

Academics should stop doing free peer-review for non-open-access journals. - MikeTaylor
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=417576&c=1

======
CJefferson
I really like this idea. It has a major strength as a boycott -- it just
involves me refusing to do work which I would not have been paid to do anyway.
It was never going to be possible to convince people to boycott submitting
papers to top journals, as that would damage their career and standing.

I also think journals as they currently stand serve an important purpose, of
quality control. They are not perfect, but I have nightmares where the future
of publication is just arXiv, or worse a wikipedia-style "the research anyone
can edit". I'm not saying these don't have an important place, but I also want
a way for the best papers to get exposure, and I think our current system is
about the best way of doing that.

~~~
MikeTaylor
[Note: I am the author of the original article, so I have a horse in this
race.]

I agree that the journal system provides a valuable filter. My beef is not
with journal, but with locking up publicly funded research. Open-access
journals are an unequivocal good.

But I am not convinced that all journals filter on the right things. I like
the approach of PLoS ONE (<http://www.plosone.org/>), which assesses papers
purely on the quality of the science, and ignores subjective notions of
"impact" or "importance". The result is that everything they publish is good
-- as reliable as articles published in any other journal -- but it includes
articles that would never get into, say, _Science_ or _Nature_ due to the
self-consciously super-selective approach those journals take.

Anyway, that's a side-issue. The real issue is that, whatever selection
criteria a journal uses, it should make the resulting papers freely available
to the citizens who funded them.

~~~
incremental
Everything PLoS ONE publishes is good because they are less selective than the
top tier journals? Seems an extraordinary claim to make.

~~~
MikeTaylor
Perhaps I wasn't clear. Everything PLoS ONE publishes is good not _because_
they are less selective, but _although_ they are less selective. The reason
their acceptance criteria don't adversely affect the quality of their
published articles is because they _do_ select on quality -- if it's not good,
it doesn't go in. But they don't select on _impact_.

~~~
incremental
Ah, my mistake, I see what you're claiming. However, let me ask a more
substantive question. You end by stating:"The real issue is that, whatever
selection criteria a journal uses, it should make the resulting papers freely
available to the citizens who funded them."

The OA model largely involves shifting the cost from the user to the author.
This will be paid out of the authors grant money, which in many cases is
publicly funded as well. It's not at all clear to me that the end effect is as
different as the proponents claim.

Reminds me a bit of how Google uses "open" as a competitive weapon to push
Android. I wonder if OA publishers are not doing the same to push their
business model...

~~~
jules
What exactly are those costs? Reviewers work for free. The only other thing
that's needed is a web application and some hosting. These costs are
negligible compared to the tax that closed journals are imposing on the
scientific world.

~~~
alttag
At a premier journal in my field, a "managing editor" is paid for the 25+
hours/wk of work assigning submissions out to the SEs/AEs (based on area of
focus), and—more importantly—following up with them on their progress. As I
understand, he's also responsible for managing itineraries and speaking
engagements for the editor-in-chief, who travels regularly evangelizing (and
getting feedback on) the top journal in our field.

We have a couple of EICs for major journals at our school, and I suspect (but
do not know for certain) that the journal subsidizes their conference
attendance too, so that the journal's senior editorial staff can meet in
person at least annually.

My point is: don't constrain your cost focus to just distribution. There's
more to running any organization than initially meets the eye.

~~~
jules
Is all of that necessary? Would a model like the following work:

Have a web site where scientists can submit papers. Other scientists can then
review the papers. The reviews are publicly (though optionally anonymously)
published along with the papers, and the authors of the paper can submit
revised versions of the paper.

