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Nature Debate on Open Scientific Journals
Declan Butler writes "I thought I'd let you know that the journal Nature is currently running an online special on the debate over access to the electronic scientific literature. It will be updated with two to three new articles each week, and will run until around mid-May. 'The Internet is profoundly changing how scientists work and publish. New business models are being tested by publishers, including open access, in which the author pays and content is free to the user. This ongoing web focus will explore current trends and future possibilities.' Best, Declan Butler, European correspondent, Nature"
Anyone can go to any public university library and make copies of articles from journals. Articles which the scientist has paid a good amount to get published in terms of research not to mention paying the journal to publish it (even if a journal accepts your article, you still have to pay the costs of the layout, figures, reprints, etc.) I worked in life sciences research at the University of Washington for 10 years and I have seen this personally.
from the dead tree edition a few months ago
open source in other arenas (than software) scroll to bottom to see beginning paragraph on the section about 'open source' scientific journals.
*shrug*
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
As a person who works at a research instutite with publicications in JFM, AMS, Nature, etc... And one of the best COMPLETE JFM collections (Journal of Fluid Mechanics) in the country, this is a big deal.
It goes down to the "communication" pillar of the Scientific Method.
Take our 400+ publications, for example. The're searchable online, but are in a database. Which means they don't show up on google.
Most of them are old, but in this field (fluid mechanics) a "recent" article may be in the mid 80's. I worked on one this morning which has sources from 1911 fluid mechanics work. Most of the cutting edge stuff just happened back in the mid 80's, and now, a few other groups are starting up again with this area.
Now, unless you either:
1. have an ip address at a school with a subscription
2. have a subsctiption yourself
3. have a catalouge, or a print out of all the journals AND have lots of time...
You will have a hard time getting at the bulk of the information availble in these types of fields. Take Chemical Engineering for example. Other than major applications and some computer simulations, little has changes since like the 70's. This means that you have to go to old print journals to get comparitively cutting edge stuff in some cases.
This article is right up there with making the descision of "profit or communication, or both."
By the way, we'll have all out publications indices up where google will be able to find them soon. And we have a policy for passing out reprints upon request, if we can.
-=fshalor
In the standard scientific/mathematical/biomedical publishing deal, for the more high-impact journals (that is, those whose articles are most frequently cited), the authors do pay--to cover, they say, typesetting, images, etc.
The universities have usually paid three times for an article in a journal to which they subscribe, with salary, grants, and subscriptions.
Opening access to scientific journals to a more general population is a good idea. However, having the author pay for publication is a terrible one.
e xt .html
Authors already do pay to publish in scientific journals. In my own field the biggest journal (Astrophysical Journal, or as we called it ApJ) can cost up to $165 a page. See here:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/pcharges_t
Are you sure you want ads subsidising the publication of scientific research, especially in medicine?
This paper entitled, "Viagra causes withered genitals," is brought to you by the makers of Cialis.
Better yet, there were two separate instances at the University of Toronto where two separate researchers were pressured into suppressing their research when it was unfavorable to one of the university's sponsors. The investigator in one case was Dr. Nancy Olivieri, who faced a possible lawsuit and discipline when she spoke out against Apotex; the other one involved Dr. David Healey, who had a job offer rescinded when he spoke against Prozac.
So what's left? Author-pay, government-pay and donation-based systems all have disadvantages.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I think you are making the point that the scientists are making. Most of us publish our work to share with other scientist, and to justify funding. Once published a journal is now holding our information away from those without the cash for a subscription.
We don't care who has access to our information, but we do care that the journals are preventing access to information we released to the world.
A large group of scientist believe that all researchers should have access, at least in electronic form, to all the published literature.
--Tsiangkun
That single button mouse is my gateway to the Terminal app
I am research scientist who has worked in big Pharma (Pfizer, Pharmacia & Upjohn) and I am currently working in a small startup biotech company. While working in big pharma we constantly had problems with our service that made all the journals available online (intranet). It was always a pain in the ass to hunt down that 'last paper' but we "People" who could take care of it for us. This is, by the way, how big Pharma handles most problems; throw ridiculous amounts of money at the problem unti it goes away. At the time I rather enjoyed that power - but I always felt a bit uneasy about it.
