Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required
Luke and Ecolog: Are there any ethical issues about the practice of jobbing-out journals to for-profit entities and taking a cut for the organization? Or do organizations get anything for their referral? Certainly, though, no officers of scholarly organizations would personally or professionally benefit from such cooperation would they? From Bergstrom and Bergstrom (Front Ecol Environ 2006; 4(9): 488-495) at the link ( http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/publications/BergstromAndBergstrom06.pdf ) available in their 2001 paper linked by Butler: . . . from the broader community perspective, the scientific community as a whole would benefit if overpriced journals were displaced by journals priced at or near average cost. The fraction of library budgets that is currently going to the shareholders of large commercial publishers could instead be used to provide services of genuine value to the academic community. Professional societies and university presses could help by expanding their existing journals or starting new ones. Individual scholars could advance this process in many ways: by contributing their time and efforts to the expansion of these non-profit journals, by refusing to do unpaid referee work for overpriced commercial publications, by self-archiving their papers in preprint archives or institutional repositories, and by favoring reasonably priced journals with their submissions. It appears to be simple and direct advice for a step in the right direction. Both of their papers (2001, 2006) contain interesting details that are shocking but not surprising. The citation data are particularly interesting. I seem to recall some relatively recent publicity regarding the quality of much of the research itself in some of the top (heavy?) journals that might place its/their credibility into question. Does this sound familiar; if so, can anyone provide citations/links? Why didn't we hear about Bergstrom and Bergstrom's papers via the world media? Aren't reporters getting tipped off (phone calls, not just press-releases, please), or did the latest gossip on some teen-star's drug habit eclipse the item? WT - Original Message - From: Luke K. Butler luke.but...@tufts.edu To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 6:58 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Carl Bergstrom and Theodore Bergstrom have produced an incredible website about the economics of journal publishing, including speculation about the future of open access journals. http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/publishing/publishing.html Luke K. Butler Post-Doctoral Associate Department of Biology Tufts University 165 Packard Ave Medford, MA 02155 ph: 617.627.4036 fax: 617.627.3805 On May 11, 2009, at 2:26 PM, Jane Shevtsov wrote: Strictly speaking, you're correct. However, the purpose of copyright law is to reward people who do creative work. That would be us. The journal's contribution is coordinating peer review, formatting the paper and, most importantly, disseminating the paper. For this, they get paid by subscribers and sometimes page charges. That seems more than fair -- really, the for-profit journals should be paying us, the way magazines pay writers. Allowing them to dictate what we can do with our work after publication seems rather excessive! As a practical matter, are there any cases of scientists being sued or prosecuted for posting their publications on their websites? Anyone interested in these issues should read Lawrence Lessig and John Perry Barlow, particularly the latter's essay The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine Without Bottles on the Global Net. Jane Shevtsov On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 1:24 PM, Gavin Simpson gavin.simp...@ucl.ac.uk wrote: On Sun, 2009-05-10 at 11:14 -0400, Alexey Voinov wrote: Instead of or in addition to boycotting and protesting, I think there is a much simpler and effective solution. Ask your kids. If they can share their music, why can't we share our papers? It's called peer-to-peer technology and requires just a little bit of good will from ourselves. All we need is to assemble our collections of pdf articles that I bet each and everyone of us has on our hard disks, and make them available for sharing. Students are already doing this. See this article: http://eaves.ca/2009/04/28/education-where-copyrighters-and- publishers-are-the-pirates/ Unfortunately these efforts seem to be sharing the fate of Napster, attacked by lawsuits. However this can and will still develop without any centralized services on a peer-to-peer basis as supported by bit-torrent and other software. So it's really up to us to make it happen. Only if you condone copyright theft. Invariably, journals do not grant you a non-exclusive right to do anything with your own
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required
, not just the impact factor of the journal or the h-index of the scientist very little will change. The UK government is planning on scrapping its peer-review assessment of UK universities, replacing it in large part with a reliance on metrics, because it is too costly to run the peer review. We all know (except the managers/politicians that we all report to) that these metrics are next to useless or are flawed to some degree, but that doesn't matter one jot if the people we leave to manage science keep relying upon them to direct career prospects, funding etc. In any case, I do not think that the way that many of us distribute PDFs of our own work constitutes rampant disregard for copyright law. I never said it was. I was responding directly to the suggestion that we act together as a community to conduct massive copyright theft by making our pdf collections (whether our own work or otherwise) available over p2p networks. Encouraging people to commit a crime on a list server like this is just plain irresponsible - and in some jurisdictions might be illegal in and of itself. If individuals choose to register a vote for retaining a bit of freedom to do with their work as they see fit by distributing their own work as PDF's then good on them. They could go further than this and try to educate the publishers a bit (probably won't work, but you'd be surprised), and I pointed to the creative commons initiative that allows scientists to try to retain some rights to distribute their work by adding an addendum to the copyright transfer form sent to you by a publisher. If they say no, you can still choose to ignore them and pop your pdf on your website or hand it out to anyone who asks. But if a journal did that to me, I'd think very long and hard about whether I wanted to publish in such a journal in future... All the best, G But as soon as one of my papers provides the lyrics for the theme song of a Hollywood movie about the fuzzy evaluation of environmental impacts I promise to reconsider. Bill Silvert - Original Message - From: Gavin Simpson gavin.simp...@ucl.ac.uk To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 6:24 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required On Sun, 2009-05-10 at 11:14 -0400, Alexey Voinov wrote: Instead of or in addition to boycotting and protesting, I think there is a much simpler and effective solution. Ask your kids. If they can share their music, why can't we share our papers? It's called peer-to-peer technology and requires just a little bit of good will from ourselves. All we need is to assemble our collections of pdf articles that I bet each and everyone of us has on our hard disks, and make them available for sharing. Students are already doing this. See this article: http://eaves.ca/2009/04/28/education-where-copyrighters-and-publishers-are-the-pirates/ Unfortunately these efforts seem to be sharing the fate of Napster, attacked by lawsuits. However this can and will still develop without any centralized services on a peer-to-peer basis as supported by bit-torrent and other software. So it's really up to us to make it happen. Only if you condone copyright theft. Invariably, journals do not grant you a non-exclusive right to do anything with your own publications that you might have in PDF format. Sometimes they allow you to post to a website your final version before journal formatting. Sometimes a journal may allow you to do this only after a certain period of time, or they may allow you to post their version of the manuscript on your (or your institutes's) website after a period of time (6-12months say). It all depends upon what rights you signed away when you completed your copyright transfer form. Reproducing or distributing any publications that are not your own, that are not covered by a licence that allows you to do this, provided to you by the publisher of said content, would also constitute copyright theft. Circumventing these restrictions, could, in some countries, be considered violation of copyright laws. Doing this with software in the US for example cold make you fall foul of the DMCA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA Whilst I'm no fan of the current predominant publication model, nor many of the associated citation indices, rampant disregard for copyright law is *not* the way to solve these problems. You should exercise your right to do with your work (i.e. your final draft, not a journal compilation/formatting of your work) as you see fit, and publish it in journals that have more open policies regarding works published by them. Or try to retain some of the rights you wish for, for example by attaching a Creative Commons Scholars Copyright Addendum to the publisher's copyright transfer forms, in an attempt to negotiate retaining some rights: http
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required
