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The Internet Science

Royal Society Wants to Keep Science off Web 223

Posted by Zonk 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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Royal Society Wants to Keep Science off Web More

Royal Society Wants to Keep Science off Web

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  • My previous post on this subject (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Catamaran ( 106796 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @06:42PM (#14115245)
    From my previous post [slashdot.org]

    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.

    • Reviewers are very variable in quality. Reviewing papers is, however, usually a pretty thankless task, so don't knock reviewers too much.

      It is clear that academic papers should be freely available on the net as long as the researchers' employers are agreeable to that. I don't think journals should get a say.

    • Wait until the offline generations enter retirement. They're not as much Luddites as unwilling to invest the effort to learn to use a new system.
    • But there is a reason for reverence for peer review - as a procedure, it weeds out a lot of bullshit. There are many scandals - but far more successes (the entirety of biology, from the sometime in the early 20th century to the present.) I'm a biologist, so I cannot speak with confidence on the impact in other disciplines, or where the corresponding institutions of peer review may lie on the continuum between old boys network and tireless defenders of the scientific method, for other journals in other disciplines. In Biology, in spite of some failings, the record is overall very good.

        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.

    • Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kebes ( 861706 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @07:03PM (#14115366) Journal
      (Note: I'm a publishing academic, so you may consider me to be biased to support the current system or to hate it.)

      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.
      • One thing I would like to see is all papers that are rejected also be made available. If someone tries an approach to a problem and doesn't get very good results, this will often be rejected for publication. A few years later, when I am looking at the same problem, I would very much like to know what approaches people have already discovered not to work - I might be able to see what they did wrong, or I might be able to use their failure to save myself from wasting time trying the same approach. So much
        • I don't know about your field, but in mine, biology, there are very low-tier journals that are non-peer reviewed. Many of the articles in them are held in fairly low regard due to lack of peer-review, but it's a good venue for publishing bits of information that might be informative for other researchers, but isn't a 'whole story' or doesn't necessarily show positive results. You might consider publishing in such a journal if you think you have done some work which would genuinely be interesting to some o

    • Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:5, Insightful)

      by s20451 ( 410424 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @07:04PM (#14115369) Journal
      Slashdot moderation bears very little resemblance to peer review.

      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.

    • Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I am a physicist, and I have published in a few journals, including Physical Review, and also refereed papers. I agree with some of the observations of the parent poster, but not with his conclusions. It is also not nearly as bad as he suggests.

      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)

        by elakazal ( 79531 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @08:00PM (#14115694)
        Peer review is a little like evolution: it's sloppy, it's brutal, it makes its share of mistakes, but in the end it works. There are loads of horror stories out there, but most of the time things shake out. And in most fields, even if your paper gets rejected one place, unless the whole field is against you, it can generally get published somewhere else, assuming there's some merit to it. Unfair reviews are balanced by other reviewers, and if you feel like you've been truly screwed, the final decision always rests with the editor. Some one in my lab is fighting that fight right now.

        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.
    • Seriously, what do you want to replace the current journal / review system with? I hope you aren't seriously suggesting anyone can "vote" on which papers they think are good? Yes, it has many problems, but no-one has come up with a better idea for a system.
      • There are several suggestions to improve the current system actually, it is an active debate in that you can follow in Science and Nature. One suggestion I saaw recently was to include reviewing reviews. The idea was that low-quality referees would be weeded out after having received bad comments/points from authors. I have seen reviews that I think very little of, where the referee has done a very poor job. (On the other hand, I have also seen some great and very helpful reviews.)

        Another suggestion that ke
    • I believe that the scientific Journal has outlived its usefulness, and will be replaced by ... Slashdot!

      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
    • I read TFA, don't see anyplace in it where the electronic publishing of papers bypasses the review process.

      The Royal Society, Britain's national academy of science, yesterday joined the debate about so-called open access to scientific research, warning that making research freely available on the internet as it is published in scientific journals could harm scientific debate.

      The review process is not addressed, just availability AFTER formal publication. FOrmal publication still comes after a review proce
    • The fact that reviews are blind means that they are also unaccountable, which fosters even more bias.

      Not true. Maybe you don't understand what blind reviews are.

      Reviews are "blind" in the sense that the identity of the reviewer is not revealed to the author of the article. The editor, by contrast, knows who the reviewers are and what they've written, so there is accountability.

  • Off the Web? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Host science on FTP then.
    • Off the web?

