
Open Access and the Power of Editorial Boards: Why Elsevier Plays Hardball - tokenadult
http://governancexborders.com/2015/11/07/open-access-and-the-power-of-editorial-boards-why-elsevier-plays-hardball-with-deviant-linguists/
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poelzi
The whole reputation dependency is highly problematic. It puts people in
spotlight that produce a lot of papers which get some spotlight, but serious
scientists that put a lot of time and thought into one paper and only produce
a dozen in their lifetime get under in the flood of papers we have now.

Everybody in science knows that the quality of papers has degraded over the
last 10 years, just the amount went up enormously.

I dream and hopefully get this project into development that takes a different
route. First, instead of letting 1-2 people decide if a paper is ok, everybody
can test and classify it. Math or logic errors are obvious once, but also a
dependency tree is required. Which methods are used, which tools etc.

Each user will then have the possibility to follow others and accept their
view, which means, their trust in a particular method as well as trusting in
methods itself.

To give an example: One may trust in classical logic, but not mathematical
logic (yes, there is a huge difference). When a paper uses a statistical
method that requires mathematical logic, this paper does not have a truth
value for you, but maybe for someone else who believes in it. Or you don't
accept method xy, or a specific apparatus.

You may also say: you accept all papers that got reviewed by at 10 people
somewhere in your web of trust.

[http://vixra.org/why](http://vixra.org/why)

censorship in science does happen and it helps nothing. Every great scientific
change in thinking sounded nuts or at least strange in the beginning and very
often reviewers are not open minded and don't let math and logic rule but
their feeling.

Since I found a physical model that requires only classical logic not a
mathematical one, I'm not so sure if I should accept anything that requires
mathematical logic at all (outside of a purely mathematical space). It's
nearly impossible to go through all the details in a paper and found their
chain of proves to check what requirements a paper has.

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pepperhigh
See also the story of Machine Learning editors, who quit to found JMLR in 2001
for the same reason:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Machine_Learning_Re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Machine_Learning_Research)

[http://sigir.org/files/forum/F2001/sigirFall01Letters.html](http://sigir.org/files/forum/F2001/sigirFall01Letters.html)

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jrapdx3
Back in 2002 the advent of online/open-access publication gave an appealing
alternative to established journals. As I was among the "pioneers" in
publishing on open-access, my bias in favor of it is strong.

The traditional publishers no doubt see open access as a threat to their
dominance and economic survival. However in the era of increasing public and
government demands it seems inevitable that open access is going to continue
to grow.

It's important to understand the implications of open access re: nature of
funding. The model is inverted, with costs of publishing falling on the author
(or institutional backer) rather than the reader. Traditionally, the cost
burden was on the subscriber, with open access it falls on the creator of the
content.

Perhaps that's not more "fair" a distribution of burden, but there's value in
ability to share research widely. Scientific knowledge is only as meaningful
as the degree to which it is available to anyone who wants to learn about it.

~~~
latj
>It's important to understand the implications of open access re: nature of
funding. The model is inverted, with costs of publishing falling on the author
(or institutional backer) rather than the reader. Traditionally, the cost
burden was on the subscriber, with open access it falls on the creator of the
content.

Which costs are you referring to? Are the editors paid? If not the only
transfer in costs seems to be hosting a website for downloading static
documents?

~~~
Laforet
Reviewers are generally not reimbursed but full time editors probably are,
there are also day-to-day operation and administration duties to be carried
out by salaried workers. Depending on the type of journal they will also have
to maintain a brick-and -mortar office, print physical copies and post to
subscribers, etc. Suffice to say there is a substantial overhead.

Previously submission by the researcher and subsequent publicaiton is
effectively free; the real cost is paid by subscribers such as university
libraries as well as commercial entities.

Under the open-access model the researcher pays the publisher directly for
each submission and this can vary from hundreds to thousands of dollars. PLoS
one currently charges US$1495 for each publication.

[https://www.plos.org/publications/publication-
fees/](https://www.plos.org/publications/publication-fees/)

The exact burden depends on the subject, STEM may be better funded, but this
is still not a sum that one can just shrug off. Often grant money also come
with strict stipulations on exactly what expenses can be paid with them -
publication fee is usually not provided.

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jrapdx3
Thanks, that's a good explanation of open access funding trade-offs.
Traditional publishing erects paywalls for readers (buying a subscription or
pay per-article fees) but not for authors. OTOH open-access has paywalls for
authors (or author's employer), but none for readers.

In 2002 the required payment was $500, probably about equivalent to current
author fees. Presumably it offsets the administrative costs involved in
running the journal website and overseeing the peer review process. I don't
have first hand knowledge regarding costs of publication or profit margins,
but the expense must be paid by _someone_ , generically authors or readers.

I was willing to pay because I regarded wide exposure of the data I was
reporting as important, my contribution to the benefit of the community at
large. In retrospect, I guess the fact that the article has been viewed
several thousand times (and cited by numerous subsequent reports) is a much
greater readership than it would have garnered behind a steep paywall.

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padraic7a
It's somewhat shortsighted to see this as a situation where the reader pays
versus one where the researcher pays.

In both cases it is typically the university which pays. In one model the
library pays, in the other it might be an academic department, research office
or the library which pays.

Gold open access [the pay to publish model] is distinct from Green open access
[where no payment is required].

Many publishers, like Elsevier are adopting a 'hybrid' model where they charge
both to publish , and to read.

While there are costs to publishing one they don't justify teh huge fees [and
profits] that Elsevier make. One would have to assume that the major,
technical infrastructure Elsevier etc implement is to keep their texts
inaccessible.

A new OA publisher, the Open Library of Humanities is trying a new model,
where neither reader not author pay. Instead the suite of journals is funded
by an international consortium of libraries.

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idiot900
Publication cost should be considered on an equal footing with all the other
costs necessary to run a lab. Reagents and buffers need to be paid for out of
grants, why not publication costs?

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sswaner
Labs typically don't pay for journal subscriptions. University libraries and
academic departments subscribe as a benefit to the collective university
community.

A per-article subscription/purchase model would be more appropriate if we
consider that the cost of peer-provided knowledge is a hard cost similar to
reagents and buffers.

But I personally agree with Open Access advocates, cost should be as close to
free as reasonably possible.

~~~
URSpider94
That wasn't true when I was a grad student. My lab had an individual (paper)
subscription to a couple of critical journals in our field. Many individuals
subscribe to "Nature", which is arguably the most prestigious general sciences
journal out there.

The landscape may have changed in the intervening years, with blanket
institutional subscriptions making paper subscriptions irrelevant.

I also suspect that, much like with albums and music, nobody actually reads a
journal cover to cover these days, instead they are consuming the papers they
want in a random-access fashion as a collection of PDF's.