Luke and Ecolog: Thanks for the link! Are there any ethical issues about the practice of jobbing-out journals to for-profit entities and taking a cut for the organization? Or do organizations get anything besides a few copies of the publication for their contracts? Certainly, though, no officers of scholarly organizations would personally or professionally benefit from such cooperation would they? I simply do not know, and would like to be reassured that there are no issues there. From Bergstrom and Bergstrom (Front Ecol Environ 2006; 4(9): 488-495) at the link ( http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/publications/BergstromAndBergstrom06.pdf ) available in their 2001 paper linked by Butler: . . . from the broader community perspective, the scientific community as a whole would benefit if overpriced journals were displaced by journals priced at or near average cost. The fraction of library budgets that is currently going to the shareholders of large commercial publishers could instead be used to provide services of genuine value to the academic community. Professional societies and university presses could help by expanding their existing journals or starting new ones. Individual scholars could advance this process in many ways: by contributing their time and efforts to the expansion of these non-profit journals, by refusing to do unpaid referee work for overpriced commercial publications, by self-archiving their papers in preprint archives or institutional repositories, and by favoring reasonably priced journals with their submissions. It appears to be simple and direct advice for a step in the right direction. Both of their papers (2001, 2006) contain interesting details that are shocking but not surprising. The citation data are particularly interesting. But this and a central micropayment system or institutional generosity still won't get Dr. Voltolini and unconnected researchers and the curious public the kind of access they once had through libraries in the paper-journal days. It took time, but it was a more level playing field. People felt good when they generously mailed off a copy (even Thermofax [R]) of a paper now and then. And before that, it was the journals or nothing. Apparently, progress is trying to take that full circle. What would some obscure clerk in some patent office do now, take out his quill pen and scratch a note to Steinmetz? I seem to recall some relatively recent publicity regarding the quality of much of the research itself in some of the top (heavy?) journals that might place its/their credibility into question. Does this sound familiar; if so, can anyone provide citations/links? Why didn't we hear about Bergstrom and Bergstrom's papers via the world media? Aren't reporters getting tipped off (phone calls, not just press-releases, please), or did the latest gossip on some teen-star's drug habit eclipse the item? Were it not for Butler and Ecolog, I wouldn't have known about their studies. It appears that publish or perish is alive and well, hustling. No wonder, given the pressure on tenure-seekers. What a tangled web! WT Today the libraries, tomorrow the readers? Hard-headed business analysis: Do the for-profit publishers use pricing theory in setting their charges? Were the publications not profitable enough before pdf files, or were the latter seen as a golden goose landing in their laps? With all their resources, couldn't they read the pixels on the screen and find a way to maybe even greater profitability through increased actual quality and wider consumption of their product? Certainly they have the distinct advantage of momentum/reputation, which it would be a shame to squander, no? Even if there was a time-limited system for scanning before purchase at a reasonable rate (mimicking what one used to do in a library), the unit sales might be high enough to eventually increase profits, especially if the publishers took it upon themselves to generate a broader readership. A phenomenon to which the publishers have not yet awakened is that of a wage-earner pursuing an extra-institutional road to greater knowledge. Universities like MIT, for example, recognize that it takes little or nothing to make educational materials available to anyone with an Internet connection, which, by lifting all boats, ensures longevity and respect in spades. Why not take the high road instead of putting obstacles in the path of learning? At long last, can the world society afford to do otherwise? The top journals would then gain well-deserved respect--and profits too. Better than a mass Exodus. - Original Message - From: Luke K. Butler luke.but...@tufts.edu To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 6:58 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Carl Bergstrom and Theodore Bergstrom have produced an incredible website about the economics of journal
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required
Is there money for graduate students to publish in open access journals? I agree with Jane Shevtsov's comment about the cost of open access journals. That is, publishing in open access journal seems superior to the old model so that everyone can access articles, but how can poor scientists (i.e., grad students like myself) afford to publish in open access journals? Thanks! Scott Chamberlain EEB, Rice University
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required
On Sun, 2009-05-10 at 11:14 -0400, Alexey Voinov wrote: Instead of or in addition to boycotting and protesting, I think there is a much simpler and effective solution. Ask your kids. If they can share their music, why can't we share our papers? It's called peer-to-peer technology and requires just a little bit of good will from ourselves. All we need is to assemble our collections of pdf articles that I bet each and everyone of us has on our hard disks, and make them available for sharing. Students are already doing this. See this article: http://eaves.ca/2009/04/28/education-where-copyrighters-and-publishers-are-the-pirates/ Unfortunately these efforts seem to be sharing the fate of Napster, attacked by lawsuits. However this can and will still develop without any centralized services on a peer-to-peer basis as supported by bit-torrent and other software. So it's really up to us to make it happen. Only if you condone copyright theft. Invariably, journals do not grant you a non-exclusive right to do anything with your own publications that you might have in PDF format. Sometimes they allow you to post to a website your final version before journal formatting. Sometimes a journal may allow you to do this only after a certain period of time, or they may allow you to post their version of the manuscript on your (or your institutes's) website after a period of time (6-12months say). It all depends upon what rights you signed away when you completed your copyright transfer form. Reproducing or distributing any publications that are not your own, that are not covered by a licence that allows you to do this, provided to you by the publisher of said content, would also constitute copyright theft. Circumventing these restrictions, could, in some countries, be considered violation of copyright laws. Doing this with software in the US for example cold make you fall foul of the DMCA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA Whilst I'm no fan of the current predominant publication model, nor many of the associated citation indices, rampant disregard for copyright law is *not* the way to solve these problems. You should exercise your right to do with your work (i.e. your final draft, not a journal compilation/formatting of your work) as you see fit, and publish it in journals that have more open policies regarding works published by them. Or try to retain some of the rights you wish for, for example by attaching a Creative Commons Scholars Copyright Addendum to the publisher's copyright transfer forms, in an attempt to negotiate retaining some rights: http://sciencecommons.org/projects/publishing/ So it's really up to us to make it happen. So, I agree with the sentiment, but not with the means by which you suggest we go about it. G -- Alexey Voinov _ !!! please note new e-mail address: aavoi...@gmail.com !!! _ Chesapeake Research Consortium Community Modeling Program Johns Hopkins University Dept. of Geography and Environm. Engineering 645 Contees Wharf Road, P.O. Box 28, Edgewater, MD 21037 TEL: 410 798-1283; 703 880-1178WWW: http://www.likbez.com/AV Fellow, Gund Institute for Ecological Economics,University of Vermont President,Int.Envir.Modeling. and Software Soc.,http://www.iemss.org/ New book: Systems Science and Modeling for Ecological Economics http://books.elsevier.com/companions/9780123725837 -- Date:Sat, 9 May 2009 16:56:12 -0700 From:Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net Subject: Re: Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!! (Suggested replacement post) Ecolog: In my university I do not have access to literature sources like = Biological Abstracts for example to reach the authors and articles . . = . This is an excellent example, unfortunately, of how pricing = intellectual resources out of range for outsiders is a moral = indictment of much of academia. This man--or any man or woman or child = (especially) should never have to hit a university firewall, be required = to pay tens of dollars ($30, $40, and more) to download a pdf file, ad = nauseam. Think of the burdensome expense and effort required on the part = of so many even to gain the privilege of Internet access in the first = place!=20 Those truly concerned about the future of the earth and its life, even = civilization, should realize that the history of intellectual = development is one of free exchange of ideas and information, not its = conversion into profit centers. It is not the struggling who should pay = the comfortable, it is the comfortable who benefit from free = intellectual synergy that compounds like a breeder-reactor, who
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required
Strictly speaking, you're correct. However, the purpose of copyright law is to reward people who do creative work. That would be us. The journal's contribution is coordinating peer review, formatting the paper and, most importantly, disseminating the paper. For this, they get paid by subscribers and sometimes page charges. That seems more than fair -- really, the for-profit journals should be paying us, the way magazines pay writers. Allowing them to dictate what we can do with our work after publication seems rather excessive! As a practical matter, are there any cases of scientists being sued or prosecuted for posting their publications on their websites? Anyone interested in these issues should read Lawrence Lessig and John Perry Barlow, particularly the latter's essay The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine Without Bottles on the Global Net. Jane Shevtsov On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 1:24 PM, Gavin Simpson gavin.simp...@ucl.ac.uk wrote: On Sun, 2009-05-10 at 11:14 -0400, Alexey Voinov wrote: Instead of or in addition to boycotting and protesting, I think there is a much simpler and effective solution. Ask your kids. If they can share their music, why can't we share our papers? It's called peer-to-peer technology and requires just a little bit of good will from ourselves. All we need is to assemble our collections of pdf articles that I bet each and everyone of us has on our hard disks, and make them available for sharing. Students are already doing this. See this article: http://eaves.ca/2009/04/28/education-where-copyrighters-and-publishers-are-the-pirates/ Unfortunately these efforts seem to be sharing the fate of Napster, attacked by lawsuits. However this can and will still develop without any centralized services on a peer-to-peer basis as supported by bit-torrent and other software. So it's really up to us to make it happen. Only if you condone copyright theft. Invariably, journals do not grant you a non-exclusive right to do anything with your own publications that you might have in PDF format. Sometimes they allow you to post to a website your final version before journal formatting. Sometimes a journal may allow you to do this only after a certain period of time, or they may allow you to post their version of the manuscript on your (or your institutes's) website after a period of time (6-12months say). It all depends upon what rights you signed away when you completed your copyright transfer form. Reproducing or distributing any publications that are not your own, that are not covered by a licence that allows you to do this, provided to you by the publisher of said content, would also constitute copyright theft. Circumventing these restrictions, could, in some countries, be considered violation of copyright laws. Doing this with software in the US for example cold make you fall foul of the DMCA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA Whilst I'm no fan of the current predominant publication model, nor many of the associated citation indices, rampant disregard for copyright law is *not* the way to solve these problems. You should exercise your right to do with your work (i.e. your final draft, not a journal compilation/formatting of your work) as you see fit, and publish it in journals that have more open policies regarding works published by them. Or try to retain some of the rights you wish for, for example by attaching a Creative Commons Scholars Copyright Addendum to the publisher's copyright transfer forms, in an attempt to negotiate retaining some rights: http://sciencecommons.org/projects/publishing/ So it's really up to us to make it happen. So, I agree with the sentiment, but not with the means by which you suggest we go about it. G -- Alexey Voinov _ !!! please note new e-mail address: aavoi...@gmail.com !!! _ Chesapeake Research Consortium Community Modeling Program Johns Hopkins University Dept. of Geography and Environm. Engineering 645 Contees Wharf Road, P.O. Box 28, Edgewater, MD 21037 TEL: 410 798-1283; 703 880-1178 WWW: http://www.likbez.com/AV Fellow, Gund Institute for Ecological Economics,University of Vermont President,Int.Envir.Modeling. and Software Soc.,http://www.iemss.org/ New book: Systems Science and Modeling for Ecological Economics http://books.elsevier.com/companions/9780123725837 -- Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 16:56:12 -0700 From: Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net Subject: Re: Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!! (Suggested replacement post) Ecolog: In my university I do not have access to literature sources like = Biological Abstracts for example to reach the authors and articles
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required
I thank Gavin for his advice. I think Sarah Frias-Torres dealt with this, but I gather that if anyone downloads one of my copyrighted PDFs to use as the screenplay for a movie or the lyrics of a pop song, that would be a violation. But only a PDFile would do that. As a former civil rights worker I confess to many acts of civil disobedience and violation of unjust laws. We are facing a stiuation where science and scientists are really suffering - at a time when we are trying to encourage the spread of intellectual activity in the developing world, the increasingly difficult access to journals restricts good research in many fields only to those in wealthy institutions. Attempt[ing] to negotiate from a postion of weakness is not going to lead to prompt reform. The arrogance of the journals can be hard to believe. I once wrote a paper which I circulated as a preprint, which one of my friends showed to a leading figure in the field who edited a prestigious journal - he called me up and asked if I would let him publish it in his journal. I was of course delighted! But now that my reprints are exhausted and I want to send out PDFs, they won't even give me one for my own use - they want to charge me 30 euros! And this for a paper published over 30 years ago. Unfortunately we cannot count on all of our scientific colleagues for support in fighting this. I remember once a talk by a distinguished Spanish scientist, one of Ramon Margalef's most famous students, who had to admit that due to a limited equipment budget the data were not quite as complete as could be wished. Another scientist from a wealthier institution (in the UK Gavin, in the UK) sniffed that scientists from the poorer countries shouldn't be working on problems that the wealthy labs could handle better. I am sure that he would share Gavin's concerns about making science more widely available through piracy. In any case, I do not think that the way that many of us distribute PDFs of our own work constitutes rampant disregard for copyright law. But as soon as one of my papers provides the lyrics for the theme song of a Hollywood movie about the fuzzy evaluation of environmental impacts I promise to reconsider. Bill Silvert - Original Message - From: Gavin Simpson gavin.simp...@ucl.ac.uk To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 6:24 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required On Sun, 2009-05-10 at 11:14 -0400, Alexey Voinov wrote: Instead of or in addition to boycotting and protesting, I think there is a much simpler and effective solution. Ask your kids. If they can share their music, why can't we share our papers? It's called peer-to-peer technology and requires just a little bit of good will from ourselves. All we need is to assemble our collections of pdf articles that I bet each and everyone of us has on our hard disks, and make them available for sharing. Students are already doing this. See this article: http://eaves.ca/2009/04/28/education-where-copyrighters-and-publishers-are-the-pirates/ Unfortunately these efforts seem to be sharing the fate of Napster, attacked by lawsuits. However this can and will still develop without any centralized services on a peer-to-peer basis as supported by bit-torrent and other software. So it's really up to us to make it happen. Only if you condone copyright theft. Invariably, journals do not grant you a non-exclusive right to do anything with your own publications that you might have in PDF format. Sometimes they allow you to post to a website your final version before journal formatting. Sometimes a journal may allow you to do this only after a certain period of time, or they may allow you to post their version of the manuscript on your (or your institutes's) website after a period of time (6-12months say). It all depends upon what rights you signed away when you completed your copyright transfer form. Reproducing or distributing any publications that are not your own, that are not covered by a licence that allows you to do this, provided to you by the publisher of said content, would also constitute copyright theft. Circumventing these restrictions, could, in some countries, be considered violation of copyright laws. Doing this with software in the US for example cold make you fall foul of the DMCA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA Whilst I'm no fan of the current predominant publication model, nor many of the associated citation indices, rampant disregard for copyright law is *not* the way to solve these problems. You should exercise your right to do with your work (i.e. your final draft, not a journal compilation/formatting of your work) as you see fit, and publish it in journals that have more open policies regarding works published by them. Or try to retain some of the rights you wish for, for example by attaching a Creative Commons Scholars Copyright Addendum
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!!