Now that I'm in a small Biotech the issues are very apparent. Many scientific journals, that we absolutely need, cost more then $1000 each for a years subscription. If you only new how many different journals we need. With start up monies of less then $500k and insane prices on lab equipment and supplies we need every break we can get. If we didn't already have an "alternate"(in other words shady) method of literature acquisition we would be screwed.
While it is true you can find just about any journal in some library - good f-ing luck finding one with everything you need. I hope that a solution can be worked out. Many researchers could benefit from an environment were the data/methods/protocols they need are just a few clicks away - instead of a 4 hour drive or expensive contract away.
"Capital punishment makes the state into a murderer. Imprisonment makes the state into a gay dungeon-master"
Scientific journals in electronic format are definitely a Good Thing and a must-have for any serious university or research institution. However, getting the journal on paper offers the subscriber one very big advantage, namely that one still has access to the paper journals already received after terminating a subscription. Not so with the electronic versions, where you lose all access, even to the volumes you already have paid subscription fees for. If all you can afford is the electronic subscription to a journal, you cannot stop the subscription as long as it is on these terms. Perhaps good for the journal, but definitely very bad for the subscribers. Let's hope this debate will bring about some change in the distribution practices.
Yes, I *am* a rocket scientist
I don't know what field you're in, but in my area of research, almost all journals have significant page charges.
Example:
Electronic manuscripts: $120.00 per page
Paper manuscripts: $150 per page
Color figures: $600.00 for first figure, $150.00 for each additional color figure
You're looking at ~$1000 minimum for a typical paper.
I think having rreely available scientific journals should make more knowledge available to a wider cross-section of people. People would be able to look up accurate technical information online, and students would probably benefit too: it would be easier for them to do research. Making this kind of information more freely available will lead us to a more enlightened, informed, knowledgeable society.
Scientific publishing is a standout example of how skewed the incentives can be in copyright law. Typically, the scientist(s) publishing a paper signs over the copyright to a journal (which may be for- or non-profit), which often charges a fee to the author for the priviledge (and especially for extras like color figures). Thereafter, the interests of the author to have the paper as widely distributed as possible is in direct conflict with the journal's interests in earning fees for access to the content. Regardless of how many people read the paper, the author receives no royalties on it. Many journals now give the author permission to redistribute electronic & paper copies of the article (gee, thanks!), but since these are not linkable by standard databases or the journal's own web page, they have limited value. You can search for them on Google, maybe you'll get lucky. Scientists sign over their rights (and often pay a fee) to have paper published under a prestiguous journal name, and to have the paper peer reviewed (NB: the peer reviewers are not paid either).
It is so obviously in the interests of scientists to have truly open journal access, it is amazing it is taking so long. Especially since many of the top journal publishers are professional scientific societies, ostensibly representing the interests of the scientists.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
This is starting to change in computer science, although other fields are a long way behind. I'm studying for a PhD at the moment, and most of the papers I need are available online, either on the authors' websites or on Citeseer. Even in CS, older papers are less likely to be available, but most of the work in my area was published in the last four years or is still awaiting publication. That's the other advantage of publishing online - the process of getting a paper reviewed and published can take years, so in fast-moving fields the journals are really an archive of significant work rather than a news medium. To keep up with recent work you have to look online.
Of course, the problem with self-publication is lack of peer review. However, Citeseer does a pretty good job of finding significant papers based on the number of citations (think Pagerank), and the database of citations also helps you to find papers that might contradict or reinforce the conclusions of the paper you've just read. This makes it less important to have editors filtering out biased or unreproducible results.
I hope that authors in other fields will start to embrace online self-publication. Unfortunately, many institutions see publication count as a good measure of an academic's standing, partly because the peer review process tends to ensure that a frequently-published author is well respected in his or her field. If insitutions started to pay attention to citation count instead, self-publication would become a viable alternative to journal publication, saving students and taxpayers an awful lot of money.
