5 ms·

Serious question: why does this need a technical solution? Researchers comprise the editorial staff for these journals, conduct the peer reviews, and submit th

by pseut 14y ago

Serious question: why does this need a technical solution? Researchers comprise the editorial staff for these journals, conduct the peer reviews, and submit the papers, all for free (or nearly so). They (we) universally want the papers to be accessible by other researchers (because that means the paper might get cited) and are at worst indifferent to the papers being accessible to the public at large, and by that I mean some people care a lot about that issue, some people don't care very much, but I don't know anyone who is opposed to public access. So there's an ongoing transition now by researchers/editorial boards/etc to move to a system with lower access costs (some of which involves taking back journal ownership, some doesn't). There's some logistical overhead and fixed costs, but those are falling. It seems like in 20 years (conservatively) all new research will be available to whomever wants it no matter what Elsevier or other companies do in the meantime (the papers may not be literally free, but affordable). So, like I said initially, I can see how some software for logistics or communication would be helpful, but the main issues don't strike me as technical.

omnisci 14y ago
One of the many problems with academic publishing is that it's holding on to an antiquated idea behind publishing and not progressing with the way communications are moving now. In a sense, publications are moving at 1970s speed and this hurts science. Hence the technical need to bring it to current times. Is it a "technical issue"? No, but neither is booking your flight via phone, that worked just fine. Could it be made much better, more accessible, cheaper, and overall better via technology. Yes.
- pseut 14y ago
  An anecdote: I finished a decent draft of a paper two weeks ago and posted it to my website an hour before submitting it to a journal. The code to replicate it is on github available to anyone who wants to look at it, and the statistical methods I use I've put in a GPL R package. I've already discussed aspects of the paper and some implementation issues with other researchers over email, presented the paper at conferences, and I think people are already writing papers that use the statistic I propose (again, despite the paper having been submitted to a journal for the first time two weeks ago). In the process of discussing the paper (in person, over email, etc) I've already essentially done two rounds of peer review without journal submission. Maybe you could give details about what you mean by "antiquated idea behind publishing" because I'm pretty sure what I described is not 1970s speed. Now, if your point is that what I've described is not common practice, I agree completely. But that means that people need to be persuaded to use existing technical tools -- I can't see a specific step that's going to be a significant pain point (I'll grant that not everyone can/will use github, but uploading a zip archive of the paper's directory to a personal webpage is easy and is almost as good for code and data dissemination). Other anecdotes are blogs that announce and discuss new research: http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2012/10/nber-asset-pricing-conference.html http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2012/10/nber-asset-pricing... http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2012/09/woodford-at-jackson-hole.html http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2012/09/woodford-at-jackso... That is legitimate academic discourse, put out by an extremely established and credentialed economist, almost instantly. On blogger.
  - omnisci 14y ago
    I think it's super awesome that you did all of that! Kudos to you, and I wish more people were doing stuff like that. My viewpoints are limited to life sciences, where people have no idea what FTP means, let alone GIT. Also, what you did is not typical, people (at least in my field of neurobiology) have no intention of doing something like that in fear of being scooped. The antiquated idea behind publishing is the concept of doing an experiment, filtering out all the negative data, and then submitting their positive data to a journal that they think will publish their data. We've been waiting for 7 months now for a paper to get published in PNAS due to this antiquated process. 7 months to do what you did in a few minutes uploading your data online and making it public.
