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Royal Society Wants to Keep Science off Web
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Nov 25, 2005 05:40 PM
from the at-least-leave-us-our-porn-and-conspiracy-theories dept.
from the at-least-leave-us-our-porn-and-conspiracy-theories dept.
truckaxle writes "Britain's national academy of science, The Royal Society, which publishes one of the world's oldest journals, Philosophical Transactions, has joined the debate of the publishing of scientific publications on the internet. In a article by the Guardian a spokesman for the Royal Society was quoted as saying: 'We think it conceivable that the journals in some disciplines might suffer. Why would you pay to subscribe to a journal if the papers appear free of charge?' They believe that internet publishing would harm the exchange of knowledge between researchers."
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My previous post on this subject (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe that the scientific Journal has outlived its usefulness, and will be replaced by ... Slashdot!
But seriously, reviewers are biased and sloppy, as are the editors. The fact that reviews are blind means that they are also unaccountable, which fosters even more bias.
Journals take months or years to respond to a submision, and often as not they respond with a rejection so the submitter has to give up or start the whole process over with another journal. There are so many scandals that one could quote. The whole process seems more designed to support the status quo than to promote knowledge.
I have discussed this with many people in academia and they react not with logic, but with horror that I would dare to question a system that they view almost mystical reverence.
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, there is some truth to what you say (Score:5, Insightful)
The comments by the royal society are nakedly self serving. The fear at the royal society is that organizations like the Public Library of Science [plos.org] will sideline them. This will only happen if organizations like PLoS can maintain the same quality of peer review as the Royal Society (I will assert - so far they are doing better) without charging money. The implicit claim, that free journals deliver a lower quality of review, does not stand up to even cursory examination. I will say (and this is a subjective assertion on my part) that PLoS actually provides a better grade of peer review, and that a system where professional editors preside over large budgets and a permanent base of prestige breeds the sort of cronyism and corruption that the parent post is (legitimately) concerned about.
From a moral standpoint, of COURSE research done at public expense should be freely available to everyone, now that the technology exists to easily do so. In sum: if the royal society doesn't want to adapt to a modern era where real publication costs approach zero, let them be sidelined.
Parent
Re:Well, there is some truth to what you say (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:5, Insightful)
Some reviewers are good, some are bad. Peer review is not perfect, but when I compare it to how things get done in alot of other areas, I'm amazed at how good it is. The journals take the anonymity very seriously, which is a good thing. Yes, anonymous reviews may enable bias, but they also enable honesty. A good editor can differentiate between insightful reviews and biases, and make the right call (yes, editors can have biases also). Peer review has many good features.
As to how long it takes for the review process... well it's getting much faster than it used to be. With online submission, emailing of PDFs, and so on, a review can take as little as a month (compared to snail mail days, where a year was more typical). Many journals will release articles online as soon as they are approved, months in advance of the paper copies. High profile journals keep amazingly tight schedules. From submission to appearing online can be only a few weeks. That's pretty fast. Not all journals are that good, mind you.
Can the system be improved? Absolutely. Will the web play a crucial role? I think so. Having the peer reviews be online, and allowing the authors of the paper to respond to comments (in an anonymous and regulated slashdot-like way, perhaps)... or even allowing the various reviewers to exchange comments with each other (again, anonymously) would make the current system just that much faster and more robust. Also, there is no reason why the reviewers comments (and author's rebuttals) could not be added to the online version of the paper (under "supplementary material" or whatever).
What we need to do is come up with better systems without ignoring the good aspects of current peer review.
Parent
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine that every slashdot comment got at least three moderations, and that each moderation involved not only a score but a written justification for the score, along with editing comments and questions for clarification.
Also imagine that you were expected to be a good moderator in exchange for the privilege of posting comments. And imagine that people's careers (including yours) hinged on timely and thoughtful reviews.
In reality, Slashdot moderation is much more like a popularity contest than a review. And items that have already been modded up are most likely to get further moderations, which is inherently unfair: the loudest voices are the ones that are most likely to get louder.
Parent
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:3, Informative)
Firstly, one can exclude certain referees when submitting a paper. If I for instance have a foe or competitor in the field, I can exclude him or her. The same goes for people I collaborate with: ethics demand they do not referee the paper. Furthermore, you can sugges
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:4, Informative)
It is important to remember the reviewers are only anonymous to the authors (though, as you say, they aren't that anonymous...looking at the review of my last three papers I can guess with about 90% certain who all but one of them are). The editors know who they are, and giving a sloppy, unfair, or inappropriate review still hurts a reviewer's reputation with editor, who many times is a fairly well-respected member of the field. I'm often tempted to give marginal papers in review a pass, just because I know how much it sucks to have a paper rejected, I know the amount of work that went into it, and I'm a fairly nice guy (I think). But I also know that the editor is judging me on how I respond to the paper, and I don't want him/her to take my willingness to let subpar work slide as a reflection of my understanding of what qualifies as quality science, and so I do my best to give my honest opinion on the quality of the work.
