Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Demand Open Access to Research
An AC sent in: "15,817 scientists have threatened to boycott all journals that refuse to provide free public online access to their articles within 6 months of publication. After all, the scientists provide the articles free of charge. What's the excuse the journals use? They claim that public archives introduce errors into the articles, making them unreliable!" We've run stories about the journal debate before; see this one or this one or this one. But it sounds like scientists are getting a bit peeved now - good for them. The lesson that "No, you don't have to give up all your rights to your work in exchange for publication anymore" is one that musicians could stand to learn as well. I guess the scientists are faster learners.
This issue is exactly the reason that I am no longer an IEEE member. I wrote a paper that was accepted into one of their journals, which I thought was great (it was my first journal-published paper). I didn't think it was great when they sent me a copyright assignment form. That's right, they wanted the copyright to the work, not just permission to publish it. I would no longer have the freedom to even photocopy my own paper or put a copy on my web site. I declined to publish it in the journal and have not been an IEEE member ever since.
I have published a few papers in restrictive journals since that time, but that's because I was not the primary author and the major authors had different priorities than I -- academic careers, for example!
It's sad to see these organizations stray from their mission for furthering the art and science and instead becoming a business. Don't get me wrong, businesses are great for some kinds of human and economic activities, but federations of scientists should not be profit-oriented because the profit motive conflicts with the mission of science that they allegedly embrace.
The paper is on my LibStroke web site. It's admittedly not one of the most significant works of scientific literature of the past century, but I felt that it was useful enough to people interested in LibStroke that it shouldn't rot on dead tree or be available to IEEE union members only.
Mark
Photogrametric Engineering & Remote Sensing isn't likely to have a wide readership. Regardless of how important its work may be to people in the remote sensing field.
In cases like that, perhaps a community supported cooperative model would make more sense than a capitalist one?
At the least, those who want to continue with their capitalist model would do well to find a way to make the customer and contributor happy.
Now THAT one deserves to be a quote of the day: Let's not go to the lengths to say that science research - meant to further the human race - is in any way comparable to Britney Spears - meant to move us in the other direction while mesmerizing us with jiggly boobies moving across the stage.
Inconceivable!
That covers the "observe" part of science. So what about the rest of it? Also, where are the "scientists" that existed in between his time and the "modern" era?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
if that's the case, then I would like to formally submit my paper on the mating habits of the penis-bird. . .
'nuff said?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
naw, it's a great comparison,
For instance, in the music industry, new music is peer-reviewed by talent scouts and agents, who are widely respected in their fields as experts in determining which new, up and coming musicians give the best head.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
actually, if you buy coke at the soda fountain (Mc Donalds, etc.) they use the water that comes out of the tap at that location.
Remember, Evian is naive spelled backwards.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Steven Hawking's book "Brief History of Time" is the only physics text-book ever to reach the best-sellers list in one country, never mind two continents.
This wasn't because your average person could understand it, or see how the work applied to their lives. It was because it made a GREAT coffee-table book, was just unpretentious enough that virtually anyone could have a copy & not look stupid, and because the title was reasonably catchy.
(For anyone who -could- understand it, it was also a great book on the -inside-, and the revised version even better, but I'm not even going to hope that even half ever read his introduction.)
The same would be true of the journal you mentioned. So what if "Photogrametric Engineering & Remote Sensing" isn't the sexiest field in existance? Trim the price, put copies in the New Age section (where Remote Sensing is definitely a popular subject - albeit a different KIND of remote sensing) and watch the circulation sky-rocket! It's ALL about perception.
That's also why good engineers make lousy managers. They know how to make things work, not look good. Skillful managers are the ones who can sell defective ice-cubes to eskimos and have the eskimos convinced they got a bargain.
Am I suggesting magazines start hyping themselves up? No. I'm suggesting that if magazines don't want to price themselves out of existance, they need to remember that even the most obsessive of scientists is still a person, and people are alergic to boring, stale, over-priced products that you can't even find if you -do- want them.
Wireless World had =plenty= of dry, straight, technically-fanatic articles, and the number of people who go out and build their own TV sets is definitely limited. They still sold in large volume. (At least, comparitively.) Why? Because they also had a few slightly-more relaxed writers ("Free Grid" and "Cathode Ray" being the pen-names I can remember), which turned the tech-mag into a coffee-table mag. And that made it possible for older kids to discover the wonderful world of electronics and radio communication.
The last thing that makes-or-breaks a magazine is its policy with shops. Especially with low-circulation mags, shops aren't going to gamble on titles that aren't on a sale-or-return basis. They stand to lose too much money. This makes spontaneous buying impossible. If it's not sold by your big chain-stores, it's not visible. And if it's not visible, it WILL have a limited circulation. It's self-limiting! Cos the only ones who know about it are the ones who already buy it!
Secret Cabals of readers might work fine for mystical societies, but it is a sure-fire way of killing a journal.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The poor journals, with their $150 - $450 subscription costs have such poor circulation, that their bank accounts are suffering. All the digits (but one) are zero! You can't get any worse than that!
For those who can't spell "satire", I have absolutely no sympathy for any journal that really DOES have financial problems. The problems are of their own making. Price the rag out of the reach of readers, and you won't =HAVE= readers! Duh! True, you can't keep reducing prices forever. It follows a Gaussian distribution, and the "ideal", from the rag's perspective, is to find the maximum. But, as they have all the monetary wisdom of a whelk, you can't expect intelligence to play any part in things.
The archives, furthermore, increase mind-share. And, as any Microsoft dweeb knows, mind-share is market-share. You can't sell to people who don't know (or care) that you exist. Convince Joe and Jane Average that hand-held fusion reactors are vital to know about, and make good conversation pieces, and you're talking a circulation increase in orders of magnitude.
It's WORTH risking 10% of sales, if there's a better than average chance of acquiring 10,000% additional ones.
I may not be an accounting wizard, but even I know that 10,000 is bigger than 10.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I asked this question about 6 years ago. (Guess I'm getting old 'huh?). The question and a couple of rather interesting responses are archived here, http://iubio.bio.indiana.edu/R106025-115883-/news/ bionet/cellbiol/9406.newsm , and here http://iubio.bio.indiana.edu/R13845-16134-/news/bi onet/cellbiol/9406.newsm.
;)
PS, for anyone whose interested, I didn't finish the bio program. I switched over to psych. My bio dept. sucked. You couldn't get to see an advisor if you weren't pre-Med/Dent/Pharm/etc (I was pre-EDU). I eventually dropped the the EDU in favor of INFOSYS.
Your kidding right? Please, please tell me you aren't really up on the technical details of your website's operation, and this isn't true.
Because, if you mean your guys are writing a program in assembler for serving web-pages, they deserve to be shot. There is no conceiveable reason to use assembly for anything by low-level operating system and embedded code.
What do I mean when I say there is no reason? You can accomplish anything you do in assembly with C, and most anything in higher level languages. Maybe your programmers told you it would be faster--if so, then they told a half-truth. It is theoretically faster, but in practice a good C compiler will produce tighter asm. Plus, the equivalent C code will take less time to develop, by a factor of about ten.
we're a listed company, and like it or not we are legally obliged to maximise revenue for our shareholders
So, perhaps you should consider writing code in a higher level language. It will be faster (most of the time) and will take a tiny percentage of the development time. Or maybe I should tell you shareholders all about asm v. C, and how your squandering their investment.
Yes, I'm still a junky. Are you still a bitch?
Done and done. One of these days I'm going to sort through all these nice quotes from /. I've collected and make a fortune file out of them. :)
Where do I sign? Where do I sign?
Somebody did have the idea of using Napster for scientific papers - just an idea at present, I don't think it has been implemented. Search for 'docster'.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Certainly the attached-to-the-tap Brita's are a biological health hazard. Room-temperature water with lots of organic gunk is primo territory for growing stuff.
I think the Brita jugs are probably fairly safe, when they're kept in the fridge. The newer models have a fill-counter, indicating when they should be replaced.
On the other hand, I think I'm getting a good four months per filter, and I suspect I drink significantly more water than most people. Four months seems like an awful long time for a filter...
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Not only did you pay a buck for it (a buck-sixty in Canada!), if it's that ever=present Dasani water, you've just paid for processed tap water!
Dasani is a Coca-Cola product. It is, I'm reasonably certain, just the processed tap water they use for their soda pop products. Instead of adding a tablespoon of sEkRiT iNgReDiEnT, they just bottle it straight.
Massive friggin' profit for them. Wish I'd thought to do it first...
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Many musicians have a better ability to "hear" than most people. I can distinguish pitches and hear differences between keys - F# major sounds way different than Db major. A friend of mine can tell a difference between two identical sets of speakers, and can tell you why - usually different wood densities and minor construction differences.
Some people prefer "analog" sound (of course, sound is analog) - it is true that the highs aren't as "harsh" as with digital recordings. Hence the return of tube amps.
It's a preference thing.
Additionally, even before they enter the formal peer review process, if the research is collaborative everybody who is listed as an author will have contributed to improving the paper, which picks up many errors and help ensure clarity of expression.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
We pay the peer reviewers.
Not in any journal I've ever heard of! Referees are expected to work for no charge. (Maybe this varies between fields, though.)
That said, the editors, typesetters, printers, and distributers clearly expend a lot of resources in making journal articles available.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
Their objection to the on-line publication is about as valid as would be their objection to the use of a photocopier. A dirty thumb-print on a poor photocopy can be just as disastrous.
Digital media is inherently more reproducible WITHOUT error.
Find a better excuse. Greed makes for bad science and secrets for the sake of secrets.
That costs us all.
The worst part is that what it costs can't even be properly quantified. It inherently falls outside the realm of the quantifiable. Sort of the application of the generalized uncertainty principle in real-life.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
From the article:
I don't get it. If they send the articles **FOR FREE** to the publishers, what's preventing them from **ALSO** sending them to the " public online archives "??? Don't tell me that when you send **FOR FREE** a manuscript to a publisher, you immediately forfeit all copyright to the article to the publisher????
--
Oh, you mean like Pons & Fleischmann's work???
--
All the scientists I know make somewhere in the $30 to $100k ranges. Most musicians I know make between $17 and $40k a year - usually only with the augmentation of other incomes. Where do I get this information (before some uninformed person asks), I'm a researcher for Indiana University by day managing a development office doing psychometric shtuff. At night, I do music and technology consultation.
/. thinks they are and they think that the labels only want to screw them so its alright to steal.
Anywho, Michael is just posting more dumb fuck commentary. Is this a troll? Or is this a comment from someone that seems to make a decent living within the music areas? Ya'll will probably say troll, but I gotta say Michael is either a dumbfuck or completely uninformed.
First, 'scientists' and other academics usually need to produce and be published to continue with their research. Are they getting paid for the publications? Not usually, but few of us will ever get any grants without publications. We probably won't keep our jobs for very long - Publish or Perish. Most importantly, we won't have the respect of our peers if we didn't publish. Want to do it yer way, start a rival publication, offer it free over the internet, and work to get it accedited and accepted. These other journals have all done that and if you want to be at the same level as they are, yer gonna have to woodshed it for a while.
Musicians - Their livelyhood is based on several things. Some musicians can make money simply by touring and selling merchandice. I've got a freidn touring Europe right now with a band that few have heard of, but they always sell out. They don't have big CD Sales, but their touring makes up for that quite a bit. I've got other friends where they sell a lot of CDs but getting folks together for a concert is like pulling teeth. They don't like touring and their audience is a pop in the CD and listen to audience.
Having said that, I encourage most musicians to post their works online. Its good advertisement, but in some genres it works against ya. To think that others a faster learners is an insult to the artist and implies you know more than they do about the work they are performing. If it were that fucking simple, why isn't every artist a millionaire? Oh yeah,
blah
clif marsiglio
I was doing my thesis on a technique to develop a system to compare the "performance" of different image segmentation algorithms.