      Usenet? I can see the titles of the spam in those groups now. "See hot intellectual babes getting down with their accellarators"

      Torrent? Oh yeah, I can trying to piece together ten thousand Postscript files of formulas and oops, was that the second part of the fifth equation or the fourth part of the eighth?

      P2P? "It has come to our attention that your IP address 192.168.24.32 has been identified as hosting intellectual property not belonging to you. You have five days to respond with an admissio

  • Exchange of ideas? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 0racle ( 667029 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @06:44PM (#14115256)
    Exchange of ideas or exchange of currency? I'm not really sure which one they don't want hurt.
    • Exchange of ideas or exchange of currency? I'm not really sure which one they don't want hurt.

      Well, anyone can and does publish to the arXiv [lanl.gov]. There are many free sources of information. If there is a market for their publication to remain offline then so be it. Each falls into its own niche and serves its own purpose. Anyone beg to differ?

  • Yup! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @06:46PM (#14115267)
    They believe that internet publishing would harm the exchange of knowledge between researchers.

    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.)

    • You hit an interesting point though. Subverting education is always a good way to control the masses.

      Why do you think the literacy rate of China is 90.9% (Canada 97%, USA 97%, France 99%)? Why do you think governments lie to their citizens? etc, etc, etc.

      If the masses actually KNEW how they were really being screwed on a daily basis you'd see heads being lopped off.

      Just remember, Bush is always right, Martin never lies, Blair is honourable and I have a bridge in mint condition to sell you.

      Tom
      • Um, while I'm not going to put myself out as a defender of China's policies, comparing literacy rates in this case means very little. Cuba has an excellent literacy rate compared to Mexico or Bolivia, but (even though I'm not particularly anti-Castro) it doesn't have a great human rights or democracy record.

        Compare China's literacy rate now to what it was 60 years ago. Then compare the US literacy rate to what it was 60 years ago.

        Remember, "the masses" didn't recieve any real education until it was in the i
        • I did some searching to try to find the relative literacy rates, but was unable after about five minutes on google. I did find that the UN considers the US to have the highest literacy rate(99.9%) compared to China at 90.9. The US itself uses a tougher standard, which results in a 97% rate. Getting that last few percent are difficult because you start running into education for the learning disabled, blind, retarded, etc. Then there's the problem of the substantially different writing system used in Chi
    • Heaven forbid the chaos that would ensue if there were a peer reviewed, moderated system like Slashdot to replace our sacred institutions.

      Actually, I tend to find slashdot very much like a lot of the criticisms that are levelled at the traditional journals - posts that toe the party line are pushed to the fore, while others are suppressed. Now, it's true that there is more than one party here, and so you see pro and con posts on most subjects, but there is a very, very heavy bias in certain areas.

      I fail to

  • From A Subscriber (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lord Byron II ( 671689 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @06:46PM (#14115269)
    As a physicist, I depend on the journals and as a matter of fact, I rarely read the bound versions. More often, I use a web service, such as Web Of Science, to search for interesting papers, print the ps files, and read those. As far as making the journals available free on the web? Nah, don't bother, since just about everyone who has a need for journal access already has it either through their employment, university, or library.

    • Re:From A Subscriber (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ettlz ( 639203 )
      Don't forget xxx! As a high-energy theory Ph.D. student, I have to say I've found the arXiv much more useful than many journals.
      • I'm surpised that there hasn't been more discussion about arXiv in these comments. At our institute (astrophysics) most people send their pre-prints to astro-ph before the journal version is published, and NASA ADS http://adswww.harvard.edu/ [harvard.edu] is the first place to go when looking for something. There are also frequent group meetings to discuss recent submissions to astro-ph, making it more talked about than any particular journal.

        Personally I feel that research which is not made publicly available only hel

    • As far as making the journals available free on the web? Nah, don't bother, since just about everyone who has a need for journal access already has it either through their employment, university, or library.

      That's fine for you and me, but what about our colleagues in the developing world? Even if social responsibility doesn't float your boat, by restricting access to the well-off we could be hindering the work of some future Einstein.

      And, as a sidenote, I know that my (fairly rich) university is trying to s

    • Your post is quite arrogant. I am a computer scientist and I work at a company in UK. My company does not have any library facilities, and I do need access to CS papers. I am also studying biochemistry on the side-lines by myself. I have private individual membership to ACM and IEEE computer society which costs me over $200 a year. I find it quite difficult to pay this, but I do because I need access. Imagine people in my situation in developing countries.

