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."

Comments

I'm lost.

[grub]

"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?

Re:I'm lost.

[zCyl]

"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?

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.

Re:I'm lost.

[TheRaven64]

If you're publishing in a journal which doesn't pay you to publish in it, then you're getting your money from elsewhere, which often means government grants. Are there any peer-reviewed journals that pay authors? I have had things in peer-reviewd journals, and things published in non-academic publications. Anything published in the second category, I have been paid for. Anything published in a peer-reviewed academic journal or conference, however, I have only been paid in reputation for, and in some cases authors are charged for having their work published (sometimes indirectly; conferences will only publish your work in their proceedings if you turn up to present it, and pay the conference fees).

Re:I'm lost.

[be-fan]

Seriously. How often do you encounter people in science who oppose the government being in science? It's exceedingly rare, for the simple reason that scientists realize that science is expensive and risky, and private industry often can't stomach it. There are even economic theories that show why government spending in research is necessary, based on the concept of "public goods", which benefit everyone but which are hard to get specific payment for.

Can anyone point out

[s20451]

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.)

Re:Can anyone point out

[NorbrookC]

an example of a prestigious journal published by a for-profit company?

Well, you might start here for a start on one publisher. Quite a number of them are the "prestige" journals in their field, and are in those cases at least, stringently peer-reviewed.

What you not know is that these articles are subject to a publication fee. So, it's actually a multi-profit system for them. They get money from the researchers, and they get money from subscriptions.

What this is, is simply a new variation on the theme we've been through with RIAA, MPAA, and others. "OMG!!! Our profits are in danger from this Internet thing! We must DO something!" From a researcher's standpoint, it actually is a better thing if they don't have to deal with the for-profit publishers. They get their work out to the community, and they don't have to pay "reprint charges," etc. It works for other researchers and libraries, since they're not shelling out several hundred dollars each for subscriptions, and the works are easily searchable. So, of course the publishers are panicking! Their gravy train is threatened! It's FUD time!

Re:Can anyone point out

[bzipitidoo]

The whole of scientific publishing is a big racket. If you stay away from dead trees, publishing a journal is shockingly inexpensive. Peer review is customarily done for free. When journals are printed up, they are sold at prices that almost guarantee a fat profit for the printer and publisher. If ever you pony up $10 or whatever ludicrous price a publisher asks for some 10 page journal article, know that the authors get precisely 0% of that money. As if that isn't bad enough, organizers hold a conference somewhere like at a ski resort which gives them a cut rate but socks it to the attendees, among whom are pretty much all the authors whose work was accepted. The attendees can almost always pass those costs on their patrons, but for those who don't have such support....

Authors get very little. All the authors get directly is bragging rights. The indirect compensation, only given out to "the best", is of course the tenured university teaching and research position, which is also the gateway to grant money. Sucks for researchers who haven't managed to get into that system. Also sucks for those researchers whom their patron (usually the government) cuts, especially when it's not for good reasons like their research is of poor quality but for political reasons. Someone even suggested that authors should _pay_ to have their work published! Well, scientists who aren't backed by a patron do have to pay. The RIAA cries about starving artists, but starving scientists, especially if their work is not what grant givers want to hear or believe, get treatment as bad or worse as the worst ever dished out to artists.

So work with it rather than fight it...

[PFI_Optix]

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.

Pay attention!

[Shabazz Rabbinowitz]

I don't know anything about that, but I do understand that we've always been at war with Eurasia.

Re:Pay attention!

[Vengeance]

Absolutely correct: We and our Eurasian allies have always been at war against Eastasia.

Shooting themselves in the foot..

[Vellmont]

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.

Open Access helps and wont kill journals

[gsn]

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.

Re:Oh yes,

[AoT]

Authors?

In scientific journals?

Paid?

Man, I wish I lived in that magical world.

Re:Peer review means little.

[TheRaven64]

I think the real problem is that peer review happens before publication, not after. In an ideal world, you would publish everything. Feynman said that if you only publish your successes then you are cheating the research community, and I agree. I have learned a great deal by looking at failed research and seeing that they came close to the right answer, but couldn't see it because they were too close to the problem.

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.

Re:Oh yes,

[posterlogo]

Absolutely not.

There is no monetary payment whatsover. The costs associated with publishing are typically paid for by advertising, and some journals with lower circulations may charge page costs as well. The authors never get payed royalties or anything for journal articles. It's an amazing thing really -- putting all your work out there for review (essentially before AND after publication), for the simple satisfaction that you have made a contribution to the knowledgebase. If your conclusions are erroneous, the community will figure it out eventually, and if your contributions are right on, you will be remembered as someone who had a positive impact on the field (you may even get rewarded). Scientists in academia are generally not the richest people in the world.

Paying your dues

[benhocking]

It's an amazing thing really -- putting all your work out there for review (essentially before AND after publication), for the simple satisfaction that you have made a contribution to the knowledgebase.

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.

You bet

[PopeRatzo]

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?

Re:You bet

[Idarubicin]

The point here is that there are money-grubbing scientists.

You're kidding, right? The scientists who do the research and write the papers receive no financial compensation from the journals whatsoever. Often, those scientists pay part of the cost of publication in the form of page or colour charges. The scientists who peer review the work work for free as well. It's seen as something that they owe to the rest of the community.

The journal publishers are the ones who make the money. They charge libraries and scientists for subscriptions, and they charge the authors to publish. Granted, they provide services; typesetting and layout and editing and distribution aren't free. But don't mistake money-grubbing publishing companies for money-grubbing scientists. A money-grubbing scientist would want to distribute their work as widely as possible as cheaply as possible. Scientists make money (grants, tenure, collaboration opportunities) on the basis of their reputations--reputations which are built on their work being widely known.