"This is incorrect. Formatting even simple papers is difficult, let alone ones with complex graphs and tables. It's not something an author can (or wants) to do."
This is patent nonsense. About 90% of the papers that I have published to require camera ready copy. In general the most that the publishers have to do is stick their copyright lines at the bottom.
"Not at all. The other major cost is the cost of reviewing papers. A major journal will receive ten times more papers than it can publish. Each one needs to be read and evaluated."
This would be read and evaluated by peer reviewers. Whom you noticable do not pay. So, in fact, its the cost of paying for an editor, and a secretary to keep track of who is doing what.
"Electronic typesetting is not cheap, not is something automatic just because its electronic. A human has to decide where articles go, how figures are positions etc. "
Generally speaking, the authors. What you say is true for a few journals but I doubt that it is true for most.
Journal publishers are on a pork barrel. They make something like 5bn dollars a year just in the US. And they prevent the scientists from doing their job. I can not access full text of the past publications. I'm even in the absurd position that I am breaking copyright by publishing my own work, on my own web site.
I firmly hope that the days of the current business model of scientific publishers is over. Open access is not only desirable, its vital.
A very bad idea. Naming a gene after its function is a recipe for installbility. Every time your ideas about the genes function changes, you have to change the name, adding to the already complex synonym nightmare.
The idea for a name, to my mind, is that it should be semantics free. Hence the use of meaningless accession numbers (P05443) in addition to the (thin) semantic content of identifiers (OPSD_HUMAN).
IUPAC strings are not actually names at all, but representations of structure. While I have some doubts about the wisdom on encoding a name like this into a string, I can still see the pressing reasons for it--we do the same thing with the internet where locations are represented using URL's.
> You are not paying for fraud through the credit card billing fees. In case of fraud, the credit card company does not pay a penny.
In this case, you are paying for fraud in purchase cost from the retailers.
It appears, however, the rules in the US are different from those in the UK. In the UK the credit card company was responsible for fraud and not the merchant.
This has just changed in the UK with chip and pin (the pin based system which has just come in). The point is that while the card companies were responsible for the fraud, the merchants had no incentive for them to upgrade their systems to the (more expensive) chip and pin technology.
It seems, however, that the US system has the opposite problem. There has been no incentive for the credit card companies to actually improve their security.
Ain't no perfect world. I wish the US would sort this out however. I don't want my card vulnerable to cloning when I am in the US. While it has no sensible security this is always a possibility for me.
>When publishers get paid by corporations for subscriptions, and multiple publishers compete for authors, authors will be able to charge for their papers.
You misunderstand the process. We have to publish in journals with high impact factors. We have to publish in journals with high impact factors because we are told to by our funding bodies. So the notion of competition within journals and the ability to choose between them is limited.
As impact factors are based on citations, and citations start a few years after the work is actually done, it takes at least five years for a journal to start getting a decent impact factor.
Besides which I don't want to charge for my papers, as I will only end up paying for everyone elses. I want the system to be free at the point of use. There is no reason that it should not be. The marginal cost of replication is nearly zero. Some scientists want to use 100's of papers, and some 100,000's. Why should they not? The publishing houses should not be in control of the way that we use the research.
You should do. First you are paying for fraud through you credit card charges. And secondly, even if you liability is limited, when someone does rip of your card, then it's still a pain in the ass getting it fixed.
What I don't understand is why the US is not moving toward a PIN based system. France did this a decade ago. The UK is finally in the throws of doing this.
The costs associated with publication, even for author pays, are still not zero. You need to write and maintain the software. You need to get editors. You need to get peer reviewers. You need secretaries to organise the reviews.
This costs are not insignificant.
Besides which, in many areas, which are conference paper based rather than journal based, you already have this problem. I work on a budget of around $2000 per publication (for costs, not for the research which is obviously much greater).
>Why shouldn't these publishers charge universities, research institutions and corporations for subscriptions?
Why shouldn't the publishers pay for the research that they are currently getting for free. I give my time and energy to reviewing articles. I get back nothing. I give my time and energy to doing the work.
More over the publishers control the way in which I can use the papers. 10 dollars to read a paper is cheap, if I am reading the paper. But what if I want to do a stastical analysis over 10,000 papers? At the moment text analysis is largely restricted to abstracts for precisely this reason. What if I want to republish all of the data in a new form? What if I want to produce a single point of entry, cross linked portal to all science.
Not really. Others have pointed out that waivers exist from most of the publishing organisations anyway. And the less well funded researchers would massively benefit from access to the research of others.
Besides which, for even poorly funded research the cost of publication (say $1500 for a paper) is relatively small in comparision to the cost of doing research in the first place. Research is expensive, period. It costs about 100-150,000 dollars a year to keep me on the road and I am relatively cheap! In a good year I am likely to publish say 2 papers (well, more than this, but each one has multiple authors).
I am not sure that "unbiased" in a possibility. Any reporting always puts a slant on things.
>Most news in the U.S. skews to the left.
I am not sure that "most" is that meaningful, but it depends on where you compare to. My experience on US news is that it is fairly right wing. But this, in turn, is just reflective of US society, which is to the right on my own country (the UK). However, most of the national media outlets are on the coasts, which tend to be the most left wing parts of the US. So compared to the US population as a whole, it probably is slightly left slanted.
Incidentally, the Marxist assumption would not be that "owned by someone means conservative". It would be that because a news source is owned by someone, it will generally operate to the benefit of the owner, rather than society at large, whether that is conservative or otherwise. This is, I think, probably fair. The BBC has it's bias as well, but at least this is different from the prevailing news media, which is no bad thing.
The BBC has covered Northern Ireland extensively, including lots of new reporting on the bloody sunday inquiry, documentaries, dramas and so on.
>And that N. Ireland thing really bugs me. Get out already.
How can this happen? Are you suggesting that the majority of Northern Ireland should just leave their homes?
>How the British greed created the current problems in the mid-east by creating states
Again, I think our colonial past has been covered extensively. We are fairly aware of the consequences of the decisions of our ancestors. They are all around us, after all.
>And all of the pandering towards the Royals.
In this, you are correct, although it's true of the UK media in general. I only care because I have to pay for them.
On the flip side, I am not sure that the Royal stories are any more silly than the attitude to unimportant celeb's in general.
>How does having a state sponsered news organization guarantee that there are a lot of differing ideas expressed?
The BBC has a public service remit, it has a management which is divorced somewhat from the political process, and comes under regularly public scrutiny (cf the Hutton inquiry). In short, it's a democratically accountable body. This doesn't guarentee anything. But on the whole, I think it provides a degree more independence than a corporate body.
The BBC is not perfect, but it's a very good thing.
And just to remain on topic, then website is excellent.
It's becoming impractical for institutions to pay for subscriptions, because of the cost. We have to ask the question, why do we give copyright to journals for free?
The article suggests that "editing, formatting, proofreading" costs money. Yes it does. But as we provide most journals camera ready copy, the cost is born by the scientists. So the publishers do nothing, and recieve a massive amount of cash for it.
This is a problem. While it would be nice to think that everyone used SSL or a VPN to encrypt all of their traffic it doesn't always happen. Many people for example, only use encryption when away from work. What's to stop someone setting up this sort of facilities within what people suppose to be a secure environment.
Of course, only time will tell how much of a problem it turns out to. It's always hard to tell which security threats are going to turn into really big security problems.
"Too many professional scholars are pinned into doing research that has immediate market viability and too many researchers are more interested in their own career advancement than the science they're supposed to be advancing. So they play it safe. "
Research is expensive and sadly this is what the funding bodies want nowadays. If you are not interested in your own career advancement, then you will not remain in a job long.
The only other alternatives to this is to either have lots of your own cash to live off. This is, by and large, the way that most early scientists worked. Or you can become a rampant self-publicist . Having a strange physical appearance is a classic sign of this, usually in the facial hair department.
It's a pity. It would be nice if science were the fearless exploration of the unknown, rather than the fearful exporation of the nearly known. But to criticise us for playing safe is not fair. We have families to support. We have to keep a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs, just the same as everyone else.
This is poor logic. The absence of a social effect does not automatically proof the presence of a genetic one.
Added to which, I find it extremely hard to believe that there is evidence of the absence of a social effect. There might well be absence of evidence but this is different.
You missed his point. If evolution had no "facts" supporting it, then it would be an hypothesis.
Of course, science doesn't work this way either. There is not really any such thing as a fact, a theory, or a hypothesis. There are just degrees of doubt.
As it stands, I wouldn't really have any problem with the stick, although it might be nice if those who campaigning for them, also had them put onto bibles as well. Fortunately for me, I don't live in the US, and I have the luxury of finding these things slightly amusing.
You'd want to do this anyway. Otherwise, you have to answer all the daft questions ("Were you a member of the Nazi party between 39-45"--"Are you entering the US to perform terrorist acts"). And spend at least three times as long waiting for the one immigration booth that they have set up for Foreign Nationals.
Oh yeah, and be photo'd and fingerprinted.
Entry into the US is getting more and more painful by the year. How long, till a tub of vaseline is an essential part of every travellers kit?
Don't be naive. There are a lot of very rich people who wish to ignore global warming.
>But even if you found some funding (probably from >a corp) to do some research in a 'forbidden' >direction
Well, I'm a biologist, so I hear this line of argument from the creationists constantly. It's just untrue. Scientists love papers which tell them accepted wisdom is wrong. At heart, science is applied cynicism. Hearing how "it's all wrong" appeals to this side.
>Politics gets into it, but at core, Global >Warming is religion.
The notion that we can keep on using enormous quantities of carbon fuels and that everything will be okay is a religion. And, like many religions, it's self-delusional.
>By asking that question it is clear no rational >discourse is possible with you, you too are a >religious zealot
This is daft. If I say "gravity is not controversial" this does not make me a zealot.
Look, global warming is there, is happening, and it's going to get worse. Of this, there is little doubt. What is in doubt is scale, how much it's going to change, and what effects this will cause. Of this, we have much poorer knowledge. The problem is that by the time we find out it will already be late in the day, and will we already suffer the consequences.
Yes, it does sound familiar. Also similar to open-bio.org which has been doing the same thing for the last 4 or 5 years. And also similar to www.i3c.org.
It's hardly a new idea. It will be interesting to see if there is anything new in this group.
In the good old days the only way to communicate long distance was by telegram. Journalists used to send stories, and get instructions in this way. You got charged by the word, so a texting like short hand, called telegraphese developed. Some of the best telegrams reached the levels of poetry. My favourite one was actually a resignation letter, and it was just four words...
"Up stuff job arsewise"
If you're leaving a job, do so in style, my advice.
"There is a loud debate going on these days about the high costs of publishing academic papers. One of the points that is seldom made is that printed journals provide a pedigree for the articles that is hard to forge: "
Journals can be re-issued and re-printed.
The problem of digital provenance is well known, and widely discussed. In fact, initials such as Digitial Object Identifiers are, at least partly, in response to these problems.
Printing, per se, does not solve the problems of archiving. And being digitial does not per se cause these problems.
Incidentally, the cost of scientific publishing is not really due to the cost of printing.
Slashdot Mirror
"This is incorrect. Formatting even simple papers is difficult, let alone ones with complex graphs and tables. It's not something an author can (or wants) to do."
This is patent nonsense. About 90% of the papers that I have published to require camera ready copy. In general the most that the publishers have to do is stick their copyright lines at the bottom.
"Not at all. The other major cost is the cost of reviewing papers. A major journal will receive ten times more papers than it can publish. Each one needs to be read and evaluated."
This would be read and evaluated by peer reviewers. Whom you noticable do not pay. So, in fact, its the cost of paying for an editor, and a secretary to keep track of who is doing what.
