Slashdot Mirror
Royal Society Wants to Keep Science off Web
truckaxle writes "Britain's national academy of science, The Royal Society, which publishes one of the world's oldest journals, Philosophical Transactions, has joined the debate of the publishing of scientific publications on the internet. In a article by the Guardian a spokesman for the Royal Society was quoted as saying: 'We think it conceivable that the journals in some disciplines might suffer. Why would you pay to subscribe to a journal if the papers appear free of charge?' They believe that internet publishing would harm the exchange of knowledge between researchers."
Exchange of ideas or exchange of currency? I'm not really sure which one they don't want hurt.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Yup, knowledge is only true and valuable when you pay lots of money for it and distribute it to a limited group. Everyone knows that. After all, that's how it's always been. Can't change that now, can we? Heaven forbid the chaos that would ensue if there were a peer reviewed, moderated system like Slashdot to replace our sacred institutions.
(Oh, and yes, some publishers making a good living might lose their monopoly gravy train in the process.)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
and the information poor get poorer.
They surely can't say that having the information for free prevents it from being exchanged? This is just another *ancient* business model being threatened by the internet.
As a physicist, I depend on the journals and as a matter of fact, I rarely read the bound versions. More often, I use a web service, such as Web Of Science, to search for interesting papers, print the ps files, and read those. As far as making the journals available free on the web? Nah, don't bother, since just about everyone who has a need for journal access already has it either through their employment, university, or library.
You're obsolete. :-)
... (glances at Microsoft)].
It's really quite simple. Adapt or die [well the other alternative is to use your undue influence to make your approach last longer than it naturally would otherwise
How any academic could think that the wide spread distribution of information could HURT academia is beyond me. Me thinks they have other issues on the mind [namely $$$ and power]. Given I've never read anything from their journal [nor consider myself an academic] I can't say I'd miss them if they disappeared. I get enough free shit [decent quality] from citeseer and eprint.iacr.org
The dude has one point though. Random acceptance [or blind] of papers can lead to some low quality material. Once in a while on eprint there are some really lack lustre crypto papers but quite a few are well written and interesting. And they are the sort of things that close minded expensive conference tours (...looking at the IACR conferences...) routinely rejected.
That said though, I've seen some REALLY POOR peer reviewed talks at conferences. Like the Indian students who presented on highly hardware optimized multivariate boolean equations at a SOFTWARE conference. Their talk was so horibly presented as to make me wish I had literally died at the time. Then there were the talks on one time pads at Crypto'03, etc, etc, etc.
Point is, quality material is subjective. The more open your publication is to peer review the more likely you will see quality material. The more close minded and aloof your publication is the less likely you will have insightful or interesting material to publish.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
It's the way of the Net. The middleman gets cut out, because the producers of real content have found a way to reach audiences without paying a tax to an editor or board. That doesn't mean it isn't a good thing. With scientific papers available on the Net it will no longer be necessary to obtaom journal subscriptions or access to far-away university libraries in order to research a given topic.
This is the spread of free knowledge we're seeing, and I expect it to keep going. After all, information, debate and the freedom of ideas are what science is all about!
It is clear that academic papers should be freely available on the net as long as the researchers' employers are agreeable to that. I don't think journals should get a say.
Prolog rules
Whilst this may have some relevance I still feel that both the internet and journals can have a place in society. People are much more likely to trust a paper published in an old, established journal than on some site they find on the internet, no matter how "reputable", especially if they are not used to the internet and its many delights. While the internet can be used for publishing discoveries quickly, and perhaps publishing discoveries which the journals may not publish, the journals will still publish the most important ones, and as such will still be bought, and will still survive.
harm the exchange of knowledge between researchers
Wait, so having it in a easier form to obtain and be searched would harm the exchange of knowledge? Well here is a easily solution for you: Pay the same amount (or less since no paper) so you can read the same stuff online.
These guys sound like they think there's a way to stop it. Short of their fellow scientists organizing a formal shunning of research data that's web-published, what could actually prevent a researcher from putting his/her results on the web? Particularly if they get turned down by the journals? If I had devoted a lot of time and effort to some research and couldn't get a journal to publish it, you can bet that I'd publish it in web form rather than just let it rot.
Wait until the offline generations enter retirement. They're not as much Luddites as unwilling to invest the effort to learn to use a new system.
All rites reversed 2010
so they ask:
Why would you pay to subscribe to a journal if the papers appear free of charge?
As a publishing scientist, I would venture another question: "Why should I publish in a journal that is not freely available? Why would I pick a journal that limits its readership?"
Science is produced (by and large) by scientists using public funds. It makes no sense that the results of this research become locked away and unavailable to the public. Scientific results should be available to the public, free of charge. The fact that this also helps foster international collaborations, makes science overall more effective, and levels the playing field between rich and poor nations is also a good thing.
Alternate funding models for the journals and publishers are being pursued. For instance, when a scientist publishes a paper, he could pay a fee to cover administrative costs. Then the article appears online, free to all. Some journals have already implemented such systems. It seems to work fine. At the end of the day, it's always the same people paying (universities and scientists pay for it, using public funds).
So to answer the question "Why would you pay to subscribe to a journal if the papers appear free of charge?" Just like now, the public will pay for the journals to operate. However, the public should be allowed access to that which they are funding.
They're not saying they're against free information flow. They are saying that for them it will have a significant impact on the scope of their activities.
Pure FUD.
The only thing being threatened is the business model of the journal publishers. Their enterprise was a necessary expense in the age of dead trees, but those days are gone. If online publication makes the free exchange of knowledge between researchers possible, that's a good thing!
But there is a reason for reverence for peer review - as a procedure, it weeds out a lot of bullshit. There are many scandals - but far more successes (the entirety of biology, from the sometime in the early 20th century to the present.) I'm a biologist, so I cannot speak with confidence on the impact in other disciplines, or where the corresponding institutions of peer review may lie on the continuum between old boys network and tireless defenders of the scientific method, for other journals in other disciplines. In Biology, in spite of some failings, the record is overall very good.
The comments by the royal society are nakedly self serving. The fear at the royal society is that organizations like the Public Library of Science will sideline them. This will only happen if organizations like PLoS can maintain the same quality of peer review as the Royal Society (I will assert - so far they are doing better) without charging money. The implicit claim, that free journals deliver a lower quality of review, does not stand up to even cursory examination. I will say (and this is a subjective assertion on my part) that PLoS actually provides a better grade of peer review, and that a system where professional editors preside over large budgets and a permanent base of prestige breeds the sort of cronyism and corruption that the parent post is (legitimately) concerned about.
From a moral standpoint, of COURSE research done at public expense should be freely available to everyone, now that the technology exists to easily do so. In sum: if the royal society doesn't want to adapt to a modern era where real publication costs approach zero, let them be sidelined.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
DISCOVERED CURE TO CANCER (-1 redundant)
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
(Note: I'm a publishing academic, so you may consider me to be biased to support the current system or to hate it.)
Some reviewers are good, some are bad. Peer review is not perfect, but when I compare it to how things get done in alot of other areas, I'm amazed at how good it is. The journals take the anonymity very seriously, which is a good thing. Yes, anonymous reviews may enable bias, but they also enable honesty. A good editor can differentiate between insightful reviews and biases, and make the right call (yes, editors can have biases also). Peer review has many good features.
As to how long it takes for the review process... well it's getting much faster than it used to be. With online submission, emailing of PDFs, and so on, a review can take as little as a month (compared to snail mail days, where a year was more typical). Many journals will release articles online as soon as they are approved, months in advance of the paper copies. High profile journals keep amazingly tight schedules. From submission to appearing online can be only a few weeks. That's pretty fast. Not all journals are that good, mind you.
Can the system be improved? Absolutely. Will the web play a crucial role? I think so. Having the peer reviews be online, and allowing the authors of the paper to respond to comments (in an anonymous and regulated slashdot-like way, perhaps)... or even allowing the various reviewers to exchange comments with each other (again, anonymously) would make the current system just that much faster and more robust. Also, there is no reason why the reviewers comments (and author's rebuttals) could not be added to the online version of the paper (under "supplementary material" or whatever).
What we need to do is come up with better systems without ignoring the good aspects of current peer review.
Slashdot moderation bears very little resemblance to peer review.
Imagine that every slashdot comment got at least three moderations, and that each moderation involved not only a score but a written justification for the score, along with editing comments and questions for clarification.
Also imagine that you were expected to be a good moderator in exchange for the privilege of posting comments. And imagine that people's careers (including yours) hinged on timely and thoughtful reviews.
