Mark Cuban recently asked questions about Macrovision, wanting to know why such DRM exists if it doesn't work, and why do the content companies use it, knowing that it doesn't work. Ernest Miller provides some very cogent answers here.
I used a Sony Ericsson t610 for a while, and it synched up great with OSX. The problem with the phone was that reception was miserable and the screen was completely useless outdoors.
I've since moved on to a Nokia 7610. The reception on this phone is amazingly good, as is the screen quality. Unfortunately, despite Apple's claims, I have not been able to get it to work with iSync (although I did automate importing all of my address book using this method).
Okay great. I was waiting for today's announcements to order my new G5 iMac. Now that I've heard them, I feel like I shouldn't bother. Why buy a new machine that will be obsolete in one year? Unless Apple comes through with some mighty steep discounts on what is now their legacy hardware, I'll spend my money elsewhere, and limp along on my old machine for another year.
Good business sense has nothing to do with how music companies operate. Here are two examples where companies are literally refusing free money, not out of fear of piracy, but simply out of fear, because these new obviously profitable ventures are different from their standard way of doing busiiness:
"So nobody wins. Fiona Apple's album goes mostly unheard. Sony gets no revenues from its being downloaded. And all because the idea of selling music online has to be made to fit into the strategies used for 90-odd years. You've adapted your job and your business to this interweb thing. But the record labels still think the Net should bow to their thinking."
"To date, it's proved very hard for companies to launch digital music services in Japan, thanks to the power wielded by recording companies, most of who fear declining CD sales if this downloading thing takes off. Never mind that digital music actually offers them better margins, they're not at all keen on it."
---The government should not, and generally does not, pay for things for which the public doesn't get some benefit---
So it's the papers that come out, not the actual knowledge or the new treatments/cures that's the real benefit of scientific research? I assume then, that you feel scientists should not be able to patent any discoveries? Should every single thing paid for by government grant be available completely free to the taxpayer? What percentage of the general public can even read a scientific paper?
Remember that most scientists work with a mixture of government and private money. How do you decide which part of which paper was paid for by the government?
Yes, I'm in favor of scientists controlling their own copyrights. But I do understand the economics of small scale publishing. It's not cheap and has to be paid for somehow. Yes, there are rapcious corporations that own journals that do bad things, but not all publishers can be painted with the same brush.
---it doesn't significantly alter the feasibility in my opinion of scientists and their institutions organising their own peer-reviewed open-access journals and applying whatever quality thresholds they deem appropriate---
Sure, and it's being done now, and it's an interesting experiment. Remember though, that the ones that are now in progress (PLOS) have a staff that needs to get paid. Someone needs to build the webpage, format the papers, maintain it, organize submissions, etc. I worry that distributing these jobs would massively slow the efficiency of the process, but we'll see. PLOS' solution to the problem seems to be getting tens of millions of dollars in grants, and then running things like a regular journal. Sadly, that option isn't going to be available for most.
---I said most scientists can quickly identify most junk submissions as junk, but I did not say or imply that it is possible to identify good submissions equally quickly---
And you're overgeneralizing too. What percentage of submissions are absolute identifiable junk? Probably a pretty low one. What percentage of submissions are a reasonable, sound paper, but not one novel enough or quite good enough for the journal (over-ambitious submitters)? Probably a very large percent. And those are the submissions that are going to take more time. Those papers deserve to be read and judged. Maintaining the quality level of a journal is going to be important in any new system. Scientists need to know whether a paper is "Nature" quality, or "NAR" quality.
---I'd say the apparently extensive proof-reading and copy-editing you deploy in your journal are quite exceptional for top journals in any field and that goes some way toward explaining your high cost base---
Perhaps, but we're known as a high quality publisher, and there are advantages to that. Our reputation brings in lots of authors and more high quality papers. Again, a small, high quality publisher like us is more likely to be damaged in this experiment than a big, greedy conglomerate.
---I'm not a biologist but I suspect the nomenclature problem in genomics is likely to disappear after what is probably a never-to-be-repeated period of extremely rapid proliferation of experimental data----
Not really. It was always a problem, even pre-genome. You have tons of model systems, each with their own nomenclature for genes, for proteins, for mutants. Very few scientists pay strict attention to these rules when writing. But when reading, it's important to know what the author is talking about, is it a gene, a protein? A mouse gene? A frog gene? The proliferation post-genome has certainly added to the problem though.
---It could get tougher than that for you because several of the new publishing models that are being discussed do not envisage any payments to commercial publishers---
Actually, we're a non-profit.
---I wonder what proportion of your existing revenue comes from advertising and how you propose to defuse advertisers' doubts about the relative cost-effectiveness of online advertisements as you move to online publishing.---
A significant amount, so this is a worry. Online advertising seems to be growing in acceptability, and hopefully this will continue.
---New journals can acquire prestige quickly - all it takes in some cases is for one or two well-regarded scientists (not necessarily students) to start using them---
I don't know, not in biology. There have been a ton of journals started in the last 5-10 years, and none of them (other than those named "Nature _____" or "Cell ____", associated with other top journals) have made much of an impact. Right now the field is overcrowded and fairly stagnant. Perhaps open access will weed things down a bit and make movement possible again. Or it may further cement the strong lead held by the large conglomerates.
---We give you our papers, and often our copyright too, free of charge, and, in some cases, we even pay you to take
---Which top journal did you say you work for?:-)---
Which is why I'm a managing editor, and not a copy editor.
---You seem to be contradicting yourself. First you said that what I said about journal editors not reviewing papers is wrong and then you said that papers which don't go out to reviewers are "rejected unreviewed"---
Sorry, it's a bit of journal jargon. Nothing that comes into our journals gets sent back without at least a careful reading by an editor. It's referred to as "rejected unreviewed" if it doesn't go out to independent reviewers, but it is reviewed by an editor.
---Few top-quality journals reject as much as 90% of all submissions unreviewed according to the journal-editor I know; your journal seems to be an unusual case.---
Really? Perhaps we're in different fields. Again, we're talking top quality journals. Lower quality journals are usually more accepting.
---Most scientists can identify most junk submissions as junk more quickly than an intelligent lay-person such as an editor, typically in less than a minute of skimming through the content.---
Perhaps my figure was an exageration, but yours is also. Are you really willing to reject someone's hard-earned results with less than a minute of scrutiny? Most scientists (and most editors) start with the attitude that they want to accept the paper, then look for reasons not to. If you're an editor/reviewer and you're only spending one minute on a paper, you're not doing your job.
---You assume that the work done by one journal editor would be replaced by work done by one scientist, whereas in fact the reviewing and admin work would be spread across each community of tens, hundreds or even thousands of scientists, their research students/assistants, and their institutions' secretaries.---
And you're assuming the entire scientific community will embrace the process and join in. This is hardly the case. There are scientists willing to review, and there are those who refuse. Like the current system, the majority of work is going to be done by a small minority who feel a sense of contribution to their community.
---You assume that proof-reading and copy-editing are things which journal editors usually do and which need to be done---
We have a staff of full-time copyeditors (I'm not one, obviously). Again, we're talking about higher end, higher quality journals. If you're willing to do away with such things, that's certainly your perogative, but in my field (biology), in the age of genomics, the nomenclature has become something of a nightmare, so a careful editing makes things much more understandable.
---I think different communities of scientists may adopt different solutions. It's also too early to say which approaches will be most "successful" or popular.---
I agree completely. By "successful", I mean financially sustainable, and providing at least as good an information flow as currently exists. Right now, the PLOS journals are only in existence because they've received massive grants. Can they survive without tens of millions of dollars in support? No one knows. But we're all very interested in the experiment. Remember that we're going from a print dominated industry to an online industry. So much of our revenue comes from print advertising and subscriptions. Without these, we'll need new revenue streams, so any new publishing model is eagerly welcome, if it proves viable over time.
---If that's how things really are, everybody else should stand back and calmly let any such transitions in journal publishing happen at their own speeds without feeling the need to criticise the whole process.---
It is, that's why we're not making any massive moves as of yet. We're being responsive and have already made some compromises to the vocal group's demands (papers are open access after 1 year, pay to publish is available if authors want it). But we're not going overboard. And don't feel that I'm just criti
Print is important for one main reason--advertising revenue. Right now, there's much more money to be made in selling print ads to advertisors. Sure, the online ads are slowly gaining in value and respect, but they're not anywhere near the level one charges for a print ad. There's also the issue that since most science papers are read online (or printed out) from a pdf, most readers aren't seeing many ads, particularly if they're going straight to the pdf from pubmed. The solution would be including ads directly in the pdf, on the paper itself, which is controversial to say the least.
--- Of course, good journals reject a lot of papers, but the journal editors themselves do not review any of them---
Sorry, you're wrong. I'm an editor with a scientific journal. I read (or one of my co-editors reads) every single paper that comes across our doorstep. We have to make a decision on every single submission--does it go out to reviewers, or is it rejected unreviewed. As I asked before, if a journal is rejecting 90% of submissions unreviewed (which is a solid number for a decent journal), that means if you eliminate the editors, your workload just went up 10X per journal you review for. Do you have that kind of spare time?
---I am a research scientist and I know what the workload of reviewing papers is like; most of my colleagues spend on average at most a few hours per week on reviewing activities---
So you have 20-30 hours to spare? What about the time you'll be spending finding reviewers for papers, or chasing down late reviews? Now how about the time refereeing between authors and reviewers as to what changes are reasonable to request? Don't forget all the time you'll be spending proofreading and copyediting (nomenclature alone is gonna take you a while).
Sorry you won't be getting any research done.
---I expect all scientific publishers will eventually be forced to adapt to the inevitable change to various forms of open-access publishing, whether they like it or not, because it is being demanded by the end users (the researchers) who, afterall, provide the publishers with free raw materials and free reviewing labour---
1) I think we're more likely to see a compromise, something in between like what's happening now where journals make papers free to access after 6 months. You can't replace a successful system until you have something else that will work as well. So far, open access does not work as well.
2) In my field, it's only a tiny vocal minority who really seems to care about such things. If you asked most scientists if they'd rather have everything be free, sure, they'd like that. But they're not adamant about it, nor are they spending a lot of their time worrying about it. They've got more important things to do with their time, like their careers. It doesn't make much difference to them whether they're going to have to spend $3000 to subscribe to a journal, or spend that same $3000 to get a paper published in an open access journal. They're out $3000 either way.