      Plos.org are doing a good job. I believe that access
      • I am not qualified to judge the review system itself, only having done research for my M.Sc. Thesis, but as a lifelong learner I have been severely penalized by lack of access to information since I live in a rural area. I was *fixated* when I began working for a large science company that had its own library!

        I fully agree on the cost and availability issue. In the past my employer could not pay as I understood it (U.S. Gov.), and as a recent grad student I only had only slow access to my field's journal(s)
    • As far as making the journals available free on the web? Nah, don't bother, since just about everyone who has a need for journal access already has it either through their employment, university, or library.

      I assume you meant this sarcastically? Subscriptions to online versions of journals are incredibly expensive, usually a LOT more expensive than a subscription to a paper version (because more people can access the online version in parallel). In recent years, we have been cutting our online subscriptio

    • Sorry - this is plain wrong. I am also a physicist, at Cambridge University. Even though we have access to the physical journals (and to electronic ones too), I have found the system immensely frustrating. The Web of Science is a dreadful tool to use - even if you have the privilege of access to it. It's nothing like as good as Google, and furthermore, hunting down the papers once you have found the reference is often time consuming[*]. And even Cambridge cannot subscribe to everything. Furthermore, if one
    • Nah, don't bother, since just about everyone who has a need for journal access already has it either through their employment, university, or library.

      Maybe if you only read articles from couple of popular journals, but *every single day* I run into articles from journals that my library doesn't subscribe to (but then, I'm a genomicist and probably have to read more widely than a physicist, as one day I may be working on the genome of a bug that lives in the Dead Sea and the next day I may be working on the

  • NEWSFLASH (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <tomstdenis@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Friday November 25, 2005 @06:47PM (#14115274) Homepage
    You're obsolete. :-)

    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 ... (glances at Microsoft)].

    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
  • It's the way of the Net. The middleman gets cut out, because the producers of real content have found a way to reach audiences without paying a tax to an editor or board. That doesn't mean it isn't a good thing. With scientific papers available on the Net it will no longer be necessary to obtaom journal subscriptions or access to far-away university libraries in order to research a given topic.

    This is the spread of free knowledge we're seeing, and I expect it to keep going. After all, information, debat

  • Journals will still survive... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AgentX24 ( 797752 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @06:49PM (#14115290)
    Whilst this may have some relevance I still feel that both the internet and journals can have a place in society. People are much more likely to trust a paper published in an old, established journal than on some site they find on the internet, no matter how "reputable", especially if they are not used to the internet and its many delights. While the internet can be used for publishing discoveries quickly, and perhaps publishing discoveries which the journals may not publish, the journals will still publish the most important ones, and as such will still be bought, and will still survive.
    • I'm not sure why they can't do both. Perhaps journals could publish papers on the internet *after* they've been published in the paper jounal.

      Also, it seems to me that there are still a very healthy number of people buying newspapers even though much of the news is freely avaliable online from various sites.

  • The Cat Got my Tongue (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Janitha ( 817744 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @06:49PM (#14115291) Homepage
    harm the exchange of knowledge between researchers

    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)

    by nietsch ( 112711 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @06:50PM (#14115292) Homepage Journal
    I would be very interested to know how these guys depend on the publishers of exotic journals. Perhaps they get paid in monies and esteem by reviewing articles for them?
    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.
    • Slashdot itself can be seen as a peer-reviewed site, and it is doing quite well i'd say.

      What a hoot. Slashdot is full or errors, duplicate stories, astroturfing and all sorts of editorial problems. I would hate to see scientific publication descend into such a mess.

      • What a hoot. Slashdot is full or errors, duplicate stories, astroturfing and all sorts of editorial problems. I would hate to see scientific publication descend into such a mess.

        Well, the editors certainly don't do the peer reviews (or even read the articles sometimes). But you'll notice that the users comment on things that are questionable, or down right false. Sure, there is no way that the story on the front page is shown to be junk, but you just need to read the comments.
      • While the reviewers of these peer-review journals are indeed of a higher caliber and more serious nature than slashdot commenters, all of the problems you mentioned are still found in those peer reviewed journals.

        They're usually just not as obvious. You still have problems with old-boy networks, personal enemies/rivals, etc. The 'karma' system is much more severe, you could say.