Parent
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:3, Insightful)
I seriously doubt that. I think the more likely future is online-only Journals. IEEE conferences are certainly moving in this direction, though they require paid access to their site. IMO the best open journal at the moment is the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research [jair.org]. They have free access to all papers online and keep their costs low.
But seriously, reviewers are biased and sloppy, as are the e
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:3, Insightful)
DISCOVERED CURE TO CANCER (-1 redundant)
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to hold up Slashdot as some kind of a model, but some aspects of the system are definitely worth looking at. The idea of reviewing the reviewers is a good one.
I've repeatedly had to deal with hostile reviewers who, when they didn't have any evidence or logic to back up their claims, resort to rhetoric, sarcasm, illogical arguments, inaccurate facts, and the nitpicking of typos. I've also had some good reviewers who have pointed out legitimate flaws in my work and made useful suggestions on how to improve it, and really helped me improve my papers. There ought to be some way to discourage the first and reward the second, but the system of anonymous reviewers means you're pretty much unaccountable for what you say. How, is the question.
The system can work wonders on a paper, I'll admit. But it's also given too much importance. The Origin of Species is one of the most important and influential books in human history, and it remains the single most important book in evolutionary biology. Yet it wasn't peer reviewed, and I seriously wonder how well Darwin's theory would have fared if he had been subjected to peer review.
Parent
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like \. already is a technical journal then, just with the addition of review the reviewers and humor, both good and bad, mostly bad, because all the good and bad you mention also occurs on \.
Hostile reviewers, check
No evidence or logic to back up their claims, often: check
Reviewers resorting to rhetoric, sarcasm, illogical arguments, inaccurate facts, and the nitpicking of typos: check, check and check.
Anonymous reviewers: check, though many are not
Good reviewers: Check, though they are often the minority.
So \. does appear to be very similar, and in some ways better
Parent
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:3, Informative)
Journals having an editor which allow behavior as you describe, and don't correct it soon, have their journals fall out of favor with sci
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:5, Interesting)
I put up with this kind of stuff for a few rounds of review, real turn-the-cheek kind of a thing. Finally, I took a couple of weeks, sat down, revised my manuscript, and carefully dissected every single point the reviewer made, citing evidence, theory, and papers. I conceded a few things, and made a couple changes, but mostly implied that the reviewer was bullshitting and didn't know what the hell he was talking about- because that's what was going on. It was a risky move: I'm an unknown from an unknown university, he's a tenured Ivy League prof with a Harvard PhD, so all else being equal, who's the editor gonna side with? But I was tired of spending all this time battling bullshit, so I did the intellectual equivalent of dragging this guy out behind the pub and working him over with a two-by-four.
The paper was accepted for publication, without further review.
So yes, it did work... eventually. But I went through five journals and a total of seven submissions before getting accepted. The whole process gave me a new appreciation for Kuhn's _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_. And I really took heart by looking at examples of persistence rewarded, like Lynn Margulis. Her Serial Endosymbiosis Theory (the idea that chloroplasts and bacteria were once free-living organisms) was rejected a dozen times(!), before finally ending up in Journal of Theoretical Biology. Now it's in every biology textbook and nobody would even think of questioning it. So after being rejected by the fourth journal, I could tell myself, "well, I'm still only a third of the way towards Margulis' score!"
But that's also the classic refuge of the crank: point out the examples of unappreciated genius. "They reject my idea... but they also rejected continental drift! Everyone says I'm crazy and there's no evidence for the Chupucabra, but people thought the first stuffed platypus specimen was a fake and wouldn't believe the evidence!" Sure, it's possible that you're right and everyone else is wrong, like with Margulis. It's also possible you're a freakin' loon. Without too much knowledge of the specific subject of your paper, how is the editor supposed to tell the difference between science which provokes hostility because it's dead wrong/plain bad, and science which is right, but provokes hostility because people are narrow minded and dogmatic? For that matter, if you're confident in your work, and the reviewers hate it, somebody's perception of reality is tweaked: how do you make sure you're not the one with the warped perception? Back when I was still trying to get this paper accepted, I liked to joke "They laughed! They all laughed!" in a classic Evil Scientist voice... it helped me keep sane, but it also made me a bit uncomfortable because I was giving voice to the doubts: "am I really crazy for thinking this?"
Seriously though... what's the easiest way to tell when you're an undeservedly unappreciated Archimedes, and when you're a deservedly unappreciated Archimedes Plutonium?
Parent
Exchange of ideas? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, knowledge is only true and valuable when you pay lots of money for it and distribute it to a limited group. Everyone knows that. After all, that's how it's always been. Can't change that now, can we? Heaven forbid the chaos that would ensue if there were a peer reviewed, moderated system like Slashdot to replace our sacred institutions.
