Slashdot Mirror
Science Journal Publishers Wary of Free Information
Billosaur writes "Nature.com is reporting that the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which includes the companies that publish scientific journals, is becoming concerned with the free-information movement. A meeting was arranged with PR professional Eric Dezenhall to discuss the problem. Dezenhall's firm has worked with the likes of ExxonMobil 'to criticize the environmental group Greenpeace', among other campaigns. The publishers are worried that the free exchange of scientific information may be bad for the bottom line, as it might cause the money from subscriptions to their journals to dry up. Among the recommendations: 'The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as "Public access equals government censorship". He hinted that the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review, and "paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles.' The AAP is trying to counter messages from groups such as the Public Library of Science (PLoS), an open-access publisher and prominent advocate of free access to information, or the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) PubMed Central."
an example of a prestigious journal published by a for-profit company? My impression is that for-profit journals only exist for the purpose of giving second-tier researchers a place to publish garbage. (All the prestigious journals in my field are published by the non-profit IEEE.)
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
There is already 'free exchange' of scientific information. The publishers already contribute to it. What they're really worried about is that people will publish in other media, especially where they don't have to pay (or not as much). They're just looking out for themselves. Publishers have to pay the bills and put their kids through college, too.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
Subscription-funded scientific journals will simply have to find alternatives to exclusivity of information.
A funded journal would still be the best way to get the relevant information all in one place; the problem with free information is that it can be difficult to sort through for specific information. Take all the information that is freely available, pick out the best of it, do some research of your own, and publish a work that goes above and beyond the free information.
That's what thousands of news organizations and non-science journals do every day.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Probably by the same reasoning that "opposition to government funding of science" equals "opposition to science".
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
They're trying to insinuate that public access means a thing must be funded by the government, and thus subject to state control. This is a silly false dichotomy of course, but such is the nature of propaganda.
The tax-payer pays for the research to be carried out. The research results are then given away to the publishers, who get other researchers to carry out quality control (at the tax-payers' expense). The publishers then sell it back to the researchers for a subscription that is paid by the tax-payer.
Quality control of the information collection is done by peer reviewers (who really do it for free), not by publishers, who only exist because it was necessary in the past for someone to organize all the communication, printing and distribution.
It is another example of "disintermediation" - cutting out the middle-man - as a result of the Internet. The publishers no longer add value.
What a silly comparison. In the original, one thing (open access) is compared to its opposite (government censorship), while in your phrasing two similar things ("opposition to government funding of science" and "opposition to science") are compared.
As the only context in which this minor distinction makes sense is that of stem-cell reseaerch, I'd say it is obvious you are trying to troll people who support stem cell research. There's nothing wrong with a good troll, but your post isn't that good.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
What? Last time I heard, you had to PAY to have your paper included in a journal, the opposite of what you describe.
Sounds to me more like the AAP is worried that a bunch of the publishers will go out of business in a world in which they have become irrelevant.
No great loss in my book. You shouldn't have to pay to publish science.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I predict that this PR campaign will blow up in their faces, big-time. Their target audience this time isn't the unwashed masses camped in front of the tee-vee; it's people who know how to think (and even do so from time to time). Hilarity will ensue as the big smack-down gains momentum.
are the same as all other publishers, only trying to protect their interests. And like the others, they distrust "free", and even more so the concept of self publishing that doesn't pass through their gates, just like the RIAA. If these gatekeepers want to insure their value, then they just have to prove that what they publish is more valuable or trustworthy than the self publisher. Interesting FUD they're putting out though.
What?
Maybe this kind of propoganda campaign might work for the masses (see death tax, global climate change, and Fox News), but I kind of doubt it'll work on the scientific community who by their very nature tend to question. The other nail against them is that from what I've heard, many scientists don't like the high fees they have to pay for publishing in journals, so there's not exactly a friendly trusting relationship between the two.
Instead of trying to trick people into thinking that free access to information is somehow "bad", maybe they should be emphasizing the things they do provide? I'm not expert on the scientific journals, but I thought one of the things they provided was seperating out the complete junk from legit research. A filter of sorts. Do they currently offer help in editing scientific papers? If not, maybe they should? The question the industry should be asking itself is "What do we provide beyond actually printing and sending out paper?" Previously they've been able to take advantage of controlling distribution, since printing and distribution of information was relatively difficult. Now it's obviously trivial and extremely inexpensive.
It seems to me that free access to scientific information is a reality. Both the people who create the information (the scientists) and the people who read it (mostly scientists) want it to be freely available. Trying to fight it rather than adapt to it is a path towards bankruptcy.
AccountKiller
Oh yes, the American way. Information that's vital for you: either pay for it, or die.
Money is a promise from society to do something for the person that holds it.
If someone learns or discovers something that saves lives, I say they deserve more than just "hey, thanks" back from society.
This is just more old media vs new media hoohah. Don't confuse peer review with public access. You've been dragged in by the spinmeisters described in the article.
I was only in the academic world for a couple of years, and helped peer review a couple papers for a professor of mine. In my smallish field (transportation operations research) there was no market for "vanity" journals like there are in some fields.
Maybe some fields are more politically charged than others, mine was certainly not one subject to popular controversy. If you want real "democracy", bear in mind that a significant percentage of the US population believes that the Earth was created 6000 years ago.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Most major advances in science have come from government funding, either basic research which private companies never do because no one can say whether basic research will ever turn a profit, let alone when it might or how much; or through military research. But you are free to have your opinion, attempt to convince others, and even attempt to get the laws changed.
Until that point, thankfully, freeloaders are forced to help pay for all the benefits they accrue (Such as the use of the Internet) through government funding of science. I love the fact that we have a system in which the selfish can not wriggle out of their share of the responsibility that comes with being a member of an interdependent civilized society. I hesitate to even speculate what kind of shithole we'd be living in if the selfish and ego oriented weren't such a minority compared to the cooperative types of the world.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You can't really judge research when it is done; this is why people tend to receive Nobel Prizes for research they did decades earlier. Your peers are also your competitors, and it's not in their interests to promote good research that produces different conclusions to their own. No paper, no matter how wrong it appears to its reviewers, should ever be denied publication now that publication online costs nothing. Instead, the journals should add value by highlighting the papers that represent the current views of the research community, and also those that were important in forming these views.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If they provide a service of value, people will pay for it.
I think they provide a service of value. Publishers of these journals provide the service of reviewing articles and providing a means to have articles reviewed. IMHO, that is a value that I think many are willing to pay for. They need to push that value to subscribers.
On the other end, people fund researchers to do work. Those same people should also be interested that the research is high quality. The way to ensure that is through journals. Thus, funders of research should also be interested in funding journals (unless they want to keep it secret--a big caveat).
It may just be that the publishers need to look at their model for doing business.
br/
OK, let's be honest here. The reason we do it is not merely for that "simple satisfaction" (although there is some of that). If you're possibly going to be looking for a job in the near future, you need to be published - often and recently. If you're trying to get tenure, you need to be published. If you've got tenure, then, well, you don't need to be published, but it certainly helps your bargaining position if you're looking for pay increases, etc.
Still, it's a racket.Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
When America was "god fearing", black people were lynched, homosexuals could be murdered without reprisal, spousal abuse was accepted as a matter of course, innocent people were burned as witches, slavery was tolerated, there was a civil war, women who were raped and became pregnant as a result were ostracized DESPITE HAVING DONE NOTHING WRONG, single mothers were the most reviled form of live on the entire planet, etc.
Sorry, no sale. Everything in the past was ghastly and horrible. A small minority lived lives of comfort, but most people suffered tremendously. Today, thanks to the elimination of fairy tales from the public consciousness, millions and millions of people have rights and freedoms that they would have been denied in any previous age. Millions of people get treated with basic Human dignity, who would been have treated like lepers in the age of Christianity and the hate-mongering that has ALWAYS (without exception) accompanied it.
Today, we don't have murderous inquisitions, we don't have witch burnings, homosexuals aren't murdered (other than in the ultra-religious south), blacks aren't hung for vaguely resembling a mistranslation of some gibberish in the book Genesis, single mothers receive at least a bit of support from the community (atheists, unlike Christians, believe that children deserve to live no matter who their parents are or aren't; before you disagree, note that the bible is VERY clear that children are damned for seven generations if their parents sin, and deserve to die if they are bastards; there isn't any ambiguity in the old testament on the subject at all).
To quote a wiseman of the modern age:
"People laughed at David Koresh for claiming to be the second coming of Christ. I laugh at Christians for worshipping the first coming of David Koresh." -- NegativePositive.
> However, the way science is being taught in public schools today essentially teaches that there is no Creator.
Nor a Santa Claus or Easter Bunny.
Are we to quit teaching the truth because it does not support someone's traditional beliefs?
If so, who gets to decide which beliefs are sacrosanct and which are dismissable?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade