I cannot "upload" my article on Google Scholar and thus make it widely available (so that it can be searched, found, commented upon, ranked, whatever).
False, false, false, false, whatever.
Give me a link where I can upload my preprint on a Google server.
Well, 3 Euros is an underestimation. I made a relevant post here. I would place the total cost a about $1300 per article. But that can still not justify their absurd profit margins.
They do not publish the articles. Google Scholar is not a publishing company, its a search engine. The pdfs need to be already available on a server and only then can Google find them and display them as search-hits. I cannot "upload" my article on Google Scholar and thus make it widely available (so that it can be searched, found, commented upon, ranked, whatever). I think that falls under your sentence "where they are the only publishers" (in your post above). And I would like that.
It is a device that costs $200 upwards, small and a lot of people are carrying. The amount of cash one holds is usually meager and credit/debit cards are worthless because they can be rendered useless with one phone-call (someone pointed out above that it would be a good idea to have that bricking option for phones too). Expensive watches would be a good alternative for theft, but youngsters don't wear them, since they have a smartphone to tell the time with. The smartphone is the new Rolex.
Usually libraries have terminals with the library's IP that gets recognized by the publisher and give you access to the subscribed material. And you can legitimately download too. You just need to find such a library (usually at a university).
The diagram with the blocks (each representing $100) puts the "article processing" costs at just under $1500 per article for the online version (it only falls at $1400 for the open access online version). Now let's assume these costs apply for Nature itself. The current issue of Nature sports only 4 (!) articles and 12 "letters". All the rest "article" content I'll just refuse to count, since it is not science and a free online journal can certainly do without. So they are actually telling us that they need 96 grand a moth (Nature is weekly) to produce about 300 pages? (I am assuming 10 pages per full-length article and 3 for each letter, that is 76 pages per week, or 304 per month.) That, I would say, is a job for two typesetters, but let's say four, since diagrams and equations can be tricky, that each cost $10.000 a month including software fees. That is 40.000 a month, not 96.000. They would have us think that they need more than two times as much staff. I also don't see how "Administering peer-review" and "quality assurance" can cover this gap (assuming that editing, proofreading, typesetting and graphics are done by the four employees as per above). They are just spending the extra money on the non-science articles nobody reads and factor these costs in the average "per article" rate, but they want us to believe that a more low-profile open access journal will still have the same costs per article (since it only goes down from $1500 to $1400, to finish where I started).
Now, I know I made some assumptions, but here's this: Nature, you can continue to claim your absurd fees, but, please, don't take us for idiots.
The libraries should refuse to pay the ridiculous prices of the publishers, but they should also offer an open-access preprint-publication service. The copyright for the article version before publishing (even after peer-review) belongs to the authors. The university libraries should: 1. Quit all subscriptions. No exceptions. This will annoy a lot of people (as it once did myself) but it will pay back in the long run for everyone. 2. Offer to buy only individual articles. As time passes, increase the time-limit of the articles that can be purchased this way. E.g. the first year all articles can be bought, the second year only articles that are at least one year old, and so on. This will also be more expensive in the first few years, but again, it will pay back in multiple in the long run. Maintain a database with all purchased articles to avoid dupes. When a purchase order comes for an article that is already there, pull it from the database. Do not make the database public: this will be copyright infringement. 3. Put online a free-access preprint database of the all papers published by the university. Let Google Scholar index it and search it. 4. Let researchers publish as usual, but when they submit their publication list to get tenure/PhD/diploma/whatever, demand pdf-preprints for all publications (after all, they are all legitimate publications and the authors should have the preprints, right?). Otherwise, no tenure/PhD/diploma/whatever, no dice. Put these preprints in the online a free-access database. 5. Agree with other institutes/universities to do the same. If a university cannot afford the infrastructure (which should be not much, but let's say it is), they can team up with another university that can. Or, heck why not gather all state universities together and have them make a non-profit organization for this purpose. This way you'll have the prestige of many universities together (you can still stamp each preprint to know where it came from, if you must).
