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Open Access To Scientific Literature: Can It Work?

Posted by Hemos on from the it-darn-well-better dept.

evilquaker writes "Nature is running a free web focus on the issue of open access to scientific literature. The current model of scientific publishing dates back to the seventeenth century and -- like the music industry -- is in serious danger of becoming irrelevant because of the rise of the internet. The main issue up for discussion is whether the author-pays/access-is-free model will supplant the author-pays-less/readers-pay-too model. "

12 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. as a scientist... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is something I always find bizarre. I support the rights of musicians to specify terms for the distribution of their work. Everybody gets paid, etc. But for science journals, the authors want the widest, freest distribution possible. The editors, reviewers, and authors are all unpaid--indeed the authors are often asked to pay. Why on earth do we still give journals the right to act as gatekeepers for our information, when they give us almost nothing (basically just a referral service) in return?

    1. Re:as a scientist... by blueZhift · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As an ex-physicist, I'd say that perhaps your argument is just what the journals are afraid of. Back in grad school, it was pretty obvious that the hottest research was being circulated via preprints and later via the web long before anything showed up in a printed journal. The only thing the journals really have left are their names. They may talk about the value of peer review, but as you point out, none of these reviewers are really paid employees, so they are largely independent of the journals.

      In the future, I'd expect to see federations of scientists reviewing and disseminating research results independently of the established journals. For the current gatekeepers, this would be a death knell.

      --
      To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
    2. Re:as a scientist... by GPLDAN · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why on earth do we still give journals the right to act as gatekeepers for our information, when they give us almost nothing (basically just a referral service) in return?

      Well, to try and answer honestly --- submissions editors add value. If one goes to the library and picks up the New England Journal of Medicine, you know that the articles in there fought to get in. Lots of sub-par research and writing was tossed or picked up by lesser journals. It serves as a kind of filter. If scientists just start setting up websites ad-hoc and there is no structure to papers being released, we end up with an Internet full of PDFs. What happens then, honestly, is corporate control of science. As somebody interested in say, stem-cell research, you maybe try Google to find papers, but somebody like Phizer may have it all neatly organized for you. Except it's just research by scientists paid by them, promoting their agenda.

      Science is at a interesting point in history. It's primacy as technological and economic weapon is unchallenged. But there is a growing anti-secularism on the rise, in the both the West with Christianity and the middle east with Islam. People are attempting to "flood the airwaves" with pseudo-science or straight up bullshit science. Social structures to create peer review and weed out crap must exist somehow.

    3. Re:as a scientist... by gowen · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Just why are you still giving the journals that power? Publish your information whatever way you see fit.
      Because its the best system yet defined to get your work out to a wide audience along with the message "In the opinion of knowledgeable people in this field, this work is probably not wrong." Sticking a PDF on the web does the former; we're nowhere near finding a better way to perform the latter.
      --
      Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
    4. Re:as a scientist... by hackstraw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The editors, reviewers, and authors are all unpaid

      I believe that editors get paid quite well, and they earn every penny, but yes, reviewers and authors are unpaid, it comes with the job of being a scientist.

      ... the authors want the widest, freest distribution possible ... Why on earth do we still give journals the right to act as gatekeepers for our information, when they give us almost nothing (basically just a referral service) in return

      Nothing is stopping scientists from simply throwing their articles on a website somewhere. I can't think of a wider more free distribution method.

      The reason that we give journals the right to act as gatekeepers is because we want them to do it. A scientist knows that there are journals that have higher respect in a field, and it looks good on scientists' vitas to have publications in peer reviewed journals, especially the more respected ones. The peer review is essential, and that is what costs money. Any bozo can throw something on a website. Journals have very strict standards for the format of the paper, and the methods used in the science. As far as who pays? Someone is paying the scientist and funding the research. I would guess that any costs associated with publishing the research is much less than 1% of research itself.

  2. Can it work? It does work! by Paul+Crowley · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In my field, cryptography, most recent papers are available online on the author's website. Those that aren't you can often get with a polite email to the author. I went from knowing nothing about the field to publishing cryptanalysis at conference almost entirely through what I've learned from downloaded papers - my "dead tree" cryptographic bookshelf is very minimal. Much of this learning was done without access to an academic library, and would have been impossible in an earlier era.

    It's a crime that so many papers are still being published under licences that do not allow their free accessibility on the Web. Scientists of the future will wonder how science was even possible without such access.

    --
    Xenu loves you!
  3. Open Online Journals by JamesD_UK · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Public Library of Science publishes the rather open, and rather lovely PLoS Biology Journal completely openly online.

  4. Re:Kind of ironic by danormsby · · Score: 5, Interesting
    To make it worse you don't get paid to get papers published there. The money goes to the journal not the paper submitters. You actually have to surrender your copyright to the journal on submission of the paper. Most journals actually expect academics to submit their papers for free, expect fellow academics to referee the papers for free and then charge the academics to view both other peoples papers and their own papers.

