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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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.
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.
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!"