

Scott Aaronson on Elsevier - cs702
http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/journal.pdf

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PaulHoule
The trouble with all this is that open access publishing has had incredible
difficulties getting sustainable sources of financing.

arxiv.org has a budget of just $400,000. If 20 university libraries put up
$20,000 a year, they could afford to keep the lights on. Many of these
libraries can find $1 million to give to Elsevier, but they cannot find $20k
to make physics, math and computer science literature available to all.

I can also say that there was another program that had people working in a
building shared with arXiv.org that spend $2M of NSF money to build a
educational web site that attracted almost no visitors. If arXiv.org had that
kind of money they could have greatly expanded and done innovative things.

Cornell Library is, after years, trying to make a plan to fund the thing, but
I can tell you that arXiv.org is a godawful place to work for a programmer
because they see programmers as a cost center, not an opportunity center. I
managed to stick it out for five years, but most people burned out after one
or two, if they lasted that long. If there isn't a stable source of funding
behind your paycheck you just don't get treated with respect.

Today I read about startup founders who've improved their quality of life by
giving up on the idea of giving things away for free and I can say that
personally, I'd rather run my business like Elsevier than arxiv.org. If you
can't get paid for what you do it just destroys you.

I like the idealism of arXiv.org, but it seems like nobody likes it enough to
fund it, even though it would take just $4 a year from registered users.
Perhaps Paul Ginsparg is a McArthur Genius but Elsevier is smarter about the
things that matter.

~~~
cs702
@PaulHoule,

The fact that arXiv.org has had difficulties in becoming financially
sustainable is irrelevant, because it represents only one of many possible
models for providing open access to academic research.

Your comment reminds me a bit of all those industry experts who for years kept
saying that tablet computing had no future, based on the embarrassing failure
of Apple's Newton in 1993 and Microsoft's unsuccessful Tablet PC initiative in
2000. They were right until they weren't.

~~~
PaulHoule
I'm not against open access in general, but I am getting increasing respect
for people, like Stephen Wolfram, who can get academics who are always
pleading poverty, to fork over huge amounts of money.

------
stfu
I don't know how this is in other disciplines but in mine journals are most of
the time "hosted" by schools or specific research groups. If the case is as
simple as described I wonder why academics haven't abandon their publishers
already.

I have no evidence of this but I suspect that publishers "support" high
profile journals in one way or another - may it be something like helping
engaged reviewers to publish/edit books, sponsor conferences, etc. It seems
somewhat native to think that there is not competition among publishers in
order to get high profile journals publishing with them and they will have to
bring more convincing arguments besides "we will get you listed on Google
scholar & Ebsco. I would really love to hear the opinion by someone knowing
the system from the "business" side of journals, i.e. the hosting/sponsoring.

------
drakstieg
The article is talking about companies that hijack information for themselves,
and I see a link for scribd. It seems that things will not change so soon.

~~~
cs702
FWIW, the URL I submitted points to a file on Scott Aaronson's personal
website... I'm not sure how the scribd link was added to the title.

UPDATE: HTML version available here:
<http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/journal.html>

~~~
antics
The scribd link appears anytime you submit a PDF directly. This was/is useful
for people who hate downloading PDFs, since scribd does not require this. Of
course, a lot of us (myself included) use Chrome, which allows you to open
PDFs inline...

~~~
SilasX
From what I remember, the scribd side is even flakier than opening a PDF in
your browser. And I'm not too keen on this "push our dogfood on readers"
policy, either...

------
mturmon
What a great post.

"In my view, what’s missing at this point is mostly anger -- a justified
response to being asked to donate our time, not to Amnesty International or
the Sierra Club, but to the likes of Kluwer and Elsevier."

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jayferd
writing gold: about a third of the way through the paper, "This article is
supposed to be a review of a book called The Access Principle by John
Willinsky (MIT Press, 2006)"

~~~
chubot
His remarks about how unreadable the book is, and the quotes from it, had me
laughing out loud (really)... the guy is sharp and funny.

This summer I also read his _fantastic_ essay "Why Philosophers Should Compare
About Computation Complexity": <http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=735>

Speaking as someone who has been out of CS and working as a programmer for 10
years, it was REALLY accessible for such a lofty topic (and well-written). I
managed to finish it in just a few days and understand almost all of it. I
wish all academics would take the time to review the necessary background info
for an educated reader. That is difficult but shows real understanding on
their part, in addition to helping to spread their ideas.

------
Jun8
As an aside, the first paragraph is meant to be sarcastic, but isn't that how
both Apple and Android app stores work? You put out your app for free although
you don't give out full copyright to it. People usually do this because they
think this may lead to monetary gain for later. Being a highly downloaded app
is a stamp of approval.

~~~
TheEzEzz
App stores only take a non-majority share of the revenue. They also provide
the hardware platform, which is not easily replicated. Elsevier, on the other
hand, takes ALL the profit, and does not have a difficult to replicate
position on a hardware platform. The only reason people continue to use them
is inertia.

------
gnu8
How much is scribd paying for that link?

~~~
frisco
I assume nothing; they're a YC company, and that link has been there
essentially since they launched.

------
TheEzEzz
Yes! This is what we need. Big shots in academia pointing out the obvious,
paving the way for the revolution.

