Royal Society Wants to Keep Science off Web 223
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."
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:2, Insightful)
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.
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.
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
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:2, Insightful)
I am pretty sure the original referee will not be asked to review papers any time soon. And, since number of reviewed papers count as measure of the impact of your research, even an anonymous referee will face some form of accountability.
On the other hand, since the astronomical community is small
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:2, Insightful)
Imagine if Darwin had submitted the Origin of Species to Slashdot, which presumably at the time would have generally accepted some sort of intelligent design theory (I'm sure someone will argue with this, but just accept it for the sake of argument). I suspect in this sort of environmen
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:3, Informative)
The Origin of Species and peer review (Score:2)
I'm not sure I agree, because realistically The Origin of Species has been peer reviewed over time. It's been criticised, compared with research, and it's held up. This is why the scientific community takes
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?
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:2)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:2)
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:3, Interesting)
Another suggestion that ke
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:2)
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
Re:My previous post on this subject (Score:2)
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)
Re:Off the Web? (Score:2, Funny)
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)
Re:Exchange of ideas? (Score:2)
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)
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.)
Re:Yup! (Score:2)
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
Re:Yup! (Score:2)
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
Re:Yup! (Score:2)
Re:Yup! (Score:2)
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)
Re:From A Subscriber (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:From A Subscriber (Score:3, Informative)
Personally I feel that research which is not made publicly available only hel
Re:From A Subscriber (Score:2)
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
Re:From A Subscriber (Score:2)
Plos.org are doing a good job. I believe that access
Re:From A Subscriber (Score:2)
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)
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
Re:From A Subscriber (Score:2)
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
From Another Subscriber (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:From A Subscriber (Score:2)
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)
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
Of Course Journals will Suffer (Score:2, Insightful)
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)
Re:Journals will still survive... (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re:look who is talking? (Score:2)
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.
Re:look who is talking? (Score:2)
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.
Re:look who is talking? (Score:2)
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)
Re:What's to prevent it? (Score:2)
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)
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
Re:on the other hand (Score:2)
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
Re:on the other hand (Score:2)
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'
Re:on the other hand (Score:2)
Probably should have read the article, then.
TWW
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].
They are right in an odd way (Score:2)
I personally think that the current academic and scientific journals will virtually disappear only when someone gets a Noble p
Re:They are right in an odd way (Score:2)
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)
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!
Re:What utter nonsense. (Score:2, Insightful)
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
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
In other news (Score:2, Funny)
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.
So an ISP costs too much for researchers? (Score:2)
Are research papers published on the internet for some reason out of reach of the researchers creating them?
Re:So an ISP costs too much for researchers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Elitist crap. (Score:2)
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... (Score:2)
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)
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.
/. headline writers worse than Fox News sometimes (Score:2)
Funding model needs to change (Score:2)
The way science is funded needs changing, not the way people share information. The most information and sharing of findings the better.
Alright (Score:2)
Ummm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Non-journal peer review -- per-topic expert groups (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Think of the children! (Score:2)
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)
Lets Go One Step Further (Score:2)
Hell, lets just ban all information from 'the net', so that 'the society' can meter out knowledge to those that it feels worthy.
Internet *harms* exchange?! (Score:2)
What is this, Backwards Day?!
--Rob
Peer POSTVIEW necessary (Score:2, Insightful)
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)
Internet publishing is exchanging knowledge. Thus, exchanging knowledge would harm the exchange of knowledge, which is a paradox
Dear Royal Society: Don't lie about your motive (Score:4, Insightful)
Astronomy has already solved this... (Score:2, Interesting)
The exa
A position for both parties to consider. (Score:3, Informative)
The main point of this article that tends to be overlooked/ignored, even by the OP, is this:
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.
Re:Paying to support (Score:2)