~~~
greeneggs
This would not work. Reviewers would not feel comfortable being completely
honest if they knew their reviews would be published publicly. In any case,
there should be no need for the reviews to be public.

~~~
MikeTaylor
Reviewers should be prepared to stand by their reviews. If they're not
prepated for it to be known that they said something in a review, then they
should not say that thing. Anonymity and secrecy in reviewing doesn't help the
field.

------
kia
This is kind of chicken-and-egg problem. Today most established journals with
high impact factors (= prestigious) are non-open-access. Publishing in or
being a reviewer of a high impact factor non-open-access journal looks much
better in a resume of a scientist than publishing in non-prestigious open-
access journal.

For an open-access journal to become prestigious it needs high quality
contributions. But at the same time an author of some important discovery will
more likely to publish it in some high prestigious non-open-access journal. Of
course for tenured faculty members it is not such a big problem because they
have a secured position. But for their apprentices not having high impact
publications may become a problem in their future career. And while tenured
adviser may force a postdoc to publish in an open-access journal most of them
will not likely do this because they understand that this puts members of
his/her lab in a bad position compared to competing scientists.

I think that well known scientists should make the first move here and to
start publishing in open-access journals. Their work has a lot of traction and
will not suffer from being published in some not-so-well-known open-access
journal. On the other hand this will help open-access journals to start
building reputation.

~~~
omaranto
Do scientists put being a reviewer on their c.v.? I am under the impression
that mathematicians don't, at least I don't remember seeing it done.

~~~
Jun8
Most people in the EE and CS areas I have seen do. The reason is that they
don't invite just anyone to do the reviewing, you have to be deemed
knowledgeable in your field, so it signifies that.

~~~
jpdoctor
I always read it as: The candidate is well connected and has enough spare time
to do reviews.

(FD: I've reviewed my share for IEEE. Now I have no time.)

------
alttag
Although I'm in favor of open access journals for a handful of reasons, I
think there are a couple of things working against the idea:

First, handling fees. As someone starting out in the field, there are a great
number of journals that advertise (read:spam), and have handling fees. It
feels very much like a scam, or a system were "success" can be bought.

Second, as one commenter on the article suggests, with a handling fee, the
publisher is incentivized to print more. (There's an undercurrent of complain
in my field that there isn't enough quality publication space, so this is two-
sided, but is the cost of more outlets a lowering in quality?) However, with a
subscription model, the quality must remain high to keep subscribers. (One
might also argue that "closed" publishers want to print as much as possible to
give more authors' schools reason to subscribe, but I don't know the level of
this effect.)

Third, on a more personal level, living as a doctoral student—more
particularly, with the budget of a doctoral student—even nominal costs can
seem overwhelming. I don't see my institution covering "handling fees" in the
near future, particularly with the amount of cost-cutting going on. The fees
are less onerous for faculty, but present a slightly higher barrier for
student entrants.

~~~
kolinko
you're assuming, that open access journals need a handling fee

distribution costs are marginal, it is possible for an open access journal
that wouldn't take handling fees. it could be a non-profit organisation, or it
could have other monetisation methods.

~~~
alttag
Yes, I'm making that 'assumption' because the article says, "... open-access
journals, such as PLoS ONE, which charge authors a handling fee to cover their
operating costs ..."

EDIT: Link from comment above shows fees for the PLoS family of journals start
at $1350 per article and go up rapidly from there.

<http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.php>

~~~
stfu
I absolutely agree. The pay-for-publishing model is heavily disadvantaging
towards smaller research institutions, independent researchers or young
researchers.

------
Uchikoma
I let you in on a secret: In many research institutions the people that "do"
peer-review don't do the review, they delegate the reviews to their underlings
who are not in a position to refuse.

~~~
kragen
I've even been delegated a review by a researcher at a different research
institution. (He didn't feel like he knew enough to properly review the
paper.) But it seems like the guy the journal editor is talking to is still in
a position to boycott, even if he's going to delegate the actual reviewing.

~~~
Uchikoma
The guy the journal editor talks to has sometimes a different agenda. As he
does not have interest in reviewing the papers, he isn't interested in the
topics. He's often interested in advancing his career and building his
network, and a move to do that is "review" papers for journals. Otherwise he
would review the papers on his own.

Boycotting would run counter to his own goals (while the guy who got the task
of actually reviewing the paper has interest in the topic and would like to
boycott journals but is not in the position to do so).

~~~
kragen
The guy the journal editor talks to still has limited minion resources at his
disposal, and he still has the option of caring about the future of academic
publishing even if he isn't interested in the topics of the papers.

