Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Gearing Up to Publish Unrestricted Journals
Ender, Duke_of_URL writes: "Genomeweb reports that scientists are gearing up for the Sept 1 boycott of science publishers, because only two publishers (Genome Biology and PubMedCenteral) have met the demands of open and copyright free access to science articles. As part of this process they're developing a means to publish their own journal articles." If you missed the history of this showdown, slashdot has published a few previous stories. Great news for science if they succeed - awful news if they fail.
I work in the humanities, and for us its precisely the archiving that's giving us headaches when considering electronic publication. We would dearly like to move on to a model of electronic publishing, since it would cut the (crippling) publication costs, and allow even the poorest of universities access to our findings. Our main worry in doing so is the ability to find today's published research a few years from now.
I'll give you an example: I'm a historian, and my sources are four hundred years old. But I also use historical works published during the last 150 years. Historians often refer to these articles as "dated, but still" usefull. And I can find them in most university libraries. Contrast that with articles published on the web. In 1995 a Dutch professor told me he could guarantee that articles published at his website would be available for the next 20 years (short timeframe for me!), but he got cancer and now it's all gone. It lasted 5 years. That makes web-based publishing seem like an awfully fragile way of distribution.
Of course, just because and article (or book) disappears from a website doesn't mean it's gone forever, but how can you trust that it hasn't been changed when it appears somewhere else? If you think that's not a major concern, you're wrong. Several histroical subjects are stil highly controversial (for instance the Holocaust, the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, American gun ownership, etc.). There are plenty of people out there who for a variety of reasons would love to change our work if they had the chance (including the authors after they have had time to reflect!).
These concerns are the main ones behind the reluctance to move to electronic publishing in my field, and I know them firsthand since I edit a historical journal. (Yeah, peer review is also important, but not the main consideration) The printers bleed us dry, while webspace at our local university is free. But we have no idea if our stuff is available in five years time if we don't put it on paper.
So we also want our articles to be kept free and open electronically, but with guarantees that they will stay so for decades without tampering. Nobody is neither able nor willing to guarantee that, so we'll stick to dead trees with electronic editions as an expensive afterthought to the more prestigious journals.
Why haven't market forces, supply and demand, driven the price down?
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
You may have been joking, but a lot of people really do feel like this, and it's a serious problem. The British Columbia Cancer agency just stopped providing testing for Breast Cancer susceptibility genes to all BC families because "the BC Cancer Agency, through the Ministry of Health Planning, received legal notice from representatives of Myriad Genetics/MDS asserting patent rights for sequencing of BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes". They priced the patent such that the BCCA can not afford to pay for it.
My mother may carry these genes, and if she does, then I probably do and any children I may have might as well. Generations of my family could go through surgical amputation, toxic chemical treatments, and even risk death, if these genes are present in our DNA and if it manifests.
So please, don't give me the argument that people are entitled to make money. They're actually not, because withholding this information is morally repugnant. How much does a mature, capable human life cost?
I've often heard the argument that monetary compensation is offered to spur the investment of time and effort into scientific endeavour, and that if we were to stop this from happening then scientific progress would stagnate due to lack of interest. Right, okay - well, according to this study that I just found if your mother lives to be 65, she has a 1% chance of dying of breast cancer within ten years. Hey CmdrTaco, how many people visit this site in a week? Let's say it's a million, and let's say none of you share a mother. One thousand of you will have a mother die of cancer if she lives to 65. Pretend you're one of those thousand unlucky people. How much of your time would you, personally give to see that that didn't happen? If your mother had cancer and you were not locked into your career (say you were in University, not 45 and in middle management) would you consider choosing a career related to cancer diagnosis or treatment? I sure am. And if you believe I care if I don't get a dime from it, you're wrong. I'm not required to do it, but I will work on it even if I have to work another job for my money.
Some of you may wonder what I do that helps - I'm making my career in the area of human information access; intelligent searching, visualization, etc. In part, this is why I am extremely interested in the consolidation of information and its liberation from the greedy. If successful, I predict it will be the largest boost to research since well before the Internet, and probably for years to come.
- It can evolve and change as this initative grows.
- It is without cost and without proprietary encumberance.
- It is stable and has unparalleled technical support.
- It is already built mainly by people who have at least as good moral as buiness sense.
Here we have an opportunity to provide an example of what can be done with the Free Software movement. It cannot be ignored as a serious foray into an enterprise-scale environment, and if the initiative succeeds it will be used by at least half of the scientific community. Proprietary software makers will be forced to be compatible with us for a change.More importantly, here we have the opportunity to catalyse scientific advancement. Try this: think of your friends, family, and coworkers and imagine that work you did help save that person's life, or made that person happier, or enable that other person to help you somehow. Heck, you can even think of the children - it actually works this time!
I urge you to head on over to http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/ and read up on it. If you can, offer your help, and mean it. If you can't help, tell your friends. It's worth it.