--- It may come as a shock to some publishers, but that will not change the outcome or the reviewing workload one iota.---
But it will drive the smaller journals out of business, and drive more power into the hands of the big conglomerates who can weather the storm.
--- Of course, good journals reject a lot of papers, but the journal editors themselves do not review any of them---
Sorry, you're wrong. I'm an editor with a scientific journal. I read (or one of my co-editors reads) every single paper that comes across our doorstep. We have to make a decision on every single submission--does it go out to reviewers, or is it rejected unreviewed. As I asked before, if a journal is rejecting 90% of submissions unreviewed (which is a solid number for a decent journal), that means if you eliminate the editors, your workload just went up 10X per journal you review for. Do you have that kind of spare time?
---I am a research scientist and I know what the workload of reviewing papers is like; most of my colleagues spend on average at most a few hours per week on reviewing activities---
So you have 20-30 hours to spare? What about the time you'll be spending finding reviewers for papers, or chasing down late reviews? Now how about the time refereeing between authors and reviewers as to what changes are reasonable to request? Don't forget all the time you'll be spending proofreading and copyediting (nomenclature alone is gonna take you a while).
Sorry you won't be getting any research done.
---I expect all scientific publishers will eventually be forced to adapt to the inevitable change to various forms of open-access publishing, whether they like it or not, because it is being demanded by the end users (the researchers) who, afterall, provide the publishers with free raw materials and free reviewing labour---
1) I think we're more likely to see a compromise, something in between like what's happening now where journals make papers free to access after 6 months. You can't replace a successful system until you have something else that will work as well. So far, open access does not work as well.
2) In my field, it's only a tiny vocal minority who really seems to care about such things. If you asked most scientists if they'd rather have everything be free, sure, they'd like that. But they're not adamant about it, nor are they spending a lot of their time worrying about it. They've got more important things to do with their time, like their careers. It doesn't make much difference to them whether they're going to have to spend $3000 to subscribe to a journal, or spend that same $3000 to get a paper published in an open access journal. They're out $3000 either way.
--- It may come as a shock to some publishers, but that will not change the outcome or the reviewing workload one iota.---
But it will drive the smaller journals out of business, and drive more power into the hands of the big conglomerates who can weather the storm.
---First, much of the research published is paid for by government grants via taxes, so taxpayers are paying for the "privilege" of reading about research they already paid for themselves.---
Should everything the government pays for be free? What about farming subsidies, shouldn't we expect free food? Small business loans--shouldn't products from these companies be free to all taxpayers?
---Yes, there is a need for someone, somehow, to finance the organized peer-review and publication of scientific articles. However, I flatly refuse to accept the proposition that $1500/year subscriptions and author-paid page charges are a good way to do this---
Keep in mind that you're dealing with economies of scale. Most scientific journals have fewer than 1000 subscribers. To put out a high quality monthly publication with so few purchasers, you're going to end up with a higher price simply because of the numbers.
Second, remember that many journals are used by scientific societies to fund other activities. Some journals are owned by research institutions, and any funds made from subscribers go to pay for research. Yes, there certainly are many journals owned by publishing conglomerates that merely rake in the money as pure profit. But eliminating our current system means eliminating most scientific societies (who sponsor things like meetings and scholarships) and hampering research at some institutions.
Surely there is some middle ground where we can keep supporting these worthwhile ventures while cutting out the rapacious profiteering of others.
You do realize that editing a journal is a full time job, right? You're proposing that, on top of running a lab, teaching courses, faculty responsibilities, and doing your own research, that you'd have time to also do the full time job of an editor?
How many hours per week are you willing to spend reviewing papers? Keep in mind that good journals reject 90% of the papers that get submitted, so multiply any reviewing you're doing now by 10X per journal. Then factor in several hours per paper that you're going to send out for peer review to be spent figuring out who to send it to, and the back and forth necessary to find people willing to review it. Don't forget that you're now also in charge of keeping those reviewers on schedule.
Every scientist I know is already overscheduled and hard pressed for time. You've just added 40-50 hours per week to those overloaded schedules. When are you going to have any time to do research?
Pretty much, and under the law, it's a reasonable approach. But in the long run, it's a futile one, and a foolish one.
First, the massive quantity of US lawsuits has caused no slowdown in p2p filesharing. So it's not an effective means of stopping copyright infringement.
Next, it's bad PR, and is turning off more and more consumers and artists from doing business with the major label cartels. It's also interesting that they continue to settle out of court, rather than letting any case go through. I think there's some fear on the RIAA and their equivalents' parts that a court case would 1) reinforce fair use rights and 2) set a precedent for the value of a song.
Most importantly, rather than seeing this as something that must be stomped out and trying to turn back the clock, a smarter approach is to find a way to profit from this obvious consumer demand. The same thing happened with the VCR, and now the MPAA makes more money from video sales and rentals than from box office receipts.
My opinion is they need to set up a system similar to this one. It takes advantage of the massive power of p2p, yet protects copyright and actively encourages users to only deal in legit files by giving them a financial incentive.