So basically, I had to develop some methodology to run test on these guys (with manually entered ground truth), choose some algorithms currently used (5-12) and be happy.
Well, was I in for a shock. People in CS journals publish algorithms and techinques and provide very little details as to how to implement their work. Not only that, but if you ask for source code you are out of luck.
I tried to contact a couple of authors to see if I could take a peek at their implementations, and most were either gone from the institution, or simply LOST the work !!!
C'mon people, if you are publishing an article describing your cool research, and try to explain it, but don't provide a way for the community to implement it, and you lose the work, what good is that in the end ?!?!?
Anyways, I fully support this boycott, we IEEE journals are great, but very inaccessible, they're not doing the research/academic comunity any favors by not allowing more free access.
- sigs are for wimps.
That's a good point, but the example I provided is littered with implementations were the researchers provided results of their work (since it's Image Processing/ Computer Vision stuff). So they did do some implementation.
If it's in a weird language, or it's poorly written (spagetti code), or doesn't even compile, no problem, the burden falls on the person trying to understand the implementation. But at least you have something that will help you much more in your research.
In addition, aside from implementation, backup material like in this case, images used for testing (and the ones printed in the journal articles) and things of the like would be nice to be stored somewhere. A nice idea, would be to let these journal sites store that backup info, maybe they can charge for that, I'd surely would pay for such data !!!
It just seems that now, people publish papers, and to be honest, there's no real proof that what they talk about works as advertised. Show me the work. Plus, it doesn't seem researchers are taking advantage of the internet, let us download stuff, that way your work won't be lost like it's apperently doing right now !!!
- sigs are for wimps.
A couple points:
Firstly, you, and so many other slashdot posters, underestimate the importance of the music industry in producing today's music. To put it in as few words as possible, what sets the major labels apart from the myriad of other methods is CAPITAL and MARKETING. If merely delivering music from point A to point B were the sole objective, any artist today can do this online for next to nothing. Never mind independent labels, physically printing and mailing CDs, etc.
Secondly, the only way this protest will help scientists is IF this proposal does, indeed, make economic sense. This may well not be the case.
Thirdly, I would argue that the difference in RELEVANT accessability between expensive publication to scientists and free access to the public online is probably rather nominal. Most of these journals have quite narrow focus and deal with matters in such details that the vast majority of them really do not concern the person that does not specialize in that field. Those that do can simply afford to pay the subscription price. If any particular article or study is of great relevance to the outside world, the chances are that it will get picked up by the greater media. In addition, many of these journals can be picked up at university libraries and through like means.
I never said the only value was direct economic benefit. However, I do think it is the biggest concern. We don't spend billions of dollars a year subsidizing scientific research so that academics and a handful of people that actually venture to read the journals can enjoy themselves. Now this is to say that it must be direct, easily measurable, or even necessarily economic, but it must be more than just enlightenment and/or entertainment for those individuals. Although the enlightenment of even a few individuals may be a worthy goal, it must be weighed against other equally worthy objectives.
And your point is?
Since when is democracy founded on the principle that everything must be free and easy? If the only means to achieve this nominal "democracy" is the destruction of that which you wish to democratize, then you are doing more harm than good. Yes, it may be good if you can increase actual readership by 10%, but if that comes at the cost of quality or even the publication itself, then it is not worth it. It seems to me that, what is at issue here is convenience, since most motivated people in this country can gain access to the material through libraries and such. So let's put this in perspective, this is truely no less democratic (not that it is technically a democracy) than our system of governance; you actually have to leave your house to get some thing that you want.
That said, I'm not necessarily arguing against it, I'm just playing devil's advocate. The finances are terribly important to this question and neither of us knows them.
You have not established that that is really the case. Nor have you established that this business model in the cause. Nor have you established that any other methods are superior. The fact of the matter is that it costs money to produce these journals, someone either pays or it is subsidized, or both. The odds are that if the universities cannot afford to pay subscriptions (doubtful), then they cannot afford to subsidize the actual costs of publishing either.
Now if these scientists wish to strike out on their own, let them, it is their own work afterall. However, that does not mean they're right or that they really fully understand the problem. Only once they've established a viable and superior alternative will their case truely be proven.
Ok, besides the fact that the very nature of intellectual property is extraneous to my argument, with the existence of intellectual property laws as they stand today, the artists choose freely to sign with the labels, rather than any other "free" or "open" system. You may argue (although I would definetely contradict) that the artist's own self interest lies contrary to the general public's, but it is unreasonable and improbable to assume that the elimination of IP would somehow give the artist a better choice.
No where did I say that economic viability somehow excluded public subsidies. However, the fact of the matter is that if the companies are not economically viable and the public is unwilling to pay (quite probable) then the scientists are indeed SOL. What's more, government subsidized entities have a well established record of operating vastly less efficiently than private industry. In other words, it is very possible that the public would pay far more on aggregate to a subsidized publisher for the same (or less) end result, than the existing publisher's customers pay.
No, although they may be the exclusive electronic provider, they do not have monopoly access to the documents themselves. They take PUBLIC information and essentially repackage and distribute it electronically in searchable databases and such. This adds value and it costs money to provide. The only thing they own is their resulting product, not the court documents themselves. In other words, you can still get them, and other competing corporations are free to create their own databases, they just can't pirate off the existing services.
Again, you miss the point. My point is not that the scientists care for the publishers' financial well being; my point is that the artists clearly want those publishing functions and if their demands make the act of publishing economically un-viable, then no one wins, not the scientists, not the greater public, and certainly not the publishers. Put simply, I do not need to know precisely what their objectives are to reasonably this.
I would argue that the barriers to court records are truely not that much lower. Although the courts may make them available, they are not all accessible online by any means. In fact, Lexis/Nexis and numerous other services make a great deal of money because they are the only effective way to get to them electronically. With a little effort in both cases though, virtually any motivated person can gain access without shelling out a small fortune. (e.g., universities, public libraries, etc.)
ACM has an online archive for its own publications (ACM members only).
No, open source is as old as computing. Nobody even thought of keeping other people from seeing the source for quite some time. After all, most early computing was academic, except for the military (which I guess is an exception, but it's a little different from closing the source for commercial reasons). The scientific culture, which is, as you say, much older than computing, transferred naturally to computers. Freedom is the basis of learning, so it didn't occur to anyone to keep knowledge away from others.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
Bipolar.
Although there are some similarities in terms of rights to publushed work, I think the parallel between scientists and musicians is a bit of a non sequitor.
Scientists do rely on publishing to further their careers. But they generally do not recieve royalties on most published items (i.e. journal articles). Scientists also rely on access to the peer-reviewed work of other scientists. (It will be interesting to see what evolves, for the peer-review process - rather than the "introduction of errors" - is still a key issue, in my opinion.)
YS.
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
For scientists, their livelihoods are sponsored by universities, not directly through the act of publishing. Publishing is used as a benchmark of academic reputation, and although academic researchers are expected to publish, universities are much more understanding about this sort of protest than the landlord of a starving young musician. Such a protest serves to further the academic reputations of the scientists involved, by demonstrating their loyalty to the ideals that have driven scientific research to date. Also, if the protest is successful, the universities benefit through greater access to the materials provided by those journals, so why wouldn't they back the protest.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I have a blog.
> The fact that most scientists...
I thought the big difference was that scientists need power cords to get their work done, whereas musicians need both power cords and power chords.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I admit, that's supposition... I've tried looking it up, but had little success....
Oh well, no doubt this will have a score of 1; and my views will not be seen.
./ moderation isn't perfect; but moderation by a small inward looking group of specialists isn't either.
Ok
In my field I deal with real world implementation. Academia deals with small samples. After reading some of the papers I am often left wondering if some researchers have done stats 101. I make the above statement with some passion.
Online publications has enormous potential. If you don't want to make a complete ass of yourself you can get your publication reviewed by other who you respect. The publication can be published with the reviewer's names.
No you do not need a paper publication for this process to continue.
Those in the field who rely on the review process to cut down what they read will know the names and will only read articles written and review by the small inward looking group that they always have.
It would however allow for other to contribute papers to be ripped to shreds or possible advance the cause.
It would also allow those that are not part of the system (but who have spent considerable time in the field) the opportunity to add an acid comment against some of the nonsense that is published.
I don't know; how did the 0.817 come about.
Are people really that stupid that they can't read a paper and come to their own conclusions.
I think it was Nature's subscription fees (or one of the other "big" journals) that acted as the last straw to break the camels back. Journal fees to libaries are outrageously expensive (thousands$$/year) and to the scientists/engineers several $ hundred/year. This is true in both general science and in medicine (When I finish my residency I can count on paying $250 per year for a monthly must have journal - that's >$20 per issue!)
These journals are usually chock full of advertisements too - which can't be cheap. Publishing costs can't possibly be as high as a regular newstand magazine - scientific journals are udually pretty low demand - lots of text with a few pictures (Black and white usually) or graphs. And they don't pay the authors!!
We bust our balls to write these papers and then get screwed! It's about time that somebody realized that we scientists should ultimately have the power and control over our work.
The journals should be pandering to us - not the other way around. As far as the issue of typos or misquotes - it's alot easier to correct online. Paper journals have to issue an erratum - which subsequent readers might never see.
..........FULL STOP.
The Google page-ranking algorithm is exactly a "distributed peer-review" mechanism.
What's really important for researchers is not the raw quantity of their publications, but how frequently their work is cited by other researchers (recursively; citations by other highly-cited researchers count more). That can be done automatically and cheaply.
I think to be fair, the six month wait is a minimum. I would be probably be OK with one year during which the article is available only to subscribers, but after that year, the article becomes public domain.
Ever say "No thanks, I have enough RAM"?
If your view of the motivation of scientific publication is solely as quote whoring, then you have been exposed to the seedy underbelly of science. I will concede that in academia, where most of scientific journal articles originate, publishing is the measure of success. But I do believe, and not naively, that much of scientific publication is motivated by something as quaint as the "joy" of the work and the desire to make it available to peers.
Ever say "No thanks, I have enough RAM"?
yes. but you've got it backwards. Open source is is only 20 or 30 years old (much less than that, if you're talking about the specific term "open source"). science has been around forever.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Wasn't HTML and HTTP invented so that scientists at CERN could share information with each other more quickly and easily?
I'm wondering why there isn't a link to the research that shows that it is better to have these articles online.
You forgot to mention that there also are science indexes which are volumes full of indexes to these articles in the various journals. I'm sure those companies don't appreciate the efforts of the general Web search engines -- although the smart companies are becoming online services also.
Why not PKI?
Every researchers has a key pair
Every article is signed by the researcher *and by all the peer reviewers*
It would be then trivial to check the signatures to find out that the electronic copy you downloaded it's the real thing.
This would probably also streamline the peer review process quite a bit, since a peer reviewer will be sure that the copy that was peer reviewed will be the actual copy that gets published without any changes you weren't aware of.
-- the cake is a lie
Mike Rosenzweig was Editor-in-chief of the journal Evolutionary Ecology until he got fed up with his corporate publisher. So he (and his editorial board) left and founded their own journal: Evolutionary Ecology Research. The journal has a variety of progressive policies regarding pricing and ownership. Importantly, he has written a great deal about them- check out this paper (its a .pdf) or others on the site where he breaks down the money issues.
Here's an example that I was looking at earlier this week. Want to read the paper where Biham and Shamir rediscover differential cryptanalysis? Here it is. It reports 115 citations of this paper, and if you click on the link, you can see the context it was cited, and then go on to download and read those papers. From browsing the citations, you might notice that linear cryptanalysis is another recently discovered technique. Citeseer doesn't include the original paper for this, but from the citation page we can see the papers which reference it, including this interesting one from the Australasian Journal of Combinatorics.
