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Education The Almighty Buck Science News

Universities Spend Millions on Accessing Results of Publicly Funded Research (theconversation.com) 76

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
Mark C. Wilson, a senior lecturer at Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland, writing for The Conversation: University research is generally funded from the public purse. The results, however, are published in peer-reviewed academic journals, many of which charge subscription fees. I had to use freedom of information laws to determine how much universities in New Zealand spend on journal subscriptions to give researchers and students access to the latest research -- and I found they paid almost US$15 million last year to just four publishers. There are additional costs, too. Paywalls on research hold up scientific progress and limit the publicâ(TM)s access to the latest information.
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Universities Spend Millions on Accessing Results of Publicly Funded Research More

Universities Spend Millions on Accessing Results of Publicly Funded Research

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  • Sci Hub! (Score:5, Informative)

    by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Wednesday December 13, 2017 @03:19PM (#55733617) Homepage Journal

    That's why I use Sci-Hub when I need to find an old paper I wrote.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That's why I use Sci-Hub when I need to find an old paper I wrote.

      When I need to find an old paper I wrote, I look in my filing cabinet. But I'm old school that way.

      • That's why I use Sci-Hub when I need to find an old paper I wrote.

        When I need to find an old paper I wrote, I look in my filing cabinet. But I'm old school that way.

        Filing cabinet? You overestimate the size of the modern cubicle dweller's cube.

    • Me too. But convenience is not the issue. The issue is journals are being fed tax dollars through subscription fees through universities, are also being fed tax dollars through publicly funded science submitted to them, are also being fed tax dollars in the form of publicly-funded researchers who volunteer to write and review the papers and serve as editors, and also are being fed tax dollars in fees paid to publish your article in those journals.

      It's one of the most bizarre economic arrangements. The co

  • I don't see why there's an entitlement for universities in New Zealand to be given free access to work that was paid for with the tax money of people in other countries (and I'm sure the U.S. is #1 by a huge margin).

    The story would have made a better point if the author actually figured out how much New Zealand universities pay to get access to papers paid for by New Zealand taxpayers.

    • Re:How much of that was New Zealand tax money? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by slashrio ( 2584709 ) on Wednesday December 13, 2017 @03:31PM (#55733701)
      Because then American universities can be entitled to look for free in the results of Brazilian, Chinese, Russian, French, English, German... well, you got the point?

      • Not China. About four-fifths of all Chinese research is hidden from Western researchers eyes, and can only be viewed within China.

        Some of that could be that it's not published in English (most papers are in English or possibly French).

        • Not China. About four-fifths of all Chinese research is hidden from Western researchers eyes, and can only be viewed within China.

          The most important Chinese research is published in English. This [springer.com] is one critical result; this [springer.com] is much more important work.

    • Re: US taxpayers, if you want to be that short-sighted, most of the money charged for access to papers goes to a Dutch company, Elsevier. How do you feel about American universities getting fleeced by them?

    • Come on, it's not that difficult to understand it. A researcher in New Zealand may have to pay to access a paper written by an US researcher, who in turn will have to pay to read a paper written be someone in Germany, who will have to pay to... do you get the idea? The writer talks about NZ because that's where he works, but the same happens in every country around the world. In the end, every university in every country is wasting taxpayer money to benefit a few corporations.

  • Publishers don't pay for much (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tolleyl ( 580010 ) on Wednesday December 13, 2017 @03:37PM (#55733725)
    One more reason why this is so irritating, is that the publishers hardly have to pay anyone. The scientists writing the papers do so for free, and often have to do the final print formatting themselves. The paper is then sent to the peer reviewers, who perform the reviews for free. In the end, the publisher doesn't pay for content, layout or review, so the journals don't have good reasons to be expensive. Things will gradually change, but it's taking a long time simply because scientists want their name in a big name journal.

    • Re:Publishers don't pay for much (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Wednesday December 13, 2017 @05:57PM (#55734569)

      The scientists writing the papers do so for free,

      No, they don't. They aren't paid by the publisher, but that doesn't mean "free".

      and often have to do the final print formatting themselves.

      Not for the reputable journals.

      The paper is then sent to the peer reviewers, who perform the reviews for free.

      But the review system is managed by the publisher, not the author. There is a cost to that management.

      In the end, the publisher doesn't pay for content, layout or review,

      Umm, layout and review are publisher costs.

      so the journals don't have good reasons to be expensive.

      Printing on archival quality paper is a costly process.

      This isn't saying the current system is right, it just isn't as cost free to the publisher as you claim.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        No, they don't. They aren't paid by the publisher, but that doesn't mean "free".

        It's not a publisher cost, which is what the GP was getting at.

        Not for the reputable journals.

        Rubbish. The leading journal in my field (Phys Rev Lett) has us do our own typesetting in LaTeX. You don't get much more reputable than them.

