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'Academic Publishing is Broken'

Started by Kai, March 22, 2012, 09:32:53 PM

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Kai

The best damn summary of everything that is wrong with scientific publishing:

QuoteLet's take a look at the flow of money in the production of research. The government takes tax revenue from citizens and uses it to fund university research groups and libraries. Researchers obtain government grants and use the money to conduct experiments. They write up the results in manuscripts that are destined to become published papers. Manuscripts are submitted to journals, where they are handled by other researchers acting as unpaid volunteer editors. They co-ordinate the process of peer-review, which is done by yet other researchers, also unpaid. All these roles—author, editor, reviewer—are considered normal responsibilities of researchers, funded by grants.

At this point, researchers have worked together to produce a publication-ready, peer-reviewed manuscript. But rather than posting it on the Web, where it can contribute to the world's knowledge, form a basis for future work, and earn prestige for the author, the finished manuscript is then donated gratis to a publisher: the author signs away copyright. The publisher then formats the manuscript and places the result behind a paywall. Then it sells subscriptions back to the universities where the work originated. Well-off universities will have some access to the paper (though even they are denied important rights such as text-mining). Less well-off universities have access to varying selections of journals, often not the ones their researchers need. And the taxpayers who funded all this? They get nothing at all. No access to the paper.

Let's say, you give me the goods, and then I give it back to you for a one time low fee, and to anyone else for the same. I'm sure you'll see this is an offer you can't refuse.

                                                             \

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞

Man this makes me seethe.

Besides telling people in detail about it, what else can we do to address this? How can we start peeling greedy capitalist's fingers off of science research?
P E R   A S P E R A   A D   A S T R A

Nephew Twiddleton

I think that there is a push going on to make articles more accessible. Thats a good start. The internets helping with that too since you dont really need publishing costs built in.

The other part would be to start writing in nirmal english. I used to hate checking papers for writing errors because i wouldnt immediately know if a word was made up or what. I think a big part of science illiteracy is that no one can really see what science is saying other than a poor summary in the news.
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

Golden Applesauce

I think I remember something about studies funded by the Canadian gov't being required to be freely available to Canadian citizens.  (although maybe that was just an initiative, and never actually happened?)

That would be a good start.
Q: How regularly do you hire 8th graders?
A: We have hired a number of FORMER 8th graders.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on March 22, 2012, 09:32:53 PM
the finished manuscript is then donated gratis to a publisher: the author signs away copyright.

Why?
Molon Lube

Nephew Twiddleton

Its a fucked up thing. You get paid in prestige not money. Its like going to an ivy league. You pay them and you have the honor of having a diploma with their name on it if they accept you.
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

MMIX

#6
Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 22, 2012, 10:53:44 PM
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on March 22, 2012, 09:32:53 PM
the finished manuscript is then donated gratis to a publisher: the author signs away copyright.

Why?

Because knowledge wants to be free, [did ya see whut I did there] and academics really, really, want to be published. Publication is the keystone to a successful academic career and the major academic publishing houses have developed over time to enable impoverished academics to basically vanity publish with the added bonus of having also created freely offered peer review. Academic publishing has burgeoned phenomenally over the last century or so. e.g. 100 years ago you could fit every anthropologist in Britain in an Oxbridge lecture theatre. The student body was on a similarly elite scale. I hardly dare estimate how many anthropologists there are today, and these are not the well heeled fathers, and occasionally mothers, of their disciplines who could afford to privately publish. And every student who puts a bum on a seat to support the edu-business needs grotesque amounts of set texts. And in amongst all that explosion of academic bumff nestles the genuinely significant theory, and the truly vital research piece.



edit to disciple a wayward vowel
"The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently" David Graeber

Faust

Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 22, 2012, 10:53:44 PM
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on March 22, 2012, 09:32:53 PM
the finished manuscript is then donated gratis to a publisher: the author signs away copyright.

Why?

A lot of publishing bodies are considered prestigious, for instance getting published in IEEE here is really hard. It's a messy situation, because these bodies can be great for contacts.
Sleepless nights at the chateau


Kai

Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 22, 2012, 10:53:44 PM
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on March 22, 2012, 09:32:53 PM
the finished manuscript is then donated gratis to a publisher: the author signs away copyright.

Why?

You're right, you know. There are many journals now which are entirely published online, do not require payment from authors, are CC licensed, and open access.

Hell, my first scientific publication was in one of those journals.

The problem is that these long standing, high prestige journals are still under the grips of old school publishing. Nature, Science, Cell, etc. And they are still prestigious because they have high impact factors, and people want to be published in high impact journals because it gets them tenure.

It will change, of course. Elsevier's recent legal attempt is part of the death throe. PLoSOne is growing so quickly, and the big publishers are slowly fighting and fading. Eventually, people will only deal with them to get to the journal archives. Even in my field, where by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature taxonomic acts must be in physical repositories to be accepted, journals are finding ways to deal with this and be quite successful.

So, my answer would be, boycott the big publishers, take a small hit on impact factor and go the PLoS route.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Nephew Twiddleton

I get the sense that the big science journals can be likened to major record labels...
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

Kai

Quote from: An Twidsteoir on March 24, 2012, 12:52:48 AM
I get the sense that the big science journals can be likened to major record labels...

Same publishing scheme. The old publishing scheme. The old school publishers of any media don't just want to make money, they want to make obscene amounts of money. And when they are the only option, they can get away with it. It's not good business to invest in a system that doesn't make as much money if your interest is making money.

Open access journals, on the other hand, have their priority firmly in making science available. Sure, they have net returns, but it's not of the same level.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish


Forsooth

do the author(s) have to sign over the copyright before the peer reviewing takes place?

if not, one could just submit it for review, then if it gets accepted just not sign it over for publishing and post it on the web somewheres

hirley0

#14
Quote from: 1SwellFOop on March 25, 2012, 03:51:22 PM
do the author(s) have to sign over the copyright before the peer reviewing takes place?

if not, one could just submit it for review, then if it gets accepted just not sign it over for publishing and post it on the web somewheres
idonno  i do wish it were clear 2Me