"Electronic typesetting is not cheap, not is something automatic just because its electronic. A human has to decide where articles go, how figures are positions etc. "
Generally speaking, the authors. What you say is true for a few journals but I doubt that it is true for most.
Journal publishers are on a pork barrel. They make something like 5bn dollars a year just in the US. And they prevent the scientists from doing their job. I can not access full text of the past publications. I'm even in the absurd position that I am breaking copyright by publishing my own work, on my own web site.
I firmly hope that the days of the current business model of scientific publishers is over. Open access is not only desirable, its vital.
Phil
A very bad idea. Naming a gene after its function is a recipe for installbility. Every time your ideas about the genes function changes, you have to change the name, adding to the already complex synonym nightmare.
The idea for a name, to my mind, is that it should be semantics free. Hence the use of meaningless accession numbers (P05443) in addition to the (thin) semantic content of identifiers (OPSD_HUMAN).
IUPAC strings are not actually names at all, but representations of structure. While I have some doubts about the wisdom on encoding a name like this into a string, I can still see the pressing reasons for it--we do the same thing with the internet where locations are represented using URL's.
Phil
> You are not paying for fraud through the credit card billing fees. In case of fraud, the credit card company does not pay a penny.
In this case, you are paying for fraud in purchase cost from the retailers.
It appears, however, the rules in the US are different from those in the UK. In the UK the credit card company was responsible for fraud and not the merchant.
This has just changed in the UK with chip and pin (the pin based system which has just come in). The point is that while the card companies were responsible for the fraud, the merchants had no incentive for them to upgrade their systems to the (more expensive) chip and pin technology.
It seems, however, that the US system has the opposite problem. There has been no incentive for the credit card companies to actually improve their security.
Ain't no perfect world. I wish the US would sort this out however. I don't want my card vulnerable to cloning when I am in the US. While it has no sensible security this is always a possibility for me.
Phil
>When publishers get paid by corporations for subscriptions, and multiple publishers compete for authors, authors will be able to charge for their papers.
You misunderstand the process. We have to publish in journals with high impact factors. We have to publish in journals with high impact factors because we are told to by our funding bodies. So the notion of competition within journals and the ability to choose between them is limited.
As impact factors are based on citations, and citations start a few years after the work is actually done, it takes at least five years for a journal to start getting a decent impact factor.
Besides which I don't want to charge for my papers, as I will only end up paying for everyone elses. I want the system to be free at the point of use. There is no reason that it should not be. The marginal cost of replication is nearly zero. Some scientists want to use 100's of papers, and some 100,000's. Why should they not? The publishing houses should not be in control of the way that we use the research.
Phil
You should do. First you are paying for fraud through you credit card charges. And secondly, even if you liability is limited, when someone does rip of your card, then it's still a pain in the ass getting it fixed.
What I don't understand is why the US is not moving toward a PIN based system. France did this a decade ago. The UK is finally in the throws of doing this.
Phil
The costs associated with publication, even for author pays, are still not zero. You need to write and maintain the software. You need to get editors. You need to get peer reviewers. You need secretaries to organise the reviews.
This costs are not insignificant.
Besides which, in many areas, which are conference paper based rather than journal based, you already have this problem. I work on a budget of around $2000 per publication (for costs, not for the research which is obviously much greater).
Phil
>Why shouldn't these publishers charge universities, research institutions and corporations for subscriptions?
Why shouldn't the publishers pay for the research that they are currently getting for free. I give my time and energy to reviewing articles. I get back nothing. I give my time and energy to doing the work.
More over the publishers control the way in which I can use the papers. 10 dollars to read a paper is cheap, if I am reading the paper. But what if I want to do a stastical analysis over 10,000 papers? At the moment text analysis is largely restricted to abstracts for precisely this reason. What if I want to republish all of the data in a new form? What if I want to produce a single point of entry, cross linked portal to all science.
Not possible. What a shame.
