Slashdot Mirror
George Soros Funds Open-Publishing Software
blair1q writes "BBC has a story reporting that George Soros and his Open Society Institute are funding "open access" media for scientific publishing. These outlets will compete with the quasi-monopolies held by the journal industry and provide information to researchers whose institutions can't afford to subscribe to large numbers of overpriced periodicals. Part of the funding will go to improve the open-access enabling EPrints software, which is under GPL."
Sort of like how Slashdot competes with the quasi-monopolies held by the magazine industry in order to provide information to geeks who can't afford to buy magazines that check their facts, etc. :-)
Scientific journals serve a purpose, despite the rants by frustrated pseudoscientists who can't get their work published. Though the system may not work perfectly, at least they make some attempt to review articles and weed out the crap. Words like "free" and "open" and "no censorship" are not necessarily good for science, because it really just means "hey! we'll publish your manifestoes on how the world *really* works, even if those self-proclaimed scientist types keep telling you to talk to a psychologist..."
Technical Writer?
I see this news as a wonderful contrast to the open source movement. Science has always been "open source", with publishers demanding a reasonable payment for their efforts of propogating that knowledge. Free speech not Free beer. Now the movement is for free propogation of that information at little or no cost. Free beer for the scientific community.
On the other hand open source and FSF has it's roots in free beer and free speech, and is now only going towards changing for that beer. I think both models are legitamate and should function with each other. Who else is going to edit that Nature or Science journal if you dont pay them? But then again there will always be people who do it for the love of the code, or in this case the research
We had to destroy the sig to save the sig.
I think that some people are missing the whole point of the way the research journal system is setup today. The journals cost a lot of money to get.... esp the paper versions. But...the journal companies ahve a LOT of overhead to deal with. Mainly coordinating the review process that gives any jounral its credibility. Others in the given scientific field have to read and review the papers before they are deemed ready for publishing.... as well as several copy editors and others employed by the actual jounral. This is all to ensure validity of the science and quality of the paper. ALong with that, people publish in a given journal because of its reputation. Science or Nature being pretty much cream of the crop work.... then moving on to journals like Proc. National Academy of Sciences, Cell, J of Bacteriology, then down to the level of journals and so on. Where you publish becomes a reflection of the quality of work that you do. Some institutions even *require* faculty to publish so many papers in a given set of journals in order to be eligible for full professorship. So, this system seems great... but I think it is going to be very difficult to get people using it in large numbers.
First, reviewing or editting an article for a journal should get you a free copy of a similiarly priced journal. Often scientists review articles that are not in their field of expertise in order to maintain impartiality, so getting a copy of the journal that the article you reviewed is in isn't always worthwhile.
Second, the "Open Access" movement should organize it's own journals. These journals could be formed at any tiem for free by anyone. The journal would mainly consist of a review board that reviews articles. If the review board considers an article to be of a high enough quality and within a certain subject area then the review board can mark the article as being "included" in said journal. This way, while anyone can still publish a paper by uploading it or whatever, people can filter searches by particular journals, giving them a quick way to weed out lots of crap.
For those of you who are wondering about who pays the review board for their time have stumbled onto the problem that faces the open access movement. You need a lot of very smart people to review enough papers to make up good journals, and those very smart people quite often have better things to do with their time.
Mr. Spey
Cover your butt. Bernard is watching.
Problem is that number of publications says nothing about quality.
I have not read a journal publication in the journal for at least five years. I generally read articles as pre-publication preprints or from the author's web site. If the only publication is in dead tree form it might as well not exist in my field.
The problem that online journals have faced is that it takes some time for an online journal to establish prestige and hence attract the type of publication that generates prestige.
Another problem has been that the HTML browser folk were never interested in implementing the HTML math markup which has left scientific publication to pdf form which is pretty useless as a dialogue medium. I can't cut and paste and equation from pdf to mathematica as MathML would allow.
What I would like to see is the rise of different modes of academic publishing that take advantage of the electronic mode. I would like to see enterprises that are structured in the manner of a dictionary or encyclopeadia, providing a systematic and structured description of the state of the art in a particular field as a whole.
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One professional society I belong to had a break-away journal promising "all the efficiencies of modern technology"- cheap, quick, etc. However, they never got a critical mass of scientists to submit articles. There's a catch-22 problem: if you dont have a quality body of people submitting articles you dont have a quality journal; if you dont have a quality journal you dont have people submitting articles. The journal failed after a couple years due to lack of quaity submissions.
Its not like people haven't thought of cheap web publishing before. Many thought they could start their own maverick journals for "almost nothing" on the web. But the human intertia of buy-in can be tremendous.
