4 ms·

Seems rather behind the times. MSP (http://msp.org/about/ http://msp.org/about/) and others seem to have already shown that "researchers can organize the peer

Seems rather behind the times. MSP (http://msp.org/about/ http://msp.org/about/) and others seem to have already shown that "researchers can organize the peer review and publication of their work at minimal cost, without involving commercial publishers". I understand that this link is talking about something slightly different (basically collecting links to Arxiv instead of "publishing a journal"), but I also don't think this is as ground-breaking as Nature makes it out to be.

anonymouz 14y ago
I think MSP is a great publisher, but it still functions more or less like a traditional publisher would. I believe their journals are reasonably priced, but this initiative seems to present another step in that it is an attempt to completely abolish publishers. The argument in favor is that they do not add all that much of value, and the community would rather do without the copy-editing that the journals provide and instead have completely open access without any charges. Of course there are already open access journals, but sometimes you have to pay to publish there, and what may make this initiative different from the ones so far may simply be momentum: Perhaps this time it will indeed start a permanent transformation of the way mathematics is published. The current push, starting with the Elsevier boycott and "lead" by Gowers, seems to have support from a substantial part of the community.
- stephencanon 14y ago
  Right. I definitely don't mean to imply that there's not room to improve on the "traditional publishing" model that MSP uses. I only mean to point out that the Nature article is rather over the top in terms of the prospective changes that it attributes to the Episciences Project, and that an enormous amount of good work has already been done in the "reforming math/science publication" space in the past 10 years or so.
plafl 14y ago
To put an example of a prestigious free open access journal: Journal of Machine Learning Research (http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/ http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/)
nottrobin 14y ago
What's so great about MSP? They're not-for-profit, great, but it's still prohibitively expensive. (http://msp.org/forms/orders/ http://msp.org/forms/orders/). Clearly their articles are far from open access as all science should be.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
xamuel 14y ago
The difficulty in escaping Springer/Elsevier is not that researchers are too dumb to organize their own journals/peer review. Quite the opposite, we already do that FOR Springer/Elsevier. The difficulty is that existing publishers own journals which have gathered significant prestige over decades and sometimes centuries. And hiring boards, swamped and unable to take a closer look, often just look at which journals a prospect has published in. That means if you're not submitting to these prestigious journals, you're crippling yourself. And by submitting to them, you're adding to their prestige, making it a vicious self-feedback loop.
- mhluongo 14y ago
  I think this varies heavily per field- some disciplines are more collaborative (eg, CS) and others are more competitive (biomed).
- jff 14y ago
  But if you get a prestigious mathematician, such as Gowers, to back your new journal, you may get some traction.
  - jamessb 14y ago
    Or if you get the entire editorial board to resign, and start a new journal. This happened with the board of Topology (http://www.ams.org/notices/200705/comm-toped-web.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200705/comm-toped-web.pdf), who then set up the Journal of Topology. The new journal isn't open access, but it is cheaper. Then the editors of K-theory resigned to set up the Journal of K-theory, which was less than half the price of its predecessor.
    - jacoblyles 14y ago
      This remains a problem - that researchers in many field don't appreciate the utility of true open access (free to read and free to reuse). see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY Cheaper is nice, but free (and machine accessible!) lets us do things that have never been done before.
mathattack 14y ago
You're right, it's old news, but I do think the more we hear of this, the more it's likely to start a movement rather than be a novelty.

anonymouz 14y ago

I think MSP is a great publisher, but it still functions more or less like a traditional publisher would. I believe their journals are reasonably priced, but this initiative seems to present another step in that it is an attempt to completely abolish publishers. The argument in favor is that they do not add all that much of value, and the community would rather do without the copy-editing that the journals provide and instead have completely open access without any charges. Of course there are already open access journals, but sometimes you have to pay to publish there, and what may make this initiative different from the ones so far may simply be momentum: Perhaps this time it will indeed start a permanent transformation of the way mathematics is published. The current push, starting with the Elsevier boycott and "lead" by Gowers, seems to have support from a substantial part of the community.

stephencanon 14y ago
Right. I definitely don't mean to imply that there's not room to improve on the "traditional publishing" model that MSP uses. I only mean to point out that the Nature article is rather over the top in terms of the prospective changes that it attributes to the Episciences Project, and that an enormous amount of good work has already been done in the "reforming math/science publication" space in the past 10 years or so.

plafl 14y ago

To put an example of a prestigious free open access journal: Journal of Machine Learning Research (http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/ http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/)

nottrobin 14y ago

What's so great about MSP? They're not-for-profit, great, but it's still prohibitively expensive. (http://msp.org/forms/orders/ http://msp.org/forms/orders/). Clearly their articles are far from open access as all science should be.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

xamuel 14y ago

The difficulty in escaping Springer/Elsevier is not that researchers are too dumb to organize their own journals/peer review. Quite the opposite, we already do that FOR Springer/Elsevier. The difficulty is that existing publishers own journals which have gathered significant prestige over decades and sometimes centuries. And hiring boards, swamped and unable to take a closer look, often just look at which journals a prospect has published in. That means if you're not submitting to these prestigious journals, you're crippling yourself. And by submitting to them, you're adding to their prestige, making it a vicious self-feedback loop.

mhluongo 14y ago
I think this varies heavily per field- some disciplines are more collaborative (eg, CS) and others are more competitive (biomed).
jff 14y ago
But if you get a prestigious mathematician, such as Gowers, to back your new journal, you may get some traction.
- jamessb 14y ago
  Or if you get the entire editorial board to resign, and start a new journal. This happened with the board of Topology (http://www.ams.org/notices/200705/comm-toped-web.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200705/comm-toped-web.pdf), who then set up the Journal of Topology. The new journal isn't open access, but it is cheaper. Then the editors of K-theory resigned to set up the Journal of K-theory, which was less than half the price of its predecessor.
  - jacoblyles 14y ago
    This remains a problem - that researchers in many field don't appreciate the utility of true open access (free to read and free to reuse). see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY Cheaper is nice, but free (and machine accessible!) lets us do things that have never been done before.

mathattack 14y ago

You're right, it's old news, but I do think the more we hear of this, the more it's likely to start a movement rather than be a novelty.