_________
The Signal/Noise ratio can be improved in two ways. Remaining silent is the OTHER way.
Journals do actually do quite a bit of work. You submit a paper to them. Then they need to decide if they want to publish it, first of all. That takes some expertise to begin with.
Then they need to find other scientists in the field with the expertise to review it. This requires that the journal has staff members who are up on the current research in the field, and who's doing what.
Once the reviews come back, and you respond to the reviewer's comments (which often involves some disagreement), the journal needs to make a decision regarding the readiness of the paper to be published. If not, either it goes through another reviewer iteration, or it gets rejected. Again, this requires scientific expertise by the journal's staff.
Finally, it gets published on paper and sent out to subscribers.
All of this takes effort, and much of it is non-trivial. Granted, the scientist does the science, and writes it up, but the journal provides a service. Some journals have exorbitant subscription rates because they have few subscribers (libraries, usually).
Scientists could get together and run their own free journals with quality research in them, but that's that much less time spent doing science. And as many scientists will tell you, much of their time is already spent doing non-science activities like sitting on committees and writing grant proposals.
Not to diminish journals in any way, but "the world needs ditchdiggers, too!"
Unfortunately, this type of outright ownership by publishers and distributors of other people's work is quite common. Many writers, whether they be scientists or freelance columnists or journalists, are forced to sign draconian contracts where in order to get their work published, they are forced to relinquish all rights to it.
Hopefully, the Public Library of Science Initiative will have an effect and take hold, starting a new trend in publishing practices.
- tokengeekgrrl
No, no, no! If they read about something on a public forum, the original publisher could bring forward the date at which it was submitted as proof of prior art. There's no reason that publishing on a web site would be treated any differently than publishing in a book, provided that you could demonstrate a date of publication. In any case, if they really wanted to patent it, they could apply for the patent before submitting it. Hell, most physicists currently make their articles that are under review available on preprint servers (like http://xxx.lanl.gov and nobody's going around and stealing their ideas. The web was invented by physicists specifically to make it easy for them to make their work available before it was formally published on paper.
This is the key point that so many people are missing. We have very strong evidence that what the biologists are requesting would work becuause the physicists have already tried essentially the same thing and made it work. There's no good reason to think that the result would be any different in biology.
Karma below 50 again. Thanks Karma Kap.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Currently, Eisen said, "We volunteer the material, the reviewing, the editing, and then we pay to get access to it"--a process he likened to a midwife who delivers a baby and then charges its parents to visit it. "
It is worse:
As a researcher, you do your research (your money and time), then you write it up in a suitable format for the journal you consider submitting it to (your time) and the guidelines to authors are sometimes quite intricate to get right. Next, you submit it to the journal, maybe even by FedEx or similar (your money). After the editor receives the manuscript, he is going to send it out to peers to have it reviewed (your peers, i.e. your time). If the paper is accepted for publication, the journal will then do the layout and insert the figures etc (their time). Then, after you OK the galley proofs, it will be published. For this, you have to pay page charges (up to $90 a page, color figures cost extra). You will have to order reprints, another $700 maybe. And your work is published in the prestigious journal, of which you will need a subscription (quite expensive) to view the results.
Summing it up, the researchers spend a lot of time, money and good-will on the publications, whereas the involvement of the journal publisher is not that great after all.
I work in the molecular biology field myself (which the article is relating to) and we have often jokingly considered opening up a journal, since this is a way to make money without much effort ... everything is done and paid for by others. While I am sure journals aren't exactly pots of gold, the distribution of who does what and who pays for what is a little odd.
Yes, it does.
I'm working on my Ph.D., and I can tell you that many, many professors are aware of this. However, just like the Dmitry situation, they are either too lazy, or too stuck in their ways to really care.
This issue was brought up in a forum and one of the faculty asked, "If journals are free, what would motivate scientists to publish?" We answered him by asking another question: "What motivates them now to publish? Not money."
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
I've often wondered if it weren't possible to modify slash code or whatever kuro5hin uses to start an online web site.
If you think about it, kuro5hin's model is very similar to that of scientific publishing: peer-reviewed submissions. If you replace "news stories" with "papers" you get a peer-reviewed online journal. Make posts abstracts, include a link to html/ps/pdf forms of papers, and there you go.
The scientists want the articles to be kept free and open electronically. If they mean kept on the web by the publishing journal, then I disagree. The journal should not have to foot that bill if they do not want to. Now, if they mean that some site should be allowed to post the articles for free access by the public, I'm all for it.
I'll assume they mean the latter. Overall, this is a disturbing trend in science. In the past science tended to prove theories, practice on applied science, etc. Engineers tended to find practical applications, which then would be patented. Now we have humans gene sequences being patented. What's next, patenting lab coats? (Ok, a bit extreme, but you get the point)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.