------
brador
I love how this all came about because of a criminal action. No amount of
protesting or discussion was succesful. Would it ever have been succesful?
Possibly, but unlikely. However, the second we see some illegal activity (the
guy from MIT who downloaded the JSTOR articles from that server), suddenly
Pandoras box has opened and we see real change, real disruption and fast.

Does this justify his actions? Is the only way to disrupt entranched business
to conduct borderline actions? Effectively pushing boundaries to the very
limits of legality?.

Either way, this is the concept of "tipping point" in action folks.

~~~
fragsworth
What exactly is the cause/effect relationship between the JSTOR breach and
this article? I don't quite see it.

~~~
brador
The JSTOR incident shone a light on the practices of JSTOR and journal
publishers in general and highlighted just how restricted access is for the
general public to research we have all either fully or partly paid for and we
fully expect to be in the public domain.

Further, it created a martyr for the movement of open-sourcing articles and to
be quite frank about it, the journal owners are now very afraid of their
monopolies crumbling to this movement. They knew this day would come, but the
speed with which this is gathering pace is terrifying.

~~~
raphman
I disagree. There is no single incident that caused everyone to love Open
Access. Instead, over the last years librarians and activists have been slowly
but steadily been making progress in this regard - without breaking the law or
contracts.

~~~
brador
No doubt their slow steady pace laid the foundations, but let's give credit
where it's due. That MIT guy broke the dam and now it's a torrent.

~~~
ak217
No, I think it's just that you personally were more exposed to this debate
because of that incident. The debate and the uprising have been going on ever
since Patrick Brown and Michael Eisen started a petition in 2001 which
eventually resulted in PLoS. Many people have been slow to follow them, for
many reasons, but the movement has been growing ever since.

~~~
brador
I'm not denying that. What I am saying is the movement has picked up a
significant pace since the MIT incident. FWIW I'm currently doing a PhD.

------
guelo
It seems like it should be governments who fund the publishing and peer review
services, they are already funding most of the research. Having private
corporations as middle-men just doesn't make sense, even if they are non-
profits.

------
shaggyfrog
One of the reasons academics do peer review is to put it on their
CV/evaluations that universities do to evaluate the amount of academic work
they do. Voluntarily declining offers to do peer review would therefore have a
negative effect on that person's ability to retain their job. (I'm talking
about those without tenure, mainly.)

One solution would be for universities taking stands like this is to somehow
"give credit" to their academics who are asked to do peer review for non-open-
access journals.

~~~
MikeTaylor
It is certainly true that academic advancement is affected by publication in
high-impact venues, and that some of those (incuding the ubiquitous _Science_
and _Nature_ ) are not open-access. I can see why someone might feel obliged
to submit to these journals.

But I have never seen anyone's career affected by which journals they _review_
for. It might happen, but if it does then it's news to me.

(BTW., for academics who feel they _must_ publish in one of the tabloids,
_Science_ is much sounder than _Nature_ because all their papers become freely
accessible one year after publication, which is much better than nothing.)

~~~
pbiggar
> But I have never seen anyone's career affected by which journals they review
> for. It might happen, but if it does then it's news to me.

Oh they absolutely are. Academic CVs are full of listings of which program
committees you're on. You start being a member of a committee for a smallish
conference (in programming language research, something like VEE or PLaS),
then try to move up to a few medium size ones (CC, perhaps), and finally you
make it to being on the program committees of the top top journals (PLDI or
POPL).

I decided not to go down the academic career path after doing my PhD, but it
was pretty plain even to a PhD student that being on good program committees
is part of your career progression.

------
jedbrown
A lot of conventional journals have an open access option available to the
author for a fee (usually for about $3000). What about offering a no-cost
upgrade after reviewing some number of papers for the journal?

~~~
jessriedel
Journal generally won't do this so long as researchers continue to do it for
free. In addition, even if researcher's followed the OP's advice and the
journals adopted this strategy, it get us where (most people think) we should
be: all research article available free to everyone.

------
regehr
I'm a CS professor and for the last several years have refused almost every
review request from a non-ACM/IEEE journal.

I'm also an associate editor of an ACM journal and often have a very hard time
getting people to review submissions. My sense is that a lot of my peers have
simply stopped doing (most) journal reviews at all.

A person can be totally overloaded just doing conference reviews, which are a
lot more fun anyway. The papers are shorter and (at a good conference) the
papers are a lot better than journal submissions.

------
jkic47
Since most reviewers are probably from Universities or Companies, it is likely
that their employment contract prohibits them from doing professional work not
associated with their current job. It should be fairly simple for these
Universities and Companies to start enforcing this and take away the supply of
qualified reviewers from Journals that lock up knowledge.

~~~
kragen
No.

Researchers at universities invariably do academic work for conferences, for
journals, and for other universities — giving talks, for example. Often they
get paid directly for these. This is a fundamental part of how academia works,
and has been (in various forms) for centuries.

I worked in Silicon Valley as a sysadmin and programmer in 1996-97 and
2000-2006, at a total of seven different companies. I've also worked
professionally at a professional services company, a defense contractor, and
freelance for various clients (primarily in the US). I don't think I've ever
seen an employment contract that purported to prohibit me from "doing
professional work not associated with [my] current job". In some cases I have
proposed modifications to confidentiality agreements with the explicit purpose
of ensuring that I could moonlight safely (for previous clients, normally).
The modifications were accepted.

~~~
jkic47
Having an academic and industrial background myself, I understand that
researchers currently do academic work for conferences, journals and so on

The point I was making was that employers could enforce the parts of the
contract that allow them to control whom their employees work for. That would,
at the very least, not be contributing brainpower to an industry that charges
the very same companies / universities enormous sums for access to journals.

While you may not have seen such restrictions in sysadmin/programmer type
positions, they certainly exist in several scientific and medical-related
disciplines (though I agree that can be waived in certain circumstances).

------
FranklinVallen
This is a lovely idea but I'm afraid it's a pipe dream. Boycotts don't change
profitable practices. (And there is little enough profit in academic
publishing to begin with!) The author's heart is in the right place but his
head is in the clouds. Too bad.

------
eeeerrrr
So why is the idea that science publishing should be _free_ attributed more
intellectual weight than the idea that music should be free, or movies, or
software? I mean, we get it, everybody loves free stuff.

~~~
jbri
Because science research is funded by public interests, not private ones.

~~~
urbanjunkie
Not really true anymore.

A significant proportion of science research is funded by non-governmental
organisations - for example the Gates Foundation.

Furthermore, most universities will charge the researchers who receive grants
a cost known as 'overhead' that can often be 100% of the grant. Typically, the
funding agencies pay for this separately.

~~~
greeneggs
When it comes to basic science, this is not true at all. Gleaning numbers from
Wikipedia, the Gates Foundation seems to spend roughly $300 million a year on
research. HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) spends $450 million a year.
In contrast, the NIH spend $31 billion a year. Biology and medicine are the
fields with the highest proportion of private funding, and even in these
fields the government is dominant.

Overhead does not seem relevant to this point.

~~~
urbanjunkie
You need to provide a reference.

This page from Wikipedia (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_science>)
suggests that over 63% of research is funded by private sources.

Overhead is relevant as it shows that even at 'public' universities, the
funding agency must pay for the research to be carried out, countering
arguments about the public paying for research.

~~~
kragen
Where it gets quantitative, the Wikipedia page seems to be talking about "R&D"
in general, which is an accounting category that is much broader than
"research". When Intel designs a new CPU or Boeing designs a new plane, for
example, that's under the "research and development" rubric in these figures.
But they typically don't publish much about it, and a lot of what they're
doing doesn't have much to do with the kind of "research" we're talking about
here.

Perhaps more relevant, though, very little research indeed is funded by
subscription fees to scientific journals or conference proceedings or sales
prices of academic books; journal and conference authors don't even get
royalties, and neither do their institutions, and very few academic books make
a substantial amount of money.

I don't understand why overhead is relevant; we're arguing about who the
funding agency is, not how grants are structured. If the NIH has to spend 40%
of their dollars on overhead so that their PIs have offices and library
access, and so does the HHMI, how does knowing this allow us to more
accurately compare the expenditures of the NIH and HHMI?