Wow Open Access journals, open Access softwares, and plenty of undergraduates and graduate students who are interested in field and lab works. Now, I can do all of my projects almost at no cost, without hiring anyone with costly salary, benefits, and insurance. No wonder, John, the frustrated Post Doc, can't get a long-term stable career. Toshihide Hamachan Hamazaki, PhD : 濱崎俊秀：浜ちゃん Alaska Department of Fish Game Division of Commercial Fisheries 333 Raspberry Rd. Anchorage, Alaska 99518 Ph: 907-267-2158 Fax: 907-267-2442 Cell: 907-440-9934 E-mail: toshihide.hamaz...@alaska.gov -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ecolo...@listserv.umd.edu] On Behalf Of malcolm McCallum Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2009 8:00 AM To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!! 1) I am a founding editor of Herpetological Conservation and Biology ( http://www.herpconbio.org).It charges nothing for anything. Our turn-around tends to be competitive with any other journal and if you look at the journal you will see that it is done pretty professionally and has a very good advisory board and editorial staff. This is done entirely by herpetologists without any cash outlay except for reserving the web address (~$25) and server costs (~$100). The layouts, editing, copy-editing, cover art, etc are all contributed. We are covered by all the major indexes, and ISI inclusion is hopefully forthcoming soon, and permanent copies are deposited in a series of major libraries. I am clearly convinced that for-pay online journals cover almost all of their overhead very early in the year. In fact, we have been approached by commercial companies who want to pick us up, and we have refused because it would escalate, not reduce costs. 2) If a discipline is not happy with the current journals, start a new one and do the buttload of work required to provide it a competitive showing. It really isn't that hard, you can even purchase, although we did not, pre-formatted websites on the web for a reasonable cost. It only takes a few folks who are dedicated, a lot of folks make it a breeze. 3) If you are a society that owns a journal consider moving your journal to your own server and abandoning the regular publishers. You can put every old paper on a website without any major problem. This can be done one of two way: (1) as an image files and then an abstract placed on the website so Google Scholar picks them up. Then go to the GS website and ask them to monitor your website. Its simple. 4) If you do not have the web programming background, get an undergraduate who is interested in the topic and make them the web manager. Today, many HighSchool students know web services and it is really no longer any harder than learning powerpoint or excel!!! 5) DON'T forget the Google Scholar database It is much more complete and refined today. YOu can also use Hartzing's publish or perish to determine your journal's relative citation rating (with some tweaking) and your personal citation rating using an h score and many other citation metrics. In 4 years, Google Scholar went from being pretty bad, to pretty good. If all the journal's make sure their papers are online and make sure they have inserted the journal into the google scholar search engine, then everyone everywhere would have access to everything. On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 6:56 PM, Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net wrote: (Suggested replacement post) Ecolog: In my university I do not have access to literature sources like Biological Abstracts for example to reach the authors and articles . . . This is an excellent example, unfortunately, of how pricing intellectual resources out of range for outsiders is a moral indictment of much of academia. This man--or any man or woman or child (especially) should never have to hit a university firewall, be required to pay tens of dollars ($30, $40, and more) to download a pdf file, ad nauseam. Think of the burdensome expense and effort required on the part of so many even to gain the privilege of Internet access in the first place! Those truly concerned about the future of the earth and its life, even civilization, should realize that the history of intellectual development is one of free exchange of ideas and information, not its conversion into profit centers. It is not the struggling who should pay the comfortable, it is the comfortable who benefit from free intellectual synergy that compounds like a breeder-reactor, who should pay forward and backwards to ensure rather than obstruct such exchange. At long last, hath academia no sense of decency? Are there no institutions out there sufficiently well endowed and clearly beneficiaries of the wealth of intellectual struggle handed down from people like Dr. Voltolini throughout history (and still do
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required
and Modeling for Ecological Economics http://books.elsevier.com/companions/9780123725837 -- Date:Sat, 9 May 2009 16:56:12 -0700 From:Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net Subject: Re: Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!! (Suggested replacement post) Ecolog: In my university I do not have access to literature sources like = Biological Abstracts for example to reach the authors and articles . . = . This is an excellent example, unfortunately, of how pricing = intellectual resources out of range for outsiders is a moral = indictment of much of academia. This man--or any man or woman or child = (especially) should never have to hit a university firewall, be required = to pay tens of dollars ($30, $40, and more) to download a pdf file, ad = nauseam. Think of the burdensome expense and effort required on the part = of so many even to gain the privilege of Internet access in the first = place!=20 Those truly concerned about the future of the earth and its life, even = civilization, should realize that the history of intellectual = development is one of free exchange of ideas and information, not its = conversion into profit centers. It is not the struggling who should pay = the comfortable, it is the comfortable who benefit from free = intellectual synergy that compounds like a breeder-reactor, who should = pay forward and backwards to ensure rather than obstruct such exchange.=20 At long last, hath academia no sense of decency? Are there no = institutions out there sufficiently well endowed and clearly = beneficiaries of the wealth of intellectual struggle handed down from = people like Dr. Voltolini throughout history (and still do-- Copernicus, = Darwin . . .) who will turn this embarrassing state of arrogant = possessiveness around? Can you imagine having to make this kind of request at every stage of = your own process of intellectual enquiry?=20 How is it possible that, this many years into one of the most = transformational achievements of human society, that Dr. Voltolini = should still be barred from journal access that costs zero to provide?=20 Why not, at the individual level, that academics simply boycott = journals which charge for access and publish in open access journals? = While these may not be perfect at the moment, might not such a = second-stage transformation accelerate their development and foster = rather than retard intellectual synergy?=20 WT PS: David has suggested that I explain how journals (e.g. those of = the Ecological Society) are supposed to pay to publish papers if nobody = has to pay to read them. This email is intended to illuminate the = problem and hear from others before deigning to suggest how all of the = complexities of this issue should be resolved. The first step, of = course, is in recognizing the problem or refuting the assertion that = there is a problem. I do not pretend, in as brief an email as possible = and still state my position unequivocally, to cover every aspect of the = subject. I do, however, know of institutions that have cancelled journal = subscriptions. I believe that very large institutions (e.g. the = University of California Library may have negotiated price reductions = from some journals; I am not up-to-date on this case, but the UC Library = did raise the issue quite vigorously a few years ago.=20 I will offer the following observations, and invite correction if they = are in error. I hope this helps=20 1. The major clay paper journals are VERY profitable.=20 2. Publishing in such journals is a political balancing act, not to = mention that author charges are often involved. (I am not against = reasonable author charges if they do not inhibit publication on the = basis of merit and are collected on the basis of the ability to pay by, = and the benefit to, sponsoring institutions.) 3. It is impossibly expensive for independent researchers or those = whose affiliations do not subscribe to Internet journal service to scan = great volumes of literature. Abstracts are wholly inadequate for = literature review. 4. I recognize that publication costs must be met, but = scientific/scholarly/intellectual publications should be financed by the = nobility, not enrich them. Peer reviews should be the obligation of = the reviewers to the discipline involved.=20 5. I suggested a boycott, but only intend that measure for those = entities looking at pdf downloads (for example) as ways to embellish = their bottom-lines, particularly when they gouge for them (charge out of = proportion to their actual marginal cost). Since intellectual articles = are in relatively scant demand, they are not likely to be priced = according to pricing theory anyway, so the benefiting institutions = should pay the actual costs--plus
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!!
I have read the followup postings to this, but want to comment on Wayne's indictment of the academic community. I don't know any academics or research scientists who like or approve of the present situation, but unfortunately the pressures arise on the periferies of academia. Pressure to publish in journals with high impact factors means that scientists who do not do so suffer professionally, and to generalise Luke Butler's resonse, people have to publish where it will do them the most good. That is why people try to publish in Science and Nature, even though almost everyone I know has a low opinion of the editorial policy of thse journals. Since retiring I have enjoyed the freedom to publish as I please, and it is really nice. If a paper gets rejected, I just publish it myself on my website (in fact, I even publish my own on-line Journal of Simple Systems, http://simple.silvert.org). I should warn potential readers that reviewers have accused me of writing with journalistic style - journalists are those people who go to school to learn how to write, what could be worse? One even contemptuously suggested that my submission read like something in Scientific American! And while I agree that we should put PDFs on our websites, legally we are not supposed to do so since journals even insist that we turn over the copyright! And some journals won't even give us PDFs of our own papers unless we pay for them! It's a rotten system, but the problem lies in the evaluation process, and that is where reform has to take place. By the way, I know a chap who published a short article in a non-refereed journal, and of course it did nothing to advance his career. Until eventually the paper won him a Nobel prize, and that helped! Bill Silvert - Original Message - From: Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2009 12:56 AM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!! (Suggested replacement post) Ecolog: In my university I do not have access to literature sources like Biological Abstracts for example to reach the authors and articles . . . This is an excellent example, unfortunately, of how pricing intellectual resources out of range for outsiders is a moral indictment of much of academia. This man--or any man or woman or child (especially) should never have to hit a university firewall, be required to pay tens of dollars ($30, $40, and more) to download a pdf file, ad nauseam. Think of the burdensome expense and effort required on the part of so many even to gain the privilege of Internet access in the first place! Those truly concerned about the future of the earth and its life, even civilization, should realize that the history of intellectual development is one of free exchange of ideas and information, not its conversion into profit centers. It is not the struggling who should pay the comfortable, it is the comfortable who benefit from free intellectual synergy that compounds like a breeder-reactor, who should pay forward and backwards to ensure rather than obstruct such exchange. At long last, hath academia no sense of decency? ...
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!!
Luke and Ecolog: Me too. I hope they will respond. What do those at Tufts have to say? As to credibility, I guess it depends upon what kind. Conformity is almost always a quicker path to advancement, and there is little question that your assessment is correct that open-access journals are a threat to the established order. I don't mean to imply that just any open-access journal is ipso-facto superior to the clays, but trends have to start someplace. And some open-access journals that have promising starts do not always maintain their vitality; others are not well-managed from the start or fall into less competent hands later. My sample size is, however, pretty small; a major reason for the initial post was to stimulate comment from those better wired than I. Just what does it take for an early-career scientist to get published in a top journal? Are there any open-access journals that are not condemned by the elders? People on the cutting edge are often burned at the stake . . . WT - Original Message - From: Luke K. Butler luke.but...@tufts.edu To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Saturday, May 09, 2009 6:14 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!! Why not, at the individual level, that academics simply boycott journals which charge for access and publish in open access journals? I would love to have this question answered by established elders in their fields. Open-access journals, being mostly new and unfamiliar, are no place for early-career scientists who are attempting to establish their credibility. Luke K. Butler Post-Doctoral Associate Department of Biology Tufts University 165 Packard Ave Medford, MA 02155 On May 9, 2009, at 7:56 PM, Wayne Tyson wrote: Why not, at the individual level, that academics simply boycott journals which charge for access and publish in open access journals? While these may not be perfect at the moment, might not such a second-stage transformation accelerate their development and foster rather than retard intellectual synergy? No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.12.23/2106 - Release Date: 05/09/09 06:54:00
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!!
A new open-access journal published at Queen's University addresses many of the concerns raised here by Wayne and others: IDEAS IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/IEE The opening editorial (http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/IEE/article/view/1949/2054) outlines the novel scope, novel peer-review model, and novel financial policy of IEE. IEE was developed to help address three main problems in scientific publication: (1) THERE IS NOW A RAMPANT AND CRIPPLING CULTURE OF ELITISM CENTERED ON JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR: Science is a mission for discovery, not a mission for elitism. Yet many editors and publishers have become more concerned about the mission for elitism and profit - boosting journal reputation through impact factor. To accomplish this, many editors now routinely reject good manuscripts, using the excuse that there are limited page numbers for each volume of the journal, and so there is space to publish only the 'best of the best'. Yet, virtually everyone now reads from digital/electronic production - not paper production. IEE is on-line only, and so there are no page space limitations, plus IEE uses a completely transparent and objective protocol for acceptance/rejection of papers (see the 'pipeline' in the opening editorial). Rejection is never based on elitist goals to publish only the best of the best. (2) IT IS NOW VERY DIFFICULT TO ATTRACT REFEREES AND TO OBTAIN HIGH QUALITY REVIEWS: This is because referees have increasingly busy lives with little incentive to review. Reviews therefore often have arbitrary, debatable, poorly argued, and/or biased recommendations to reject. Many editors use these poor-quality reviews as another gate-keeping strategy to justify rejection based on the elitist goal to boost journal impact factor. Referees can get away with mediocre reviews because they can hide behind anonymity, with no accountability to anyone. The philosophy of IEE is that referees are analogous to expert consultants/witnesses in a court of law, who are often paid for their professional assessment, and are always accountable for their views, and hence never anonymous. Accordingly, referees for IEE are paid professionals, and are named within published papers; there is no anonymity. This provides both incentive and accountability for providing a high-quality review. Authors pay a submission fee for this, but the money is returned to the community of colleagues (as remuneration for reviewing), rather than paid to big publishers (IEE operates purely on a not-for-profit basis). In