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Of course they see a dime: they receive public money. Elsevier are such geniuses: public money paid papers need to be paid a second time, and still, they remain
by yrochat 12y ago
Of course they see a dime: they receive public money. Elsevier are such geniuses: public money paid papers need to be paid a second time, and still, they remain unavailable for the public who has paid for it (twice). Rich geniuses.
- p4bl0 12y agoAl-Khwarizmi was not talking about the publisher but about the scientists actually doing the peer-reviewing work: they don't see a dime from the publisher for this work (which is normal because it is part of their job as scientist to peer-review, what is abnormal is that the result of this work is given for free to private companies who put it behind paywalls).
- yrochat 12y agoI wasn't implying that the publishers but the reviewers were getting public money for that. Having spent around 12 hours between Sunday and Monday to write a single review for a journal paper, I must say that I am pretty surprised that this system has been working until now… The scientists are united in making their reviews, while someone on top is getting so much money for it (this catches up with your argument). I can't help myself considering us as naive people.
- p4bl0 12y agoI see. Naive I don't know, not interested by money, certainly. Otherwise we would be following much more lucrative career paths, which are well, basically anything else than public research. That said, I've encountered many scientists who simply never thought about it before we discussed it, and who now think the situation is absolutely crazy, as anyone would. The questions are: What can they do about it? Do they have the time to do it? How can they do it without hurting themselves? Indeed, it's hard enough to get a position as it is, refusing to publish in prestigious journal owned by asshole publishers won't help young scientists. Older scientists often work with young ones, and they can't tell them "no we won't publish in the asshole-owned prestigious journal because it's the right thing to do", it wouldn't be fair. The reality is that the solution can't really come only from individuals, it has to be a legal battle, not only for future publications (which is the easiest part), but also for all the past ones. The entire Elsevier "Freedom Collection" for example should be seized by governments (UN?) and made available for free to anyone on the internet and in public libraries worldwide. But in this "free-market" economy, this is not something people seems to be ready to ear, let alone understand.
- masklinn 12y ago> Indeed, it's hard enough to get a position as it is, refusing to publish in prestigious journal owned by asshole publishers won't help young scientists It seems to vary strongly by field though, some fields seem much more bullish on "open access" than others.
- Al-Khwarizmi 12y agoI think the solution has to come from public funding agencies (i.e. from governments). If my country's government says that from 2015 onwards, only publications that can be freely accessed count towards public grant requests, tenure and positions in public institutions, etc.; in a year no one would be published in the asshole-owned journals. Instead, my government has policies that actively incentivize publishing in said journals (basically ISI JCR journal papers are what counts for everything).
- im2w1l 12y ago>What can they do about it? Do they have the time to do it? How can they do it without hurting themselves? Get the top people in a field to collectively decide to create/back a new journal. Because they are the top, what they publish in will "automatically" become prestigious, assuming the journal is selective. Once the journal is well established, the up and coming will start publishing there too.
- masklinn 12y ago> Of course they see a dime: they receive public money. Scientists receive money for the work they do, but that money is generally in the form of grants for their own sciencing, I've never heard of "review grants".