This is the way paper hunting should be done.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Well, most of these journals are run by not-for-profit organizations (like the American Physical Society, etc). One of the top journals in my field is run by a couple physicists here at Princeton. They certainly get paid for their editorial roles, but this is not their main gig.
So, I don't think profit is at all a motive in publishing these journals. They are just trying to recoup costs. Subscription fees aren't the only source of income, the authors of articles actually pay page charges to get their article published. These can be substantial, maybe several hundred dollars. So, perhaps the articles can be offered for free download, but maybe the page charges will have to go up to compensate for this potential loss in subscription fees.
I have known several professors that do Algorithm research. Much of the research is all theoretical and done with the numbers, so often times ther IS NO implementation to get from them, much less source code, much less in a language that is useful.
I'm sure there are a plenty of "scientists" who are working on things that pay - more so than being "real science"
yep. these people work in industry. the stuff they develop is owned by the corporation that they work for and they generally don't publish the truely revolutionary... although private organizations _do_ accomplish alot, we will not see it because it is owned. that is until it has been patiented or rediscovered in academia.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
Are you sure you've understood the reviewer's role right?
I've reviewed scientifically brilliant but grammatically hideous papers
Note my previous comment about incorrect facts in /. articles. I'd reject a paper for that in a heartbeat. I've seen gramatically hideous papers that I've tried to fix (or indicate they should be sent to someone who can fix them), but I've also gotten some which simply aren't understandable. I'll reject those as well. Papers should be reviewed first on content, of course, but also on understandability.
In general, compare the writing in even the worst published paper to a typical +5 slashdot comment. There's no contest: the academic paper will be better written, in part because good reviewers take time to point out bad English. It also has a much better chance of being correct, have the conclusions follow the data and the like.
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Myabe they could learn from /.'s moderation system?
Dear God, let's hope not.
Academic peer review bears no resemblance to /.'s. A decent reviewer will go over a paper with a fine tooth comb: I've taken well over a full day to review papers before, adding numerous comments, correcting mistakes, making suggestions to add citations and the like. /. reviewers might take 30 seconds, if that. The horrible grammar, bad spelling and incorrect facts that litter /. articles never seem to prevent them from being modded to +5. An academic reviewer would return such articles with "Do not publish" written all over them.
Academic reviewers are also experts in their field. You don't get to review until your grad advisor thinks you should, and you probably won't get much until you have a publication record that other scientists respect. Here, I can make comments about articles I don't even understand and get modded up if I agree with the majority.
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
And we all know that researchers have unlimited grants, which they can spend freely and without thinking.
> I guess the scientists are faster learners.
That is a little cruel and out of context michael. A am so disappointed...
By taking a position of superiority you show how nearsighted you are. Thus Spake ADRA
Bye!
Indeed, some of these journals cost a small fortune for subscriptions. But aside from library and corporate sales, they don't sell many subscriptions.
It is apparently outrageous when viewed in some ways ($0 for content, no meaningful advertising, etc.) to think that they rely on CCC and on-line fees as their mode of collecting fees for reprint distribution.
On the other hand, what are, in fact, the economics of the journal business. Do these companies make lots of money, as return on investment, or not? Clearly, they provide an important and significant service -- were there no journal publishers, managing and mediating substantive editorial panels, supervising publication and editorial deadlines, and so forth, we might be much less well off. So we want publishers to exist.
So, are they making money? Are they making enough money that it makes sense for them to keep doing it, rather than publishing something else?
While it is nice to say that these guys owe us a living, they don't. They are businessmen, pure and simple, and will only stay in the business if it makes them a buck. We don't want scientists to step into that breach, involving themselves even more deeply into the mechanics of publishing, because we want scientists to practice their sciences -- beyond peer review and reviewing their own galleys, I am quite certain I don't want our best minds dedicated to anything other than their research.
I have serious trouble believing that journals are struggling for money. Publishers pay /only/ for the direct print-onto-paper process: peer reviewers aren't paid (it's a privilege for the reviewers) and scientists are charged for having their articles printed (some journals charge per page, some just charge for color figures). For example, the most recent paper my lab published cost $10,000 for figures and reprints. Journals are getting paid by both the contributors and the subscribers (and subscriptions can be several hundred or thousand dollars a year) ... how EXACTLY are they managing to lose money during this process?
I think the idea of a free public archive is a great one, but the boycott suggested won't work simply because the majority of scientists can't afford to snub the best journals. Except for a few Nobel winners, scientists depend on publishing (the old publish-or-perish adage is very true) for grant money and job promotions, and even scientists who are already tenurred need to publish in order to hang on to their lab space.
While I agree with the scientist's anger, I find the comparison of peer-reviewed articles to contracted copyrighted music entirely ludicrious.
Even technically, music can be copyrighted a number of ways. One person (or more than one) can write the song and the lyrics, and be registered for it under ASCAP. Then, someone can PERFORM it, and the record labels can have a copyright on THAT. Then there's derivative works, etc...
Let's not go to the lengths to say that science research - meant to further the human race - is in any way comparable to Britney Spears - meant to move us in the other direction while mesmerizing us with jiggly boobies moving across the stage.
Oh, by the way, there IS a reason researchers LICENSE FOR FREE their articles to journal publishers... so they can get them peer-reviewed, not just printed somewhere. And although the journal does not pay them for the rights to the article, certainly the journal doesn't have the rights to the artcle when all is said and done... and neither does anyone else in the world, as plagarism would be a copyright violation.
But I understand. It's morning, and you need more coffee. So do I.
Some web journal have peer review. The Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research is a highly respected, peer-reviewed journal.
In Europe (and the US military) the date format is dd/mm/yyyy. In the US, for civilians, it's mm/dd/yyyy.
Best Slashdot Co
Has anyone thought about adapting one of the napster clones - like OpenNAP - for use with scientific publications? That would be an incredibly useful resource. Another system that would work, or possibly even better, would be to take something like SlashCode or Zope (or any of the other weblog engines) and publish papers by category just like we do articles now. This would allow for moderated in depth peer review, and eliminate the lack of access to scientific research that IS hurting the comunity.
Some examples: When I was in university, I had access to research on astrophysics research papers. One example of this was using plasmas as an RF antenna - a pretty nifty idea that I never would have been exposed to otherwise, and that I'm experimenting with now. There's a lot of REALLY good info not available to the Open Source (could there be open research, too?) community as a result of the stratospheric fees charged. The rational for the fees is that they have to pay for peer review, but my counter would be that it's not that difficult to rate (moderate) someone's credentials and past work on a forum like slashdot.
To flip things around the other way, there are a lot of lay people who might have good ideas and even research that they can't get peer reviewed at all. I've seen some really good ideas for antennas and other RF devices that might be odd at first, but will never get in depth review or analysis because there's no access to that community.
Here's to the scientists.. maybe some journal will take the initiative and get a open system running for publication. If it's done well, and people start using it, then it doesn't matter what the "established" journals say - good science is good science, if it's here or in Russia, or India, or China. Hell, THAT'S another good point - how many ideas have to be reinvented because of poor or nonexistance international communications in the research field?
Just some thoughts..
..don't panic
right now, journal subscriptions are, say, $200 per journal. there IS a market [of institutions] willing to pay for many of them. i would love to pay for scientific journal subscriptions if they were around the same cost as other magazines, and i'm sure i'm not alone here.
so you set up this huge online repository and make people pay to subscribe to it -- $50 a year for individuals or something; several ks for institutions or whatever. the newspaper and legal worlds have Lexis-Nexis, which all of them subscribe to.
an interesting thing about Lexis-nexis, at least as far as newspapers go, is that newspapers functionally pay a bit to contribute to these databases: in high school i worked as a copy clerk at a fairly large floridian newspaper, and they staffed one clerk per night for 8 hours just filtering and uploading the paper's original content. it's not much, but they *were* paying for the dude's wages. the same benefit applies, of course: if the paper gets its stuff in the database, it can be syndicated or simply rise in prestige, thereby attracting better writers, editors, etc.
one of the problems, in my mind, seems to be the difficulty of distinguishing between individual subscribers and institutional or business ones. perhaps someone has already solved this problem? but it seems to rely on either retarded security restrictions or user honesty (ha ha ha).
For some journals, you have to pay a hefty publishing fee per page. I believe the figure was $60 a page for my most recent article.
So no, the journals don't get the material for free, they *get* paid for it and then turn around and charge us money to read it. We get screwed on both ends.
I'd be curious to hear about the bottom line of a notable scientific journal if someone can bring it up here, I expect it's fairly cozy.
I support the boycott, but the most important thing that scientists (or any writer) can do is to negotiate their contracts with publishers. The standard contract in all academic publishing -- books, journals, etc. -- assigns full copyright from the author to the publisher. Under those terms, the author has absolutely no further rights to the work, period. This is a very bad situation for academic authors, but in academia publishers can get away with this because of the "publish-or-perish" pressure: who's going to fight a publisher when they have a tenure review committee nipping at their heels?
If you sign away the rights, you have no recourse; therefore, don't sign away the rights in the first place. Negotiation need not be as difficult as it may seem -- most academic authors don't even ask, and so they don't know what's possible. I wrote a book and got an "all-rights" contract from a university publisher. I sent it back requesting that it be changed to assign only those rights they intended to use. They said "OK" right away and that was that. Most academic authors are just so glad to get that contract that they sign it without thinking.
While it is nice to say that these guys owe us a living, they don't. They are businessmen, pure and simple, and will only stay in the business if it makes them a buck.
This isnt true. Most scientific peer-reviewed journals are associated with professional institutions, which are supposed to be largely subsidized by member fees (which are generally quite high). These professional institutions are non-profit organizations, which shouldnt be concerned with maximizing profit at all. If they are, they need to be taxed at business rates.
These abstract "businessmen" you speak of have absolutely no god-given right to parasitic profit from the free expression of others. They add no value. Period.
No free inquiry means no pure-science research. No pure-science research means no technological advance. No technological advance means no new business opportunities. And no new business opportunites means the death of capitalism.
Please ponder that.
Tell me how this isn't the best way to get peer reviews. I wonder why other fields don't follow the Physicists' lead and make themselves a preprint archive...
A quick disclaimer, I work for an academic publisher but these are not their views.....
On the whole as an ex scientist this seems a good idea but there are a few problems and the concept is not as revolutionary as it seems.
Firstly there is not one single type of scientific publishing there are three, I will deal with each in turn.
1) Primary publishing.
This is where journals publish papers written by authors. This is not, from a scientists PoV, the main task, these hournals also organise peer review of papers submitted for publication. It is the nature of peer review that makes publication in a major journal worthwhile. Peer reviewed articles have effectively been checked for errors etc. and are therefore of much more value than unreviewed articles. Organising the peer review process takes resources and this is primarily what you pay for when you buy a peer reviewed journal.
A second point about primary publishing is that when you buy a subscription to a journal you almost always get online access to all its back issues anyway. Even so a fair proportion of such a journals income comes from reprints.
2) Secondary publishing (wow).
These are products made up from abstracts of articles in a wide range of primary journals with complex indices making it easy to find relevant articles (eg medline). The major cost here is generating the indices.
3) Tertiary publishing
Articles summing up the state of the art in certain fields, these are often contracted and paid for.
In conclusion, an archive of primary published articles would be a problem for some primary journals dependant on their publishing schedule. They are relied upon to provide peer review in the academic community and the requirement for this would have to be taken into account.
For secondary publishing an archive of full text articles would be a real bonus allowing them to link directly to a copy of the full text of articles found using their indices.
Tertiary publishing resembles normal (non academic) publishing and is a completely different subject.