addition, authors with limited funds can earn remuneration from reviewing, and then use this to pay for the publication fee for their own paper submitted to IEE (or to any other open-access journal). (3) THERE IS AN INTRINSIC BIAS AGAINST THE PUBLICATION OF NEW IDEAS: In most traditional journals, there is limited interest in publishing 'ideas and perspectives' style papers, and high rejection rates often means that it can take more than a year to get a new idea published, by which time it is already old - scooped by someone else. An alternative is to promote ideas through blogging, but most scientists don't blog because they get no credit/recognition for blogging. IEE is the only journal in Ecology and Evolution that is dedicated exclusively to forum-type papers. It is also on-line only and open-access, and has a fair, transparent protocol for manuscript acceptance/rejection. A new idea, therefore, can be published within weeks - analogous to blog-style communication speed - and at the same time, the author earns peer-reviewed publication credit. PLEASE CONSIDER SENDING YOUR NEXT NEW IDEA OR COMMENTARY PAPER TO IEE! Lonnie W. Aarssen Professor Dept. of Biology Queen's University Kingston, ON Canada, K7L 3N6 Editor Ideas in Ecology and Evolution http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/IEE Campus Office: Room 4326, Biosciences Complex email: aarss...@queensu.ca web:http://biology.queensu.ca/%7Eaarssenl/ tel:613-533-6133 fax:613-533-6617
[ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required
Instead of or in addition to boycotting and protesting, I think there is a much simpler and effective solution. Ask your kids. If they can share their music, why can't we share our papers? It's called peer-to-peer technology and requires just a little bit of good will from ourselves. All we need is to assemble our collections of pdf articles that I bet each and everyone of us has on our hard disks, and make them available for sharing. Students are already doing this. See this article: http://eaves.ca/2009/04/28/education-where-copyrighters-and-publishers-are-the-pirates/ Unfortunately these efforts seem to be sharing the fate of Napster, attacked by lawsuits. However this can and will still develop without any centralized services on a peer-to-peer basis as supported by bit-torrent and other software. So it's really up to us to make it happen. -- Alexey Voinov _ !!! please note new e-mail address: aavoi...@gmail.com !!! _ Chesapeake Research Consortium Community Modeling Program Johns Hopkins University Dept. of Geography and Environm. Engineering 645 Contees Wharf Road, P.O. Box 28, Edgewater, MD 21037 TEL: 410 798-1283; 703 880-1178WWW: http://www.likbez.com/AV Fellow, Gund Institute for Ecological Economics,University of Vermont President,Int.Envir.Modeling. and Software Soc.,http://www.iemss.org/ New book: Systems Science and Modeling for Ecological Economics http://books.elsevier.com/companions/9780123725837 -- Date:Sat, 9 May 2009 16:56:12 -0700 From:Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net Subject: Re: Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!! (Suggested replacement post) Ecolog: In my university I do not have access to literature sources like = Biological Abstracts for example to reach the authors and articles . . = . This is an excellent example, unfortunately, of how pricing = intellectual resources out of range for outsiders is a moral = indictment of much of academia. This man--or any man or woman or child = (especially) should never have to hit a university firewall, be required = to pay tens of dollars ($30, $40, and more) to download a pdf file, ad = nauseam. Think of the burdensome expense and effort required on the part = of so many even to gain the privilege of Internet access in the first = place!=20 Those truly concerned about the future of the earth and its life, even = civilization, should realize that the history of intellectual = development is one of free exchange of ideas and information, not its = conversion into profit centers. It is not the struggling who should pay = the comfortable, it is the comfortable who benefit from free = intellectual synergy that compounds like a breeder-reactor, who should = pay forward and backwards to ensure rather than obstruct such exchange.=20 At long last, hath academia no sense of decency? Are there no = institutions out there sufficiently well endowed and clearly = beneficiaries of the wealth of intellectual struggle handed down from = people like Dr. Voltolini throughout history (and still do--Copernicus, = Darwin . . .) who will turn this embarrassing state of arrogant = possessiveness around? Can you imagine having to make this kind of request at every stage of = your own process of intellectual enquiry?=20 How is it possible that, this many years into one of the most = transformational achievements of human society, that Dr. Voltolini = should still be barred from journal access that costs zero to provide?=20 Why not, at the individual level, that academics simply boycott = journals which charge for access and publish in open access journals? = While these may not be perfect at the moment, might not such a = second-stage transformation accelerate their development and foster = rather than retard intellectual synergy?=20 WT PS: David has suggested that I explain how journals (e.g. those of = the Ecological Society) are supposed to pay to publish papers if nobody = has to pay to read them. This email is intended to illuminate the = problem and hear from others before deigning to suggest how all of the = complexities of this issue should be resolved. The first step, of = course, is in recognizing the problem or refuting the assertion that = there is a problem. I do not pretend, in as brief an email as possible = and still state my position unequivocally, to cover every aspect of the = subject. I do, however, know of institutions that have cancelled journal = subscriptions. I believe that very large institutions (e.g. the = University of California Library may have negotiated price reductions = from some journals; I am not up-to-date on this case, but the UC Library = did raise the issue quite vigorously a few years ago.=20 I
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!!
All this talk of PDF files make me nostalgic for reprint request cards. I still have a stack of those somewhere.. sigh C- Christopher T. Ruhland, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Biological Sciences TS 242 Trafton Sciences Center Minnesota State University Mankato, MN 56001 phone: 507 389-1323 fax: 507 389-2788 email: christopher.ruhl...@mnsu.edu webpage: http://ruhland.pageout.net/page.dyn/student/course/instructor_info?course_id=109326
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!!
Ah yes, and I remember that I used to get reprint requests from places with addresses in Berlin Germany, Paris France, Tokyo Japan and ... Mankato MN? I always wondered why Americans never felt it necessary to list their country as part of their addresses (or their country code as part of their phone numbers). At least with requests for PDFs you get a complete return address! Bill Silvert Portugal - Original Message - From: Ruhland, Christopher T christopher.ruhl...@mnsu.edu To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2009 3:51 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!! All this talk of PDF files make me nostalgic for reprint request cards. I still have a stack of those somewhere.. sigh C- Christopher T. Ruhland, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Biological Sciences TS 242 Trafton Sciences Center Minnesota State University Mankato, MN 56001 phone: 507 389-1323 fax: 507 389-2788 email: christopher.ruhl...@mnsu.edu webpage: http://ruhland.pageout.net/page.dyn/student/course/instructor_info?course_id=109326
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!!