  - pnathan 14y ago
    You're doing it vastly different from many academics. Kudos to you!
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - mhluongo 14y ago
    I'm all about this sort of openness in the research process, but it seems counter to some disciplines' cultures- aren't eg, medicine and chemistry more competitive / secretive prior publication?
hack_edu 14y ago
A good start would be increased quality of interfaces and abilities to find and connect similar sources; that's all I'm really asking for. There is a huge amount of research published within the Gale-Wilson-ElSevier-JSTOR-Ebsco-Taylor&Francis vaults, properties of immense academic and economic value, yet the tools they charge to access them aren't much more advanced than Yahoo circa '99. Don't even get me started on the transition from physical-copy journal publishing where you always 'own' the copy to a model of journals-as-a-service (the ultimate DRM; they host it) that cost well into the five figure range per year where you lose all access once you let the subscriptions expire. Meanwhile, 'search' as we know it rules the world and is the driving force enabling the entire tech industry. It wouldn't be hard to throw a little effort in building out their platforms, but there's no competition to force further development in their products.
- Radim 14y ago
  Not sure you realize, but these companies already are throwing more than a little effort into advancing their platforms. Elsevier in particular is spending ridiculous amounts on internal research & acquisitions for its platform (called SciVerse, http://www.hub.sciverse.com/ http://www.hub.sciverse.com/), following the latest advancements in machine learning and NLP for data mining, etc etc. They also host competitions for start-ups and developers to produce new apps for their platform. These businesses may be unethical and not to everyone's liking, but they are not stupid.
- pseut 14y ago
  For most scientific fields, the last decade's research is much less important than the next decade's research. New research is much less locked in than stuff that was written before the internet became ubiquitous, so I'm not as concerned about that issue.
pms 14y ago
Well, a technical solution is needed to make changes faster and even better, namely: 1. Provide for the papers a system of transparent reviews and ratings accessible and readable to the public. 2. Provide a recommender system and a search engine based on the reviewed and rated papers available publicly. This would add real value to the scientific publishing and simply help the researchers to find what they need.
- pseut 14y ago
  > Provide for the papers a system of transparent reviews... [snipped] I don't think this is a technical issue. Journals make mistakes on which papers to publish all the time, even when the referees work hard and take the review seriously, so this is hard for committed people to do well.
  - pms 14y ago
    Sure, but reviews are not transparent, nor accessible to the public. Why not? Wouldn't it be nice to see what other people think about the article before reading it? Currently there are citations, but that's about it.
    - pseut 14y ago
      My point is only that these are cultural issues, not technological issues; I agree that it might be useful to see referee reports.
    - PeterisP 14y ago
      A public review of article X by reviewer Y would often be quite different than a double-blind review of the same article by the same reviewer. There are some arguments for both approaches, but I believe that the double-blind approach is much better.
      - Thrymr 14y ago
        I don't think any journal reviews attempt to be double-blind. I could be wrong, but I've never heard of it in my field. In smaller fields, even single-blind (the author not knowing the identity of the reviewer) is difficult, the other way around would be impossible.

