5 ms·

I'd say the boycott has reached the point of crossing the chasm into adoption by mainstream users. There are still new people signing up all the time, but the p

I'd say the boycott has reached the point of crossing the chasm into adoption by mainstream users. There are still new people signing up all the time, but the pace is low. A bottleneck to mainstream use is the lack of overlap between hackers/devs and people who are most influential in academic publishing, such as senior editors. To developers the question is: if editors want to post their articles on the web, why don't they just do that? To editors, the question is: how can I practically make my journal open access? There is a need for technology to assist in setting up open access journals. Some people are working on solutions, but it's not obvious what that solution will ultimately look like. There is some trial and error happening, and I hope great progress is made while the problem has the attention of the community.

gnosis 14y ago
"There is a need for technology to assist in setting up open access journals." I just hope they don't start hosting them on Facebook.
anonymouz 14y ago
"A bottleneck to mainstream use is the lack of overlap between hackers/devs and people who are most influential in academic publishing, such as senior editors. To developers the question is: if editors want to post their articles on the web, why don't they just do that? To editors, the question is: how can I practically make my journal open access? There is a need for technology to assist in setting up open access journals." That seems pretty far-fetched. Lots of Open Access journals and preprint platforms exist, and there is no evidence that lack of a suitable software platform is a limitation. The problem is more one of those new outlets gaining sufficient reputation to be trusted by more people (and hiring comittees) and figuring out how they should sustain themselves financially. With the more adventurous approaches the main problem is once again coming up with a model that is actually better and then convincing a whole scientific community to drop their current approach and make their careers depend on a new publishing model. Writing the software is easy by comparison.
jrochkind1 14y ago
> how can I practically make my journal open access? There is a need for technology to assist in setting up open access journals. I would like some further clarification of why you believe this is true. The tech to make a journal open access is no harder than the tech to have an online journal with a paywall. Is the issue just that if you go with an existing commercial paywalled publisher, they supply you with tech staff to do it for you, but if you aren't bringing in any income you have to figure out how/who is going to do the tech yourself? That seems potentially legit, but it's not purely a tech issue. There are plenty of open access journals publishing using open source tech -- from tech like OJS (designed for that purpose), to WordPress, to static HTML. I don't think any of the tech solutions produce _great_ UIs -- but then again neither do any of the paywalled UIs, the bar is pretty low, unfortunately. I don't think lack of existence of software is really a barrier. "Who is going to set up and maintain this software if we don't have money to pay them, and our editors aren't techies" is probably a much bigger barrier. But what would be needed to solve that isn't just 'we need technology' -- it would be -- and geez, I can't believe I'm just thinking of this for the first time spurred by your comment (thanks!), a hosted 'software as service' solution, grant-funded, that provides centralized free (or very cheap) hosting to open access journals. Might be a business opportunity there, in fact.

gnosis 14y ago

"There is a need for technology to assist in setting up open access journals." I just hope they don't start hosting them on Facebook.

anonymouz 14y ago

"A bottleneck to mainstream use is the lack of overlap between hackers/devs and people who are most influential in academic publishing, such as senior editors. To developers the question is: if editors want to post their articles on the web, why don't they just do that? To editors, the question is: how can I practically make my journal open access? There is a need for technology to assist in setting up open access journals." That seems pretty far-fetched. Lots of Open Access journals and preprint platforms exist, and there is no evidence that lack of a suitable software platform is a limitation. The problem is more one of those new outlets gaining sufficient reputation to be trusted by more people (and hiring comittees) and figuring out how they should sustain themselves financially. With the more adventurous approaches the main problem is once again coming up with a model that is actually better and then convincing a whole scientific community to drop their current approach and make their careers depend on a new publishing model. Writing the software is easy by comparison.

jrochkind1 14y ago

> how can I practically make my journal open access? There is a need for technology to assist in setting up open access journals. I would like some further clarification of why you believe this is true. The tech to make a journal open access is no harder than the tech to have an online journal with a paywall. Is the issue just that if you go with an existing commercial paywalled publisher, they supply you with tech staff to do it for you, but if you aren't bringing in any income you have to figure out how/who is going to do the tech yourself? That seems potentially legit, but it's not purely a tech issue. There are plenty of open access journals publishing using open source tech -- from tech like OJS (designed for that purpose), to WordPress, to static HTML. I don't think any of the tech solutions produce _great_ UIs -- but then again neither do any of the paywalled UIs, the bar is pretty low, unfortunately. I don't think lack of existence of software is really a barrier. "Who is going to set up and maintain this software if we don't have money to pay them, and our editors aren't techies" is probably a much bigger barrier. But what would be needed to solve that isn't just 'we need technology' -- it would be -- and geez, I can't believe I'm just thinking of this for the first time spurred by your comment (thanks!), a hosted 'software as service' solution, grant-funded, that provides centralized free (or very cheap) hosting to open access journals. Might be a business opportunity there, in fact.