4 ms·

"you're paying Elsevier to digitize, index, catalogue, and host publicly funded research" Really, is that what we are paying them for? Well that's interesting

"you're paying Elsevier to digitize, index, catalogue, and host publicly funded research" Really, is that what we are paying them for? Well that's interesting, because the next paper I submit, which I am preparing now, is written in LaTeX and is submitted electronically. In the LaTeX source, I have to write keywords and codes that classify the article. The article is hosted on my website, which is hosted on the university's computer. So remind me, what is the publisher being paid for?

rayiner 14y ago
> So remind me, what is the publisher being paid for? Nothing is stopping you from, you know, just not submitting your paper to Elsevier. You could just put up a link on your blog or something. Whatever thing it is that makes you submit to them instead of just doing that is what Elsevier is being paid for.
- betterunix 14y ago
  In other words, they are paid because of the names of the journals they publish. Researchers rarely read bound copies of journals in this day and age; it is faster to download the articles they want to read. My work is published on my web page. I receive emails all the time about it, from people trying to make use of it. At the last meeting for the grant I paid on, my advisor and I were thanked by another research group for some of our work, and for helping that group get our code to run. All of that, however, amounts to nothing if the work is not published in a prestigious journal (or in my field, presented at a prestigious conference, but the conferences are run by the same companies that publish journals and the proceedings are published in the same fashion as journals). Yes, that is how this works. A researcher with a good reputation in their field, whose website provides quick and easy access to their work, has not advanced their career at all unless their work is published in some set of venues. This is not like interviewing for a tech company and giving them a link to your github account or showing them examples of your code; your CV has to contain a list of publications in major journals/conferences if you want to get anywhere in academia. It all boils down to the names of the journals. So the next time you want to remind someone that Elsevier is paid for something, you can tell them the truth: Elsevier is paid for the names of its journals.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Okay, so you're paying Elsevier for lending you the weight of their brands, because it's beneficial to you to do so. What's wrong with that? I paid a lot of money to my undergrad and law school so I could put their brands on my resume. Nobody forced me to do it--I did it because it was beneficial to me. I don't see the problem with it. Everyone pays for brands--it's why Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, etc, still exist in an industry where marginal costs are approaching nothing. Hell, even tech companies pay for brands. They don't recruit at Berkeley and Stanford just to get a look at peoples' github repositories. Signaling, filtering, vetting, vouching are intrinsic to human society. There is nothing coercive about what Elsevier is doing. They've built up brands people trust and are making money providing the signaling services people want.
    - Robin_Message 14y ago
      > They've built up brands people trust TL;DR: No they didn't. Academics did, and publishers will wither away because they add no value and have relatively little power over the academics upon which they are parasites. I then break the law. Certainly in computer science, it is not the publishers who have not built up brands people trust (except ACM and possibly IEEE). Academics forming program committees and organising the conferences have built up the trusted brands. Now, in the past, it made sense to get a publisher to produce paper proceedings for attendees and distribute proceedings to libraries. However, now publishers make very little contribution to conferences – attendees all pay a significant fee to attend. The programme committee and referees are not paid. The authors produce digital works (and the referees do minor proof reading, not the publisher). Paper copies are often not distributed. I've not been on a programme committee, but I'm pretty sure publishers are adding no value whatsoever. The reason this hasn't withered away already is that all universities pay for access to all publishers so academics don't really see it as a problem; it's easier to just stick to the status quo when it's not your rights being violated. But eventually, conference organisers will realise they can just tell Elsvier or Springer or even the IEEE and ACM to get stuffed†. They'll then put the proceedings on arxiv or some other free place (hell, just torrent them) and merrily continue doing everything else exactly the same sans publisher. Civil disobedience time: http://robinmessage.com/wwv07.pdf http://robinmessage.com/wwv07.pdf is a conference paper I wrote. In order to participate in that conference, I was coerced into giving my copyright to Elsvier. Note they did nothing to make it happen; it was my work, and the work of the organising committee and referees. But I no longer own the copyright to that paper, and so probably broke the law posting it here. † Interestingly, apparently all publicly funded UK research will soon be required to be published somewhere open access, in direct violation of the requirements of most publishers. So academics have a fun question to answer: don't publish anywhere good, or break the law?