by pseut 14y ago

omnisci 14y ago

One of the many problems with academic publishing is that it's holding on to an antiquated idea behind publishing and not progressing with the way communications are moving now. In a sense, publications are moving at 1970s speed and this hurts science. Hence the technical need to bring it to current times. Is it a "technical issue"? No, but neither is booking your flight via phone, that worked just fine. Could it be made much better, more accessible, cheaper, and overall better via technology. Yes.

pseut 14y ago
An anecdote: I finished a decent draft of a paper two weeks ago and posted it to my website an hour before submitting it to a journal. The code to replicate it is on github available to anyone who wants to look at it, and the statistical methods I use I've put in a GPL R package. I've already discussed aspects of the paper and some implementation issues with other researchers over email, presented the paper at conferences, and I think people are already writing papers that use the statistic I propose (again, despite the paper having been submitted to a journal for the first time two weeks ago). In the process of discussing the paper (in person, over email, etc) I've already essentially done two rounds of peer review without journal submission. Maybe you could give details about what you mean by "antiquated idea behind publishing" because I'm pretty sure what I described is not 1970s speed. Now, if your point is that what I've described is not common practice, I agree completely. But that means that people need to be persuaded to use existing technical tools -- I can't see a specific step that's going to be a significant pain point (I'll grant that not everyone can/will use github, but uploading a zip archive of the paper's directory to a personal webpage is easy and is almost as good for code and data dissemination). Other anecdotes are blogs that announce and discuss new research: http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2012/10/nber-asset-pricing-conference.html http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2012/10/nber-asset-pricing... http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2012/09/woodford-at-jackson-hole.html http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2012/09/woodford-at-jackso... That is legitimate academic discourse, put out by an extremely established and credentialed economist, almost instantly. On blogger.
- omnisci 14y ago
  I think it's super awesome that you did all of that! Kudos to you, and I wish more people were doing stuff like that. My viewpoints are limited to life sciences, where people have no idea what FTP means, let alone GIT. Also, what you did is not typical, people (at least in my field of neurobiology) have no intention of doing something like that in fear of being scooped. The antiquated idea behind publishing is the concept of doing an experiment, filtering out all the negative data, and then submitting their positive data to a journal that they think will publish their data. We've been waiting for 7 months now for a paper to get published in PNAS due to this antiquated process. 7 months to do what you did in a few minutes uploading your data online and making it public.
- pnathan 14y ago
  You're doing it vastly different from many academics. Kudos to you!
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- mhluongo 14y ago
  I'm all about this sort of openness in the research process, but it seems counter to some disciplines' cultures- aren't eg, medicine and chemistry more competitive / secretive prior publication?

hack_edu 14y ago

A good start would be increased quality of interfaces and abilities to find and connect similar sources; that's all I'm really asking for. There is a huge amount of research published within the Gale-Wilson-ElSevier-JSTOR-Ebsco-Taylor&Francis vaults, properties of immense academic and economic value, yet the tools they charge to access them aren't much more advanced than Yahoo circa '99. Don't even get me started on the transition from physical-copy journal publishing where you always 'own' the copy to a model of journals-as-a-service (the ultimate DRM; they host it) that cost well into the five figure range per year where you lose all access once you let the subscriptions expire. Meanwhile, 'search' as we know it rules the world and is the driving force enabling the entire tech industry. It wouldn't be hard to throw a little effort in building out their platforms, but there's no competition to force further development in their products.

Radim 14y ago
Not sure you realize, but these companies already are throwing more than a little effort into advancing their platforms. Elsevier in particular is spending ridiculous amounts on internal research & acquisitions for its platform (called SciVerse, http://www.hub.sciverse.com/ http://www.hub.sciverse.com/), following the latest advancements in machine learning and NLP for data mining, etc etc. They also host competitions for start-ups and developers to produce new apps for their platform. These businesses may be unethical and not to everyone's liking, but they are not stupid.
pseut 14y ago
For most scientific fields, the last decade's research is much less important than the next decade's research. New research is much less locked in than stuff that was written before the internet became ubiquitous, so I'm not as concerned about that issue.

pms 14y ago

Well, a technical solution is needed to make changes faster and even better, namely: 1. Provide for the papers a system of transparent reviews and ratings accessible and readable to the public. 2. Provide a recommender system and a search engine based on the reviewed and rated papers available publicly. This would add real value to the scientific publishing and simply help the researchers to find what they need.

pseut 14y ago
> Provide for the papers a system of transparent reviews... [snipped] I don't think this is a technical issue. Journals make mistakes on which papers to publish all the time, even when the referees work hard and take the review seriously, so this is hard for committed people to do well.
- pms 14y ago
  Sure, but reviews are not transparent, nor accessible to the public. Why not? Wouldn't it be nice to see what other people think about the article before reading it? Currently there are citations, but that's about it.
  - pseut 14y ago
    My point is only that these are cultural issues, not technological issues; I agree that it might be useful to see referee reports.
  - PeterisP 14y ago
    A public review of article X by reviewer Y would often be quite different than a double-blind review of the same article by the same reviewer. There are some arguments for both approaches, but I believe that the double-blind approach is much better.
    - Thrymr 14y ago
      I don't think any journal reviews attempt to be double-blind. I could be wrong, but I've never heard of it in my field. In smaller fields, even single-blind (the author not knowing the identity of the reviewer) is difficult, the other way around would be impossible.