Of course, I'm hoping that this will be the new model for education: everyone is a leraner, an educator, and an accreditor. And therefore anyone who thinks they have a good idea can publish, and it is peer-reviewed to determine quality along a number of attributes.
Check it out: http://www.oomind.com/
PS. Yes this is blatant self promotion. Still, I think it is totally apropriate.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Feynman played the drums.
S P O R K O P s O R o K s o P O R K
- Next time I write an article on my music, I'll publish it for free!
Like that, slashdot?--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
WTF? I have reviewed dozens of scientific papers and never received a dime! Most scientific journals don't pay their reviewers. Scientists publish, review articles, write chapters or whole books because it's their job. And for once, they would like to have access to the information for doing things like text data mining which is close to impossible right now.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
I took a look, and it is nice, but it is still small and somewhat obscure. What happens when such things get huge, go back fifty years, and are easily found and often used by everyone who has a reason? Imagine the load this thing would draw in November and May as college kids worldwide start slapping term papers together?
Going be time means getting slammed big time. I think it can be done, people just need to be aware that this will not be as simple as tossing journal articles onto a extra PC running apache.
Who will pay to put this stuff online? Such web sites would require huge servers, as they would almost instanteously become common research tools for students, journalists, scientists, and science enthusiasts worldwide.
You don't host that sort of thing on tiny intel boxes running Linux or NT/2K. This will take big servers, and big bandwitdth. That stuff is NOT cheap.
Beyond that are the setup costs. All of the articles will need to be entered into text or PDF format. Easy for new papers, but what about the thousands of old ones? And what about the costs of setting it all up? Sure open software can be used for most of it, but someone still has to set it up.
This kind of thing will require loads of funding from outside sources. Hopefully the government could get involved. Perhaps the universities of world will foot part of the bill, as their students, professors, and researchers could benefit immensely from such a tool.
I hope the scientists are willing to work on getting this the funding it deserves. Hell, if they can just get things rolling I am sure that many people will be glad to call or email senators.
anyway, this is running on too long.
You state that "After all, the scientists provide the articles free of charge". As a former full time scientist, I should point out that often the scientists PAY THE JOURNALS to publish their findings!!! The payments are called "page charges" and they can be quite substantial running from hundreds to thousands of dollars. While some scientists have these costs covered from their grant funds, I have seen grad. students pay these charges directly out of their own pockets. Much of this work is paid for by government grants. It should be made available to the public and to other researchers via the 'net. Since publishers and even many scientific societies garner revenues from the page charges and subscription charges, its no wonder that they have been reluctant to make the publications more readily available. But it is about time that these groups come into the 21st contrary. Kudos for the boycotters.
Stephen Nodvin
This is slightly US-centric, but I imagine it can be extrapolated to many other countries. In the US, the taxpayer sponsors research via the NIH, NSF, DOE, NASA, and a whole bunch of other acronyms. The scientists are paid for their research. Some of that money goes into publication fees. Some of it goes into journal subscriptions for the principle investigator. Some also goes into "indirect costs" which pay for, among other things, library journal subscriptions. The taxpayer also gets to pay for PubMed, a splendid, free, journal search engine (for lack of a better description). Of course in the final bit of amusement, the taxpayer-backed researchers get to sign away almost all rights to the published version of their work to the publisher.
I can't help but think the whole system would be a lot more efficient if PubMed expanded into the role of journal publisher as well as indexer. I can easily imagine a system where all publications come through a single outlet which would be filtered differently depending on the interests of the researcher. I see two primary problems (aside from just setting it up). One is getting people to publish in it -- new journals take time to develop. That could be solved by requiring research funded by US grants be sent to this national journal first. That brings up the second problem; filtering all research through a single (government) entity is liable to cause problems for unpopular research. I don't think this is a problem; independent journals will likely continue to exist, but this may put significant pressure on them to reform into a more author and reader friendly format.
RC
At least for now, this Economics journal is freely accessible online.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
"all, the scientists provide the articles free of charge. What's the excuse the journals use?"
Since publications in peer reviewed journal is a large factor in hiring, tenure, etc. decisions, even though scientists provide articles for free, they are still compensated for doing so (though not by the journals in question).
So, like, at 11am?
Maybe your address is wrong.
.. ad it does to me.
"The lesson that "No, you don't have to give up all your rights to your work in exchange for publication anymore" is one that musicians could stand to learn as well"
The direct parallel ofcourse being individual "file sharers" ripping off musicians' music as those are the only times the musician actually loses his/her rights.
(Legitimate publishers buy negotiated rights, the musuician retains all rights they don't agree to sell.)
good luck to all of them. they should put up a public-support petition. i'd sign it.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
"Well for starters physics just plain sucked from the beginning. The formulas hardly helped at all because mainly they were just rewritten each problem and each circumstance."
I feel your pain, I really do. I'm only a freshman in college, but I have done some math classes already, so I know the kind of thing you're talking about. You've probably had it worse, though.
"I cannot express how abyssmally hard I actually worked on such a thing. These problems made the most difficult calculus problems seem trivial. . . . and not only that but you have to have the right equation. Guess what it's impossible (ok if anyone has any bright ideas about how to check your formulae so that you know you have the right one I would be really interested to know how) to determine if you have the right one."
What I did was I started out with a small set of things I knew, and when I learned something new, I learned how to find it using only what I already knew. It was hard but it was usually possible to build something like a tree of facts. When I derived the equations from first priciples over and over, I usually could remember the process if not the end result. As an example, do you know the sine and cosine identities for sums and differences of angles? I don't. I know, however, that:
e^iu = cos u + i sin u
e^i(v+w) = e^iv * e^iw = (cos v + i sin v)(cos w + i sin w) = cos v cos w + i cos v sin w + i sin v cos w - sin v sin w
u=v+w
cos (v+w) = cos v cos w - sin v sin w
sin (v+w) = cos v sin w + sin v cos w
I did this kind of thing over and over until I could do it on the back of the test, then use the equations I got to work the test. It doesn't make it easy, but it makes it possible.
Pressure on a pane of glass under a certain amount of water? Cut the glass into horizontal slices, express the pressure on each slice as a function of depth, and make the slices infinitely thin. Add them up.
Things like that, you know?
Thanks, I didn't know that. Cool.
Newton and Leibniz(sp?) came up with calculus at about the same time. The NSA hardened DES against differential cryptanalysis in the early 1970's, and then Eli Biham and Adi Shamir invented it a bit before 1990.
I don't know how frequent it is, but reinvention is more frequent when secrets are being kept.
Ever hear of a chap by the name of Aristotle?
I figured, OK, but the researchers got some coin. Now I find out that's bogus. ARGH. Thus, the question.
Why, in all the groups like ACM, CIPS, etc., and all the universities like MIT, CalTech, etc., isn't there an online gathering of the papers? (I use comp sci examples as an example, generalize as needed) Is there a real need for the journals in the reviews of performance, raises, tenure, and all and is that need at the level that there can be no competition in the interest of distribution of knowledge and sharing of findings?
MIT is moving huge leaps forward with the recent initiative to put ALL course materials onine within 10 years. Kudos. But there are thousands, perhaps to the level of millions of papers in proceedings, journals, annuals, and other obscure collections that are becoming lost, and unknown, and likely, unfortunately, repeated.
What is the barrier to a prestigious university or two doing this themselves, or an association having an online collection of the papers of the members open to the public?
It's easy to see that they'll have a lot of support for this, from a lot of people -- vastly more people might have an occasional interest in reading, say, the Astrophysical Journal than have an interest in writing an article for it. And the publishers are able to defend an increase in page charges by saying it's paid for by researchers' grants, not by the researchers themselves.
I'm a co-author on a paper which will be submitted to the ApJ in the next few weeks; the page charges will be several thousand dollars. We haven't really bothered about it too much, because there's no real way to avoid paying it, and besides the grant money is there. It should also be mentioned that this paper is a somewhat extreme case -- around 20 pages, with a number of color figures (which are, I think, $600 for the first and $150 thereafter, but which are also unfortunately necessary). ApJ charges around $130 a page, IIRC, so you can do the math.
Does this strike you as absurd? It does me. $3000 is more than a trip to a great conference costs, more than the cost of supporting an observing run, more than a lot of things. It's only bearable because I happen to be doing space-based astronomy, where grants are big enough to support these kinds of outlays. But the problem is that a lot of research doesn't need big grants, or shouldn't -- I know plenty of people who do pure analytical theory which doesn't even require applying for supercomputer time. Admittedly, faculty at many institutions have to apply for grant money to pay their summer salary, so it's not totally indefensible, but still : a thousand bucks can take a pretty healthy chunk out of many grants. Some journals allow "hardship exemptions," whereby page charges are waived, but I don't know how easy/difficult it is to get them.
I've often suspected that a major driver behind page charges is their action as a "gatekeeper": ApJ probably doesn't get a lot of cranks submitting wacko stuff, b/c who the hell would be willing to pay a thousand bucks of their own money to see their article printed there? But I think page charges have the unpleasant tendency to constrain good research as well. Other things do this -- ie, there is already a tendency to work in areas where you know the money is easy to come by -- but that doesn't make it defensible.
As with all interesting things, there are no easy answers here. I don't think the ApJ (to keep using the same example) is an evil institution -- it's a publication of the American Astronomical Society, which is a non-profit organization that does many good things. And I'd be very surprised if the AAS didn't derive an appreciable fraction of its operating budget from ApJ-related charges; making the journal charge less overall would probably mean fewer activities funded by the AAS. It's also worth noting that astronomy/astrophysics journals (ApJ, AJ, A and A) are perhaps unusual in that they have no ads, so that's not a potential source of income. Note, also, that currently issues of ApJ more than three years old are available online without a subscription -- but see aforementioned bits about how much we pay for this privilege.
The point of my (absurdly long) diatribe is this: if researchers are able to "convince" publishers to supply online versions of everything for free with no negative repurcussions, great. But if the publishers recoup some of their lost subscription charges by increasing page charges, well, maybe that ain't so great. I don't know what page charges are for biosciences journals are these days, and I don't know enough about the culture of research in that field to know whether dramatic increases in those charges would have a seriously detrimental effect. If the current charges are low, would these folks be willing to accept charges similar to those "enjoyed" in the astro community? Would they be willing to accept charges running into the several thousand dollar range? I don't know, but I suspect we may find out.
After all, how often has scientific work been duplicated because the second (or third+) scientist didn't know what the first had done?
That's actually a good thing. This is the same prinicple as the Open Source movement. If everyone can see the articles in journals, then maybe someone out there will have a much better idea, and further science because of it.
Let's just pray together that this doesn't lead to stupid patents....
Trolls make great pets. Adopt one today!
I think the need is just as real to access information in the physical and social sciences. A science-wide boycott seems more appropriate.
I am not a lawyer.
If the went a step further and arranged for the peer-review process to take place, kept a second database for reviewed documents and distributed print versions for university libraries. They could basically replace all the old paper journal within a few year. Good thing too. Ditch the B-arkers.
Because print journals have more credibility.
It is much easier to set up a web page than a magazine.
The print journals don't have more credibility than a website set up by a researcher because of the greater difficulty of paper printing. The print journals have more credibility because the put research through a peer review and editing process.
Because print journals have more credibility.
It is much easier to set up a web page than a magazine.
That too. :)
Which also adds to the expense.
n/t but it's a cute image...
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
[o]_O
Publishing research papers online will be specially great for research community in countries other than US, UK (from where a larhe number of research journals are bublished) etc., I remember getting a lot of journals months after their publication date, in India. Some were really hard to locate ...
Of course they are. If they weren't, they'd be drummers.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
More and more university libraries are cancelling journal subscriptions because of the mounting expense. Unless papers find their way online, researchers are not going to have access to the information they need.
