Tipping Point For Open Access CS Research?

First time accepted submitter trombonehero writes "Prominent Computer Science researchers from Google, Microsoft and UC Berkeley are starting to sign the 'Research Without Walls' pledge, promising to never be involved in peer review for a venue that does not make publications available to the public for free. Others have made similar pledges in isolation; could this be the start of something big?"

Comments

This *is* big

[dwheeler]

This is big. There are a lot of parasitic journals today, that is, journals that take work the public paid for, and lock it behind paywalls. Parasitic journals typically use big-name free labor from to do the peer reviews. If the world removes from the parasites many good peer reviewers, as well as many good papers (through policies like the NIH Public Access policy), then they will have to change or fold. I don't have a problem with organizations paying for work to be done, and then charging for use of the result. For example, most fiction authors get at least some money for their labor (not a lot, but at least some). In contrast, parasitic journals typically take publicly-funded stuff away from the public; time to change. By the way, there are a number of journals and publications that have always done this, like ACSAC. If authors would simply ONLY submit their works to open access journals and publications, the parasites would disappear.

Re:This *is* big

[fish waffle]

If authors would simply ONLY submit their works to open access journals and publications, the parasites would disappear.

The problem here is that someone needs to organize these things. Someone has to pay for the bandwidth, buy and run the servers, spend effort soliciting reviewers, run the reviewing software, respond to questions, request ISBNs, submit the work to indexing sites, etc etc etc..

Open access journals address this by having a publication fee, or by advertising, or by seeking volunteers and asking for charity. Paying for publication gets blurry with vanity press, and advertising ends up sucking up to the advertisers. Volunteering and charity seem wonderful, but have to compete with lots of other worthy causes.

In CS, most of the major publishers allow you to post a copy of your paper on your personal website (as long as you also link to the official version). Finding papers outside of the paywalls is only difficult when the authors are in industry (but those aren't the publicly funded papers you're talking about anyway).

Re:This *is* big

[JanneM]

You do realize, I hope, that many, if not most, for-profit journals also have publication fees? That includes a good number of very high-profile journals, and the fees are generally as high or higher than open access journals. Journal of Neuroscience, for instance, will charge you just north of $1000 for a paper - $950 in publication fee and $120 just to submit the paper.

Open Access journals are in general no more expensive to publish in that for-profit journals, and they have more generous exceptions for people that find it difficult to pay.

Re:This *is* big

[Beetle B.]

They all do. The "prestigious" ones especially and yes IEEE does too.

From the IEEE submission guidelines:

Voluntary Page Charges and Reprints: After a manuscript has been accepted for publication, the author's company or institution will be asked to pay a voluntary charge to cover part of the cost of publication. IEEE page charges are not obligatory, and payment is not a prerequisite for publication. The author will receive 100 free reprints if the charge is honored. Detailed instructions on page charges and on ordering reprints will accompany the proof.

Emphasis mine.

There are two aspect of the problem

[godrik]

And the one that matter for me (a researcher) is how I get funded. Basically I get funded when I can convince other people of how good I am. To estimate that, they look WHERE I am publishing my research; and most likely, they do not look at WHAT I am saying. The name of the conference or the journal is what matters most. What you are actually doing is not so important.

I know that suck. It makes me cry at night. But that is what it is. If I came not to publish in journal with no public open access, I won't be able to publish in journals that matter in my field. So I won't get funded.

I totally agree the public should be able to read what ever we write. But I can not give up my funding. (For the record: no funding, no food on my table.)

Moreover, that's basically a false issue. All journals and conference allow you to publish pre-print on your website. All my papers are on my website or in arxiv. So I am not even sure it matters so much.

Of course, complete open access for everybody would be better.

Re:There are two aspect of the problem

[jameson]

The pledge is not about not submitting to these venues. It's about not reviewing for them.

Re:There are two aspect of the problem

[mdmkolbe]

Actually, the ACM recently refused to publish an author because he posted it on ArXiv.

This was a copyright assignment issue, but it directly impacts the strategy you suggest. As an academic myself, the copyright assignment issue is as big an issue as open access. For example, ACM does not allow me to let others use any figures I publish with the ACM. Sorry, Wikipedia, I may have the perfect figure to illustrate one of your articles, but the ACM won't let me give it to you.

I'm not even allowed to use my own figures for my own uses unless I put an ACM copyright notice on every copy of the figure and every slide with such a figure. This is not consistent with academic practice and custom (almost all presentations at ACM conferences violate this rule).