Slashdot Log In
Science Journal Publishers Wary of Free Information
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jan 25, 2007 05:55 PM
from the keeping-the-truth-under-your-hat dept.
from the keeping-the-truth-under-your-hat dept.
Billosaur writes "Nature.com is reporting that the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which includes the companies that publish scientific journals, is becoming concerned with the free-information movement. A meeting was arranged with PR professional Eric Dezenhall to discuss the problem. Dezenhall's firm has worked with the likes of ExxonMobil 'to criticize the environmental group Greenpeace', among other campaigns. The publishers are worried that the free exchange of scientific information may be bad for the bottom line, as it might cause the money from subscriptions to their journals to dry up. Among the recommendations: 'The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as "Public access equals government censorship". He hinted that the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review, and "paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles.' The AAP is trying to counter messages from groups such as the Public Library of Science (PLoS), an open-access publisher and prominent advocate of free access to information, or the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) PubMed Central."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
I'm lost. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Public access equals government censorship"
I've been parsing that for a few minutes and it doesn't make sense. How would open access equate to some sort of closed access?
Pay attention! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Pay attention! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I'm lost. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're trying to insinuate that public access means a thing must be funded by the government, and thus subject to state control. This is a silly false dichotomy of course, but such is the nature of propaganda.
Parent
Re:I'm lost. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:I'm lost. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:I'm lost. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Can anyone point out (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can anyone point out (Score:5, Insightful)
an example of a prestigious journal published by a for-profit company?
Well, you might start here [elsevier.com] for a start on one publisher. Quite a number of them are the "prestige" journals in their field, and are in those cases at least, stringently peer-reviewed.
What you not know is that these articles are subject to a publication fee. So, it's actually a multi-profit system for them. They get money from the researchers, and they get money from subscriptions.
What this is, is simply a new variation on the theme we've been through with RIAA, MPAA, and others. "OMG!!! Our profits are in danger from this Internet thing! We must DO something!" From a researcher's standpoint, it actually is a better thing if they don't have to deal with the for-profit publishers. They get their work out to the community, and they don't have to pay "reprint charges," etc. It works for other researchers and libraries, since they're not shelling out several hundred dollars each for subscriptions, and the works are easily searchable. So, of course the publishers are panicking! Their gravy train is threatened! It's FUD time!
Parent
Re:Can anyone point out (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole of scientific publishing is a big racket. If you stay away from dead trees, publishing a journal is shockingly inexpensive. Peer review is customarily done for free. When journals are printed up, they are sold at prices that almost guarantee a fat profit for the printer and publisher. If ever you pony up $10 or whatever ludicrous price a publisher asks for some 10 page journal article, know that the authors get precisely 0% of that money. As if that isn't bad enough, organizers hold a conference somewhere like at a ski resort which gives them a cut rate but socks it to the attendees, among whom are pretty much all the authors whose work was accepted. The attendees can almost always pass those costs on their patrons, but for those who don't have such support....
Authors get very little. All the authors get directly is bragging rights. The indirect compensation, only given out to "the best", is of course the tenured university teaching and research position, which is also the gateway to grant money. Sucks for researchers who haven't managed to get into that system. Also sucks for those researchers whom their patron (usually the government) cuts, especially when it's not for good reasons like their research is of poor quality but for political reasons. Someone even suggested that authors should _pay_ to have their work published! Well, scientists who aren't backed by a patron do have to pay. The RIAA cries about starving artists, but starving scientists, especially if their work is not what grant givers want to hear or believe, get treatment as bad or worse as the worst ever dished out to artists.
Parent
So work with it rather than fight it... (Score:5, Insightful)
A funded journal would still be the best way to get the relevant information all in one place; the problem with free information is that it can be difficult to sort through for specific information. Take all the information that is freely available, pick out the best of it, do some research of your own, and publish a work that goes above and beyond the free information.
That's what thousands of news organizations and non-science journals do every day.
Censorship v. Censorship. (Score:4, Interesting)
Publishing is fundamentally a service industry. What the publishers provide is some task (e.g. binding copies to dead-tree format) that is difficult. With the advent of the interweb many of these tasks (e.g. shipping copies around the world) have become much easier. There is still a market for publishers of science and music (e.g. Special editions, bound works, and stuff that is "better than free") but rather than chase those niches the publishers have chosen to attack their own readers and authors.
This is especially hilarious when you consider the difference. Odd as it may seem, compared to this group, at least the RIAA has some leg to stand on. The RIAA is trading stuff that is typically not shared wheras the entire process of science is based upon sharing things freely and widely. That is how everything works from peer review to the spurring of new developments. At least the RIAA hires their music editors and producers while most editors of scientific journals are paid by their home universities and do this task for free in order to spur the exchange of information. Similarly most musicians are paid by the music producers while most authors of scientific papers are not paid by the publishers in any way rather its the other way around because the authors have to pay for subscriptions to read their own work.
This excange starts to look less and less fair all the time. Especially since more and more people are seeking out papers online rather than in the dead-tree forms.
Viva XXX [lanl.gov] and PLOS [plos.org].
In their faces (Score:4, Insightful)
Shooting themselves in the foot.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of trying to trick people into thinking that free access to information is somehow "bad", maybe they should be emphasizing the things they do provide? I'm not expert on the scientific journals, but I thought one of the things they provided was seperating out the complete junk from legit research. A filter of sorts. Do they currently offer help in editing scientific papers? If not, maybe they should? The question the industry should be asking itself is "What do we provide beyond actually printing and sending out paper?" Previously they've been able to take advantage of controlling distribution, since printing and distribution of information was relatively difficult. Now it's obviously trivial and extremely inexpensive.
