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Current Scientific Publishing Methods Problematic
A recent examination of current scientific publishing methods shows that they are problematic at best, treating the entire process like an economic system, with publishers as bidders at an auction, authors as sellers, and the community at large as consumers. "The authors then go on to discuss a variety of economic terms that they think apply to publishing, but the quality of the analogies varies quite a bit. It's easy to accept that the limited number of high-profile publishers act as an oligarchy and that they add value through branding. Some of the other links are significantly more tenuous. The authors argue that scientific research suffers from an uncertain valuation, but this would require that the consumers — the scientists — can't accurately judge what's significant. "
What is wrong with the free market? When has it ever failed us?
That's exactly why I gave up writing scientific papers and now rob gas stations.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Seriously, hosting a document for me to view doesn't cost $100/mo. so why are you trying to charge me that?
So they don't devalue the print versions, which is where they make all their cash.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
There are things that you can run like a business, and there are things that you cannot. Without meaning to be political about it, look at what 8 years of running the country like a business with an MBA at the top has got us.
I have not read the article. If the summary is accurate reflection of the authors' point about this, then it is at once misguided, and foolhardy. The purpose of business in a modern capitalist economy is to produce goods at low prices that the consumers can afford, generate enough profit to please the shareholders and to set aside enough money to do research to develop the goods and services to increase these profits and consumer good down the road. Sure, businesses cannot be left alone to do what they wish and government regulations limit unchecked profit-mongering, but the primary purpose of businesses is to establish a market share and earn profit for the shareholders.
Contrast this with the purpose of scientific research. The purpose varies from gaining a more accurate understanding of physical, chemical and biological phenomena to leveraging these phenomena into processes and contraptions that improve the quality of human life (where you lie on this spectrum depends on how pure/fundamental or applied your area of research is). The only shareholders in this process are the authors of scientific work, and their reward varies from just scientific renown to funding for future research or even commercialization of the fruits of their research. However, to achieve the most progress, scientific research tends to be 'open source', in the sense that anyone capable of understanding, and with financial resources to buy access to the journals (if the work is not presented in the growing number of free journals online) can read not only what was done, but also how it was done (something commercial concerns never reveal).
Of course, scientific journals are often run like a business (at least successful and well-renowned ones), but to extend these ideas to the actual business of carrying out research is utterly misguided. The goals of business (from a businessman's pov) and science (from a scientist's pov) are very different. The authors might as well apply these ideas to conduct of a military for all the relevance it has.
There are a host of other objections to such treatment as well, but I will pause here as people know what they are.
No, authors don't get paid to appear in journals like Science and Nature. In fact, in most cases the author pays a fee for the space in the journal. It's a total racket.
The benefit to the author is that he can put the paper in his CV. The more big name journals you publish in, the more likely it is that you'll get grant funding and that all important tenure. It's publish or perish out there.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Scientific journal publishers are surviving on one thing alone: inertia. And while it makes me sad to see the RIAA try to pull culture with it to its grave, it makes me *furious* to see these groups trying to pull science down with them.
Scientist do the writing, the editing, the peer-review, the *typesetting*... and then turn over the rights to their work for the privledge of paying up to $3,000 per seat to access it. When disseminating information was expensive, this made sense, but now... not so much. But like produces of shiny plastic discs, they'll pervert the laws for years to come to try to buy a few more years of life.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
I looked at scientific journals, and I honestly can't see much of an incentive to appear there. I mean sure, you might get published and that's got some merit...
Some merit? In many academic institutions, number of papers published in respectable journals is the preferred metric of performance, and will affect your promotion and the status/funding of your institution.
YMMV depending on the level of enlightenment and subject area of your institution - there are, of course, other aspects which can and should count - but number of papers is the "gold standard" and the safe bet.
If this were a scientific paper, I'd back that up with some references (but my institution definitely doesn't recognise /. karma and mod points, so I can't be arsed).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
No. Follow the first link in the linked story (here, I'll save you the trouble.) It is precisely about the legislation being proposed which would ELMINATE OR STRONGLY RESRICT that acess, being lobbied for by the publishers (using the (poor) arguments in today's linked article.)
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Having a high publication helps a graduate student land a good post-doctoral opportunity. As a post-doc, you'll need a good publication record (Nature, Science, Cell) if you want to land a good faculty position at a top university (tenure track). A scientist that can semi-regularly publish in the top journals will have an easier time earning grants (without such, they wouldn't be able to run a lab). Without a good publication record, a junior faculty won't get tenure (the review is typically 5-7 years for the biological sciences post hire). Publications - no, make that publications in good journals - is everything.
From the scientist's perspective, if they have pure research, then, they can put it on a web site, such as the university web site or even their own, and just skip the b.s.
Any yahoo can post on a website. The reasoning behind scientific journals is that the science is peer reviewed before being accepted. While not everything published on Nature, Science or Cell is top quality work (politics does play a role), the signal to noise ratio is much higher than say, International Immunology. The science presented in the top journals usually has a much higher impact factor than the 'lower' journals; i.e A paper published in Nature Immunology or Nature Medicine typically has a much broader impact on the field than, say, a paper published in Journal of Immunology. That's not to say that the JI paper is worse than the Nat. Imm. or Nat. Med. paper - it's not. Just that the JI paper will likely be much more narrow in scope.
Robin Hood? Is that you?
No, he's just robbin' the 'hood. Easy mistake to make.
Information doesn't want anything.
YOU want information to be free.
I'm a grad student in the natural sciences. Some other friends of mine and I started Labmeeting.com because we are so eager to help change the way science gets published.
The current system of peer review is inefficient, arbitrary, and hidden from public view. We definitely need something new, but, as we said in our talk at BioBarCamp a while back, change needs to be gradual enough to preserve consensus.
That's why we're starting by just trying to make research tools that are useful to scientists in their everyday professional lives.
Of course we could all just publish stuff on the Internet.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I love Thomas Jefferson as much as the next American, but there are certain things you listen to him on and some things you don't. Civil liberties, the scope of government, certainly. The economy.... not so much.
Jefferson wanted us to farm our way to victory. Here's some primary source stuff on the subject for your edification/amusement.
Just because he's a founding father doesn't make him a visionary on everything. See also: slavery.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
A softball question. One simple example of the failure of the market is the apparent inability of science publishers, particularly in the pharma area, to publish so-called negative results or to spin negative results as if they are postive. In epidemiology and in pharmacology, negative results are at least as important as postive ones ("first, do no harm"). Yet, the greater economic forces of pharmaceutical sales (and nutricutical sales, and outright woo sales) incent the supression, or simple failure to publish, of such findings in pernicious ways. Check out Ben Goldacre's site (and buy his book while you are there). Tucked away among various rants against, among other things, media coverage of medicine, you will find several discussions about this very phenomonon, and why it is so incredibly bad.