        But the review system is managed by the publisher, not the author. There is a cost to that management.

        Actually it's managed by an unpaid academic editor, so no, no cost to that management.

        Umm, layout and review are publisher costs.

        No. Layout by authors, review assigned by free to the publisher (volunteer) editor, performed by free to the publisher (volunteer) reviewers.

        Printing on archival quality paper is a costly process.

        And an unnecessary one. No-one I know reads journals, we all get the articles onl

        • No, they don't. They aren't paid by the publisher, but that doesn't mean "free".

          It's not a publisher cost, which is what the GP was getting at.

          I think "they aren't paid by the publisher" kinda covers that, but thanks for the admonishment anyway.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Getting published in a big name journal isn't just a nice fillip to the ego; it's pretty much the only way you continue to have a career in academia.

      Until universities, grant awarding bodies and tenure committees abandon "impact factor" as a factor in their decision making, we will continue to have perverse incentives to lock research behind paywalls that nobody in science wants except for paywalled publishers.

  • Don't journals provide value? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Am I wrong in saying that journals have staffs of experts that read numerous submitted papers, select the important ones, work with the authors to improve them a bit and then publish them? It's not as though journals aren't doing any work and are then charging people for their services.

    Disclosure: My father is a professor at a public university and editor of a large not-for-profit journal.

    • or everyone could just publish to https://arxiv.org/ [arxiv.org]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tolleyl ( 580010 )
      In most of the sciences at least the journal doesn't do much of that. The editor might do a quick screen to weed out terrible papers, but most get sent off to unpaid peer reviewers who do most of the hard work. There aren't "staffs of experts" and they don't really work with the authors. However, in other areas things might work differently.

  • Library Purges (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    In addition to subscriptions to new journals, universities are also paying to continue accessing old journals that were "paid for" decades ago. This is because many universities are removing the books in their libraries.

    http://mercurynews.com/2016/12/24/montgomery-on-ucscs-outrageous-mass-destruction-of-books [mercurynews.com]

    As a result, the universities have to pay the publishers for online access to the old, archival journals that used to sit on the library shelves.

  • Research paper neutrality has been repelled.

    "The vibrant and open research that Americans cherish isn't going anywhere."
    "it's a better way of making money"
    "[research paper neutrality] had slowed investment"

  • At least from my experience, in most fields in CS, researchers are not that different from software engineers. A better term would be 'article writer', since that is their main concern. They don't care whether these articles enrich human knowledge, let alone freely accessible. Some of them will probably fudge the data a bit to make the article look better. For them it is just a job, just like for the rest of us, in a culture where economic gain is the only thing that matters.

  • Most medical research is published in PubMed, and you can always read it.

  • True but irrelevant (Score:2, Insightful)

    by lfp98 ( 740073 )
    The simple fact is that the essential quality control involved in scientific publication - vetting the scientific content and standardizing the presentation - is expensive to perform, and somebody has to pay for it. Traditionally, that work has been done by publishers who charge subscription fees for the service, and are periodically accused of price-gouging. Open-access journals which have attempted to bypass the commercial publishers have invariably discovered much to their dismay just how expensive it

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You have no idea what you're talking about. Publishers don't pay for peer review of the articles. It's all volunteer work.

    • now charge authors several thousand dollars to publish an article, money generally taken out of grant funds which otherwise would be used to support the actual research being reported. And still these open-access journals claim to be losing money.

      These journals are trash journals that only get submitted to by people desperate to get published. arXiv is the prototype free journal repository, and it does very well (although it's supported by donations).

    • >> vetting the scientific content and standardizing the presentation - is expensive to perform

      My understanding is that most associate editors and peer reviewers are unpaid volunteers. Is that incorrect?

    • The simple fact is that the essential quality control involved in scientific publication - vetting the scientific content and standardizing the presentation - is expensive... Traditionally, that work has been done by publishers who charge subscription fees ... When they started, they predicted that vetting, copy-editing and maintaining an article online could easily be done for under $1000. But they now charge authors several thousand dollars to publish an article ...

      This is the YouTube age. For the sake of becoming reknown, don't need journals.

      Reproduce the lab work as a video, then present the theory in a nice tidy package.

      Not sure what the cost would be to the researcher, but the societal benefit would be a lot quicker to propagate. Journals used to be good for listing massive bibliographies, but websites can do that too. Websites can host the video presentations too.

      I've seen some nice presentations on YouTube but people try to make videos that reach wide audiences

  • I just had my very first citation of my paper according to google scholar. I have no idea what they said about my paper. I need to pay £100 to find out. My university (Oxford) doesn't have access to that journal. If Oxford doesn't have access, who the f*** is supposed to have access to that journal? I tried sci-hub, but the journal cunningly blacklisted ip addresses known to originate from sci-hub.

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