This is the only realistic way, in my opinion, to change this system. It served us well in the 1900s, but this is the information age and things have to move on. The university where I worked had the online free database, but only included the dissertations of the PhDs that chose to publish this way. I say force them, and expand the concept to include articles and conference papers. And the library still had some subscriptions, so it was a half-assed attempt at best. The company that I work for now refuses to subscribe, but they will purchase individual articles. We had an internal database with all purchased articles that was searchable via the company intranet, but the legal department got complaints that intranet-access was still too "public" for the lawyers of Elsevier and their ilk.
This was also a very cheap subscription price. The major journals in my field (chemical engineering) cost more than $1000 per year (each). The individual articles range from $25 to $40, depending on the journal.
They offer a specialized search engine, yes, but they do not publish original research material. I would be a complete fanboy if they did. Anything to escape Elsevier.
I have been using Office for ages. At work I have a WinXP and a Win7 machine with Office 2003 and 2010 respectively. I find myself switching to Office 2003 very often, especially when using Excel. When using PowerPoint less so, probably because of the following reason. In Excel, I almost always want to calculate something that takes brain cycles to implement, whereas in PowerPoint it is more about the aesthetics and whether a slide "works" or not, i.e. less brain-work (well, at least not that part of the brain anyway). I find the Office 2010 GUI to be more "brain-cycle-demanding" than the old interface. That is, you need to think under which function the button you need is to be found so that you can click through the ribbon items. With the old interface I used a spatial organization of the menu bars that I needed the most, which made using the software much like driving a car or playing a game: your hand would move the mouse towards the right menu "automatically" without you having to explicitly think about going there. You could thus keep focused on what you were doing and the software did not demand your attention, it was just "out of the way". It needed more screen real-estate, but why do we have these huge monitors nowadays for?
I'm self-taught and never, ever, really needed tutoring. Google was my friend for the most challenging of cases. Tomorrow, I have my first training booked for helping me out with the mess of Excel 2010 after more than a decade of usage. Nice going Microsoft.
It is called "maintaining your living standard". Two taxi rides every day can amount to 3-4 thousand euros per year or more, depending on the distance. Which, given a "standard" well-paying job, amounts to a month's net salary (give or take). Losing a month's pay on transportation only is a lot, even if you are grossing 75k yearly, and your living standard is at stake. Which could mean a psychologist's bill in the long run (even more so, if you factor in your disability as well). So that small help from the community is a huge help for such people.
Unlike Europe and Asia, this country was not founded by a conquering king.
Oh, get off your horse you (anonymous) coward. A lot of countries in Europe and Asia had to fight for their freedom, too. Against Turks, Russians and so on.
My parents survived an attack on their lives once (in Europe, not in the US). Their neighbor went nuts and started hacking at their door with a butcher's cleaver. The police arrived just in time to disarm the lunatic. He is now in a special high security prison/hospital where they keep all dangerous loonies.
My parent's didn't own a gun, and I can definitely see your point. If the neighbor owned a gun though, they wouldn't stand a chance. The would-be murderer in this case didn't plan ahead in attacking them, just woke up that day and decided that that's what the voices in his head wanted him to do. I much prefer such people without the right to bear arms. I'll take my chances with the police, thank you very much.
Not true. Where I work almost everyone wear glasses. I'm sure they could use contact lenses if they wanted to, or do laser surgery. But they don't choose to. And they are ALL nerds to the bone. Coincidence?
we regret to inform you that we must increase your monthly health insurance fees by 50% since you were recorded smoking a cigarette outside Joe's Bar on April 12th. Also, you were recorded driving through McDonald's on April 15th, so we will have to bill you that dietician's visit we covered last month. And no skin-disease related treatments will be covered after April 20th, on which you were reportedly sunbathing continuously for 5 hours.
You are absolutely right, but the GP was making the point that the so-called "interdisciplinary" science is becoming the norm. Taking the author lists as an example was an unfortunate choice for an argument, but that doesn't invalidate his point.