Surprisingly, the bottom line isn't all that good. I was closely associated with one of the Pergamon Press majors (one of the Math Psych journals) a few years ago. The page costs covered the cost of typesetting and figure pressing. The journal made its money off the subscription fee libraries payed for it, pure and simple.
So what happens when you run out of space for dead trees? This is not a silly or irrelevant question; it's an issue that real world libraries face all the time. I can tell you that the library at my institution is getting rid of old journals, cutting back on subscriptions in some areas, and the like just because they lack physical space to store the paper. Who cares if it will last forever if it can't be kept forever because of space constraints?
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
But the journals aren't actually doing the peer review themselves. The reviews are done on a volunteer basis by other scientists in the field, as is the editing in many cases. Top scientists will receive dozens of papers to review every year and are expected to do so without any compensation. This is actually one of the major threats that the signers of the letter are making; they're not just going to refuse to buy or publish in the journals but also to review papers for them. The journals are going to find it quite tough when they no longer get free content and editorial work.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Touche. I'll admit that education is an important role of an academic scientist, and there are even some schools (mostly of the 4 year Undergraduate only type) where teaching is the primary factor used in judging their effectiveness. That was a big mistake on my part and I should have written it better.
The distinction that I wanted to make was between a pure researcher, who is investigating phenomena in the pursuit of abstract knowledge, and an applied researcher who works in industry. For the "abstract knowledge" type of researcher publication of results is a critical part of the overall research effort and not just an afterthought as some people seem to think. Work that is not published, or is published somewhere so obscure that nobody ever hears about it, is essentially useless. The strong emphasis on publication as a measure of productivity is an accurate reflection of its importance. Publication is the product of a research scientist in the same way that tangible goods are the product of an engineer. The effort put into the research is wasted if it's not published in exactly the same way that the effort of designing a product is wasted if it's never built.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
...and society is still trying to figure out what the fsck is up. This applies to scientific journals, music, and movies.
Once upon a time, publishing was exclusively done with dead trees, and was 'hard'. Therefore publishers came into being, so that they could become good at it. They do the hard part of publishing for me, putting it on dead trees. We do the hard part of content creation for them, giving them something to put on their dead trees. A wonderfully synergistic relationship that worked for hundreds of years.
But now we're moving away from dead trees. Publishing has quit being 'hard', and we don't need many aspects of those publishing specialists as much as we used to. But these people have a big chunk of turf, and don't want to lose it.
At present, as copyright assignees, publishers, be it books, music, movies, etc, are licensed government monopolies. Whether that's the only thing keeping them in business is anyone's guess. At present, I would argue that we have a counter-productive situation.
I don't advocate getting rid of publishers alltogether, merely that we attempt to refine the meaning of publishing and IP as they relate to an electronic age. Today legislation is trying to extend the past. Besides merely condemning SBCA and DMCA, we should try to arrive at sensible counterproposals. Ones that allow the publishing industries a decent continued existance are more likely to get a hearing.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Blame the users, not the software!
/. is populated with trolls and idiots there is no reason to think that the same type of forum, populated with professionals, couldn't be a succesful arena for the exchange of ideas. I agree that I wouldn't want anyone in the world to have post access (just like not everyone gets commit access to the Mozilla CVS) but for limited group the form has merits.
You are blaming the software for the faults of the users. Just because
Politics, Culture, Food?
Umm... YOu're not really supposed to be able to understand scientific journals unless you have background knowledege. Articles in journals are by experts for experts. If you want data digestable by "everyman" wait for the terciary literature. Hell the knowledge required to understand some of this stuff is such that if you have Phd in physics and specialise in one subject, you really don't understand what another PhD in physic (who specialises in another area) does. If this stuff was easilly accesable and understandable, you wouldn't need to soend year of your life gettting a PhD and more year on reasearch to do it.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
This looks a little biit like the 'html as formatting instructions' fallacy that's damaged the web so badly.
The SGML isn't a question of formatting, particularly not for the dead-tree editions. It's done for the semantics to allow for searchability within our 'electronic warehouse' (those s/370s), as well as to permit stylesheeet-driven formatting for the variety of formats in which the material is made available.
Also bear in mind that there has to be a single file format for all the articles within an issue - by using SGML for this we can give the academics the freedom to use the document preparation tools of their choice. It's not so long ago that publishers had to mandate specific software for their authors, which was obviously not a good approach.
TomV
I work for one of the publishers who refused to be interviewed. One crucial point that was missed was the matter of editorial quality control and peer review. One of the factors that gives aparticular journal its credibility is the mechanism to filter submissions, the moderaton if you like.
When we get a new article, the editor (usually one of an editorial board) takes a look at it and if it's reasonably credible, it goes out for review to several eminent practitioners for peer review, and only after this does it stand any chance of getting published.
We pay the editors. We pay the peer reviewers. We provide them with the necessary equipment (PC's, software, connectivity and so forth) to do the job. We also, later in the process, pay for the SGML markup, proofing, printing, distribution, administration of the subscriptions, protecting the authors' copyright when necessary. Then there's the webservers (in our case a cluster of s/370's with a large team writing assembler for them - we get a LOT of hits requesting very large responses - fulltext with a lot of illustrations) when the electronic versions are released, of course.
This stuff is far from cheap. And it's also worth remembering( this is a legalistic point, not a moral one as I tend to disagree with it on moral grounds somewhat) - we're a listed company, and like it or not we are legally obliged to maximise revenue for our shareholders, so if we were to make an arbitrary decision to free up material with over 49 years of copyright outstanding, it would be only right that our directors would go straight to jail.
But it's mainly the peer review that costs. If you want quality peer reviewers, you'll find they're very busy and in short supply.
TomV
And the Journals would not dare admit that they withhold publishing the scientific papers online so they can maximize their profits.
that would be... wrong.
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
While making research available in a timely way may place more work on the journals, it is not too great a burden. They get their publication material for free anyway (in most cases). I'm glad to see people forcing this issue. Having all the research available in electronic form and indexed will be more efficient.
"Drug related crime" is a misnomer, "prohibition related crime" is the more accurate and correct phrase.
Which kind of ties in to the journals desire to charge for online access. You're paying for the review and delivery, not necessarily for the content.
The question then becomes, how long would you be willing to pay full price for a particular bottle? If the bottle had a date six months old, would you still pay for it as if it were new? How about a year old? Five years?
Edward Burr
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Of course, there is the minor detail that the group that determined this was headed by Newton...
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
Subscriptions to journals can cost up into the thousands, and any particular discipline can have multiple journals. If you're studying nuclear fusion, you need to read Physical Review D, maybe Physical Review C (or A or B, who knows?), Physical Review Letters, journals on low temperature physics, superconductivity, high energy microwaves, or whatever, all of which costs your research library a ton of money to subscribe to.
And then there's the cost of actually keeping them around -- I once spent most of a summer reorganizing a research library at MIT, moving hundreds of journals from one room to another. A single journal like Phys Rev D can publish something like 5 feet of shit a year. And when you need to search it all, there's so much information that you have to do it online, sometimes on a pay service like DIALOG.
All the costs we're talking about here -- whether it's the scientists paying to publish, the librarians keeping all this crap under control, or the subscriptions themselves -- ultimately comes from the university who pays the researchers, librarians, and journals.
When the university budget tightens, they're just as likely to increase revenue as cut back on prestigious research. So the people who might have a lot to lose here are the undergrads, many of whom are actually paying cash or taking out loans to finance their education.
It seems like the univerities themselves should step in here and insist that they be allowed to save money by doing all this online.
circa75.com
.... and your response makes you sound like you don't understand sarcasm. :-)
I have not seen the link to science e-Print archive yet, so here it is http://xxx.lanl.gov/ Astro-ph has proven a very valuable method for getting young (read undergraduate) scientists to get their hands on current articles. Not all of the information is correct since these are just preprints, but at least one can quickly and easily find out what just about everyone else in a particular concentration are doing right now. It is also nice, since it is just a click away, to be able to email the contributing authors about errors they might not be aware of or get more information on their collaboration.
Has anyone considered that this could in fact drive up the subscription costs for these journals? I mean, if the journals in question do put all of the articles online, there are hosting charges to be considered. Bandwidth isn't free.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly with the scholars in question. This stuff should be online NOW! I am glad that MIT is already into this and I can peruse the Computer Music Journal online from anywhere, anytime.
hmmm...
How many of the "support people" (your garbage men, janitor, delivery man- yes and maybe even scientists) love (insert favorite musician here) and make it through their day easier with some song in their head -- and how does that effect productivity? maybe that's not quantifiable Yeah, but the transmission technology required for them to be able to hear it is...
-.sig sauer-
I'm constantly wanting access to papers published in, say, Science. If they charged a dollar or something for access, that'd be nominally acceptable, but they are selling someone else's work, and not paying them for it. It would also be marginally acceptable if they charged the subscription amount, and then gave any money not needed to run the site to the people who wrote the papers.
We should all boycott people like Science online who don't give up the text until a year after publication. They're holding our science hostage. On top of that, I couldn't even get in to the place where you register for basic (Free) access which gives you access to articles older than one year, supposedly. Oh, and in order to subscribe to the online version of Science, you also have to have a subscription to their print publication. Tell me again why scientists choose to support these money-grubbers?
I think that what this boils down to is that there needs to be some sort of nonprofit which exists only to make scientific papers available for as little money as possible. Maybe there already is, and it just needs more press; In which case, we should do what we can to ensure that it gets it.
--
ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This reminds me of the whole issue with doctoral thesis work done by PHd candidates. The school owns the thesis and can sell/carve/do whatever the hell they want with it. The student? No rights whatsover. And here we have a similar situation (at least more similar than the musician thread). The sci journals want the same rights as universities now have over students.
"Population 1,656"
Because of the pressure to publish, most of what gets published is gargbage. One solution might be (free) curated databases of the few results that aren't garbage. Another might be a moderation system like Slashdot's.
And humans have done tremendous things for long periods of time even when they didn't make cold-hearted "economic sense".
In responding to a post one level up, sure, most people most of the time will have little interest in the arcana of any particular field. But free access is still important, because at least it leaves that choice -- be informed or not -- in the hands of the average citizen. Not in the publishers' hands. Not in the hands of MegaMultiContentMediaCorp. In the hands of the people who might be affected.
Why doesn't anyone seem to trust the citizenry any more? We're not the ones who broke faith.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
The goal isn't always to reproduce the original.
-Dave
Mind you, it's sometimes quite possible to have a good guess at who the reviewers are: after all, if the editor is doing their job, the reviewers will be experts in your particular sub-field, and so people you're likely to have met. Dead giveaways are things like a review comment saying "the following articles need to be added to the bibliography" followed by a list of articles all sharing an author.
In some cases, the identity of the author of the paper is hidden from the reviewers. It's usually not too hard to come up with a reasonable guess in this case.
The purpose behind this anonymity (both sides) is to attempt to improve the quality of the reviewing process: if you don't know who wrote a paper, you won't be tempted to give it a good review because the author is a buddy of yours coming up for tenure, or conversely give it a bad review because you've got a feud going on with the author. Keeping the reviewers' names secret is a way to try to prevent those feuds from starting in the first place.
but there is only 1 Dylan or John Lennon (or Stravinsky or Mingus for that matter) -- I'm sure there are a plenty of "scientists" who are working on things that pay - more so than being "real science" -- pills so fat people can eat all the food they want, perfume and other cosmetics, ways to get more TV channels in the same wire -- are these Einstein/Hawkins level of science or Britney Spears science? , same as a pop artist cranking out an album that the suits at the label want to hear.
If its a question of personality then you should be very careful about you generalizations - there are average an exceptional people in every profession. Just cause Einstein was a genius doesn't mean that every physicist is too.
