5 ms·

> Academic publishers are literally the enemies of humanity. I would not be so extreme: they used to be a necessary evil before the Internet became mainstream.

• Blahah 13y ago
  Edited to be more specific - it's only the publishers who are systematically restricting knowledge that are at fault. But no matter where they've come from, what they are doing now is holding humanity back on a massive scale.
• naterator 13y ago
  >They are more of a millstone from the past that research still drags with it because changing an institution is hard. It's not that changing is hard, since it would be easy if that's what everyone wanted. It's that you have many competing forces (perhaps that's what you mean by "hard"). The most important is scientists who made their careers in the current system--the people who publish yearly in Nature, for example. They have tremendous political sway and it is not in their interest to change. They will even admit that it is not an ideal system, but no one likes giving up being King. Edit: I should point out that it is more complicated. Science does need a way to judge which scientists are doing valuable work and which aren't, and currently Impact Factors are one of the main ways this is done now. We don't yet have a great alternative.
  • Blahah 13y ago
    Altmetrics is a growing field - I think in the next couple of years we will have an ecosystem of tools (like impactstory.org, altmetric.com) much better and more rounded than impact factors. I also think impact factors are poisonous in their own right.
  • ProblemFactory 13y ago
    I don't think anyone but the traditional publishers wants to keep traditional publishers. Every scientist I've ever met wants as many people as possible to read (and cite) their work. But the main issue is that the main metric for scientists' performance is number of publications in prestigious journals, and the oldest journals tend to be the most prestigious ones. If a scientist wants to get grant funding or promotions, they have to put up with the copyright terms of the traditional publishers. Any real change to the system has to start from the government agencies and councils handing out grant funding to research groups. As long as they prefer to fund people with Nature papers over SomeOpenAccessJournal papers, only a few scientists are willing to sacrifice their career for the principle of open access.
• masklinn 13y ago
  And like traditional publishers there is still a role they can play, edition and synchronisation of anonymous review remains an important element of paper publication.
  • dalai 13y ago
    This is not done by the publishers. They only provide an online system to do so. The editors and reviewers are other scientists.
    • masklinn 13y ago
      > This is not done by the publishers. The work itself obviously is not[0], but you need somebody to synchronise that stuff, especially to ensure reviews remain anonymous (to paper authors). This must be handled by a third party. [0] not entirely true for edition, publishers generally employ a number of editors although these editors usually have a solid science background for obvious reasons.
  • Blahah 13y ago
    They theoretically could play this role, but others are much better at it. These companies are structured to exploit scientists and the public, not to enable them. Innovation is stifled both within and without. We're much better off turning to fresh approaches to peer review, for example any of the things on this list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HD-BEaVeDdFjjCNFkb0j3pvwe7MrP3PtE-bWHkkdq7Q https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HD-BEaVeDdFjjCNFkb0j3pvw...
• rayiner 13y ago
  What proponents of "open access science" fail to realize is that science is a business like any other, and a very big one involving lots of money. Like in any business, some form of marketing and reputation management is key. Academic publishers provide essential marketing services: filtering, sorting, and branding. You self publish, and most people regard you as a kook. You publish in Nature, and suddenly you're someone worth reading. Branding, credentialing, signaling, all these things are just as important if not more so in science than in any other field, and that's the service academic publishers provide. At the end of the day, nobody is holding a gun to the heads of professors forcing them to publish in these journals. These are freely-negotiated agreements between researchers and publishers. The reason researchers continue to support the existing system is that it serves their purposes and furthers their careers. Any alternative system will have to provide similar benefits.
  • revelation 13y ago
    None of this explains why they should get the copyright.
    • rayiner 13y ago
      They negotiate with researchers for it.
      • silentOpen 13y ago
        Just like I negotiate with my hospital for medical care payment.
        • patio11 13y ago
          Life lesson for US HNers who may never have been in this situation: you can negotiate with healthcare providers on price. It is actually fairly routine. They won't think less of you. 70 cents on the dollar delivered immediately in cash beats the heck out of 100 cents on the dollar transferred to a debt-collection agency, worked for 6 months, and negotiated down to 60 cents of which the agency keeps 15.
• gaius 13y ago
  It's a narrative that plays very well on HN, that <insert industry here> are not only obsolete but evil and what's more stupid and we - the enlightened software developers - will free humanity from their shackles. But the world is a good deal more complicated than that. And not least because what most software people here do wouldn't really be missed if it went away. Ask Altavista and Myspace about that.
  • Blahah 13y ago
    Of course the world is more complicated than that - but just saying it's more complicated is not a constructive contribution. We can talk about problems we perceive and try to solve them, or we can sit around saying things are complicated. Let's do the first one.
    • gaius 13y ago
      That ground has been covered many times. Hotels it turns out do things that AirBnB doesn't, for good reasons. Taxis it turns out do things that Uber doesn't. Yadda yadda. My critique is intended of the theme, not any specific instance of it. You probably consider yourself neither stupid nor evil - try to remember this when it's your turn to be "disrupted"...
      • Blahah 13y ago
        Well, then I agree in abstract. I'm not suggesting we disrupt publishing, or try to save it. We (loosely the open science movement) are trying to fix our own field. Publishers serve a purpose, but some of what they do is harming us. We're encouraging the ones that can be encouraged to change. We'll force the ones that wont be encouraged. You're right - I don't consider myself stupid or evil. But if I ever do become those things and it hurts others, whether I realise it or not, I hope someone forces me to stop.
  • ahomescu1 13y ago
    > Ask Altavista and Myspace about that. One particular search engine or one particular social network wouldn't be missed if gone, but I bet search engines and social networks would be missed if they all went away completely (and it would also be pretty bad if the Internet shut down entirely).
• diminoten 13y ago
  Aw come on now, they do perform a service that's of nonzero value - they (ostensibly) sift the wheat from the chafe. I don't have the expertise to know what's valid research and what's hokum, but I know if I read it in Nature, I can at least take it seriously. Admittedly I believe we could develop a much better system for doing this then academic publishing, but I don't honestly know what such a system would look like.
  • vajrabum 13y ago
    Uh, you do know that the editing and reviewing are normally done for these journals by mostly government supported academics who don't charge for their time don't you? The academic journal business has devolved into tax payer dollar farming with the usual campaign $$$ payoffs to establish and maintain monopolies.