Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Organize Elsevier Boycott
An anonymous reader writes "The academic publisher Elsevier has attracted controversy for its high prices, the practice of bundling journals for sale to libraries and its support for legislation such as SOPA and the Research Works Act. Fields medal-winning mathematician Tim Gowers decided to go public with a blog post describing how he'll no longer have anything to do with Elsevier journals, and suggesting that a public website where mathematicians and scientists could register their support for an Elsevier boycott would further the cause. Such a website now exists, with hundreds of academics signing-up so far. John Baez has a nice write-up of the problem and possible solutions."
They've been asked to say that they: "1) won’t publish with them, 2) won’t referee for them, and/or 3) won’t do editorial work for them ... At least do number 2)" ... most of those signed up have gone for all three however it seems like roughly one in ten have prevaricated on the "won't referee" pledge - what is the magnetic allure of refereeing for Elsevier journals?
Looks like "how many roads must a man walk down" was a traveling salesman problem and not some humanist statement
"Ban Elsevier
Please take the pledge not to do business with Elsevier. 404 scientists have done it so far:"
Just got me thinking...
They seem unnecessary in the internet age. Set up some sort of social networking system for scientists.
Also keep getting disturbing reports of journals censoring works for political reasons or because they're afraid that certain factions within the science community will boycott them.
The whole thing is anti science. Create a forum where all scientists can share information freely without fear of being censored or favoritism. If other scientists don't find your work compelling then they don't have to listen to it.
It will also make disclosing all the information about a given study easier since hopefully more of the work will be within the system.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Publishing articles nowadays is terribly easy and does not cost a thing (arxiv); filtering and getting good referees however is not.
My solution for this would be a public network of papers, where everybody can publish, read and 'sign' those papers. If you agree with a paper, you put your signature under it and the worth of this paper goes up. As your 'worth' goes up your signature also gains in weight, when signing other papers. Every paper gets a comment section, where reviews can be written and errors pointed out.
If a well known professor therefore signs your work, others will catch up to it. A 'good' paper will gain in publicity quickly due to being sent around a lot. One would also need to include a system of diminishing returns, as to avoid groups signing only their own papers. Ironing out these points of abuse will be the hardest part of this system.
The specification above only consists of four to five sentences and yet I would call it more robust than the currently arbitrarily chosen journals.
Being a referee is part of being a scientist. Someone is taking the time to review your work and you are returning the favor. With a bit of luck, you also get an advance glimpse of some of the work that is being done in your area.
Elsevier also publish some bad translations. eg http://turnersyndrome.researchtoday.net/archive/6/3/454.htm And don't they publish New Scientist from whom I unsubscribed when they published the jesuit intelligent design fruitcake Paul Davies on the front page and refused right of reply from James Randi and others.
There is another part to the open access. Trade associations that publish specs. They want anywhere from $100-$1000 for a specification that MUST be used to manufacture equipment. Those specs are written by employees of many businesses (users). These associations do not pay taxes.These specs should be published as e-books for a reasonable price. $35 for example. They are still living in the 50s.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Go to google scholar, research anything and you'll inevitable bumb into those extortionists. What is the point of having all that knowledge theoretically at your fingertips, if people cannot have access to it? No matter what it is - an icelandic volcano erupting and you want to know what this means for your plans to fly somewhere? Well, there are plenty of papers that will tell you about ash emissions, the impact of ash on airplanes, the concentrations of ash in the air and so on and so forth.
A nuclear reactor has a problem and you want to know what engineers found out about the likely consequences or progression of the accident, or what people in this country and other countries did about mitigation? It's right there. BUT:
$30.00 for reading a paper (which more likely than not will not contain what you are looking for) just makes it impossible to research anything at all - unless you are at least a millionaire. Just having access to one research paper per day will cost you $11000 a year. That has nothing to do with copyrights or protecting intellectual property or anything else.
It is all about extortion - thank you for trying to stop it.
Being a referee is part of being a scientist.
Being a human being with integrity is ALSO part of being a scientist.
If one wants to think one being worthy to be known as a SCIENTIST one must at least have the integrity to know that keep on feeding leeches such as Elsevier does the scientific community a dis-service
Restricting the access to information is an antithesis to scientific principle.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The problem is that academics get all of those benefits from papers that people read and most importantly from ones that they cite. A research paper that is never cited does very little to an academic's reputation. Elsevier tries very hard to restrict access to their journals. Unless you buy a subscription to a load of them together you are likely to end up paying $10-30 or more for each paper that you might want to read. Most people, when they encounter this kind of paywall will just go elsewhere and read someone else's related work. And then they'll cite the paper that the other person wrote and it's as if yours doesn't exist.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Future employment at a college often depends upon how many papers and grants you produce. It's more of a fear of losing their jobs.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
This makes as much sense as claiming that the only reason athletes accept an invitation to play in the all-star game is that "in general have such low esteem of themselves that they crave for the respect of their own peers in order to survive".
And this would also apply to prizes such as the fields medal and nobel prize.
To put it simply, there is a considerable difference between having a low self-esteem and receiving an honour of having our own work recognized by the community.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Last year I sent an email to IEEE saying that I would leave the organization if they continued holding research papers hostage behind pay walls.
I.e. authors were told that in order to get published they would have to assign their copyrights to IEEE and would have to remove any freely available copies on their own personal web page.
See also http://politics.slashdot.org/story/10/06/30/2027226/ieee-supports-software-patents-in-wake-of-bilski and http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/15/177217/ieee-working-group-considers-kinder-gentler-drm about locking research behind DRM gates.
With very little visible change to their attitudes, I decided to leave.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
It's easy enough to sign up, and to say you hate Elsevier (so do I). But if you're in a research group at a university, and you're the PhD student, you're probably not doing yourself a favor by signing this. Your name will show up in search results, so people may know you signed (if you used your own name and institute).
In order to get your PhD, you will need to publish somewhere, and your prof will want you to get the highest "impact factor", because that's good for the whole group. You're in a way just an employee, so you better listen to the boss.
By effectively saying "screw you" to the whole system of publications, and going online to a really open system, you gamble. Better make sure the prof agrees.
But I applaud you, if you do.
An intelligent scientist, however, publishes a copy of his/her paper on arxiv.org so that those who cannot get over the paywall can read the arxiv version while still citing the original. Win-win.
Every end has half a stick.
Let's not forget, that Elsevier created two dozen completely fake magazines full of completely fake "articles", which were ads for pharma industry products disguised as medical studies. They then planted those in doctors' offices for doctors to read.
Doctors based their trust on that, assuming it was factually correct, and prescribed millions of pointless drugs to patients, often endangering their health.
All for the profit of the pharma industry. Which is clearly bordering on... how do you call that in English? Mass felony mayhem? Mass battery? (I mean "Massen-Körperverletzung")
Nobody will argue that that wasn't a huge crime, and that Elsevier should not be closed down and its management put in PMITA prison.
I think that's part of why the Public Library of Science went with their model -- authors pay to submit their article (which *does* get peer reviewed, but on technical merits, not if it's "interesting" to the edior). And then it's free to read forever.
ArXiv has shown their value to the community, but they currently rely on support from organizations. Many people who use the site don't even know the issues -- it's not like they're running banner ads asking for donations like Wikipedia.
Now, with the pay-up-front model, some people might balk at the PLoS $1500 submission fee, but that's actually cheaper than some of the existing publishers charge for 'making an article open access' (ie, if you're published with them, you can pay a fee so that no one else has to pay a per-article charge ... but that doesn't help the libraries who have subscriptions). And it's not unheard of for peer-reviewed journals to have submission or publishing fees. Some are per page, some add extra charges for color images, etc.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Plain and simple. Just to include another one: IEEE (the devil on Earth).
Publishers take advantage of the fact that a researcher needs to make their work available in (what is considered) a reputable publisher.
So, what happens:
- You work your ass off for months, if not years.
- Research done. You write a paper and submit that to congress X which will/may publish the approved ones in the Y journal.
- You must format your paper precisely according to the publisher's standards. The publisher gets the whole thing ready for print.
- You have to sign a COPYRIGHT TRANSFER document provided by the publisher. That's right, the publisher OWNS your paper. It's not yours anymore.
You submit your paper.
- The paper is peer-reviewed. And that is voluntary and unpaid, the publisher does not have such expense either.
IF your paper is accepted...
- You/your university/employer/whoever will have to pay a reasonable sum for congress expenses + whatever_they_claim_it_is_for.
- Naturally, you will have to present your paper. So add travel/hotel expenses here.
After all that...
- Your paper is available to anyone... anyone willing and able to pay the absurd per-paper free, or the subscription, in order to download that.
So, basically: the researcher provides print-ready material, gives away his/her copyright and pays the publisher ; the reader pays the publisher ; the reviewers work for free ; and the publisher laughs at everyone.
If you are legally allowed to. Some journals require copyright trasnfer upon acceptance of a manuscript, which makes such things illegal.
A CC-licensed illustrated horror novel