You mean Airport Express, which you can use as an 802.11 base station with Mac or Windows machines? And that you can use to stream audio from any application using Rogue Amoeba's new program? Doesn't sound real proprietary or locked-in to me.
---I believe the poster meant "the wireless playback unit requires iTunes, so the wireless playback unit is one more thing I'm not going to buy from apple, because I don't like/want iTunes."---
Understood, but his reasons for disliking iTunes were not very accurate.
More importantly, the unit in question, Airport Express, does not require iTunes, it's essentially an 802.11 base station compatible with OSX or Windows. If you do want to stream music over it, you can use iTunes, or as pointed out in the article, Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil program.
---But it requires iTunes, so there's one more thing that I'm not going to buy from apple.---
You do realize that iTunes is free, and works just fine with all sorts of file formats you can rip from your own cd's or buy elsewhere right? It'll even convert your WMA files to AAC.
---If I buy a Chevy vehicle, I want it to work with any gasoline that's been refined properly. I don't want to buy Chevy gasoline, or gasoline from an "approved Chevy distributor". Same goes for my music... If I buy something that plays music, I just want it to play my goddamned music... Not music from store A, or through service B.----
Sounds pretty much like iTunes fits the bill for you then, as long as you avoid buying music downloads from any seller with proprietary DRM (pretty much everyone selling major label songs for download, Apple included).
--- Until things change, Apple ain't seeing a dime from me.---
You should really stick it to them by downloading it and using it for free then.
I agree with what you're saying, but science journals are not the right place for public outreach. Journals are for communication between scientists, for the review and publication of results, not for helping the public to understand.
It's a nice thought, but I have a hard time believing that the general public is going to spend a lot of time reading high level journal articles that are often difficult to comprehend for those actively working in the field. There's a reason why the average person doesn't subscribe to the Journal of Neuroscience, other than a lack of interest, it's that scientific papers are really hard to read for non-scientists.
You also have to remember that many of these societies serve smaller scientific communities and their work is probably not going to catch the eye of the public. How many people do you think would send a PayPal donation to the RNA society after reading their exciting papers about RNA structure?
I don't know if your doing scientific research at the moment, but money is extremely tight in this age, and with the current administration. Hoping for donations of 10's if not 100's of thousands of dollars from cash strapped scientists is wishful thinking at best.
Your response does not answer my question. There are many, many scientific societies that do very important work for their respective communities (putting on meetings, funding scholarships, etc). Many of these societies fund their activities through the publication of a journal. If you put together a system whereby profits can not be made from scientific journals, these societies will cease to exist. A big publishing conglomerate like Elsevier will weather the storm, but scientific societies will disappear.
---PLoS (Public Library of Science) does it by a system of "author pays" in which most or all of the cost is borne by the submitter---
Note that the PLOS is using a system where they actually lose money on the publication of their journals. Right now, they are supported by huge grants that lets them get away with this. When the grant money runs out in a few years, expect them to either cease publication, or massively increase the charges authors have to pay.
Your statements show a very naive, if not completely incorrect understanding of what goes into publishing a scientific journal. There are lots of costs involved, and nearly every journal that exists has a score of paid employees.
---The editor is usually a volunteer---
Not true in most cases. Most journals have a paid full time editor (at least this is certainly the case for biology journals). There is usually an editorial board made up of scientists. These people are sometimes volunteers, but are often paid a stipend for their contributions.
---The editor sends your manuscript to two or three referees, who mark it up and write him a report. He then takes their names off the reports, and forwards them to you, with his decision (usually either ``forget it'' or ``revise and resubmit''). All this is done electronically, so costs are nil.---
First, a decision has to be made as to whether the article is worth reviewing. This is done by the editor who reads the paper and assesses its initial value. If favorable, the paper is then forwarded to reviewers. Due to the large volume of submissions seen by most journals, an administrative assistant usually oversees and tracks this process. Some journals have indeed switched to electronic submission and review systems, while many haven't. Such systems are very expensive to set up, and expensive to maintain. One such system is run by Stanford University's Highwire Press (who also help journals publish online). Care to see how many people they employ?
---Aside from a secretary for the editor (not all publications have this), the only paid employees are the guys who run the printing press and the fat cats who take your checks to the bank.---
Um, no. Most journals have a publication staff. These people are responsible for layout and formatting of accepted articles, reviewing and correcting artwork, copyediting, cover designs, dealing with legal permissions, sending out reprints, and inumerable other tasks. As far as the fatcats go, many journals are run by scientific societies who rely on journal profits to fund community activities like scholarships and meetings (Protein Science is an example). Other journals are published by universities and research institutes, and all profits go into funding further research and support for the scientists working there (MIT Press for example). Yes, there are plenty of Elseviers and other greedy publishing empires out there, but don't tarnish all journals with the same broad brush.
---and in return, the publisher takes the copyright---
Many journals, such as those published by the Nature Publishing Group, give the authors full copyright in return for an exclusive license for the article.
Slashdot Mirror
Mark Cuban recently asked questions about Macrovision, wanting to know why such DRM exists if it doesn't work, and why do the content companies use it, knowing that it doesn't work. Ernest Miller provides some very cogent answers here.