What makes Soros different, how he stands aside from the other giants is in his thoughtful, abstract approach to the mechanisms of profit, and the rise and fall of economies.
His "public works" have taken place throughout his career, not merely as an afterthought. He appears to be quite intelligent, and seems to surround himself with intelligent, critical advisors. Most of his oddball adventures and forays in Europe have been profitable, or at least, had the intention of bringing back some compensation, but there seems to be a broader plan at work.
A naive western observer might see the Hand of Soros offering charity and kindness to a world that desperately needs his help. The natives who've endured his schemes probably see him as a standard-model Ugly American, his interference in their culture and economies don't seem to be quite as welcome as advertised. He appears to regret (sincerely?) the harm he's caused, but his answer seems to be... try new schemes. He quite baldly treats Economics as an Experimental and not a Theoretical science. He seems to take the broad perspective, in his field, that a Machievelli took in the realm of Renaissance politics, though he's had far more success.
I suspect history will look on him with more interest than his contemporaries do; he's one of the most influential single humans on Earth today, but tries to work stealthily and quietly. Whether they will approve or disapprove... ultimately depends on who gets to write those histories.
First, nothing begins if not opening
Calm down, everyone.
Typically, academic journals need to maintain a staff, space, equipment, travel, conference, and other associated costs. This doesn't mean that all academic journals are priced correctly. And, yes, authors usually do pay per-page costs.
The problem is neither of these things but the reaction to them. Don't like the costs? Think you can do better? Start your own journal.
Slashdot is probably not the best forum for this debate because people unfamiliar with what's required for academic publishing think that the Open Source Software model can be equated to the academic review and publishing model.
Open source software works because it has time on its side. Programs that become popular can gain momentum and steam on an irregular timeline (e.g. according to demand). A publishing schedule doesn't work that way.
Good luck to George & Company, but I don't think they're going to find it's all that easy to promise a quality scientific research product by the mere fact of throwing away the traditional review process and giving the product away for free. If the good authors were all into giving away their research for free to begin with, they'd have just published it on the Web in the first place!
The fact that so many people replying to this article confuse "free" and "open source" and "review processes" is a reflection of ignorance about some of the very essentially different consequences of pursuing any combination of those propogation models.
The main problem with George's idea is that his journals will be overrun by hacks. Anybody who couldn't get published in a traditional scientific journal (which is basically 95% of people who submit articles) will exploit the weaker standards to get junk published. Consequently, the quality of research published in these journals will be lower, and no one who values their time will take them seriously.
Meanwhile, lead researchers won't dare get involved in that mess, and their co-authors won't dare abandon that gravy train either.
Just because people "should" have something for free doesn't mean other people "should" be coerced into providing it. Instead of complaining Soros & Company should just start a competing journal... good luck to them, I say, but don't pretend like never charging the end user can ever be sustainable (without a millionaire standing behind the operation who's taking money to fund it from somewhere else).
It's laughable sometimes how people confuse "free" as in not having to pay with "free software" (free of onerous licensing restrictions). It's embarrassing to see so many Slashdot posts that obviously don't understand the difference, e.g. assume it means they shouldn't ever have to pay for something.
It's free as in speech, people, not free as in beer. Stop whining and write a research paper that's worthy of publication.
Oh sure some of the "flasiher" ones, i.e. the ones that don't amount to as much scientifically. The ones I'm talking about don't maintain any staff, i.e. they share staff between several. All the real work is done by unsalaried researchers.
Well, that's just the point. With the web we're currently debating doing just that. There have already been a few attempts.
Well, we do "give our research away for free", there's no-one paying us. Not one single journal ever pays for published work, ever. That's the point. And we do also give it away on the side. I cannot remember when I actually had to go to the library to read an article I was interested in last. Since all the journals I'm talking about do allow publishing on your own website, that's where we actually go to get the papers.
Are you on drugs? What gravy train? There's no money to be had in research publication unless you own a publishing house. None, zero, nada, zilch! Re-read my first post, you typically have to pay the journal money to have them print it!They don't pay you to peer review either!
Researchers get their grants elsewhere, their work has already been "paid for" when the publication process begins. The only reason to publish is to have your work submitted to the peer review, and hence measured against the competitors of your field, so that you can get more grants. That you get a dead tree copy of your work, doesn't even enter into the equation. It has no financial bearing on your work what so ever. In my field we don't even publish in journals much, opting instead for conferences.
Well, I for one, have. Haven't you read any of the posts your responding to. Sheesh, no-one peer reviewed your submission, that's for sure.
Stefan Axelsson