  • What's to prevent it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @06:50PM (#14115298)
    These guys sound like they think there's a way to stop it. Short of their fellow scientists organizing a formal shunning of research data that's web-published, what could actually prevent a researcher from putting his/her results on the web? Particularly if they get turned down by the journals? If I had devoted a lot of time and effort to some research and couldn't get a journal to publish it, you can bet that I'd publish it in web form rather than just let it rot.

    • Nothing.

      Short of censorship that would ultimately stop the research from occurring in the first place.

      In other words, all scientific progress would come to a screeching halt, and even this society would suffer. The fact that they are too blind to realize it makes me wonder what sort of people run the organization.

  • on the other hand (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kebes ( 861706 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @06:54PM (#14115319) Journal
    so they ask:

    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.
    • 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?"

      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)

        by kebes ( 861706 )
        The reason right now is that nobody would pay any attention to such a publication.

        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
    • Because the restricted journal is known for agressive sifting of wheat from chaff, and rigorous reviewing of the wheat? That journal also (or therefore) has a high-impact factor as well, which ensures that people will actually read your paper.

      I've had this go-round with other people before, since as an assistant professor, I chafe at having to pay page-charges, which reduces the amount of money available for research. I admit that journals cost something to publish, but the cost shouldn't determine whet
    • 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?"

      Because it matters.

      The prestige/merits of publishing in a magazine people actually *pay* for is obviously far greater. Because people pay for it they demand a higher quality and selection is tougher. In other words: what is more valuable: something you have to pay for or something you get for free? And no, inherent merits don'

  • Colateral damage (please RTFA) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by robindmorris ( 682328 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @06:55PM (#14115329)
    Remember that the Royal Society is a non-profit organization, and does more than just publish journals. They also fund research, organize meetings, and do public outreach. What the Royal Society said is that they use the revenue from their journals to subsidise these other activities, and if the revenue from journals went away, they would most likely have to cut back on public outreach etc.

    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.

    • And remember that the Royal Society is not always unbiased: Royal Society misleads MPs over cloning CAHGE believes that the Royal Society is misusing its scientific prestige in attempts to overcome the public and MP's resistance to embryo cloning. http://www.hgalert.org/pReleases/pr07-11-00.htm [hgalert.org] and: Pro-GM Royal Society Fellow Named as Source of Libel Case Allegations The High Court in London has been told that a letter from Prof. Anthony Trewavas, well-known champion of GM and critic of organic agricultur
    • If those activities are worthy, people will pay for them. There is not need to hijack scientific publishing, which should be free as in "we already paid for the research with our taxes", to subsidize those activities.

      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
    • You're quite right... Many scientific societies use the journal money to fund other (often worthwhile) activities. But we should be clear. No one is saying that the scientific societies should be given less money. We are saying that journals should make all published articles available at no charge.

      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)

    by bunyip ( 17018 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @06:56PM (#14115336)
    Now, while I am not a history major (IANAHM), I seem to recall something about some scientists at a large scientific facility (CERN) that invented this web thingy to exchange scientific data in a timely manner. And, since necessity is the mother of invention, the journals were'nt filling the need of the consumers (scientists).

    Anybody know if Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a member of the Royal Scority?

    Alan.
  • If everyone published in the web and not in high brow journals, then the journals would have little or no value. The problem with that is modern world of the PhD program is "publish or perish." If there is no place to publish that is peer reviewed and has the perks of being a closed publication environment, then there is no value in publishing at all for some of these researchers.

    I personally think that the current academic and scientific journals will virtually disappear only when someone gets a Noble p
    • It's funny you mention they need to "publish or perish" in order to get their PhD and then fail to realize that that itself is a problem.

      Maybe a PhD should be based on creativity and not quantity. A single unifying theorem can do much more for a field of study than a series of "stabs in the dark".

      Quite a few "filler" papers in conferences are just that. Junk. But they look well polished. Until you see the same idea over and over. Like Shamirs T-Functions which he presented at Crypto'03 and again at FSE

  • What utter nonsense. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Max Threshold ( 540114 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @06:57PM (#14115343)
    "They believe that internet publishing would harm the exchange of knowledge between researchers."

    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!

    • Their enterprise was a necessary expense in the age of dead trees,

      People like you keep saying that, over and over, but it doesn't make any sense.

      If the printing and distribution cost were the only expense involved, you'd be right. However, Readers Digest magazine has been widely available for many decades, at a far lower cost than many scientific journals, and yet it has aprox. the equivalent physical production and distribution costs.