I used a Sony Ericsson t610 for a while, and it synched up great with OSX. The problem with the phone was that reception was miserable and the screen was completely useless outdoors.
I've since moved on to a Nokia 7610. The reception on this phone is amazingly good, as is the screen quality. Unfortunately, despite Apple's claims, I have not been able to get it to work with iSync (although I did automate importing all of my address book using this method).
Okay great. I was waiting for today's announcements to order my new G5 iMac. Now that I've heard them, I feel like I shouldn't bother. Why buy a new machine that will be obsolete in one year? Unless Apple comes through with some mighty steep discounts on what is now their legacy hardware, I'll spend my money elsewhere, and limp along on my old machine for another year.
Good business sense has nothing to do with how music companies operate. Here are two examples where companies are literally refusing free money, not out of fear of piracy, but simply out of fear, because these new obviously profitable ventures are different from their standard way of doing busiiness:
Fiona Apple saga shows Sony's core dilemma
"So nobody wins. Fiona Apple's album goes mostly unheard. Sony gets no revenues from its being downloaded. And all because the idea of selling music online has to be made to fit into the strategies used for 90-odd years. You've adapted your job and your business to this interweb thing. But the record labels still think the Net should bow to their thinking."
Apple Japan 'will' open Music Store
"To date, it's proved very hard for companies to launch digital music services in Japan, thanks to the power wielded by recording companies, most of who fear declining CD sales if this downloading thing takes off. Never mind that digital music actually offers them better margins, they're not at all keen on it."
Apple switched their rendering farm to OSX machines early last year, at least according to this article. Slashdot discussion thread here.
---The journals then retain the copyrights to the research---
It depends on where you publish. Many journals, like those in the Nature Publishing Group, leave the copyright with the author.
---The government should not, and generally does not, pay for things for which the public doesn't get some benefit---
So it's the papers that come out, not the actual knowledge or the new treatments/cures that's the real benefit of scientific research? I assume then, that you feel scientists should not be able to patent any discoveries? Should every single thing paid for by government grant be available completely free to the taxpayer? What percentage of the general public can even read a scientific paper?
Remember that most scientists work with a mixture of government and private money. How do you decide which part of which paper was paid for by the government?
Yes, I'm in favor of scientists controlling their own copyrights. But I do understand the economics of small scale publishing. It's not cheap and has to be paid for somehow. Yes, there are rapcious corporations that own journals that do bad things, but not all publishers can be painted with the same brush.
---it doesn't significantly alter the feasibility in my opinion of scientists and their institutions organising their own peer-reviewed open-access journals and applying whatever quality thresholds they deem appropriate---
Sure, and it's being done now, and it's an interesting experiment. Remember though, that the ones that are now in progress (PLOS) have a staff that needs to get paid. Someone needs to build the webpage, format the papers, maintain it, organize submissions, etc. I worry that distributing these jobs would massively slow the efficiency of the process, but we'll see. PLOS' solution to the problem seems to be getting tens of millions of dollars in grants, and then running things like a regular journal. Sadly, that option isn't going to be available for most.
---I said most scientists can quickly identify most junk submissions as junk, but I did not say or imply that it is possible to identify good submissions equally quickly---
And you're overgeneralizing too. What percentage of submissions are absolute identifiable junk? Probably a pretty low one. What percentage of submissions are a reasonable, sound paper, but not one novel enough or quite good enough for the journal (over-ambitious submitters)? Probably a very large percent. And those are the submissions that are going to take more time. Those papers deserve to be read and judged. Maintaining the quality level of a journal is going to be important in any new system. Scientists need to know whether a paper is "Nature" quality, or "NAR" quality.
---I'd say the apparently extensive proof-reading and copy-editing you deploy in your journal are quite exceptional for top journals in any field and that goes some way toward explaining your high cost base---
Perhaps, but we're known as a high quality publisher, and there are advantages to that. Our reputation brings in lots of authors and more high quality papers. Again, a small, high quality publisher like us is more likely to be damaged in this experiment than a big, greedy conglomerate.
---I'm not a biologist but I suspect the nomenclature problem in genomics is likely to disappear after what is probably a never-to-be-repeated period of extremely rapid proliferation of experimental data----
Not really. It was always a problem, even pre-genome. You have tons of model systems, each with their own nomenclature for genes, for proteins, for mutants. Very few scientists pay strict attention to these rules when writing. But when reading, it's important to know what the author is talking about, is it a gene, a protein? A mouse gene? A frog gene? The proliferation post-genome has certainly added to the problem though.
---It could get tougher than that for you because several of the new publishing models that are being discussed do not envisage any payments to commercial publishers---
Actually, we're a non-profit.
---I wonder what proportion of your existing revenue comes from advertising and how you propose to defuse advertisers' doubts about the relative cost-effectiveness of online advertisements as you move to online publishing.---
A significant amount, so this is a worry. Online advertising seems to be growing in acceptability, and hopefully this will continue.
---New journals can acquire prestige quickly - all it takes in some cases is for one or two well-regarded scientists (not necessarily students) to start using them---
I don't know, not in biology. There have been a ton of journals started in the last 5-10 years, and none of them (other than those named "Nature _____" or "Cell ____", associated with other top journals) have made much of an impact. Right now the field is overcrowded and fairly stagnant. Perhaps open access will weed things down a bit and make movement possible again. Or it may further cement the strong lead held by the large conglomerates.