(Oh, and yes, some publishers making a good living might lose their monopoly gravy train in the process.)
From A Subscriber (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:From A Subscriber (Score:3, Interesting)
From Another Subscriber (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:From A Subscriber (Score:3, Interesting)
Point #1: I didn't say reviews aren't useful. The point in my comment was that subject to some criteria, all submitted papers should be available for people to decide for themselves whether the information in them suits oneself or not. This is the base functionality of Arxiv.org. Reviews, however opiniated they may be, are useful and people trust certain persons more than others to provide them with opinions they agree with. So a layer of reader reviews / moderation / sorting by popularity / or even
NEWSFLASH (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really quite simple. Adapt or die [well the other alternative is to use your undue influence to make your approach last longer than it naturally would otherwise
How any academic could think that the wide spread distribution of information could HURT academia is beyond me. Me thinks they have other issues on the mind [namely $$$ and power]. Given I've never read anything from their journal [nor consider myself an academic] I can't say I'd miss them if they disappeared. I get enough free shit [decent quality] from citeseer and eprint.iacr.org
The dude has one point though. Random acceptance [or blind] of papers can lead to some low quality material. Once in a while on eprint there are some really lack lustre crypto papers but quite a few are well written and interesting. And they are the sort of things that close minded expensive conference tours (...looking at the IACR conferences...) routinely rejected.
That said though, I've seen some REALLY POOR peer reviewed talks at conferences. Like the Indian students who presented on highly hardware optimized multivariate boolean equations at a SOFTWARE conference. Their talk was so horibly presented as to make me wish I had literally died at the time. Then there were the talks on one time pads at Crypto'03, etc, etc, etc.
Point is, quality material is subjective. The more open your publication is to peer review the more likely you will see quality material. The more close minded and aloof your publication is the less likely you will have insightful or interesting material to publish.
Tom
Journals will still survive... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Cat Got my Tongue (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait, so having it in a easier form to obtain and be searched would harm the exchange of knowledge? Well here is a easily solution for you: Pay the same amount (or less since no paper) so you can read the same stuff online.
look who is talking? (Score:3, Interesting)
Slashdot itself can be seen as a peer-reviewed site, and it is doing quite well i'd say. I would have loved a site like this (but based on 'real' science) when I was doing science.
But maybe the conservqatives fear that their fragile ecosystem of importance, references and reviews would all fall down when the web equalises it. Suddenly bright young studends will have as much esteem as a good-for-nothing professor, and they all fear they are that good-for-nothing.
What's to prevent it? (Score:5, Insightful)
on the other hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you pay to subscribe to a journal if the papers appear free of charge?
As a publishing scientist, I would venture another question: "Why should I publish in a journal that is not freely available? Why would I pick a journal that limits its readership?"
Science is produced (by and large) by scientists using public funds. It makes no sense that the results of this research become locked away and unavailable to the public. Scientific results should be available to the public, free of charge. The fact that this also helps foster international collaborations, makes science overall more effective, and levels the playing field between rich and poor nations is also a good thing.
Alternate funding models for the journals and publishers are being pursued. For instance, when a scientist publishes a paper, he could pay a fee to cover administrative costs. Then the article appears online, free to all. Some journals have already implemented such systems. It seems to work fine. At the end of the day, it's always the same people paying (universities and scientists pay for it, using public funds).
So to answer the question "Why would you pay to subscribe to a journal if the papers appear free of charge?" Just like now, the public will pay for the journals to operate. However, the public should be allowed access to that which they are funding.
Re:on the other hand (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason right now is that nobody would pay any attention to such a publication. The sound of one hand clapping, etc.
The problem is that internet publishing does not currently provide mechanisms critical to scientific publication.
- Peer review
- Professional indexing (no Google search won't work)
- Tracking citations
- Archiving
Wi
Re:on the other hand (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm confident that this will change. Scientists, as a group, are generally doing science for the love of it, to better society, etc. (they usually are not doing it for the money, that's for sure!). Thus, as a group they are remarkably interested in "doing the right thing." Hence the ongoing debate in the scientific community, with more and more scientists putting support behind the notion of open access. As more open acces
Colateral damage (please RTFA) (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not saying they're against free information flow. They are saying that for them it will have a significant impact on the scope of their activities.
Re:Colateral damage (please RTFA) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Colateral damage (please RTFA) (Score:3, Interesting)
If they were to offer a real publishing service, then I would pay for it. I'd like to give them content and they take care of fighting with Latex, Word or whatever formatting tool. They should take care of creating top-quality charts and plots. They should take care of storing my data and my pr
Re:Colateral damage (please RTFA) (Score:3, Informative)
They just have to adapt their payment model. Consider this example. Reviews of Scientific Instruments [aip.org] is a journal that offers authors the option to pay a surcharge ($2000) so that their article is freely avai
Anyone remember how the web was invented? (Score:3, Interesting)
Anybody know if Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a member of the Royal Scority?
