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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."
Oh yes, the American way. Information that's vital for you: either pay for it, or die.
Now seriously, come on! those "scientific" papers, I didn't know they made MILLIONS a year out of subscriptions (that's what research costs, millions if not billions). Maybe I'm in the wrong business?
"Public access equals government censorship"
I've been parsing that for a few minutes and it doesn't make sense. How would open access equate to some sort of closed access?
Trolling is a art,
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.
Once you've been in academia or the research world for a couple of decades, you'll truly understand how little peer review often means. In many respects, it's a popularity contest no different than that one would see between high school kids.
Those researchers and academics who are most outspoken and sure they are correct end up being considered as such. As long as you consistently deny that you're wrong and insist that you're correct, many fellow researchers and academics will believe you, even if you're completely full of shit. When such people are the peers reviewing your work, it's basically pointless to go through with the whole process. Shitty peer-reviewed literature is still shit.
"Public access equals government censorship". This is a quote destin to inflame the /. community.
kinda like this sig... Vista Help Forum
Windows Vista Help Forum
I don't know anything about that, but I do understand that we've always been at war with Eurasia.
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.
So efforts to promote science to the general public by making the product of science available for the general public (improving scientific education, etc) are "government censorship" while locking things in overproced journals (Acta Chemica has a $1300/year price tag) is not? They look more and more like the RIAA every day.
Publishing is fundamentally a service industry. What the publishers provide is some task (e.g. binding copies to dead-tree format) that is difficult. With the advent of the interweb many of these tasks (e.g. shipping copies around the world) have become much easier. There is still a market for publishers of science and music (e.g. Special editions, bound works, and stuff that is "better than free") but rather than chase those niches the publishers have chosen to attack their own readers and authors.
This is especially hilarious when you consider the difference. Odd as it may seem, compared to this group, at least the RIAA has some leg to stand on. The RIAA is trading stuff that is typically not shared wheras the entire process of science is based upon sharing things freely and widely. That is how everything works from peer review to the spurring of new developments. At least the RIAA hires their music editors and producers while most editors of scientific journals are paid by their home universities and do this task for free in order to spur the exchange of information. Similarly most musicians are paid by the music producers while most authors of scientific papers are not paid by the publishers in any way rather its the other way around because the authors have to pay for subscriptions to read their own work.
This excange starts to look less and less fair all the time. Especially since more and more people are seeking out papers online rather than in the dead-tree forms.
Viva XXX and PLOS.
I predict that this PR campaign will blow up in their faces, big-time. Their target audience this time isn't the unwashed masses camped in front of the tee-vee; it's people who know how to think (and even do so from time to time). Hilarity will ensue as the big smack-down gains momentum.
You know the drill:
while(!$goodthink)
{
print "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH\n";
print "WAR IS PEACE \n";
print "LOVE IS HATE\n";
print "Public access equals government censorship\n";
checkGoodthink();
}
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
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
Complete rubbish. Physics has had preprint servers like arxiv for 15 years now, and the American Physical Society (APS) found NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that subscriptions were drying up because of arxiv. APS publishes a large number of journals at that. I can find things much easier through arxiv but if I'm going to cite something then its going to be peer reviewed. APS actually felt that preprint servers helped so setup one with Brookhaven, and link to a number of their own webpage. Their attrition rate has remained very constant over the same time period and probably has more to do with shrinking funds. The preprint servers help us. Our group put out a couple of papers recently and we got some constructive feedback from people reading the preprints of astro-ph - and some of the points mentioned the referee didn't catch. Its a stronger paper as a result. The preprint servers are also frequently much easier to search for current literature than the journals sites. They have their problems - theres a good number of completely crazy papers on them and its sort of annoying to sift through them - look for submitted to/accepted for publication in the comment field. In short they are great for easy information access and the journals are great for enforcing quality control. The public access to information is an added bonus. Yes, open access to scientific journals AND data should be mandatory. The journals won't die because they do still provide a valuable service in peer-review.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Peer review may be of little value for articles by people who are stars of their field, but that is just a tiny fraction of the articles submitted for publishing. For the rest, peer review filters out incredible amounts of junk (I *have* seen the rejections), and improve the rest significantly (that is called "accepted with major/minor revisions").
[ I have been in "academia" for two decades. ]
I'm kind of surprised to see an article calling attention to an upcoming FUD campaign by the traditional publishers, in a traditionally published journal.
Pleasantly surprised, but still it seems to me that there is an interesting story hidden there.
"The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as "Public access equals government censorship."
Simple sound bites are used because people respond. Most people don't want to take the effort to absorb anything more complicated. God knows we wouldn't want to have to think for ourselves.
And have you ever noticed that the sound bites don't even have to be true? "Public access equals government censorship." "The war in Iraq is a war on terrorism." "The jury is out on global warming."
I've also noted that if you dig deep enough you find that it's all about money and power.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Here is a directory of open access journals. One of the requirements for inclusion is "Quality control: for a journal to be included it should exercise quality control on submitted papers through an editor, editorial board and/or a peer-review system."
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
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?
It's true that if the publishers of scientific journals offered their information for free that a substantial amount of their revenue would dry up. However, not everyone would stop buying the hard copy. I'm sure that many libraries for prestigious universities would still buy the hard copy. For the average student or scientist, however, we could care less about the hard copy (it just takes up shelf space). We just want the information.
Furthermore, they could alter their business model by charging a flat fee per submission. After all that is the true value added that they provide: the peer-review system which filters out articles that lack scientific merit and forces researchers to really do their homework. Even a submissions fee of $1,000 is a small amount when compared to the overall budget of a multi-year scientific research project. Of course academic fields with smaller budgets may have to find other business models, but what else is new.
The world changes. Either you can be innovative and survive. Or you can use scare tactics to try to prolong the death of your dying business model.
The point here is that there are money-grubbing scientists. It's not just the Republicans any more.
I'm telling you, the quicker the entire Intellectual Property system goes topsy-turvy, the better. There was a watershed moment, sometime in the last few decades, when copyright, patents, the whole schmear, started working against it's initial purpose - to encourage innovation and creativity. Now, you write a good song and you hope it gets used in a movie and a commercial and you're set for life. How does that make you more creative?
I made my living from the IP system until some years ago, when I noticed the first time I lost revenue because of the copying and sharing of my work without my permission. After an initial few hours of outrage, the part of me that got into this whole business to be creative started to realize "Of COURSE people want to share it and copy it. It's entire value is in it's dissemination. It's what's SUPPOSED to happen."
Then, I went to work to reevaluate how I charged for my ideas and to come up with a way that's not based on commoditizing or objectifying my creativity, but just the opposite: Embracing the fact that these things are ephemeral. They are MEANT to be shared, copied, live a life and then go into an archive, maybe to be found again and maybe not. I don't need to collect a toll every time someone uses what I make, and I don't need to squeeze every last cent.
The final piece of the puzzle for me is figuring out a way to identify my work as my own, not to prevent copying, but to prevent someone else saying they made it. Unless that's part of the deal, that is. Digital Watermarking is still too expensive for a small-market individual like me and there are still some questions about signatures. I read an article about how The Aphex Twin hid his own face in a graphical display of his music. That fascinated me and I'm always bugging the math folk in my little world about these things. An answer will come. I just hope it's Open Source, or at least reasonable.
Reasonableness. I guess that's the solution, no?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The publishers' real problem is not free journals, but rather libraries trying to stop paying the publishers' vastly increased charges. "Free journals" is merely the latest library tactic.
Many librarians and researchers didn't start out caring about the principle of free journals. The publishers' greed forced it on them. Even major research libraries are cancelling subscriptions. The libraries are doing that because the journal prices have been increasing so fast. First the libraries tried switching from paper copies to online subscriptions. So the publishers raised the online prices. Further, the publishers bundled many journals together so that libraries could not cancel the least used titles. The libraries try to form consortia to share subscriptions, but the publishers' license terms stop that.
Even "free" journals cost someone money. PLOS is quite expensive to publish in. Their model is charging the author not the reader.
One factor driving rising journal prices is the increased concentration as big publishers like Elsevier buy their competitors. Some years ago, Elsevier stated their business model as, approximately, serving assistant profs trying to get tenure. In 2005, their profit was 655 million euros on income of 2097 million euros ( http://www.reed-elsevier.com/ ) That's not a bad profit margin.
Journals are priced like drugs, at what the market is perceived to bear. That can be up to $2/page (w/o even any color) ( http://www.ams.org/membership/journal-survey.html )
Journals are obsolete. They're slow to publish, rarely have color, don't have videos, etc. We academics publish in them because administrators use them to judge us. However, when we need something, we search the web, not the libraries. I put my own research first on the web, so that people can find it. Later I write papers.
Finally, to respond to the comment that publicly funded work should be free: That would be nice, but there's a US law giving universities ownership in discoveries resulting from NSF-funded research. What do other countries do?
I'm opposed to this simply because I view it as an arguement to essentially dismantle peer review by flooding it with disinformation.
As the article mentions, there are many organizations that don't like scientific information having consensus and respect.
This is very clear by:
1. The Forced ShutDown of EPA Libraries
2. Scrapping the funding of the NASA earth program
3. Censoring of the US Geological Survey
_
Whats more,
The article mentions this guy is from an Exxon PR firm.
A group which stands the most to gain from disinformation.
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