In reality, Slashdot moderation is much more like a popularity contest than a review. And items that have already been modded up are most likely to get further moderations, which is inherently unfair: the loudest voices are the ones that are most likely to get louder.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Vested interest.
internet publishing would harm the exchange of knowledge
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Ha! Harm? Why do they think that the Internet was invented? (Okay, so it wasn't invented, technically, but you get the idea) For the purpose of making information widely available! Why only publish in journals, which you have to subscribe to? What if you don't live near where the journal is published? Why should you miss out? Why do they think it will harm exchange of knowledge? People often go around the world in the name of science--with the Internet, their findings can be reported almost instantly! In fact, getting information between scientists, other scientists, and the public would happen faster than ever!
The Internet is here for this purpose--use it!
I believe that the scientific Journal has outlived its usefulness, and will be replaced by ... Slashdot!
I seriously doubt that. I think the more likely future is online-only Journals. IEEE conferences are certainly moving in this direction, though they require paid access to their site. IMO the best open journal at the moment is the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. They have free access to all papers online and keep their costs low.
But seriously, reviewers are biased and sloppy, as are the editors.
I'm sorry, are you describing Slashdot or journals?
The fact that reviews are blind means that they are also unaccountable, which fosters even more bias.
If your research can't stand up to what people might say behind your back, then maybe you ought to support it better.
Journals take months or years to respond to a submision, and often as not they respond with a rejection so the submitter has to give up or start the whole process over with another journal.
Timliness is a problem, but reviewers are human; It takes a while to find the time to do a journal review. There are many other options than outright rejection; In fact at least within computer science, "revise and resubmit" is a popular option. You have to fix what's wrong, and it will get reviewed again. I think that's pretty reasonable.
Now, if your work is completely out of left field, it will get rejected. If you didn't take the time to think something through clearly AND understand what others have already done in your area, then you are simply wasting the reviewers time.
There are so many scandals that one could quote.
Interestingly, you don't give any examples or a reference. Maybe there really aren't that many scandals. Also, there are plently of journals to choose from, so find one that hasn't had a major scandal.
The whole process seems more designed to support the status quo than to promote knowledge.
It's run by a community, and pretty much everything run by a community works that way. You seem to be confused about the roles in this process. It is your job as author to convince the reviewers that you are right, it's not their job to automatically recognize your genius when you don't make enough of an effort to present it.
I have discussed this with many people in academia and they react not with logic, but with horror that I would dare to question a system that they view almost mystical reverence.
Well, maybe that's because you advocate complete removal of a system that failed to serve you, but serves a lot of researchers just fine. Instead of thowing out the baby with the bathwater, why not help journals like JAIR which fix only what's broken in the system, and try to keep the good parts. If you submit to such journals, and reivew in fields what you are well versed in, these journals will quickly rise to prominence. There's no monopoly here; The system can be fixed with competition.
Of course Internet publishing would harm the exchange of knowledge between researchers. Any way to distribute information that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars a year per subscription would harm the exchange of knowledge, as anyone drawing a paycheck from this out of date and over priced industry well knows.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to hold up Slashdot as some kind of a model, but some aspects of the system are definitely worth looking at. The idea of reviewing the reviewers is a good one.
I've repeatedly had to deal with hostile reviewers who, when they didn't have any evidence or logic to back up their claims, resort to rhetoric, sarcasm, illogical arguments, inaccurate facts, and the nitpicking of typos. I've also had some good reviewers who have pointed out legitimate flaws in my work and made useful suggestions on how to improve it, and really helped me improve my papers. There ought to be some way to discourage the first and reward the second, but the system of anonymous reviewers means you're pretty much unaccountable for what you say. How, is the question.
The system can work wonders on a paper, I'll admit. But it's also given too much importance. The Origin of Species is one of the most important and influential books in human history, and it remains the single most important book in evolutionary biology. Yet it wasn't peer reviewed, and I seriously wonder how well Darwin's theory would have fared if he had been subjected to peer review.
You make some good points. However, I don't agree with this:
Answer: because a printed copy is easier to read as a reference document. Ever try to cut and paste a reference on your computer screen into a actual research notebook?
Well that's not what happens in real life. I know of exactly one professor and zero graduate students that would ever do that. It is much, much easier to print off a single page of a PDF than to go to the library and photocopy the required page.
It still has a cost associated with it in terms of printing supplies, long-term storage media (CDs, DVDs, paper, etc.) and most important to some scientists--time.