If its a question of productivity - consider this - How many of the "support people" (your garbage men, janitor, delivery man- yes and maybe even scientists) love (insert favorite musician here) and make it through their day easier with some song in their head -- and how does that effect productivity? maybe that's not quantifiable
Talk is cheap. Supply exceeds demand.
Tube amps do sound better. and they feel better too - solid state does not have the same responsiveness or warmth. (think sex with a condom vs without one) Plus we all grew up listening to great albums recorded using that technology - the familiarity of the sound also contributes to "sounding good"
maybe scientists should release videos and go on tour to promote their research.
Talk is cheap. Supply exceeds demand.
Duplication isn't necessarily a bad thing. An experiment performed twice with the same results is much more convincing than an experiment performed once. Further, it is unrealistic to think that scientists often *unknowingly* do the same work simultaneously as other scientists. The truth is scientists communicate with each other, especially those in the same field of research, and they generally know what kind of research is going on. In my experience talking with various researchers, they can often say with certainty if anyone else is doing similar work and who they are.
-----
Are you sure you've understood the reviewer's role right?
I've reviewed scientifically brilliant but grammatically hideous papers from the far east and eastern Europe. If I think the article is scientifically worth my and others' time, I usually correct the worst spelling and grammatical mistakes myself and include these as "suggestions" with my other comments to the authors. If they can't handle it, then so be it - fix your text or don't publish it.
Most working musicians I know - myself included - are more than happy to provide access to their music, be it tracks in MP3 format or what have you. It's the record labels - the same ones that pay musicians $1 - $0.50 (if even that) per CD that hate the thought of anyone hearing something that they didn't get their $15 share for.
/. has posted no end of stories about RIAA abuses of musicians. Think before you post goes for editors too, guys...
Come on,
That's a good distinction to make.
An AC made this point already, but I'm afraid he won't be heard.
:)
"Publication is not just the measure by which scientists are judged, it is in a real sense the only truly valuable activity that academic scientists do."
If that's the "real" sense, in what sense should we view the role of academic scientist as Educator? Granted, full profs at very large universities may have little contact with the undergrads, but that's hardly representative of the entire spectrum of "academic scientist," and anyway, that same professor is probably teaching something to someone, if not in a classroom then to his grad students in the lab.
Those grad students are also, I think, "academic scientists," since they participate in the research, get their names on papers, etc. (and they're the ones teaching bio 100). And of course, there are all those "academic scientists" at smaller schools who do actively teach, and are probably at those smaller schools because they view themselves as equal parts educator and scientist in many cases.
The whole publish-or-perish thing is romantically tragic and all, but it fails to describe things as fully as you would like us to believe. Don't sell out all of the fabulous science educators out there (who do research, who publish stuff, but who also fulfill the role of the university as a place of learning) in pursuit of your cynicism.
People selling free stuff for money???
Take a look at that bottled water on your desk.
"The world is 80% water, but you just paid a buck for that little bottle!"
--Dennis Miller
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I've included the entire letter though the most intersting part is at the beginning of the fourth paragraph
To AAAS Members:
As most of you know, Science - through revenue from advertising and
subscriptions - helps to support a wide range of Association activities.
These include strong programs in science and public policy, science
and law, international cooperation, K-12 education, and many others.
And of course Science also serves the entire scientific community more
directly, by providing, in addition to its research reports of new
findings, news and perspectives that place that research in the context
of human needs and public policy.
As the publication of a nonprofit scientific society, we face obligations
that sometimes present us with conflicts. AAAS is really two entities
in one: the publisher of a world-class journal and a nonprofit mission-
driven society with over 130,000 members. These two roles usually
mesh, but sometimes AAAS faces internal conflict. We need adequate
revenues to support the Association's programs, to serve our members,
and to keep Science's world readership. At the same time, we have a
responsibility to serve the broader scientific community and to respond
to its changing needs. In a world in which electronic and print
publications coexist, our financial picture is more complex and riskier.
We have to balance the need for revenue from Science in print against
the need to offer scientists everywhere the advantages that the Internet
can provide.
For example, we have executed site licenses for our online version with
over 500 institutions in the United States and abroad. The list includes
most of the major U.S. research universities as well as research-
intensive companies and many international institutions. This means
that students and fellows, faculty members, and research workers of all
kinds in such places can download any paper-indeed, any part of
Science. We knew all along that this policy would result in the loss of
some personal subscriptions, and it has. Yet we continue because we
believe it is part of a larger service obligation that comes to us
because we are a nonprofit organization.
As of April 23, 2001, we have made our back research content freely
available 12 months after initial publication. By taking this step, we
are responding to strong representations from the scientific community.
Yet this move may involve economic risks for us, through loss of
subscriptions, posing another potential threat to the Association
programs we support.
There is no immediate answer to this dilemma, which in one respect we
welcome because it testifies to the significance of our journal to the
community we serve. It is important, however, for you to appreciate the
tradeoffs involved, because you are both subscribers to Science and
members of the Association. One way in which you can help resolve
the problem is through loyalty to the print version. When the time for
renewal comes, we hope you will consider-in addition to the
convenience and the aesthetic advantages of Science in print-that you
are supporting a broader set of services that it provides to you and
your fellow scientists.
Sincerely,
Don Kennedy
Science's Editor-in-Chief
Good to see scientists fighting back so vigourously!
The lesson that "No, you don't have to give up all your rights to your work in exchange for publication anymore" is one that musicians could stand to learn as well. Actually, I disagree. Many modern top 40 style musicians need the marketing blitz that comes from the major publishers. So much of the music is crap, it wouldn't survive in an open competitive market. On the other hand, scientific papers will survive peer review with or without publishers. Musicians (especially the bad ones) have to make a deal with the devil to get their product in the market. Scientists are less susceptible to that problem. The main reason for this is that most people who listen to music are not musicians and can't really separate the wheat from the chaff. However, most people who read scientific articles can tell the difference and no amount of marketing or hype will change the outcome.
It's a little easier to protest when you've got tenure.
Actually, the ease of protesting comes from solidarity (over fifteen thousand protestors) and from the fact that there are no contractual obligations getting in the way.
1) Scientist puts up research on his own website.
2) Scientist includes MD5 checksum of file (maybe one MD5 for the ps version, another for the html.gz version etc.)
3) Scientist publishes MD5 and article title in some print media (maybe university journal), to further increase reliability
4) Everyone in the world can put it up for public access reliably. If it matches the published MD5, it's The Real Thing (TM).
5) Copyright negotiation can run in parallel. Reliability isn't an issue anymore.
They're called page charges.. I don't know how many journals do it, but all the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) journals do it. I'm not saying its bad, but these scientists do have a point.
One, we don't want to go that way. Two, that's the only way we don't want to go...
like National Geogrpahic's new ape-man missing link ancestor every six months? And who's the 817/1000 of a scientist who joined the boycott?
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
Then again, there is the flip side of the coin, of how do you turn a profit when you give away your valued goods?
This is the problem of the music industry, who has turned it into the question "how do you turn an obscene profit while giving away your goods"
And then you have the people who always want a free lunch, and say that you a criminally negligent if you do not give them the shirt of your back.
The problem is that there is no agreement on what would be "Fair Exchange". Many people on various sides of the issue think that the best ratio is "One for you, 100 for me" This is a problem because the argument is also made that "and if you don't agree, you are a moral moron"
Given the situation, I would probably suggest that the content be made availble for free online after one year. Anyone who is in the business should be subscribing. But this is still timely enough for students, etc without totally giving up the cutting edge material.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I was pointing out the need for fair exchange, at least so I thought. But it is Monday, and so I may have been less coherent or something.
It is no surprise to me that abuse exists. Everyone has to work towards the idea of Fair exchange, where it is something that everyone can live with, instead of acting out the idea of unfair, or criminal exchange (ie,we'll just legally steal this from you).
Sometimes Fair Exchange is not purely monetary. In a friendship, for example. But the monetray aspect is not a bad place to inspect for abuse.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I work for a small physics association that publishes it's own journal. Though I don't work directly with the journal, we are small enough that I hear about most of the issues.
I can agree with the argument that information needs to be free (speech). However, to accuse associations that produce journals of being greedy is oversimplifying the situation. Scientists that don't agree with their association charging money for their journal to subsidize other programs need to take that up with their association. For us, the journal does provide a significant income to the association in the form of advertising revenue. It's actually amazing considering the puny market our members represent. The benefit is that our members pay less in annual dues and get more benefits. Incidentally, we don't charge separately for our journal, it's considered a benefit of membership, both online and in print. It's mainly seen as a forum for the exchange of information. Also, our situation is fairly unique in that a vast majority of physicists in this field are members and therefore the information is already getting to most of the people that need it.
That a group wants to separate and form their own journal is ultimately counterproductive. How do they think their own journal started? Do they really want to fracture the body of research that much more and make it that much more difficult to access current information? The centralized library of which they crow will hardly be timely. Increasing the number of journals will make current research harder to track down.
On the subject of NIH running a central library. Normally, I'm against government programs, but I suppose this may be one activity that the governmnent might actually do to promote some public good. I just don't think that it should be compulsory. Most of this material comes from private sources and for the government to mandate the 'freeing' of that material is a form of force and is unacceptable.
Stop the use of force!
Actually, I found out that the copyright issue is VERY ambiguous. Timing seems to play into which version of an MS is copyrighted. It's all very confusing. Also, an author is allowed to post an article on their own site only until it is published on ours.
Stop the use of force!
As someone who likes to review papers, I believe there are two _REALLY_ good reasons to do it:
1) Keep the crap out. A large number of papers submitted for publication are rehashes of old work, incorrect, incomplete, make bad assumptions, and/or make bad conclusions. To have these types of papers in the written record of the field can make it impossible for the good ideas to be heard and recognized.
I have seen the effects of incorrect papers published causing government agencies to spend extra millions of dollars on a non-existent problem and significantly reducing the scientific progress in the field. Never underestimate the problems that a poor paper can cause...if the idea in the paper is really good, it can always be published at a later date when the author gets their act together, but the moment it is in the written record, it can be accepted almost as fact (even in the face of contradictory evidence published in another journal that might not be easily found. A good argument for a comprehensive index).
2) To improve your own work. By reviewing and editing other people's work, you learn what is really good and what is really bad. You might dislike a portion of a paper and then realize that you sometimes write the same errors or type of poor writing. Or you might find in someone else's papers the best way to present your data in the future or the best way to explain some complex subject. Plus you get early access to data that you might find helpful in your own research.
Editing and reviewing papers is a teaching tool that is as valuable to the teacher as the student in many cases.
One important point: publication is by far the most important factor in determining the hiring and promotion of faculty at Universities. A graduate student who doesn't publish enough will never become an assistant professor. An assistant professor who doesn't publish enough will be denied tenure and, basically, "fired". After you've got tenure, things get more interesting, but you won't get any grants (or more promotions, etc.) if you don't publish...
Anyway, the point is that journals are a for-profit business primarily run by a few large publishing companies, and they have academia by the balls. Academia is based on the publish-and-get-promoted system. Posters and talks at conferences can provie an alternative means of publication, but for the quantity of publication that is (realistically) required by every scientific field, you have to deal with those journals.
... arti cles are belong to us.
____________________________
2*b || !(2*b) is a tautology
There already is such a format...well, sort of.
The Rosetta Project
We can argue that this project is only meant to store languages, but that's not a true barrier to the disk's use. I suppose we could also argue high cost, but I'm a market economy advocate... ^_^
I resent the comment about musicians in the article. The only reason many musicians would hold off on publication, or at least basically give up their publication rights, is because if done through one of the big guys, the payoff is often tremendous. It should be noted that there are also many musicians who have chosen the other route and that they have been made to pay dearly for it, but continued nonetheless. If any of you haven't heard of Eva Cassidy by now, you should definite find a way to take a listen. You will not believe it, and this poor woman passed away in her early 30s, having been offered record deals that she consistently turned down because of the constraints they proposed to impose. Keep the faith!
yoink
The problem, though has to do with peer review. To be considered legitimate, at least in my field, having your work looked over by your peers is crucial. For one thing, they're not as close to the work. They often catch errors and suggest better experiments or controls. For another thing, when I read a reviewed journal article outside my specialization, I have more trust that someone within the specialty thinks the work is reasonable.
Someone brought up Pons and Flieshmann -- a classic case of publishing via the popular press without peer review. Direct web publishing carries similar problems.
> The lesson that "No, you don't have to give
> up all your rights to your work in exchange
> for publication anymore" is one that
> musicians could stand to learn as well.
FYI, the GNUArt Project which consists of GPL'ing Art has become reality on http://gnuart.org (charter) and http://gnuart.net (gallery) on January 1st, 2001.
It is still being translated to english at the moment but you have the fish until then.
The charter was co-written with Richard Stallman.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
It seems to me we've had this debate recently. I am all for unrestricted access to info that's old. I hate the fact that my research and my writing will belong to someone else just because they have a reputation and I don't. That's really all the peer reviewed journals are able to offer in the days of self publishing internet world.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
To publish in a journal it needs to be a solid piece of work. At a conference 2 scientists can talk about specific peices of their work that may or may not be fully fleshed out. They can get ideas from each other and not have to worry about how the work looks or if it fits the context of the journal.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
If Joe Sixpack Taxpayer doesn't want to pay for my research next year then there will be a pretty smart and pretty bored person running around. Given my talent for organic synthesis Joe Sixpack Taxpayer will be paying for my prison cell the year after that.
Now is the common man going to understand my research? No EF IN way! In fact Bio professors were all scared off my research at the undergrad poster session yesterday. I had graphs and figures and scary chemistry terms like gas chromatography. If PhD's dont understand my work then poor Joe is going to be lost. Am I trying to insult the source of my bread and butter? No but they better get used to the idea of paying for me one way or the other.
Of course I'm trolling here. Mods can open fire I probably have it coming.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
I'm not saying the public is limited to Joe Sixpack but he does outnumber us 100:1 (statistic made up) and it is they who fund our research up to the point it becomes profitable then we go private at the last minute and patent and collect liscencing fees on our IP so that our lawyers don't go hungry! Nice run on sentance! Anyway if the govment doesn't give me some nice taxpayer pork so that I can study the effect of laser induced fluoresence on capilary ion exchange resins in an inert atmosphere using an argon laser... well I'll just have to take my science skills to the market place. Whatever I end up doing will definately come back hard and fast and get on top of Joe Sixpack either in the form of incaceration or hazmat or maybe just in the form of disgruntled ranting on small websites. Either way it won't be pretty.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
This may of course be true, but is hardly relevant. The point is of course that scientists want to be able to perform computation over their output. As a scientist I want to be able to search through previous papers, I want to be able to follow references easily. All of this is technologically simple, but legally impossible because we can not get access to the journals.
The point is that in the past the journals used to do a reasonable job at publishing articles. Nowadays they do not simply because technology has advanced enough to make this possible.
"the scientists in our audience shouldn't take this as a flame "
Calling a group of people "snooty, elitest bastards" is not a flame!
Incidentally I am a musician as well. The issues are less clear with musicians because we are in it for much more varies reasons than scientists, and there are many more types of musicians. The community of people who listen to musicians is also much broader. With science the same people who produce the content, read it. And finally of course however rich the scientific publishers are they are no where near the scale of the music publishers. Despite this in time I think as musicians we will get ourselves a better deal for ourselves. Its just going to take a lot longer.
Phil
- Most journals actually accept or reject articles sent to them based on their scientific content. That's why most journals are actually edited by expert scientists in the field - in order to guarantee that the scientific content is worthwhile. Since the fields a journal publishes in are usually rather narrow in most sciences, this actually works quite well.
- Still, there is the occasional article which has scientific value that the editor does not recognize, for example if it is a "revolutionary" article or one that focuses on subjects of dispute. Public moderation would not solve this, however. Take a look at the moderation on Slashdot, for example: it does not judge the content of comments based on whether they're true or justified, but based on whether someone thinks they're worth reading, which is much more a matter of personal taste. In general, a large set of persons with varying expertise in a field is less likely to democratically judge so that the results are appropriate than a small set of editors with much expertise in the field. The reason for using Slashdot moderation is the avoidance of trolls (sorry, couldn't resist), a danger which is not or hardly not present in scientific publications.
Apart from that, the problem of a lot of garbage getting published is not due to the pressure on the publishers and has little to do, hence, with the financial situation we are talking about. It is a more general problem in heavily paradigmatic sciences where a person's scientific productivity and, ultimately, "value" is based on the sheer number of their publications. Very little authors have the honesty and/or courage to publish, say, a result like "We did this and this experiment, but the results actually show that the investigated theory has little scientific significance."; instead, the pressure to publish forces them to inflate their results, leading to the well-known jokes about scientific jargon.As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
always the LAST to adopt to new methods. listen to them insist that their tube amps and reel-to-reel tape machines and vinyl records SOUND BETTER than digital means of recording and playing. it's simply not true, but they will hold on to these beliefs and fervently defend them to the grave. they, more than any other group i've ever been involved with, fear change like death.
i could live a little longer in this prison
there's no reason you can't immitate this with an algorithm, is my point. and maybe tube amps were a bad example. musicians cling to methods that are inferior in every way -- vinyl, reel to reel recording -- simply because they are familiar, even though the digital equivalents sound better. (don't tell me a reel to reel recording sounds "warmer" or "happier" than a jazz disk recording)
i could live a little longer in this prison
well actually i -am- a musician. i can tell the difference between keys. ...maybe tube amps were a bad example. but musicians cling to methods that are inferior in every way -- vinyl, reel to reel recording -- simply because they are familiar, even though the digital equivalents DO sound better, are easier to work with, are much cheaper, and better stand the test of time. (don't tell me a reel to reel recording sounds "warmer" or "happier" than a jazz disk recording)
i could live a little longer in this prison
There's a big difference to why and how researchers publish papers and why and how musicians publish music tracks, so it's pretty unfair to compare these two.
(the fact that we learn fast is of course not difficult to understand :)
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
So what exactly would happen if all of these scientists planning the boycott simply decided to go ahead and do it anyway? Wait until the article is in the pipeline or in print, and then make the article freely available. Or simply refuse to accept the limits on distribution.
Seriously, would the journals sue the scientists? Would they refuse to publish their other work as punishment? Those sorts of tactics would clearly compromise their own reason for existence. The scientists obviously have the position of strength in this sitation; they should use it.
-Bryan
Scientists do not provide the articles/reports free of charge. They actually pay page charges to have them published. Page charges are typically charged to research grants, which are typically funded using money collected from taxes. The journal publishers make out by charging at both ends. On the other hand, there are only so many articles they can fit into an issue and only so many people interested in subscribing to (for example) Journal of Neuroimmunology. Just like software developers, they deserve to make money from their efforts.
Using TeX. And around any math department you can find TeX typesetters who charge a heck of a lot less than $60/page.
...scientists want the access available.
After all, how often has scientific work been duplicated because the second (or third+) scientist didn't know what the first had done?
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
>I guess the scientists are faster learners.
Oh! So THAT'S why they make the big $$ for using their brains!
hehe
Actually you misspelt "After all, the scientists PAY to provide their articles". It can cost thousands of dollars (color figures) to be published in a respectable journal.
Burn Hollywood Burn
That said, what makes conferences and journals valuable is the peer review process that each paper has to go through - it cuts out huge amounts of chaff. People are, of course, quite at liberty to publish their papers on the web, but these works are typically not accorded the same respect as peer reviewed work.
Sure, those idiots, why can't they just see, it's so simple! Why don't they boycott the monolith that feeds them? Or they could sign with a minor label with no distribution or advertising budget. It's just so simple to fix.
It's a little easier to protest when you've got tenure.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
Sounds like an opportunity to me.
Setup a website as a forum for posting articles for many disciplines in place of the paper-journal model. Since for scientists, offer TeX,LaTeX,pdf formats as well.
--Nowt
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
What you propose already exists.
As well as xxx.lanl.gov, theres the NASA Astrophysics Data System at: http://adswww.harvard.edu/
The fact that most scientists are snooty, eletist bastards who have incredible opinions of themselves and most musicians with contracts have been taught from line one that they would be nothing without their distributors and agents and should never question the wisdom of large corporations.
Now, the scientists in our audience shouldn't take this as a flame because it's precisely the reason why they can pull off a boycott of their 'distributors' and make it work while all the artists, musicians and singers can't quite manage.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Well, I wanted to talk about personality rather than productivity, but you have a valid point here. There was only one Einstein. There is only one Hawking. Before you are gone, you will see at least a dozen Britney Spears and NSYNC. Actually, these two aren't the first in the queue. Let's go back and Talk about Tiffany and New Kids on the Block if we're going to talk about corporate clones.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
The article briefly mentions many factors contributing to paying the over-all cost of publication. For many journals (e.g. J. of the American Ceramic Society), peer review is not a cost, as it is distributed amongst the community. Further, page charges have been in effect for years, ranging from $75-150 per page. Add this to $0.5-3k anually for a subscription, plus the cost of reprents for the author(s) (several more hundred $ for ~100 reprints). For the younger generation of researchers (of which I consider myself a part), print dissemination is burdensome. PDF files would save the journals a bundle of costs, and leave it to the reader to print out a copy for him or herself. Heck, 50% of the articles I request through our Library's database subscription arrive in PDF, and I only print out ~5 of 50/month for in depth review. Until the younger generation earns high positions in the archival/peer review publishing community, the 'old school' will resist change, for the most part. Not looking forward to getting old, myself.
Let's not.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
Since these journals are being reviewed by peers, publishing by such non-profit groups can work. Both the submitter and review wants the highest quality publication since it helps their respective reputations, the reviewer does not need a hugh amount of cash, just enough to cover expensives or pay for the costs of their next paper.
Smaller topics in mathematics, computer science, and physics already have free pre-print services (arXiv.org www.acm.org/dl), and more than a few online peer reviewed publications. These areas have quickly adapted because they already use electronic submissions of "camera-ready" papers in TeX format.
I think the important point is that these speciality publications are for a small community not for a general audience. The numbers are small, and most participates main income comes from elsewhere.
I didn't even say peer2peer once.
Amazing! I was just speaking with a colleague about this (there's an upcoming conference at our university about the crisis in scientific publishing).
Citeseer truly is amazing, and is useful as a search engine and a model of research dissemination. However, the problem is third-party review. Any sort of gnutella or napster for papers will not quite replace journals because they lack review.
However, slashcode has the peer review quality built in! Slashdot, in effect, is just one huge peer-reviewed newsgroup.
It seems like someone (I don't have the time to do all by myself) could alter slashcode to post paper titles and abstracts instead of stories, with links to ps, pdf, latex, etc. versions of the papers. Reviewers rate the articles, and give their review. Other readers could then rate the reviews themselves. Perhaps individuals could only post papers if their reviews have high enough ratings; ratings and reviews of papers might be weighted by their own ratings; etc. etc. etc.
Ignoring themes and whatnot, it seems the only real change is allowing for some numeric rating of the papers--like a Slashdot where posts include ratings of the stories. Readers could filter papers/stories by rating, etc. Those who want everything get it, those who get want high-profile papers only get those.
Beautiful!