Reviewers do their work for free, but editors and editors-in-chief are paid. And, even relatively small journals have a good size administrative staff (10-12 people) on hand to manage author submissions, distributing papers for peer review, subscriptions, and all sorts of other stuff. Software to manage papers is expensive because it's to specialized, and many journals still fed-ex papers around the world to get copies to reviewers. So, you're looking at running an entire business based off of subscription and author fees. So, the charges might sounds exhorbitant to you, but think how many subscriptions it takes to keep a dozen people on salary.
got biv?
For an academic institution the price for Nature is based on the full FTE figure for all staff, students and researchers. Please provide details to your sales representative.
Which would, according to our librarians, amount to about 20.000 Euro/year for our university. A sum we simply cannot afford - mostly due to the horrible research funding in Germany. But don't get me started on this topic...
This comment does not exist.
As a software engineer outside of academic channels the publication of computer science papers online has been invalueable to someone myself. Previously if I wanted to lookup work done on a particular subject I would have to try and get access to the university libraries to find the publication I was intrested in.
;-)
As more and more journals are appearing online and via searchable databases using a web interface this has allowed me to find the required papers I need for my work much easier.
The result is that I'm able to write better software that has been greatly enriched by the work done by the academics publishing these papers.
I feel I should just point out that any code that I write based on a particular piece of work is properly credited for. I have never liked taking credit for something that someone else has spent a good deal of time and effert on. I'm an engineer not someone in marketing.
As a biologist, I can share that most biology journals have page charges. It's just something you accept and live with. A couple hundred dollars on a publication is nothing, considering how important pubs are to your career. Frankly, I can spend upwards of a thousand dollars in an afternoon in reagents and supplies, so in the grand scheme of things, paying for publications doesnt really seem that bad at all.
Citeseer rocks my world, everyone should use it!
Nature is currently promo'ing a digital version available through "Newsstand". I was extremely disappointed to find out that I was supposed to download a Windows only "viewer" to try out this "digital" subscription
The rules vary between different journals, but many of the papers seen on researchers' web pages are pre-prints. It is often the case that journals allow pre-prints to be distributed, but retain all rights to the post-prints which have been through the editorial process.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Hi, I'm a 4th-year grad physics student that came back to school after 3 years of doing engineering-type research (hardware + software) after my undergrad. So I see where you're coming from.
What you want already exists and is the arxiv . You can put any papers here, and people can download them, etc. I don't know what limitations there are, like how long they'll keep your papers or things like that. But this is exactly what you want. It even allows searches based on various keywords.
Some people publish here because it's quick, and then get a peer-reviewed journal (like PRL) to publish it just for more 'authenticity'. But that's not necessary, and some people publish there and don't worry about future peer review.
I regularly look at the daily new writeups in condensed matter physics, and it's amazing how many there are, and many are by very respected researchers.
Anyway, on the other side of the coin, there is something to be said for peer-review. It does help 'weed' out some of the bogus stuff that will inevitably appear.
As for the publish or perish, yeah, that's what happens when a society uses some factor for judging 'worth'. Ie, in the business world it's money and people thus try to maximize their money. For physics, some people will try to optimize their publications. Look at Schon, the guy that faked his data 2 years ago, and finally got caught. He was putting out several Nature and Science articles a year, which is nearly deity status in the physics world. He couldn't keep up with this rate, and at some point had to fabricate his data.
make world, not war
I work for the Public Library of Science, an organization dedicated to Open Access publishing, and just wanted to clarify a few issues.
I've only briefly scanned the posts, but wanted to clear up a few things, at least about how we go about open access publishing:
1) ALL of our papers are peer-reviewed to very stringent standards. In fact, many of our editorial board members have worked with high profile for-profit journals (Nature, Science, Cell, etc.). This is not simply a 'pay to publish' system.
2) Our publication costs are not necessarily prohibitive. We grant waivers to those unable to afford these costs. Incidentally, our publication charge does not currently cover even our own costs.
Currently, for-profit journals are taking advantage of a free labor pool (scientists who donate their time to perform peer review), and turning around and profiting from it. As several readers have mentioned, much of the research published in these journals is funded by taxpayers; the fact that these taxpayers, and even the scientists themselves, have to pay for access to this research is something which needs to be remedied.
Please refer to our website for more information.
Some people agree with you, for instance:
Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis