
Open Journal Systems – Open Source Journal Management and Publishing - oli5679
https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/
======
hessammehr
Other comments have pointed out the prestige issue. My real issue with this is
that academic findings need to be freed from the whole "paper" format: a
static, discrete document. New findings compliment and invalidate older ones.
In the old days there was no way to reflect this due to the static nature of
print. The paper and its physical constraints do not need to exist with
today's technology. One more thing -- How many times have you wondered if some
journal somewhere has the answer to the question you're trying to answer (but
don't know how to look it up)? The disparate, static content of journals
resists the formation of a cohesive corpus of knowledge.

Github has no barrier to entry, yet does not have a prestige issue. People get
hired based on the content of their github account. I can't see why funding
agencies couldn't use a similar system to track the academic contributions of
researchers.

It's ironic that the rest of the world has moved on to connected, consistent
experiences while academics are still stuck with papers. I've been thinking
after I submit my thesis that I should find other people that are likewise
frustrated and try to build a better system for academic collaboration and
dissemination. Perhaps something more like Wikipedia than a journal.

~~~
untilHellbanned
Alot of people want a wikipedia/github-like system but nobody will go there
until it has the prestige. Academics are not early adopters. They are
followers. I'm a professor in a STEM field at a major university so I'm
speaking from experience.

~~~
hessammehr
Agreed. Would you say it helps if the funding agencies were on board with,
say, having a non-profit foundation run this service? They would have a much
easier time allocating their $ since the system can show who contributed what
and how many people found it useful. I feel like PIs need to know they can pay
the bills and as long as the money is coming we can get them to try out the
new systems.

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oli5679
Does anyone know of any activity in this space by YC? The largest journal
publisher, Elsevier Reed, has revenue of £5.9 Bn and 17% net margin [1]. Seems
like there could be some interesting (and socially valuable) scope for
disruption.

[1]
[https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http:...](https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.relx.com/investorcentre/reports%25202007/Documents/2015/relxgroup_ar_2015.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwjL-I3l-fjRAhUJnRoKHVdMB7MQFggaMAA&usg=AFQjCNE-3XeKu70eMgu0_0xdiZR786Mw0Q&sig2=FJiLGCkiEnXXgMhpYEJeyQ)

~~~
tyingq
How do you solve the core problem though? As far as I can tell, the real issue
is maintaining the "prestige" part for researchers. Anything that reduces
friction in publishing decreases scarcity...which decreases the perceived
prestige.

~~~
oli5679
It's important to distinguish between researchers, reviewers/editors and
publishers.

The academics who write a paper or make the decision to include it in a
journal typically aren't paid. They benefit from the prestige signal generated
by a famous journal (editors gain some control of research directions in their
field and young academics get a signal validating the quality of their work).
Publishers do the typesetting, hosting, distribution, marketing and other
admin responsibilities and get grossly overpaid for this task [1].

The publishers clearly want to maintain the status-quo. However, I think both
authors and editors would prefer lower journal subscription fees/greater open
access for the papers. It would lead to lower costs for universities and
broader audiences. However, coordinating away to this outcome is tricky, since
(as you say) upstart journals are less prestigious so would offer lower
initial influence and prestige to defectors. This is basically the classic
path dependence problem from economics[2].

There are a couple of possible solutions to the problems:

(1) Incumbent publishers could be breaching European and American antitrust
law. Competition authorities could prosecute them for charging excessive
prices, bundling practices or placing unreasonable restrictions on academics
wishing to make their research open access? Governments could also address
this with specific policies.

(2) High profile academics, newly emerging fields or those particularly
frustrated with the current system could coordinate to use open access
publishing models. Tim Gower's discrete analysis is a good example of this
[3].

(3) Researchers can develop alternative methods for assessing the quality of
research, placing a lower weighting on the signal of journal prestige.

So I agree 'prestige' complicates the problem, but I don't think it makes it
unsolvable. The more clearly the tech community explains the current system to
government/regulators, the more likely they are to adopt sane policy in the
area (1). The greater support the tech community can offer to disgruntled
academics seeking alternatives (2)(3), the more likely they are to defect.

[1] [https://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-
so...](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-some-
facts/#more-5430)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence)

[3] [https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-
an...](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-
overlay-journal/)

------
evolve2k
Is the code open source? Is it on GitHub? Hunted around the site for a while
but couldn't find the code. Mainly want to know which langauage it was built
with.

~~~
cing
All your questions are answered on the "Download" page. It's GPL2, on Github
([https://github.com/pkp/ojs](https://github.com/pkp/ojs)), and it's written
in PHP.