As a fairly poor undergrad, I can see that this would help undergrads (who frequently have to pay for a lot of their research out of their own pockets) wanting to do research projects. I doubt that it will happen in time to help me (there are a lot of articles from many fields that relate to computer science at least a little that I've wanted to read).
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
An important part of the publishing is being able to say "this was published with the approval of my peers". Something could be set up based around the web, but it would necessarily involve more than attaching your paper and clicking submit.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
In any academic circle the publication date is the date that a researcher sets his/her claim on the findings.
If someone else publishes before you, even if they stole your work, it's very hard to demonstrate that the discovery really was yours.
But why do scientists care if they are credited with the discovery? Well, besides the simply fact that we all like to be rewarded for our work, most Professors (which is what most scientists are) are expected to keep up a publication rate as part of their job. Failure to do research (i.e. publish research) usualy won't result in being fired (the joys of tenure) but can result in loss of raises etc.
So what scientists want is a way to publish their work in a manner that dates it and garuntees recognition of publication by an outside authority. They also want to have these papers, which they provided, available in a small number of searchable formats to allow for quick access without thousands of bulky journals filling their offices.
Just a clairification... Sounds like the parrent poster got screwed over by a Prof... so perhaps this is a litte less biased
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
One of the bigger problems with the exclusivity of scientific journals is that the lay public has no real way of precisely determining how its money is being spent on scientific research. After all, most scientific papers are reports on publicly funded projects. By and large, the scientific community does not feel like it is accountable to the lay public and looks down condescendingly at them. I think it is a mistake to underestimate the collective lay-intellect. It is also not a good idea to insult the source of one's bread and butter.
Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics
Look at the subscription prices on the inside of a typical journal. Since they don't advertise, they charge outrageous amounts. Some journals cost $400 an issue (I'm thinking of things like the Physical Review journals). These people have HUGE operating costs.
Second, the poster was not correct in stating that scientists submit articles for free. It costs quite a bit of money to submit a paper. (Again, cost depends on the journal, but I've seen pricetags around $400.) But, that's why we have grants.
I'm confused -- will this have any effect on all the SDMI business?
The one problem is that the journals do one vital service -- they run the peer review system that filters out the garbage. Find a way to do that on zero budget, and persuade the universities that "publication" does not require dead trees, and the scientists would quite happily FTP their articles into an on-line database instead of messing with the journals.
/.'s moderation system?
Myabe they could learn from
That is, the reviewers are more carefully selected from a pool of better people, and they take the job more seriously... Duh, I know that. No offense meant to anyone except first-posters and the goat.sxe nuts, but /. is a toy system where half the contributors are idiots. That doesn't mean it might not be a usable prototype for a serious system.
Suppose you tweaked the parameters by awarding "karma" within particular areas of expertise, requiring lots of karma to do any reviewing, and giving the reviewers unlimited mod points restricted to their particular area. Also enable reviewers to mark up a paper and send it back for changes. Start the system off by picking some eminent scientists to review each area. Then their ratings eventually elevate other top people into reviewers, etc. Would it ultimately be any different than the present peer-review system?
One thing I don't understand though -- what motivates the reviewers to work that hard? As I understand it, most aren't paid.
There's no permanence, no durable record, in Online Publishing. That's true, and I am quite familiar with these issues from struggling to keep CAD drawing files usable for just 5 to 10 years. But dead-trees are only marginally better -- because no one can store even 10% of all the publications that exist now. The stamped CD and DVD formats are about as permanent as good paper, and far more compact, but that requires as much investment in tooling to stamp a disk as in typesetting a printed publication. What is needed is some sort of laser-etched-on-platinum disk.
Until then, the lack of a good long term storage solution for the few articles that are going to be useful in thirty years is no reason for not improving immediate access to scientific articles -- most of which have ephemeral value at best. I wonder how much work is needlessly duplicated while the articles are waiting at the printers? And if you don't trust the on-line archive and do have storage space, print the key articles out on acid-free paper, it will cost far less than trying to subscribe to all the printed journals.
Thanks. "[The Rosetta project] micro-etches text as analog images on a 3" nickel disk at densities of up to 350,000 pages per disk. Since the encoding is a physical image (no 1's or 0's), there is no platform or format dependency" You read it with a microscope. It sounds kind of extreme, but it is what you need for really long-term storage without filling large buildings with paper. Where can I get such a system for archiving CAD drawings?
Scientists working for universities use these journals to exchange information and to build their reputations. That is, they write up the results of an experiment, a study, or (very rarely) a new discovery, and send it off to a journal covering that field. The journal gets other scientists to "peer review" it, that is to check for errors and to rate how interesting it is. (Sort of like /. modding conducted by snail mail.) If it passes, then eventually it is printed on dead trees and mailed out. At salary review time (or the academic equivalent, whatever that is), the scientist points to published papers as evidence that he has done some worthwhile science. And now and then, who sent a paper in first becomes critical in deciding who gets the Nobel prize.
Other scientists refer to these journals so they will be building on work already done rather than duplicating it. However, a relevant article may have been published in one of dozens of different journals, so indexing journals and searching for prior work are difficult, time-consuming, and error-prone jobs. And once you have located possibly interesting articles in the indexes, you still have to obtain the articles themselves. University libraries are not able to buy or to store all the dead-tree journals, so you have to try to borrow journals from somewhere else, or pay for reprints.
By putting whole articles into an on-line database, the scientists can do a full-text search if necessary, can download interesting articles immediately, and scientific research should progress just a little faster. The authors also benefit from better exposure. (At least the better articles get better exposure, whether this is a benefit for a particular scientist or not depends...)
However, the journals fear that this will bite them in the pocketbook. The specialized journals get some advertising revenue, but not nearly as much as news magazines. So they depend on subscriptions to cover part of the editorial and peer review expenses as well as printing and postage. And so the subscription prices are high, and if the same articles will soon be appearing on-line, many people will save their money and wait. And of course the journals also lose those reprint fees, and fees for when they re-issue last years 12 issues on a roll of microfilm, etc. On the other hand, journals get the scientific articles free, aside from editing and peer review which only cost about 10% of their budget. While I understand the journals' financial concerns, I think that ultimately the on-line articles are going to be far more significant than the dead tree issues; somehow journals are going to have to adjust or else perish.
And it's a good thing to see authors of any sort banding together and insisting on keeping control of their work.
I have been thinking abot all this cloning and genetics research, and the other day I thought of something, what would a human look like with two Y chomosomes?
All women have two X chomosomes, their egg always cairries an X.
Men have an X and a Y, and the sperm may carry either.
Of course because always have X it has been inmpossible in the past to generate offspring with a YY configuration, but what would a YY man be like? Naturally, no femenine side whatsoever. Given the lack of logic and reason displayed in most women, would a YY be superintelligent, Superstrong? Super-sterile?
My mind boggles.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
So why not just get together and form a website like slashdot for publishing scientific research. It could be run by an internnational organization, the UN for example. Add a searchable online library and that cuts out the publishers completely.
....public archives introduce errors into the articles, making them unreliable!....What if a g (microgram) suddenly becomes a mg (milligram)?
....various publishers are thinking about changing their business model: instead of billing readers, they plan to bill authors....f journal articles became freely available after a while, some libraries might stop subscribing to them.
How? aren't these articles submitted on electronic format allready? All that is needed is a simple conversion to HTML format. That has no more risk to it than the editing/typesetting done by the Scientific Journals.
Charging researchers is not a good idea. Alot of research is done on a shoestring budget and not everybody might be able to afford what a big time publisher regards as a few thousand dollar peanut fee.
If the researchpapers were released to a central archive after six months I rather doubt that people would stop subscribing. I for one would not like to be six months behind on cutting edge research.
A free and indipendent online archive would of course have the advantage of being completely up to date and not up to date minus six months.
Da Rabbit!
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The source for the system is even available (though restricted).
The only thing it really lacks is a feed of articles from assorted print media, in addition to what it robot indexes from the web.
If you're doing computer science work, you should really take a look at it. And if you're not, but are interested in seeing a good stab at automatic indexing and archival of material, go look anyway.
it would be great to read online journals like nature,physical review letters.etc.... i would love to do so along with all the other geeks like me but its too costly at the moment and making it free online would change a lot of things.
musicians could stand to learn as well. I guess the scientists are faster learners
That's fer sure. No matter how loud I yell, the guy with the tuba upstairs never learns.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
A friend gave me this technique when doing his final-year project for his Masters at UMIST. You search the on-line journal for the paper. The paper is likely to be listed with the name of the author, and the title - put these into Google or Altavista and 9 times out of 10 you will find the author's homepage. It is likely that on this page you will find that the author has put his paper up himself there, free of charge, for the world to see.
;-)
As our unofficial company slogan goes - "There's ways round that" - (c) Wargames.
This line intentionally left here to annoy you.
"some publishers resent a central, NIH-run archive like PubMed Central because they fear that technical failures would affect all users at once, and because the government might impose restrictions in the future, for example, by ruling not to publish certain kinds of research."
Do you think this arguemnt is valid? True, it's not so long ago cryptologic research had problems in this area. But can that come back? I hope not, and I think not. Even if it did, wouldn't the net make censorship harder? Consider freenet.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
We idiots make up far more than half the slashdot contributors.
--
"Creating a Global Knowledge Network"
By P. Ginsparg
http://cnls.lanl.gov/aux/oneday?daypat=20010425
...the feud between scientists and musicians! The original remark about musicians versus scientists was off topic. It was unfortunate. The original article was about on-line publishing, but the better moderated posts concerned the feud. Let me return to the topic at hand.
Print journals want to control the dissemination of content in order to fund their activities. There is nothing wrong with journals wishing to make a profit, but there is no reason to grant them a monopoly to do so. The "activities" they fund are rarely all that important. They rarely fund scholarships, or research itself, but rather fund their semi-scientific editorial staffs who stuff the limited available space with pet peeves, and then decide what submissions shall receive the coveted remaining space. An open forum would allow more scientific results to reach a wider audience more quickly at less expense.
Print journals will have to make scientists pay for publishing if subscriptions fall! Oh, dear. Canals will have to charge more if railroads carry the freight! Page charges, which are sometimes waived, already reach $1000 per page.
Print journals are very afraid of errors creeping into on-line archives? Oh, please. Sorry to tell everyone this, but the errors have already got into the articles. The authors put them there. The peer reviewers didn't catch them. I, myself, managed to formulate an equation that violates the second law of thermodynamics and got it into the peer reviewed literature. It is a cross I shall have to bear alone, but it didn't cause a crisis in science. Much scientific work is wrong or outdated by the time it manages to get into the print medium. This is why demand for articles diminishes sharply after only a few months.
Print journals are the present keepers of truth. By limiting space and organizing peer review they restrict the supply of scientific discussion. If anyone truly believes all the current trendy blather about diversity, then science would improve through diversity of view points, opinion, and interpretation. In the present system the only dissenting voices come from the well connected. An open system could allow obscure voices to be heard occasionally.
In connection with this last point scientists and musicians are in the same position. There are lots of truly creative artists, of all types, who cannot find an outlet because the current distribution system of "art" stricts supply. Luckily artists can set up on a street corner and appeal directly to an audience. This is more for difficult for scientists, but the internet makes all things possible.
Too much peer review is badly organized, and is done by people who are not truly peers, but who refuse to admit as much. An open forum would allow true peers to review scientific work.
No scientist was a poor kid from the ghetto, being offered an easy path to riches by a smooth-talking A&R man - 'if you just sign this bit of paper, just a formality you understand'.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
since when in this world does a High IQ corolate to a high income?
to say a musician is smarter than an experimental physicist is insane, as wel as saying the reverse.
both the musician and scientist are brilliant and creative, they just focus that brilliance in diffrent directions.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3