Phil
Not really. Others have pointed out that waivers exist from most of the publishing organisations anyway. And the less well funded researchers would massively benefit from access to the research of others.
Besides which, for even poorly funded research the cost of publication (say $1500 for a paper) is relatively small in comparision to the cost of doing research in the first place. Research is expensive, period. It costs about 100-150,000 dollars a year to keep me on the road and I am relatively cheap! In a good year I am likely to publish say 2 papers (well, more than this, but each one has multiple authors).
Phil
>I assure you the BBC is biased.
I am not sure that "unbiased" in a possibility. Any reporting always puts a slant on things.
>Most news in the U.S. skews to the left.
I am not sure that "most" is that meaningful, but it depends on where you compare to. My experience on US news is that it is fairly right wing. But this, in turn, is just reflective of US society, which is to the right on my own country (the UK). However, most of the national media outlets are on the coasts, which tend to be the most left wing parts of the US. So compared to the US population as a whole, it probably is slightly left slanted.
Incidentally, the Marxist assumption would not be that "owned by someone means conservative". It would be that because a news source is owned by someone, it will generally operate to the benefit of the owner, rather than society at large, whether that is conservative or otherwise. This is, I think, probably fair. The BBC has it's bias as well, but at least this is different from the prevailing news media, which is no bad thing.
Phil
> Northern Ireland.
The BBC has covered Northern Ireland extensively, including lots of new reporting on the bloody sunday inquiry, documentaries, dramas and so on.
>And that N. Ireland thing really bugs me. Get out already.
How can this happen? Are you suggesting that the majority of Northern Ireland should just leave their homes?
>How the British greed created the current problems in the mid-east by creating states
Again, I think our colonial past has been covered extensively. We are fairly aware of the consequences of the decisions of our ancestors. They are all around us, after all.
>And all of the pandering towards the Royals.
In this, you are correct, although it's true of the UK media in general. I only care because I have to pay for them.
On the flip side, I am not sure that the Royal stories are any more silly than the attitude to unimportant celeb's in general.
>How does having a state sponsered news organization guarantee that there are a lot of differing ideas expressed?
The BBC has a public service remit, it has a management which is divorced somewhat from the political process, and comes under regularly public scrutiny (cf the Hutton inquiry). In short, it's a democratically accountable body. This doesn't guarentee anything. But on the whole, I think it provides a degree more independence than a corporate body.
The BBC is not perfect, but it's a very good thing.
And just to remain on topic, then website is excellent.
Phil
It's becoming impractical for institutions to pay for subscriptions, because of the cost. We have to ask the question, why do we give copyright to journals for free?
The article suggests that "editing, formatting, proofreading" costs money. Yes it does. But as we provide most journals camera ready copy, the cost is born by the scientists. So the publishers do nothing, and recieve a massive amount of cash for it.
Something has to change here.
Phil
This is a problem. While it would be nice to think that everyone used SSL or a VPN to encrypt all of their traffic it doesn't always happen. Many people for example, only use encryption when away from work. What's to stop someone setting up this sort of facilities within what people suppose to be a secure environment.
Of course, only time will tell how much of a problem it turns out to. It's always hard to tell which security threats are going to turn into really big security problems.
Phil
"Too many professional scholars are pinned into doing research that has immediate market viability and too many researchers are more interested in their own career advancement than the science they're supposed to be advancing. So they play it safe. "
Research is expensive and sadly this is what the funding bodies want nowadays. If you are not interested in your own career advancement, then you will not remain in a job long.
The only other alternatives to this is to either have lots of your own cash to live off. This is, by and large, the way that most early scientists worked. Or you can become a rampant self-publicist . Having a strange physical appearance is a classic sign of this, usually in the facial hair department.
It's a pity. It would be nice if science were the fearless exploration of the unknown, rather than the fearful exporation of the nearly known. But to criticise us for playing safe is not fair. We have families to support. We have to keep a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs, just the same as everyone else.
Phil
This is poor logic. The absence of a social effect does not automatically proof the presence of a genetic one.
Added to which, I find it extremely hard to believe that there is evidence of the absence of a social effect. There might well be absence of evidence but this is different.
Phil
economists bad at genetics.
Take your pick. I know which I think is more likely.
Phil
You missed his point. If evolution had no "facts" supporting it, then it would be an hypothesis.
Of course, science doesn't work this way either. There is not really any such thing as a fact, a theory, or a hypothesis. There are just degrees of doubt.
As it stands, I wouldn't really have any problem with the stick, although it might be nice if those who campaigning for them, also had them put onto bibles as well. Fortunately for me, I don't live in the US, and I have the luxury of finding these things slightly amusing.
Phil
"and always enter the US using a US passport"
You'd want to do this anyway. Otherwise, you have to answer all the daft questions ("Were you a member of the Nazi party between 39-45"--"Are you entering the US to perform terrorist acts"). And spend at least three times as long waiting for the one immigration booth that they have set up for Foreign Nationals.
Oh yeah, and be photo'd and fingerprinted.
Entry into the US is getting more and more painful by the year. How long, till a tub of vaseline is an essential part of every travellers kit?
Phil
>Not really
Don't be naive. There are a lot of very rich people who wish to ignore global warming.
>But even if you found some funding (probably from >a corp) to do some research in a 'forbidden' >direction
Well, I'm a biologist, so I hear this line of argument from the creationists constantly. It's just untrue. Scientists love papers which tell them accepted wisdom is wrong. At heart, science is applied cynicism. Hearing how "it's all wrong" appeals to this side.
>Politics gets into it, but at core, Global >Warming is religion.
The notion that we can keep on using enormous quantities of carbon fuels and that everything will be okay is a religion. And, like many religions, it's self-delusional.
>By asking that question it is clear no rational >discourse is possible with you, you too are a >religious zealot
This is daft. If I say "gravity is not controversial" this does not make me a zealot.
Look, global warming is there, is happening, and it's going to get worse. Of this, there is little doubt. What is in doubt is scale, how much it's going to change, and what effects this will cause. Of this, we have much poorer knowledge. The problem is that by the time we find out it will already be late in the day, and will we already suffer the consequences.
Phil
Yes, it does sound familiar. Also similar to open-bio.org which has been doing the same thing for the last 4 or 5 years. And also similar to www.i3c.org.
It's hardly a new idea. It will be interesting to see if there is anything new in this group.
Phil
In the good old days the only way to communicate long distance was by telegram. Journalists used to send stories, and get instructions in this way. You got charged by the word, so a texting like short hand, called telegraphese developed. Some of the best telegrams reached the levels of poetry. My favourite one was actually a resignation letter, and it was just four words...
"Up stuff job arsewise"
If you're leaving a job, do so in style, my advice.
Phil
"There is a loud debate going on these days about the high costs of publishing academic papers. One of the points that is seldom made is that printed journals provide a pedigree for the articles that is hard to forge: "
Journals can be re-issued and re-printed.
The problem of digital provenance is well known, and widely discussed. In fact, initials such as Digitial Object Identifiers are, at least partly, in response to these problems.
Printing, per se, does not solve the problems of archiving. And being digitial does not per se cause these problems.
Incidentally, the cost of scientific publishing is not really due to the cost of printing.
Phil
"Thats because you don't have a tri-band phone"
True. They're too expensive to be loosable at the moment.
"you should know already you need a tri-band phone if you are going to travel anywhere important in the world."
I do. I should get one at some point. As you say, it would be useful for going to Canada.
Phil
Nuts. Satire lost to a typo.
"Next you'll be telling me that you don't use good old metre's and kilo's."
What can I say. My phone seems to work all across Europe. It works in Asia. It even works in Africa. But it's knackered in the US.
It's very strange. It all seems very silly to me. Next you'll be telling me that you do use good old metre's and kilo's.
Phil
All we need now is get the US using the same phone system as everyone else and we'll be home and dry....
Phil