Actually it can easily be argued that printing papers from the internet saves ressources compared to paper copies. About 5-6 years ago, we used to get the print versions of some key journals. However once the journals were online it was obvious how silly the print version was. I would only read, at most, 20% of the articles in a given issue. I would only want to keep a few of those. It is more economical to print the few articles I really want, rather than to have a print version with hundreds of pages that I will never even read. Speaking of time, the internet articles were available months before the print versions. That's a huge savings of time and paper.
Could I go get the electronic copy of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation magazine? Sure, since my university subscribes to the IEEE Xplore electronic depository. Is it easier for me to grab a copy off the bookshelf withing arm's reach? Without a doubt.
Again, that's not what I've observed in my lab and others. Inevitably, a lab will only have a few journals. What's the chance that the paper you need today happens to be in a journal you subscribe to? With thousands of journals out there, the chance is low. I read articles from at least a hundred different sources. Not all those journals can be close at hand in paper form. However, with the net they are all close at hand (especially with the usage of DOIs, it's very fast to get the article you want).
Again, I'm not trying to be mean or argumentative. I'm just saying that having journals online has completely changed the way I interact with the literature... it's a highly positive change.
In recent years things have changed a bit, and several publishers now allow an author to release a version of his paper on the web, but it cannot be the same version as the journal version, and they pressure the author in releasing it at least one year after the original publication.
It depends on the scientific discipline how many papers you will find republished on the web. For computer science, I estimate it is about 25%, which is quite high. The more recent the paper and the younger the researcher, the higher the chance you'll find it on the web. So I think that in a few years, most of recent computer science papers are available online.
Wasn't the web invented in the first place by scientists so they could more easily share information?
Sounds like \. already is a technical journal then, just with the addition of review the reviewers and humor, both good and bad, mostly bad, because all the good and bad you mention also occurs on \.
Hostile reviewers, check
No evidence or logic to back up their claims, often: check
Reviewers resorting to rhetoric, sarcasm, illogical arguments, inaccurate facts, and the nitpicking of typos: check, check and check.
Anonymous reviewers: check, though many are not
Good reviewers: Check, though they are often the minority.
So \. does appear to be very similar, and in some ways better
Our founding fathers removed the guys in charge. Be American. Vote incumbents out.
The internet is the great leveler. As more services appears and more info, it will be easier for poor countries to come on board. But if you have a current monopoly AND wish to maintain it, then you must limit who has access to the information. So yes, the request makes total sense.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The one time I faced a hostile referee, I presented my case to the editor. He sent my arguments and the referee's to yet another referee, who saw them as the crap they were. So, my paper was accepted and published.
I am pretty sure the original referee will not be asked to review papers any time soon. And, since number of reviewed papers count as measure of the impact of your research, even an anonymous referee will face some form of accountability.
On the other hand, since the astronomical community is smaller than other science specialities, I do not know how representative is my experience.
First off, most exchange of information leading up to the publication is electronic anyway. So why NOT publish electronically? After a paper is published, the original article should never be tampered with, though corrections can be indicated. The authors paper, right or wrong, needs to be preserved.
However, due to demands for speed in publishing breakthrough science, peer REVIEW suffers. Except for the journal Organic Synthesis, no other journals require peers to replicate the procedure/results of a paper. So quality suffers.
A journal could institute peer POSTVIEW, by which scientists who attempt to replicate the science can support or detract the original claims. Perhaps then scientists will include more (and more accurate) details of their work. And the postviews will keep the scientists honest.
On an unrelated note, I was always bothered that journals retained copyright over the hard work of the scientists. We need good OPEN SOURCE journals.
Be heard || Be herd
Imagine if Darwin had submitted the Origin of Species to Slashdot, which presumably at the time would have generally accepted some sort of intelligent design theory (I'm sure someone will argue with this, but just accept it for the sake of argument). I suspect in this sort of environment the Origin of Species would have been met with arguments similar to those against intelligent design today.
I suspect slashdot peer reviewing would encourage research that agrees with the prevailing ideas. This is probably good overall, but many of the most important scientific breakthroughs have been in direct contrast to the widespread beliefs of the time, and it would be a shame to see these modded down just because they didn't agree with everyone else.
If you want to say "As dead tree format publishers, we think that Internet publishing hurts dead tree format publishing and therefore internet publishing should be stopped," that's fine. Don't try and feed us some bullshit about how the Internet (whose one and only purpose for existance is information exchange) will hurt information exchange. Just just come out and say it: "We hate the fact that the Internet makes us redundant. Someone prop up our business model for us!"