1) I am a founding editor of Herpetological Conservation and Biology ( http://www.herpconbio.org).It charges nothing for anything. Our turn-around tends to be competitive with any other journal and if you look at the journal you will see that it is done pretty professionally and has a very good advisory board and editorial staff. This is done entirely by herpetologists without any cash outlay except for reserving the web address (~$25) and server costs (~$100). The layouts, editing, copy-editing, cover art, etc are all contributed. We are covered by all the major indexes, and ISI inclusion is hopefully forthcoming soon, and permanent copies are deposited in a series of major libraries. I am clearly convinced that for-pay online journals cover almost all of their overhead very early in the year. In fact, we have been approached by commercial companies who want to pick us up, and we have refused because it would escalate, not reduce costs. 2) If a discipline is not happy with the current journals, start a new one and do the buttload of work required to provide it a competitive showing. It really isn't that hard, you can even purchase, although we did not, pre-formatted websites on the web for a reasonable cost. It only takes a few folks who are dedicated, a lot of folks make it a breeze. 3) If you are a society that owns a journal consider moving your journal to your own server and abandoning the regular publishers. You can put every old paper on a website without any major problem. This can be done one of two way: (1) as an image files and then an abstract placed on the website so Google Scholar picks them up. Then go to the GS website and ask them to monitor your website. Its simple. 4) If you do not have the web programming background, get an undergraduate who is interested in the topic and make them the web manager. Today, many HighSchool students know web services and it is really no longer any harder than learning powerpoint or excel!!! 5) DON'T forget the Google Scholar database It is much more complete and refined today. YOu can also use Hartzing's publish or perish to determine your journal's relative citation rating (with some tweaking) and your personal citation rating using an h score and many other citation metrics. In 4 years, Google Scholar went from being pretty bad, to pretty good. If all the journal's make sure their papers are online and make sure they have inserted the journal into the google scholar search engine, then everyone everywhere would have access to everything. On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 6:56 PM, Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net wrote: (Suggested replacement post) Ecolog: In my university I do not have access to literature sources like Biological Abstracts for example to reach the authors and articles . . . This is an excellent example, unfortunately, of how pricing intellectual resources out of range for outsiders is a moral indictment of much of academia. This man--or any man or woman or child (especially) should never have to hit a university firewall, be required to pay tens of dollars ($30, $40, and more) to download a pdf file, ad nauseam. Think of the burdensome expense and effort required on the part of so many even to gain the privilege of Internet access in the first place! Those truly concerned about the future of the earth and its life, even civilization, should realize that the history of intellectual development is one of free exchange of ideas and information, not its conversion into profit centers. It is not the struggling who should pay the comfortable, it is the comfortable who benefit from free intellectual synergy that compounds like a breeder-reactor, who should pay forward and backwards to ensure rather than obstruct such exchange. At long last, hath academia no sense of decency? Are there no institutions out there sufficiently well endowed and clearly beneficiaries of the wealth of intellectual struggle handed down from people like Dr. Voltolini throughout history (and still do--Copernicus, Darwin . . .) who will turn this embarrassing state of arrogant possessiveness around? Can you imagine having to make this kind of request at every stage of your own process of intellectual enquiry? How is it possible that, this many years into one of the most transformational achievements of human society, that Dr. Voltolini should still be barred from journal access that costs zero to provide? Why not, at the individual level, that academics simply boycott journals which charge for access and publish in open access journals? While these may not be perfect at the moment, might not such a second-stage transformation accelerate their development and foster rather than retard intellectual synergy? WT PS: David has suggested that I explain how journals (e.g. those of the Ecological Society) are supposed to pay to publish papers if nobody has to pay to read them. This email is intended to
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!!
I'd also like to point out that there are a wide number of open access journals in which ecologists can publish. See here for a comprehensive listing: http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=findJournalshybrid=query=ecology with titles such as Research Letters in Ecology - http://www.hindawi.com/journals/rleco/ The Open Ecology Journal - http://www.bentham.org/open/toecolj/ BMC Ecology - http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6785 Many of these journals are wonderful, but also underutilized. Some of that is certainly because they are new, and therefore their impact factor is not well established. Or, some are so new that they are not listed in ISI Web of Science or other indices, thus remaining somewhat invisible. As a postdoc, I can vouch that when I submit, my mind immediately zooms to the typical rundown of journals to submit to by the prestige that I feel it will lend to my career. Quite honestly, PLoS Biology and PLoS One are the only two open access journals that are typically on my list. So, I am as much to blame as anyone else. What suggestions would the community have for rectifying this? Or is this a problem that needs solving? Jarrett Byrnes Postdoctoral Associate, Santa Barbara Coastal LTER Marine Science Institute University of California Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106-6150 http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/eemb/labs/cardinale/people/byrnes/index.html On May 10, 2009, at 8:11 AM, Lonnie Aarssen wrote: A new open-access journal published at Queen's University addresses many of the concerns raised here by Wayne and others: IDEAS IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/IEE The opening editorial (http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/IEE/article/view/1949/2054 ) outlines the novel scope, novel peer-review model, and novel financial policy of IEE. IEE was developed to help address three main problems in scientific publication: (1) THERE IS NOW A RAMPANT AND CRIPPLING CULTURE OF ELITISM CENTERED ON JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR: Science is a mission for discovery, not a mission for elitism. Yet many editors and publishers have become more concerned about the mission for elitism and profit - boosting journal reputation through impact factor. To accomplish this, many editors now routinely reject good manuscripts, using the excuse that there are limited page numbers for each volume of the journal, and so there is space to publish only the 'best of the best'. Yet, virtually everyone now reads from digital/electronic production - not paper production. IEE is on-line only, and so there are no page space limitations, plus IEE uses a completely transparent and objective protocol for acceptance/rejection of papers (see the 'pipeline' in the opening editorial). Rejection is never based on elitist goals to publish only the best of the best. (2) IT IS NOW VERY DIFFICULT TO ATTRACT REFEREES AND TO OBTAIN HIGH QUALITY REVIEWS: This is because referees have increasingly busy lives with little incentive to review. Reviews therefore often have arbitrary, debatable, poorly argued, and/or biased recommendations to reject. Many editors use these poor-quality reviews as another gate-keeping strategy to justify rejection based on the elitist goal to boost journal impact factor. Referees can get away with mediocre reviews because they can hide behind anonymity, with no accountability to anyone. The philosophy of IEE is that referees are analogous to expert consultants/witnesses in a court of law, who are often paid for their professional assessment, and are always accountable for their views, and hence never anonymous. Accordingly, referees for IEE are paid professionals, and are named within published papers; there is no anonymity. This provides both incentive and accountability for providing a high-quality review. Authors pay a submission fee for this, but the money is returned to the community of colleagues (as remuneration for reviewing), rather than paid to big publishers (IEE operates purely on a not-for-profit basis). In addition, authors with limited funds can earn remuneration from reviewing, and then use this to pay for the publication fee for their own paper submitted to IEE (or to any other open-access journal). (3) THERE IS AN INTRINSIC BIAS AGAINST THE PUBLICATION OF NEW IDEAS: In most traditional journals, there is limited interest in publishing 'ideas and perspectives' style papers, and high rejection rates often means that it can take more than a year to get a new idea published, by which time it is already old - scooped by someone else. An alternative is to promote ideas through blogging, but most scientists don't blog because they get no credit/recognition for blogging. IEE is the only journal in Ecology and Evolution that is dedicated exclusively to forum-type papers. It is also on-line only and
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!!