Alan.
Re:Anyone remember how the web was invented? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes [w3.org].
What utter nonsense. (Score:4, Insightful)
Pure FUD.
The only thing being threatened is the business model of the journal publishers. Their enterprise was a necessary expense in the age of dead trees, but those days are gone. If online publication makes the free exchange of knowledge between researchers possible, that's a good thing!
I have two words in response (Score:3, Insightful)
Not as contradictory as I first thought it to be (Score:3, Interesting)
My immediate reaction to this little tidbit was "How obvious can you make a contradiction?" How does open access harm scientific debate? The research papers are there for other researchers to read and discuss--isn't that the idea?
Then when you read more, there is a case made:
The Royal Society fears it could lead to the demise of journals published by not-for-profit societies, which put out about a third of all journals. "Funders should remember that the primary aims should be to improve the exchange of knowledge between researchers and wider society," The Royal Society said.
The RS does bring up a good point in one respect--the printed journals could conceivably lose funding due to the lack subscribers, thus actually making the work less accessible. While access to the Internet is becoming more and more common, it isn't universal and thus works published ONLY in electronic form would be accessible only to those with electronic access. Presumably researchers are in positions and facilities that have such access, but in field sites or less developed countries this may not always be the case.
However, to answer the final question asked: "Why would you pay to subscribe to a journal if the papers appear free of charge?"
Answer: because a printed copy is easier to read as a reference document. Ever try to cut and paste a reference on your computer screen into a actual research notebook?
Yes, electronic copies such as PDFs can be printed, I am well aware of this. It still has a cost associated with it in terms of printing supplies, long-term storage media (CDs, DVDs, paper, etc.) and most important to some scientists--time. Could I go get the electronic copy of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation magazine? Sure, since my university subscribes to the IEEE Xplore electronic depository. Is it easier for me to grab a copy off the bookshelf withing arm's reach? Without a doubt.
Electronic copy makes searching for a particular resource much easier, but if I have the paper copy on the shelf, I don't have to worry about CDs or CD drives going bad, hard drive failures, etc. (Yes, I am aware of the importance of backups, offsite storage, etc.) However, a printed copy isn't concerned with file formats, media formats, etc. Printed words are printed words.
My prediction: electronic records will never completely replace paper. They will be an additional resource, not a replacing resource.
Re:Not as contradictory as I first thought it to b (Score:3, Insightful)
Answer: because a printed copy is easier to read as a reference document. Ever try to cut and paste a reference on your computer screen into a actual research notebook?
Well that's not what happens in real life. I know of exactly one professor and zero graduate students that would ever do that. It is much, much easier to print off a single page of a PDF than to go to the library and photocopy the required page.
It still has a cost associate
The process (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, the process is flawed, but it's what we have at the moment. Blind reviews are lame, and blind authorship is even worse (where the reviewers have no idea who wrote the paper - but can quickly guess given their reference list). It's the editor's job, however, to ensure that the quality of the reviews are adequate. The peer review process certainly isn't without flaws, but I have yet to see a better process. If you have a better suggestion, please speak up.
On the topic of the availability of scientific publications on the web, this really isn't new. Many researchers already post their papers as pdf on the web, and Scholar Google provides instant access to them. I suspect he trouble seems to be with greedy publishers. Academics are expected to hand over their rights to the publishers to distribute their own work. Many don't look favourably on posting papers for download and are trying to stop it. This is a bit odd. They have the rights to the version of the paper *as it looks in the journal*. So if you take out a comma and repost it, you're fine. Or if you're a LaTeX user, you can create nicer looking documents than the publishers do! There's also the issue of reprints. Once upon a time, if someone requested a copy of the paper, you could send it to them. The publishers even provide a number of hard copies to do so. So many researchers have added a prompt to the user before downloading the document indicating that by clicking the download link to the article, they are requesting a reprint.
well duh! (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course Internet publishing would harm the exchange of knowledge between researchers. Any way to distribute information that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars a year per subscription would harm the exchange of knowledge, as anyone drawing a paycheck from this out of date and over priced industry well knows.
I'd love free access (Score:4, Interesting)
What about accessibility? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, is the delivery format really the problem here, or is it simply a case of dollars and sense? Is the concept of charging for access to content -- whatever the delivery vehicle -- completely foreign to the content publishers?
Sometimes I read this kind of thing and wonder if I'm in the wrong career.
Ummm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes sense to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear Royal Society: Don't lie about your motive (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So an ISP costs too much for researchers? (Score:3, Insightful)