---We give you our papers, and often our copyright too, free of charge, and, in some cases, we even pay you to take
---Which top journal did you say you work for? :-)---
Which is why I'm a managing editor, and not a copy editor.
---You seem to be contradicting yourself. First you said that what I said about journal editors not reviewing papers is wrong and then you said that papers which don't go out to reviewers are "rejected unreviewed"---
Sorry, it's a bit of journal jargon. Nothing that comes into our journals gets sent back without at least a careful reading by an editor. It's referred to as "rejected unreviewed" if it doesn't go out to independent reviewers, but it is reviewed by an editor.
---Few top-quality journals reject as much as 90% of all submissions unreviewed according to the journal-editor I know; your journal seems to be an unusual case.---
Really? Perhaps we're in different fields. Again, we're talking top quality journals. Lower quality journals are usually more accepting.
---Most scientists can identify most junk submissions as junk more quickly than an intelligent lay-person such as an editor, typically in less than a minute of skimming through the content.---
Perhaps my figure was an exageration, but yours is also. Are you really willing to reject someone's hard-earned results with less than a minute of scrutiny? Most scientists (and most editors) start with the attitude that they want to accept the paper, then look for reasons not to. If you're an editor/reviewer and you're only spending one minute on a paper, you're not doing your job.
---You assume that the work done by one journal editor would be replaced by work done by one scientist, whereas in fact the reviewing and admin work would be spread across each community of tens, hundreds or even thousands of scientists, their research students/assistants, and their institutions' secretaries.---
And you're assuming the entire scientific community will embrace the process and join in. This is hardly the case. There are scientists willing to review, and there are those who refuse. Like the current system, the majority of work is going to be done by a small minority who feel a sense of contribution to their community.
---You assume that proof-reading and copy-editing are things which journal editors usually do and which need to be done---
We have a staff of full-time copyeditors (I'm not one, obviously). Again, we're talking about higher end, higher quality journals. If you're willing to do away with such things, that's certainly your perogative, but in my field (biology), in the age of genomics, the nomenclature has become something of a nightmare, so a careful editing makes things much more understandable.
---I think different communities of scientists may adopt different solutions. It's also too early to say which approaches will be most "successful" or popular.---
I agree completely. By "successful", I mean financially sustainable, and providing at least as good an information flow as currently exists. Right now, the PLOS journals are only in existence because they've received massive grants. Can they survive without tens of millions of dollars in support? No one knows. But we're all very interested in the experiment. Remember that we're going from a print dominated industry to an online industry. So much of our revenue comes from print advertising and subscriptions. Without these, we'll need new revenue streams, so any new publishing model is eagerly welcome, if it proves viable over time.
---If that's how things really are, everybody else should stand back and calmly let any such transitions in journal publishing happen at their own speeds without feeling the need to criticise the whole process.---
It is, that's why we're not making any massive moves as of yet. We're being responsive and have already made some compromises to the vocal group's demands (papers are open access after 1 year, pay to publish is available if authors want it). But we're not going overboard. And don't feel that I'm just criti
Print is important for one main reason--advertising revenue. Right now, there's much more money to be made in selling print ads to advertisors. Sure, the online ads are slowly gaining in value and respect, but they're not anywhere near the level one charges for a print ad. There's also the issue that since most science papers are read online (or printed out) from a pdf, most readers aren't seeing many ads, particularly if they're going straight to the pdf from pubmed. The solution would be including ads directly in the pdf, on the paper itself, which is controversial to say the least.
As an editor, you'd think I'd know better.
--- Of course, good journals reject a lot of papers, but the journal editors themselves do not review any of them---
Sorry, you're wrong. I'm an editor with a scientific journal. I read (or one of my co-editors reads) every single paper that comes across our doorstep. We have to make a decision on every single submission--does it go out to reviewers, or is it rejected unreviewed. As I asked before, if a journal is rejecting 90% of submissions unreviewed (which is a solid number for a decent journal), that means if you eliminate the editors, your workload just went up 10X per journal you review for. Do you have that kind of spare time?
---I am a research scientist and I know what the workload of reviewing papers is like; most of my colleagues spend on average at most a few hours per week on reviewing activities---
So you have 20-30 hours to spare? What about the time you'll be spending finding reviewers for papers, or chasing down late reviews? Now how about the time refereeing between authors and reviewers as to what changes are reasonable to request? Don't forget all the time you'll be spending proofreading and copyediting (nomenclature alone is gonna take you a while).
Sorry you won't be getting any research done.
---I expect all scientific publishers will eventually be forced to adapt to the inevitable change to various forms of open-access publishing, whether they like it or not, because it is being demanded by the end users (the researchers) who, afterall, provide the publishers with free raw materials and free reviewing labour---
1) I think we're more likely to see a compromise, something in between like what's happening now where journals make papers free to access after 6 months. You can't replace a successful system until you have something else that will work as well. So far, open access does not work as well.