    I've got a bit of experience of this having a publication list of my own.

    Perversely after I've had papers accepted in journals I can't leave the PDFs of the papers on my web site as I don't own them anymore, the journals do.

    --
    Omnis amans amens
  5. Reviews and moderation by nodwick · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Funny that you should mention Slashdot, because there's a second issue that is being overlooked in this discussion that I think is even more important than cost, and that's moderation. IMO, the cost of my subscriptions (which currently cost me a few hundred bucks a year) is pretty negligible compared to the benefit of keeping me up to date on the newest research in the field. What's more important is that the publications themselves contain high-quality, useful material.

    The biggest challenge I find going through the technical literature today is information glut. If a publication or web site accepts just anyone's submissions, then it's going to be next to useless because it'll be so hard to dig out the gems from the chaff that it'll be totally useless. Imagine if you had to read through some of the bigger Slashdot discussions (1000+ comments) without the moderation system in place so that you at least have somewhere to start.

    Today, paper reviews that decide whether your paper gets admitted or not are typically seen by only ~3 reviewers. This leads to pretty big variance on the quality of reviews -- some reviewers just couldn't care less and rush through the reviews with non-committal comments, while more rarely there are others who'd prefer to suppress competing research. Poor papers may get in if they hit a few indifferent reviewers, and good papers may be bounced for similar reasons.

    I'd be curious about how well a public moderation system like Slashdot's would work in that context -- with more mods, review scores would be less vulnerable to manipulation by a small group of poor reviewers. That way, no one's work could be suppressed by negative reviewers, but the scoring system would help draw a reader's attention to the most popular articles.

    1. Re:Reviews and moderation by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The biggest challenge I find going through the technical literature today is information glut. If a publication or web site accepts just anyone's submissions, then it's going to be next to useless because it'll be so hard to dig out the gems from the chaff that it'll be totally useless.

      Agreed. I recently checked out Barnes & Noble and Borders for technical books. Once upon a time, I could find the books on OS Design, Algorithms, Cryptology, Data Compression, Sound Theory, Game Programming, etc. You know what I found instead? EJB for dummies, UNIX for Dummies 3rd edition, Beginners Guide to Linux, J2EE for Business, etc. Talk about dumbed down material. Half of this stuff is useless crap intended for people who won't read specs (or at least tutorials). They simply add "purdy picturz" to a minor amount of information and call it a book.

      Maybe it's just me, but you know what I got for an anniversary present from my wife? A book on calculating sounds (i.e. synthesis of sounds produced by real objects) in real time. My wife pulled it from my wish list on Amazon. THAT is something I want on my shelf. Right next to the processor specs from Intel and AMD, Practical File System Design with BeOS, OS Design by Tanenbaum, Introduction to Advanced Data Structures, Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus, etc, etc, etc.

      I don't even have a Masters degree. What the hell are the people who DO have one reading?

      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  6. Proactively Protect Lost Freedoms by Milo+Fungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just finished reading Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig's latest book. That was an interesting read, and I found it remarkably similar on some points to thoughts I've had on the subject lately.

    The last few chapters discuss ways that individuals and governments can and should act to preserve free culture and prevent the culture cartels from gaining more influence. He gives several examples of proactive efforts to preserve freedoms that were lost as technology developed. The Free Software movement was the first example, and Lessig explained how the GPL proactively protects freedom to derivitize, use, and distribute software. It has taken a couple of decades, but there is now a healthy and vibrant ecology in the copyleft commons of software.

    He then listed several examples of using ideas from the FSF copyleft commons to proactively protect freedom of non-software things. The Public Library of Science was discussed, as well as the Creative Commons. I remember reading the philosophy section of the GNU project website a few years ago and thinking, "You know, these guys are really on to something..." The ball is rolling, and with work and time we will have a free culture protected by copyleft, including art, literature, music, software, entertainment, and scientific discovery. This is not about communism. It's about FREEDOM, sweet FREEDOM.

  7. PLoS is on to something by joib · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think that PLoS might very well be the model for how things are done in the future, now that the internet has essentially reduced the distribution costs to zero.

    Peer review is as good as any traditional journal. In theory at least; my field is physics so I haven't actually read any articles in the PLoS journals.

    With the author pays model, the articles can be distributed around the world, without restrictions. This is a big thing, for poor countries as well as people who have graduated but still wan't to keep up with their field. And we don't see the perversity were researchers need to assign the copyright to the journal and then pay to read their own words!

    As PLoS is a non-profit, the per-page costs are not that big as there is no need to fatten the wallets of any shareholders. Hell, per-page costs for PLoS are lower than for many traditional for-profit journals! Additionally, researchers from poor countries are allowed to publish for free. This combined with the fact that they can get the articles for free, is about the best we can do to help the third world to increase their knowledge base.

    I wish all the success to PLoS and hope that the same concept will be increasingly popular in other scientific fields as well.