It seems to me that free access to scientific information is a reality. Both the people who create the information (the scientists) and the people who read it (mostly scientists) want it to be freely available. Trying to fight it rather than adapt to it is a path towards bankruptcy.
Re:Shooting themselves in the foot.. (Score:4, Interesting)
But first they would have to provide something of value.
What they offer is a panel of scientists to whom your article is sent before it appears in their journal. These people then get to review it prior to publishing. This is unnecessary today; you just publish your paper on the internet, and then people review it. People can easily find reviews of your paper with google, unlike in a dead-tree-only model, where without a review process as part of the journal submission process, you would have to search manually though paper publications to find reviews of the paper in question. Basically their business model has expired and they are looking for lies to tell to bolster it, because they can't think of any legislation they could afford to solve the problem for them.
It's not clear that there's a lot of adaptation to be done, although I think they could limp along for a while by providing free or nearly free websites that handle the review process, and then charged people for dead tree editions compiled from material on the website monthly. Some schmucks would buy it. Ultimately nothing short of getting into another business is going to save them because a site (or network of sites) similar to Wikipedia could replace all of those scientific journals.
Parent
Open Access helps and wont kill journals (Score:5, Informative)
And where does Nature stand in that battle? (Score:4, Interesting)
Pleasantly surprised, but still it seems to me that there is an interesting story hidden there.
756 quality controlled free access journals (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Peer review means little. (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Peer review means little. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't really judge research when it is done; this is why people tend to receive Nobel Prizes for research they did decades earlier. Your peers are also your competitors, and it's not in their interests to promote good research that produces different conclusions to their own. No paper, no matter how wrong it appears to its reviewers, should ever be denied publication now that publication online costs nothing. Instead, the journals should add value by highlighting the papers that represent the current views of the research community, and also those that were important in forming these views.
Parent
Re:Oh yes, (Score:5, Informative)
In scientific journals?
Paid?
Man, I wish I lived in that magical world.
Parent
Re:Oh yes, (Score:5, Informative)
There is no monetary payment whatsover. The costs associated with publishing are typically paid for by advertising, and some journals with lower circulations may charge page costs as well. The authors never get payed royalties or anything for journal articles. It's an amazing thing really -- putting all your work out there for review (essentially before AND after publication), for the simple satisfaction that you have made a contribution to the knowledgebase. If your conclusions are erroneous, the community will figure it out eventually, and if your contributions are right on, you will be remembered as someone who had a positive impact on the field (you may even get rewarded). Scientists in academia are generally not the richest people in the world.
Parent
Paying your dues (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, let's be honest here. The reason we do it is not merely for that "simple satisfaction" (although there is some of that). If you're possibly going to be looking for a job in the near future, you need to be published - often and recently. If you're trying to get tenure, you need to be published. If you've got tenure, then, well, you don't need to be published, but it certainly helps your bargaining position if you're looking for pay increases, etc.
Still, it's a racket.Parent
You bet (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm telling you, the quicker the entire Intellectual Property system goes topsy-turvy, the better. There was a watershed moment, sometime in the last few decades, when copyright, patents, the whole schmear, started working against it's initial purpose - to encourage innovation and creativity. Now, you write a good song and you hope it gets used in a movie and a commercial and you're set for life. How does that make you more creative?
I made my living from the IP system until some years ago, when I noticed the first time I lost revenue because of the copying and sharing of my work without my permission. After an initial few hours of outrage, the part of me that got into this whole business to be creative started to realize "Of COURSE people want to share it and copy it. It's entire value is in it's dissemination. It's what's SUPPOSED to happen."
Then, I went to work to reevaluate how I charged for my ideas and to come up with a way that's not based on commoditizing or objectifying my creativity, but just the opposite: Embracing the fact that these things are ephemeral. They are MEANT to be shared, copied, live a life and then go into an archive, maybe to be found again and maybe not. I don't need to collect a toll every time someone uses what I make, and I don't need to squeeze every last cent.
The final piece of the puzzle for me is figuring out a way to identify my work as my own, not to prevent copying, but to prevent someone else saying they made it. Unless that's part of the deal, that is. Digital Watermarking is still too expensive for a small-market individual like me and there are still some questions about signatures. I read an article about how The Aphex Twin hid his own face in a graphical display of his music. That fascinated me and I'm always bugging the math folk in my little world about these things. An answer will come. I just hope it's Open Source, or at least reasonable.
Reasonableness. I guess that's the solution, no?
Parent
Re:You bet (Score:5, Informative)
You're kidding, right? The scientists who do the research and write the papers receive no financial compensation from the journals whatsoever. Often, those scientists pay part of the cost of publication in the form of page or colour charges. The scientists who peer review the work work for free as well. It's seen as something that they owe to the rest of the community.
The journal publishers are the ones who make the money. They charge libraries and scientists for subscriptions, and they charge the authors to publish. Granted, they provide services; typesetting and layout and editing and distribution aren't free. But don't mistake money-grubbing publishing companies for money-grubbing scientists. A money-grubbing scientist would want to distribute their work as widely as possible as cheaply as possible. Scientists make money (grants, tenure, collaboration opportunities) on the basis of their reputations--reputations which are built on their work being widely known.
Parent