      So there must be something more than that involved here.

      Obviously there
  • Vested interest.

  • Not as contradictory as I first thought it to be (Score:3, Interesting)

    by frdmfghtr ( 603968 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @07:11PM (#14115400)
    The Royal Society, Britain's national academy of science, yesterday joined the debate about so-called open access to scientific research, warning that making research freely available on the internet as it is published in scientific journals could harm scientific debate.

    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.
    • You make some good points. However, I don't agree with this:

      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

  • In other news (Score:2, Funny)

    by MykeBNY ( 303290 )
    Makers of hiking boots fear that paved roads and automobiles will be bad for the travel industry, because fewer people would then buy hiking boots.

  • The process (Score:5, Informative)

    by jtangen ( 861406 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @07:13PM (#14115407)
    I'm not sure what journals you're submitting to, but the turnover rate for most journals in science are only a few months, and some just a few weeks. As an academic with a wife who works as an editorial co-ordinator for three journals, I think I have a bit of insight into the process, and you've greatly misrepresented the process.

    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)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @07:14PM (#14115414)
    They believe that internet publishing would harm the exchange of knowledge between researchers

    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.

  • Wait a second. Couldn't researchers just get an internet acount and share papers that way?

    Are research papers published on the internet for some reason out of reach of the researchers creating them?

    • The problem is in the contracts. Basically, a publisher says: I will publish your paper in journal X, and you, the writer, will provide me this paper free of charge, will relinquish all copyrights to the paper, and will pay me a couple of thousand dollars (this last one is not that common, but it happens). Because the scientist no longer holds the copyrights to the paper, he cannot publish it on the web. Alternatively, the scientist can publish his paper ONLY on the web, but that way he loses all the status
  • For my thesis I researched a lot on IEEE transactions, and papers freely available from citeseer. There were a couple of papers that I had to go to the universities to research.

    I was lucky to find papers on the internet regarding my research subject. But wanting to take science off the internet would be like locking knowledge from the people.

    As a scientist, i'm against that move. Knowledge is for mankind, not for the rich. I'm sure journals can find alternative ways to finance themselves, i.e. paypal, havin
  • Just like the monarchy, they are slowly fading into irrelevence.

    Civilization changes when technology changes, and when the information exchange is freer than it ever was, anything that hobbles the exchange of information will simply be bypassed into oblivion.

  • I'd love free access (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Frangible ( 881728 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @07:44PM (#14115594)
    I use PubMed regularily to search millions of journal articles relating to biology, and only about 10% of the abstracts contain a link to a "free" version of the full article. Often the abstract contains enough information such that this isn't necessary, but sometimes the pertinent information in the conclusion is missing entirely from the abstract. To access the article without being a subscriber it typically costs $50-$100 to get a copy of the PDF! I am not making a profit off of this so I'm not sure why they expect me to pay that much. I would certainly love free access, as-is, I have to bug someone with access such as a doctor or university student friend to get the PDF for me (as their organizations have subscriptions). I wouldn't even mind paying a reasonable fee, but the current rates are anything but reasonable.

  • What about accessibility? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by isolationism ( 782170 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @07:51PM (#14115635) Homepage
    Let me sort this out. Say that one of the brightest minds of our time is blind -- but they can't access the content of scientific publications because braille is going to take months to produce (if it ever materialises at all, and chances are it won't). I'm sure most people wouldn't have too hard a time thinking about some luminaires (past and present) with severe disabilities; most people in the know are aware that properly designed HTML is just about the most accessible content there is because of its incredibly rich structural markup capability.

    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.

  • Royal Society Wants to Keep Science off Web
    Aw come on! Now that's not actually true, is it?
  • I find it laughable that science of all things would be calling for changes in the way people communicate and share information to be held back.

    The way science is funded needs changing, not the way people share information. The most information and sharing of findings the better.
  • Who told the Royal Society about the web? I think we should keep them off the web instead. What would they rather put on the web? Intelligent Design? Scientology?

  • Ummm... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Liam Slider ( 908600 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @08:22PM (#14115797)
    Wasn't the web invented in the first place by scientists so they could more easily share information?
    • Wasn't the web invented in the first place by scientists so they could more easily share information?

      Indeed, and it can go a lot further too.