2) In my field, it's only a tiny vocal minority who really seems to care about such things. If you asked most scientists if they'd rather have everything be free, sure, they'd like that. But they're not adamant about it, nor are they spending a lot of their time worrying about it. They've got more important things to do with their time, like their careers. It doesn't make much difference to them whether they're going to have to spend $3000 to subscribe to a journal, or spend that same $3000 to get a paper published in an open access journal. They're out $3000 either way.
--- It may come as a shock to some publishers, but that will not change the outcome or the reviewing workload one iota.---
But it will drive the smaller journals out of business, and drive more power into the hands of the big conglomerates who can weather the storm.
--- Of course, good journals reject a lot of papers, but the journal editors themselves do not review any of them--- Sorry, you're wrong. I'm an editor with a scientific journal. I read (or one of my co-editors reads) every single paper that comes across our doorstep. We have to make a decision on every single submission--does it go out to reviewers, or is it rejected unreviewed. As I asked before, if a journal is rejecting 90% of submissions unreviewed (which is a solid number for a decent journal), that means if you eliminate the editors, your workload just went up 10X per journal you review for. Do you have that kind of spare time? ---I am a research scientist and I know what the workload of reviewing papers is like; most of my colleagues spend on average at most a few hours per week on reviewing activities--- So you have 20-30 hours to spare? What about the time you'll be spending finding reviewers for papers, or chasing down late reviews? Now how about the time refereeing between authors and reviewers as to what changes are reasonable to request? Don't forget all the time you'll be spending proofreading and copyediting (nomenclature alone is gonna take you a while). Sorry you won't be getting any research done. ---I expect all scientific publishers will eventually be forced to adapt to the inevitable change to various forms of open-access publishing, whether they like it or not, because it is being demanded by the end users (the researchers) who, afterall, provide the publishers with free raw materials and free reviewing labour--- 1) I think we're more likely to see a compromise, something in between like what's happening now where journals make papers free to access after 6 months. You can't replace a successful system until you have something else that will work as well. So far, open access does not work as well. 2) In my field, it's only a tiny vocal minority who really seems to care about such things. If you asked most scientists if they'd rather have everything be free, sure, they'd like that. But they're not adamant about it, nor are they spending a lot of their time worrying about it. They've got more important things to do with their time, like their careers. It doesn't make much difference to them whether they're going to have to spend $3000 to subscribe to a journal, or spend that same $3000 to get a paper published in an open access journal. They're out $3000 either way. --- It may come as a shock to some publishers, but that will not change the outcome or the reviewing workload one iota.--- But it will drive the smaller journals out of business, and drive more power into the hands of the big conglomerates who can weather the storm.
---First, much of the research published is paid for by government grants via taxes, so taxpayers are paying for the "privilege" of reading about research they already paid for themselves.---
Should everything the government pays for be free? What about farming subsidies, shouldn't we expect free food? Small business loans--shouldn't products from these companies be free to all taxpayers?
---Yes, there is a need for someone, somehow, to finance the organized peer-review and publication of scientific articles. However, I flatly refuse to accept the proposition that $1500/year subscriptions and author-paid page charges are a good way to do this---
Keep in mind that you're dealing with economies of scale. Most scientific journals have fewer than 1000 subscribers. To put out a high quality monthly publication with so few purchasers, you're going to end up with a higher price simply because of the numbers.
Second, remember that many journals are used by scientific societies to fund other activities. Some journals are owned by research institutions, and any funds made from subscribers go to pay for research. Yes, there certainly are many journals owned by publishing conglomerates that merely rake in the money as pure profit. But eliminating our current system means eliminating most scientific societies (who sponsor things like meetings and scholarships) and hampering research at some institutions.
Surely there is some middle ground where we can keep supporting these worthwhile ventures while cutting out the rapacious profiteering of others.
You do realize that editing a journal is a full time job, right? You're proposing that, on top of running a lab, teaching courses, faculty responsibilities, and doing your own research, that you'd have time to also do the full time job of an editor?
How many hours per week are you willing to spend reviewing papers? Keep in mind that good journals reject 90% of the papers that get submitted, so multiply any reviewing you're doing now by 10X per journal. Then factor in several hours per paper that you're going to send out for peer review to be spent figuring out who to send it to, and the back and forth necessary to find people willing to review it. Don't forget that you're now also in charge of keeping those reviewers on schedule.
Every scientist I know is already overscheduled and hard pressed for time. You've just added 40-50 hours per week to those overloaded schedules. When are you going to have any time to do research?
---Isn't this exactly what we asked for?---
Pretty much, and under the law, it's a reasonable approach. But in the long run, it's a futile one, and a foolish one.
First, the massive quantity of US lawsuits has caused no slowdown in p2p filesharing. So it's not an effective means of stopping copyright infringement.
Next, it's bad PR, and is turning off more and more consumers and artists from doing business with the major label cartels. It's also interesting that they continue to settle out of court, rather than letting any case go through. I think there's some fear on the RIAA and their equivalents' parts that a court case would 1) reinforce fair use rights and 2) set a precedent for the value of a song.
Most importantly, rather than seeing this as something that must be stomped out and trying to turn back the clock, a smarter approach is to find a way to profit from this obvious consumer demand. The same thing happened with the VCR, and now the MPAA makes more money from video sales and rentals than from box office receipts.