I would ignore your answer, but I just want to specify exactly how I came to my conclusion. You see, I don't doubt that USA is a powerful country, but the way how you (notice that I am not generalizing this to "all Americans") rub such facts in the face of other people is why people hate you. Here are some examples from your post: - All of Iraq could be destroyed and the world will keep moving along Well, the Iraqis would certainly have another opinion on the mater. And other nations might, for various reasons, not want to just let it go. - If you hate that then I guess we could let some other country make all our decisions for a while... People hate you deciding about other people's businesses. You can, and you should, decide upon your foreign policies, but your foreign policies are often too intrusive to be considered acceptable by many. - let the UN rule us just so you feel better Funny that you should mention this, since the US is the one ruling the UN. How about letting the UN rule the UN for a change (Yes, you're powerful, we know that already)
So we will try and not hate you so much, but you'll try and be nicer, yes?
You do realize that pricks like you are the reason for all this hatred, right? So your are powerful, like Rome was before you, and Alexander the Great before that. Does that mean that everyone else is supposed to take your crap?
If you have read this, they you would know that all these mistakes were done by the police! The poor dude was just walking around and using public transport when a bunch of cops executed him.
So what if Win8 was a flop? Like nobody has skipped a version of Windows before... Of course Windows is not doomed. It's just that people now buy a tablet to browse the web rather than a desktop/laptop. This is also the thing that MS tried to address with Win8 (and failed). They were slow in comprehending the market behind the tablet/smartphone users. They tried to launch a tablet interface for the desktop (which desktop users didn't like) and when the same GUI came in a tablet people were under the mistaken impression that they will be using their tablet as a PC (which got them disappointed). Windows, however just can't cease to be relevant in the office market.
Slashdot Mirror
I cannot "upload" my article on Google Scholar and thus make it widely available (so that it can be searched, found, commented upon, ranked, whatever).
False, false, false, false, whatever.
Give me a link where I can upload my preprint on a Google server.
Well, 3 Euros is an underestimation. I made a relevant post here. I would place the total cost a about $1300 per article. But that can still not justify their absurd profit margins.
They do not publish the articles. Google Scholar is not a publishing company, its a search engine. The pdfs need to be already available on a server and only then can Google find them and display them as search-hits. I cannot "upload" my article on Google Scholar and thus make it widely available (so that it can be searched, found, commented upon, ranked, whatever). I think that falls under your sentence "where they are the only publishers" (in your post above). And I would like that.
Well, duh!
It is a device that costs $200 upwards, small and a lot of people are carrying. The amount of cash one holds is usually meager and credit/debit cards are worthless because they can be rendered useless with one phone-call (someone pointed out above that it would be a good idea to have that bricking option for phones too). Expensive watches would be a good alternative for theft, but youngsters don't wear them, since they have a smartphone to tell the time with. The smartphone is the new Rolex.
Usually libraries have terminals with the library's IP that gets recognized by the publisher and give you access to the subscribed material. And you can legitimately download too. You just need to find such a library (usually at a university).
I call bullshit. Straightout.
The diagram with the blocks (each representing $100) puts the "article processing" costs at just under $1500 per article for the online version (it only falls at $1400 for the open access online version). Now let's assume these costs apply for Nature itself. The current issue of Nature sports only 4 (!) articles and 12 "letters". All the rest "article" content I'll just refuse to count, since it is not science and a free online journal can certainly do without. So they are actually telling us that they need 96 grand a moth (Nature is weekly) to produce about 300 pages? (I am assuming 10 pages per full-length article and 3 for each letter, that is 76 pages per week, or 304 per month.) That, I would say, is a job for two typesetters, but let's say four, since diagrams and equations can be tricky, that each cost $10.000 a month including software fees. That is 40.000 a month, not 96.000. They would have us think that they need more than two times as much staff. I also don't see how "Administering peer-review" and "quality assurance" can cover this gap (assuming that editing, proofreading, typesetting and graphics are done by the four employees as per above). They are just spending the extra money on the non-science articles nobody reads and factor these costs in the average "per article" rate, but they want us to believe that a more low-profile open access journal will still have the same costs per article (since it only goes down from $1500 to $1400, to finish where I started).