      In addition to information sharing, the net could easily support moderated peer review by the very same experts who review papers submitted to the top journals. All that's needed is for a group of experts on a topic to get together and decide to do it. After all, the costs are miniscule, except for their time. And publication of a paper accepted by such a review bo
  • My God, and perhaps the paper, pen and pencil will be used for fuel to power e-mail!

    There will be a niche for peer-reviewed communication in science, and the smart journals will adapt. End of story.

  • Makes sense to me (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Friday November 25, 2005 @08:38PM (#14115879) Journal
    The internet is the great leveler. As more services appears and more info, it will be easier for poor countries to come on board. But if you have a current monopoly AND wish to maintain it, then you must limit who has access to the information. So yes, the request makes total sense.
  • After we ban Science, lets ban math, then music.

    Hell, lets just ban all information from 'the net', so that 'the society' can meter out knowledge to those that it feels worthy.
  • They believe that internet publishing would harm the exchange of knowledge between researchers.

    What is this, Backwards Day?!

    --Rob

  • Peer POSTVIEW necessary (Score:2, Insightful)

    by 0xC2 ( 896799 )
    First off, most exchange of information leading up to the publication is electronic anyway. So why NOT publish electronically? After a paper is published, the original article should never be tampered with, though corrections can be indicated. The authors paper, right or wrong, needs to be preserved.

    However, due to demands for speed in publishing breakthrough science, peer REVIEW suffers. Except for the journal Organic Synthesis, no other journals require peers to replicate the procedure/results of a paper.

  • Paradox (Score:2, Informative)

    by hdante ( 771422 )
    "... internet publishing would harm the exchange of knowledge between researchers."

    Internet publishing is exchanging knowledge. Thus, exchanging knowledge would harm the exchange of knowledge, which is a paradox
  • If you want to say "As dead tree format publishers, we think that Internet publishing hurts dead tree format publishing and therefore internet publishing should be stopped," that's fine. Don't try and feed us some bullshit about how the Internet (whose one and only purpose for existance is information exchange) will hurt information exchange. Just just come out and say it: "We hate the fact that the Internet makes us redundant. Someone prop up our business model for us!"
  • In Astronomy (at least in the US), major journals are supported by subscriptions AND by page charges. If an author wants to publish in a journal (eg. ApJ, AJ, etc.), they have to pay by the page. Subscription rates (for paper copies) are quite low, and generally reflect the cost of printing, binding, and postage. On-line subscriptions are also available to individuals (if you're institution doesn't already have an on-line subscription to the journal you're interested in), and are quite reasonable.

    The exa

  • A position for both parties to consider. (Score:3, Informative)

    by TimFenn ( 924261 ) on Saturday November 26, 2005 @04:33AM (#14117734) Homepage

    The main point of this article that tends to be overlooked/ignored, even by the OP, is this:

    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.

    Also, its worth linking the entire Royal Society position [royalsoc.ac.uk] on open access, so those who read it would realize the OP is presenting a very selective view of the Royal Society's position.

    The Royal Society's point is that free stuff might make non-profit/commercial organizations lose big money, possibly forcing them to stop producing their peer-reviewed journal. This is obviously bad for a scientific community trying to reach a larger audience, and thusly the above quote on exchanging knowledge and what-not. As scientists/free-as-in-beer advocates, this is the sort of concern/fear that we need to squash, and pronto.

    What I believe the Research Council UK and the Royal Society should consider is a position put forth [arxiv.org] by Paul Ginsparg, who helps run arxiv.org [arxiv.org] (an open access system primarily for math/physics based papers). His idea, contrary to the Research Council UK plan of concurrently publishing research on the web at the same time as in such journals as Philosophical Transactions, is to publish research of refereeable quality immediately in a "standard tier" system primarily interested in dissemenation, rather than review of, the information - similar to that provided by arxiv.org. That way, experts in the field have immediate access to the work, can review/comment on the work so that the authors can improve upon it, respond to comments, post updates, etc. Upon meeting some guidelines put forth by an "upper tier", the work could then be submitted for peer review knowing it had met the standards for that tier. Only upon acceptance through peer review would the article reach the larger audience via publication, thereby fulfilling both the needs of open-access advocates and commercial/non-profit societies.

    As an aside, Paul Ginsparg makes the interesting note that this system would also put the power of publication back in the non-profit sector: commercial entities only got involved due to the enormous costs associated with mass-production quality control of submissions. However, the dissemination of information and communication across the 'net essentially eliminates this requirement.

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