitive with respect to site license subscriptions. Journals could offer the new papers for free, and still universities would pay for the site license subscription. This is what has happened with the arxiv: most new papers in theoretical physics are on there for free, and yet physics departments still subscribe to the theoretical physics journals. Why is that? It's because the departments need access to papers in the back catalog, which are not on the arxiv. The upshot of this is that site license revenue wouldn't be affected by requiring open access on research 6 months after publication (or even 3 months, or 0 months, in my view). There is enough price insensitivity in the system for existing revenues to be unaffected by a change like this. The reason the journal industry hates legislation like this, despite it not posing an economic danger to them, is that they are worried about the general trend of the government getting involved in changing the scientific publishing industry. The journal industry would like to freeze their business model in the form that it was in during the pre-internet days. They believe that it's in their interest to fight every piece of pro-change legislation that the government suggests, in order to slow down the rate of change.

amurmann 14y ago

It's expensive because the journals are leaches sucking money and IP out of the system. The research was funded by the people, so why should the journals get the rights? The same institutions that are paying big bugs are also the ones contributing all the content. All the reviewing is even done by researchers who end up paying for the journal and contribut to it. It's sickening how the scientific community and the public at large get exploited by those leaches!

smsm42 14y ago

Fees != costs. If all the work of preparing research for publication (getting it in the proper format, adding proper metadata, etc.) is done by the researcher, I don't see how it would cost that much to host it. Server/electricity/admin costs, of course, but given that scientific papers aren't exactly most high-traffic website on the planet, and marketing/etc. is not needed I don't see it as unmanageable costs. US government and various departments run hundreds of websites by now, getting one more there wouldn't be that great marginal cost.

VigUi7vv8G2 14y ago

What are you talking about? The requirement would be that the articles be published in open access journals, or else published elsewhere after being published initially in closed access journals. The high prices you linked too aren't an impediment, they are THE REASON TO DO IT. Also, when it comes to tax payer funded research, it's already, you know, funded.

streptomycin 14y ago
The high prices are the costs to publish articles in open access journals. Somebody has to pay the costs of publishing, and it's currently either subscribers (traditional journals) or authors (open access journals).
- TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
  A mail server and website combination is cheap to build. Your only cost is bandwidth. The only real cost is bandwidth. That's when you have the schools host these cheap servers. "instead of 15 million USD, we want to colo. Deal?" And to completely trounce your idea, publishing is easy for journals. It's called "load page and press print". There's hardly any reason to print tomes that can easily loaded ip on a web page as needed. And if you need a bound book, go to lulu or other JIT publisher.
  - cmsmith 14y ago
    Publishing is not referring to printing the physical journals (no one is arguing that those should be free). Publishing refers to the work done by editors, copyeditors, typesetters, etc. Without those paid employees the quality of journals would drop significantly.
    - TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
      You mean all the work the grad students do when they write the content.... And all the work other grad students do when they typeset it? Sure. Apologist.

cheald 14y ago

Purchase 3 fewer Tomahawk missiles this year. Boom, program funded.