Now, I know I made some assumptions, but here's this: Nature, you can continue to claim your absurd fees, but, please, don't take us for idiots.
The libraries should refuse to pay the ridiculous prices of the publishers, but they should also offer an open-access preprint-publication service. The copyright for the article version before publishing (even after peer-review) belongs to the authors. The university libraries should:
1. Quit all subscriptions. No exceptions. This will annoy a lot of people (as it once did myself) but it will pay back in the long run for everyone.
2. Offer to buy only individual articles. As time passes, increase the time-limit of the articles that can be purchased this way. E.g. the first year all articles can be bought, the second year only articles that are at least one year old, and so on. This will also be more expensive in the first few years, but again, it will pay back in multiple in the long run. Maintain a database with all purchased articles to avoid dupes. When a purchase order comes for an article that is already there, pull it from the database. Do not make the database public: this will be copyright infringement.
3. Put online a free-access preprint database of the all papers published by the university. Let Google Scholar index it and search it.
4. Let researchers publish as usual, but when they submit their publication list to get tenure/PhD/diploma/whatever, demand pdf-preprints for all publications (after all, they are all legitimate publications and the authors should have the preprints, right?). Otherwise, no tenure/PhD/diploma/whatever, no dice. Put these preprints in the online a free-access database.
5. Agree with other institutes/universities to do the same. If a university cannot afford the infrastructure (which should be not much, but let's say it is), they can team up with another university that can. Or, heck why not gather all state universities together and have them make a non-profit organization for this purpose. This way you'll have the prestige of many universities together (you can still stamp each preprint to know where it came from, if you must).
This is the only realistic way, in my opinion, to change this system. It served us well in the 1900s, but this is the information age and things have to move on. The university where I worked had the online free database, but only included the dissertations of the PhDs that chose to publish this way. I say force them, and expand the concept to include articles and conference papers. And the library still had some subscriptions, so it was a half-assed attempt at best. The company that I work for now refuses to subscribe, but they will purchase individual articles. We had an internal database with all purchased articles that was searchable via the company intranet, but the legal department got complaints that intranet-access was still too "public" for the lawyers of Elsevier and their ilk.
This was also a very cheap subscription price. The major journals in my field (chemical engineering) cost more than $1000 per year (each). The individual articles range from $25 to $40, depending on the journal.
They offer a specialized search engine, yes, but they do not publish original research material. I would be a complete fanboy if they did. Anything to escape Elsevier.
Mod parent up!!
This is as Insightful/Interesting as it can get...
I have been using Office for ages. At work I have a WinXP and a Win7 machine with Office 2003 and 2010 respectively. I find myself switching to Office 2003 very often, especially when using Excel. When using PowerPoint less so, probably because of the following reason. In Excel, I almost always want to calculate something that takes brain cycles to implement, whereas in PowerPoint it is more about the aesthetics and whether a slide "works" or not, i.e. less brain-work (well, at least not that part of the brain anyway). I find the Office 2010 GUI to be more "brain-cycle-demanding" than the old interface. That is, you need to think under which function the button you need is to be found so that you can click through the ribbon items. With the old interface I used a spatial organization of the menu bars that I needed the most, which made using the software much like driving a car or playing a game: your hand would move the mouse towards the right menu "automatically" without you having to explicitly think about going there. You could thus keep focused on what you were doing and the software did not demand your attention, it was just "out of the way". It needed more screen real-estate, but why do we have these huge monitors nowadays for?
I'm self-taught and never, ever, really needed tutoring. Google was my friend for the most challenging of cases. Tomorrow, I have my first training booked for helping me out with the mess of Excel 2010 after more than a decade of usage. Nice going Microsoft.
It is called "maintaining your living standard". Two taxi rides every day can amount to 3-4 thousand euros per year or more, depending on the distance. Which, given a "standard" well-paying job, amounts to a month's net salary (give or take). Losing a month's pay on transportation only is a lot, even if you are grossing 75k yearly, and your living standard is at stake. Which could mean a psychologist's bill in the long run (even more so, if you factor in your disability as well). So that small help from the community is a huge help for such people.
Unlike Europe and Asia, this country was not founded by a conquering king.
Oh, get off your horse you (anonymous) coward. A lot of countries in Europe and Asia had to fight for their freedom, too. Against Turks, Russians and so on.
My parents survived an attack on their lives once (in Europe, not in the US). Their neighbor went nuts and started hacking at their door with a butcher's cleaver. The police arrived just in time to disarm the lunatic. He is now in a special high security prison/hospital where they keep all dangerous loonies.
My parent's didn't own a gun, and I can definitely see your point. If the neighbor owned a gun though, they wouldn't stand a chance. The would-be murderer in this case didn't plan ahead in attacking them, just woke up that day and decided that that's what the voices in his head wanted him to do. I much prefer such people without the right to bear arms. I'll take my chances with the police, thank you very much.
Oh, but we know how to defend ourselves against people armed with fresh fruit! It's pointed sticks that I'm worried about...
Not true. Where I work almost everyone wear glasses. I'm sure they could use contact lenses if they wanted to, or do laser surgery. But they don't choose to. And they are ALL nerds to the bone. Coincidence?
Dear Mr Smith,
we regret to inform you that we must increase your monthly health insurance fees by 50% since you were recorded smoking a cigarette outside Joe's Bar on April 12th. Also, you were recorded driving through McDonald's on April 15th, so we will have to bill you that dietician's visit we covered last month. And no skin-disease related treatments will be covered after April 20th, on which you were reportedly sunbathing continuously for 5 hours.
Yours,
Your insurance company.
WORD! That's a fly name for an experiment dawg!
Yawn.
Yet another programming language that promises to solve all our life's problems...
You are absolutely right, but the GP was making the point that the so-called "interdisciplinary" science is becoming the norm. Taking the author lists as an example was an unfortunate choice for an argument, but that doesn't invalidate his point.
I would ignore your answer, but I just want to specify exactly how I came to my conclusion. You see, I don't doubt that USA is a powerful country, but the way how you (notice that I am not generalizing this to "all Americans") rub such facts in the face of other people is why people hate you. Here are some examples from your post:
- All of Iraq could be destroyed and the world will keep moving along
Well, the Iraqis would certainly have another opinion on the mater. And other nations might, for various reasons, not want to just let it go.
- If you hate that then I guess we could let some other country make all our decisions for a while...
People hate you deciding about other people's businesses. You can, and you should, decide upon your foreign policies, but your foreign policies are often too intrusive to be considered acceptable by many.
- let the UN rule us just so you feel better
Funny that you should mention this, since the US is the one ruling the UN. How about letting the UN rule the UN for a change (Yes, you're powerful, we know that already)
So we will try and not hate you so much, but you'll try and be nicer, yes?
You do realize that pricks like you are the reason for all this hatred, right?
So your are powerful, like Rome was before you, and Alexander the Great before that. Does that mean that everyone else is supposed to take your crap?
If you have read this, they you would know that all these mistakes were done by the police! The poor dude was just walking around and using public transport when a bunch of cops executed him.
"Black guys" have no power over me (well, not because they are black). Cops, however, do. So we should be a bit harsher in that case, I think.
So what if Win8 was a flop? Like nobody has skipped a version of Windows before... Of course Windows is not doomed. It's just that people now buy a tablet to browse the web rather than a desktop/laptop. This is also the thing that MS tried to address with Win8 (and failed). They were slow in comprehending the market behind the tablet/smartphone users. They tried to launch a tablet interface for the desktop (which desktop users didn't like) and when the same GUI came in a tablet people were under the mistaken impression that they will be using their tablet as a PC (which got them disappointed). Windows, however just can't cease to be relevant in the office market.