My opinion is they need to set up a system similar to this one. It takes advantage of the massive power of p2p, yet protects copyright and actively encourages users to only deal in legit files by giving them a financial incentive.
You mean Airport Express, which you can use as an 802.11 base station with Mac or Windows machines? And that you can use to stream audio from any application using Rogue Amoeba's new program? Doesn't sound real proprietary or locked-in to me.
---I believe the poster meant "the wireless playback unit requires iTunes, so the wireless playback unit is one more thing I'm not going to buy from apple, because I don't like/want iTunes."---
Understood, but his reasons for disliking iTunes were not very accurate.
More importantly, the unit in question, Airport Express, does not require iTunes, it's essentially an 802.11 base station compatible with OSX or Windows. If you do want to stream music over it, you can use iTunes, or as pointed out in the article, Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil program.
---But it requires iTunes, so there's one more thing that I'm not going to buy from apple.---
You do realize that iTunes is free, and works just fine with all sorts of file formats you can rip from your own cd's or buy elsewhere right? It'll even convert your WMA files to AAC.
---If I buy a Chevy vehicle, I want it to work with any gasoline that's been refined properly. I don't want to buy Chevy gasoline, or gasoline from an "approved Chevy distributor". Same goes for my music... If I buy something that plays music, I just want it to play my goddamned music... Not music from store A, or through service B.----
Sounds pretty much like iTunes fits the bill for you then, as long as you avoid buying music downloads from any seller with proprietary DRM (pretty much everyone selling major label songs for download, Apple included).
--- Until things change, Apple ain't seeing a dime from me.---
You should really stick it to them by downloading it and using it for free then.
I agree with what you're saying, but science journals are not the right place for public outreach. Journals are for communication between scientists, for the review and publication of results, not for helping the public to understand.
It's a nice thought, but I have a hard time believing that the general public is going to spend a lot of time reading high level journal articles that are often difficult to comprehend for those actively working in the field. There's a reason why the average person doesn't subscribe to the Journal of Neuroscience, other than a lack of interest, it's that scientific papers are really hard to read for non-scientists. You also have to remember that many of these societies serve smaller scientific communities and their work is probably not going to catch the eye of the public. How many people do you think would send a PayPal donation to the RNA society after reading their exciting papers about RNA structure?
I don't know if your doing scientific research at the moment, but money is extremely tight in this age, and with the current administration. Hoping for donations of 10's if not 100's of thousands of dollars from cash strapped scientists is wishful thinking at best.
How does a money losing strategy by the PLOS to fund their journals result in money being raised to fund unrelated scientific societies?
Your response does not answer my question. There are many, many scientific societies that do very important work for their respective communities (putting on meetings, funding scholarships, etc). Many of these societies fund their activities through the publication of a journal. If you put together a system whereby profits can not be made from scientific journals, these societies will cease to exist. A big publishing conglomerate like Elsevier will weather the storm, but scientific societies will disappear.
---PLoS (Public Library of Science) does it by a system of "author pays" in which most or all of the cost is borne by the submitter---
Note that the PLOS is using a system where they actually lose money on the publication of their journals. Right now, they are supported by huge grants that lets them get away with this. When the grant money runs out in a few years, expect them to either cease publication, or massively increase the charges authors have to pay.
---Roughly speaking, there are no expenses.---
Your statements show a very naive, if not completely incorrect understanding of what goes into publishing a scientific journal. There are lots of costs involved, and nearly every journal that exists has a score of paid employees.
---The editor is usually a volunteer---
Not true in most cases. Most journals have a paid full time editor (at least this is certainly the case for biology journals). There is usually an editorial board made up of scientists. These people are sometimes volunteers, but are often paid a stipend for their contributions.
---The editor sends your manuscript to two or three referees, who mark it up and write him a report. He then takes their names off the reports, and forwards them to you, with his decision (usually either ``forget it'' or ``revise and resubmit''). All this is done electronically, so costs are nil.---
First, a decision has to be made as to whether the article is worth reviewing. This is done by the editor who reads the paper and assesses its initial value. If favorable, the paper is then forwarded to reviewers. Due to the large volume of submissions seen by most journals, an administrative assistant usually oversees and tracks this process. Some journals have indeed switched to electronic submission and review systems, while many haven't. Such systems are very expensive to set up, and expensive to maintain. One such system is run by Stanford University's Highwire Press (who also help journals publish online). Care to see how many people they employ?
---Aside from a secretary for the editor (not all publications have this), the only paid employees are the guys who run the printing press and the fat cats who take your checks to the bank.---
Um, no. Most journals have a publication staff. These people are responsible for layout and formatting of accepted articles, reviewing and correcting artwork, copyediting, cover designs, dealing with legal permissions, sending out reprints, and inumerable other tasks. As far as the fatcats go, many journals are run by scientific societies who rely on journal profits to fund community activities like scholarships and meetings (Protein Science is an example). Other journals are published by universities and research institutes, and all profits go into funding further research and support for the scientists working there (MIT Press for example). Yes, there are plenty of Elseviers and other greedy publishing empires out there, but don't tarnish all journals with the same broad brush.
---and in return, the publisher takes the copyright---
Many journals, such as those published by the Nature Publishing Group, give the authors full copyright in return for an exclusive license for the article.