rayiner 14y ago

> So remind me, what is the publisher being paid for? Nothing is stopping you from, you know, just not submitting your paper to Elsevier. You could just put up a link on your blog or something. Whatever thing it is that makes you submit to them instead of just doing that is what Elsevier is being paid for.

betterunix 14y ago
In other words, they are paid because of the names of the journals they publish. Researchers rarely read bound copies of journals in this day and age; it is faster to download the articles they want to read. My work is published on my web page. I receive emails all the time about it, from people trying to make use of it. At the last meeting for the grant I paid on, my advisor and I were thanked by another research group for some of our work, and for helping that group get our code to run. All of that, however, amounts to nothing if the work is not published in a prestigious journal (or in my field, presented at a prestigious conference, but the conferences are run by the same companies that publish journals and the proceedings are published in the same fashion as journals). Yes, that is how this works. A researcher with a good reputation in their field, whose website provides quick and easy access to their work, has not advanced their career at all unless their work is published in some set of venues. This is not like interviewing for a tech company and giving them a link to your github account or showing them examples of your code; your CV has to contain a list of publications in major journals/conferences if you want to get anywhere in academia. It all boils down to the names of the journals. So the next time you want to remind someone that Elsevier is paid for something, you can tell them the truth: Elsevier is paid for the names of its journals.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Okay, so you're paying Elsevier for lending you the weight of their brands, because it's beneficial to you to do so. What's wrong with that? I paid a lot of money to my undergrad and law school so I could put their brands on my resume. Nobody forced me to do it--I did it because it was beneficial to me. I don't see the problem with it. Everyone pays for brands--it's why Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, etc, still exist in an industry where marginal costs are approaching nothing. Hell, even tech companies pay for brands. They don't recruit at Berkeley and Stanford just to get a look at peoples' github repositories. Signaling, filtering, vetting, vouching are intrinsic to human society. There is nothing coercive about what Elsevier is doing. They've built up brands people trust and are making money providing the signaling services people want.
  - Robin_Message 14y ago
    > They've built up brands people trust TL;DR: No they didn't. Academics did, and publishers will wither away because they add no value and have relatively little power over the academics upon which they are parasites. I then break the law. Certainly in computer science, it is not the publishers who have not built up brands people trust (except ACM and possibly IEEE). Academics forming program committees and organising the conferences have built up the trusted brands. Now, in the past, it made sense to get a publisher to produce paper proceedings for attendees and distribute proceedings to libraries. However, now publishers make very little contribution to conferences – attendees all pay a significant fee to attend. The programme committee and referees are not paid. The authors produce digital works (and the referees do minor proof reading, not the publisher). Paper copies are often not distributed. I've not been on a programme committee, but I'm pretty sure publishers are adding no value whatsoever. The reason this hasn't withered away already is that all universities pay for access to all publishers so academics don't really see it as a problem; it's easier to just stick to the status quo when it's not your rights being violated. But eventually, conference organisers will realise they can just tell Elsvier or Springer or even the IEEE and ACM to get stuffed†. They'll then put the proceedings on arxiv or some other free place (hell, just torrent them) and merrily continue doing everything else exactly the same sans publisher. Civil disobedience time: http://robinmessage.com/wwv07.pdf http://robinmessage.com/wwv07.pdf is a conference paper I wrote. In order to participate in that conference, I was coerced into giving my copyright to Elsvier. Note they did nothing to make it happen; it was my work, and the work of the organising committee and referees. But I no longer own the copyright to that paper, and so probably broke the law posting it here. † Interestingly, apparently all publicly funded UK research will soon be required to be published somewhere open access, in direct violation of the requirements of most publishers. So academics have a fun question to answer: don't publish anywhere good, or break the law?