(Suggested replacement post) Ecolog: In my university I do not have access to literature sources like Biological Abstracts for example to reach the authors and articles . . . This is an excellent example, unfortunately, of how pricing intellectual resources out of range for outsiders is a moral indictment of much of academia. This man--or any man or woman or child (especially) should never have to hit a university firewall, be required to pay tens of dollars ($30, $40, and more) to download a pdf file, ad nauseam. Think of the burdensome expense and effort required on the part of so many even to gain the privilege of Internet access in the first place! Those truly concerned about the future of the earth and its life, even civilization, should realize that the history of intellectual development is one of free exchange of ideas and information, not its conversion into profit centers. It is not the struggling who should pay the comfortable, it is the comfortable who benefit from free intellectual synergy that compounds like a breeder-reactor, who should pay forward and backwards to ensure rather than obstruct such exchange. At long last, hath academia no sense of decency? Are there no institutions out there sufficiently well endowed and clearly beneficiaries of the wealth of intellectual struggle handed down from people like Dr. Voltolini throughout history (and still do--Copernicus, Darwin . . .) who will turn this embarrassing state of arrogant possessiveness around? Can you imagine having to make this kind of request at every stage of your own process of intellectual enquiry? How is it possible that, this many years into one of the most transformational achievements of human society, that Dr. Voltolini should still be barred from journal access that costs zero to provide? Why not, at the individual level, that academics simply boycott journals which charge for access and publish in open access journals? While these may not be perfect at the moment, might not such a second-stage transformation accelerate their development and foster rather than retard intellectual synergy? WT PS: David has suggested that I explain how journals (e.g. those of the Ecological Society) are supposed to pay to publish papers if nobody has to pay to read them. This email is intended to illuminate the problem and hear from others before deigning to suggest how all of the complexities of this issue should be resolved. The first step, of course, is in recognizing the problem or refuting the assertion that there is a problem. I do not pretend, in as brief an email as possible and still state my position unequivocally, to cover every aspect of the subject. I do, however, know of institutions that have cancelled journal subscriptions. I believe that very large institutions (e.g. the University of California Library may have negotiated price reductions from some journals; I am not up-to-date on this case, but the UC Library did raise the issue quite vigorously a few years ago. I will offer the following observations, and invite correction if they are in error. I hope this helps 1. The major clay paper journals are VERY profitable. 2. Publishing in such journals is a political balancing act, not to mention that author charges are often involved. (I am not against reasonable author charges if they do not inhibit publication on the basis of merit and are collected on the basis of the ability to pay by, and the benefit to, sponsoring institutions.) 3. It is impossibly expensive for independent researchers or those whose affiliations do not subscribe to Internet journal service to scan great volumes of literature. Abstracts are wholly inadequate for literature review. 4. I recognize that publication costs must be met, but scientific/scholarly/intellectual publications should be financed by the nobility, not enrich them. Peer reviews should be the obligation of the reviewers to the discipline involved. 5. I suggested a boycott, but only intend that measure for those entities looking at pdf downloads (for example) as ways to embellish their bottom-lines, particularly when they gouge for them (charge out of proportion to their actual marginal cost). Since intellectual articles are in relatively scant demand, they are not likely to be priced according to pricing theory anyway, so the benefiting institutions should pay the actual costs--plus a margin for a cushion-endowment perhaps. 6. I do not think David or anyone else should have to be bothered with sending materials to requestors who are deprived of equal privileges/rights. While this is generous in the extreme, there is still a faint sniff of (unintended) patronizing in that, and the requestor must be driven to make the request in the first place. Most simply suffer in silence. 7. My primary question to Ecolog remains Is this intellectual imperialism or not? 8. One
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!!
It is sometimes not practical to publish in open access journals, because of cost or other reasons. (I wish PLoS would say exactly under what circumstances they waive publication charges.) But most of us have web pages. Once you have a PDF of your article, put it on your web page! Thanks to Google, anybody will be able to find it. Jane Shevtsov On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 7:56 PM, Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net wrote: (Suggested replacement post) Ecolog: In my university I do not have access to literature sources like Biological Abstracts for example to reach the authors and articles . . . This is an excellent example, unfortunately, of how pricing intellectual resources out of range for outsiders is a moral indictment of much of academia. This man--or any man or woman or child (especially) should never have to hit a university firewall, be required to pay tens of dollars ($30, $40, and more) to download a pdf file, ad nauseam. Think of the burdensome expense and effort required on the part of so many even to gain the privilege of Internet access in the first place! Those truly concerned about the future of the earth and its life, even civilization, should realize that the history of intellectual development is one of free exchange of ideas and information, not its conversion into profit centers. It is not the struggling who should pay the comfortable, it is the comfortable who benefit from free intellectual synergy that compounds like a breeder-reactor, who should pay forward and backwards to ensure rather than obstruct such exchange. At long last, hath academia no sense of decency? Are there no institutions out there sufficiently well endowed and clearly beneficiaries of the wealth of intellectual struggle handed down from people like Dr. Voltolini throughout history (and still do--Copernicus, Darwin . . .) who will turn this embarrassing state of arrogant possessiveness around? Can you imagine having to make this kind of request at every stage of your own process of intellectual enquiry? How is it possible that, this many years into one of the most transformational achievements of human society, that Dr. Voltolini should still be barred from journal access that costs zero to provide? Why not, at the individual level, that academics simply boycott journals which charge for access and publish in open access journals? While these may not be perfect at the moment, might not such a second-stage transformation accelerate their development and foster rather than retard intellectual synergy? WT PS: David has suggested that I explain how journals (e.g. those of the Ecological Society) are supposed to pay to publish papers if nobody has to pay to read them. This email is intended to illuminate the problem and hear from others before deigning to suggest how all of the complexities of this issue should be resolved. The first step, of course, is in recognizing the problem or refuting the assertion that there is a problem. I do not pretend, in as brief an email as possible and still state my position unequivocally, to cover every aspect of the subject. I do, however, know of institutions that have cancelled journal subscriptions. I believe that very large institutions (e.g. the University of California Library may have negotiated price reductions from some journals; I am not up-to-date on this case, but the UC Library did raise the issue quite vigorously a few years ago. I will offer the following observations, and invite correction if they are in error. I hope this helps 1. The major clay paper journals are VERY profitable. 2. Publishing in such journals is a political balancing act, not to mention that author charges are often involved. (I am not against reasonable author charges if they do not inhibit publication on the basis of merit and are collected on the basis of the ability to pay by, and the benefit to, sponsoring institutions.) 3. It is impossibly expensive for independent researchers or those whose affiliations do not subscribe to Internet journal service to scan great volumes of literature. Abstracts are wholly inadequate for literature review. 4. I recognize that publication costs must be met, but scientific/scholarly/intellectual publications should be financed by the nobility, not enrich them. Peer reviews should be the obligation of the reviewers to the discipline involved. 5. I suggested a boycott, but only intend that measure for those entities looking at pdf downloads (for example) as ways to embellish their bottom-lines, particularly when they gouge for them (charge out of proportion to their actual marginal cost). Since intellectual articles are in relatively scant demand, they are not likely to be priced according to pricing theory anyway, so the benefiting institutions should pay the actual costs--plus a margin for a cushion-endowment perhaps.
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!!
Why not, at the individual level, that academics simply boycott journals which charge for access and publish in open access journals? I would love to have this question answered by established elders in their fields. Open-access journals, being mostly new and unfamiliar, are no place for early-career scientists who are attempting to establish their credibility. Luke K. Butler Post-Doctoral Associate Department of Biology Tufts University 165 Packard Ave Medford, MA 02155 On May 9, 2009, at 7:56 PM, Wayne Tyson wrote: Why not, at the individual level, that academics simply boycott journals which charge for access and publish in open access journals? While these may not be perfect at the moment, might not such a second-stage transformation accelerate their development and foster rather than retard intellectual synergy?
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!!
JS and Ecolog: Yes, but that's not the question. For example, from the AAAS website: The content you requested requires a AAAS member subscription to this site or Science Pay per Article purchase. To find out what content you currently have access to - view your access rights. If you would like to recommend that your institution subscribe to this content, please visit our Recommend a Subscription page. One can buy 24 hour access rights to a single paper for $15 (cheaper than most, but it has no connection to the actual cost of providing the service--it is no doubt justified by recovering the costs of publication). Or join AAAS and every other organization (some suck as much as $40 or more from individuals, not to mention the major fees required of institutions) that holds rights to a paper one MIGHT be interested in. It adds up to an onerous financial burden either way. Such policies effectively exclude any riff-raff who might have a serious interest in a simple or complex subject, and cross-fertilizers must be millionaires and willing to spend it. Such heathen are conscribed to their local library--if they have one, putting them at an enormous disadvantage to the connected and the in. It's competitive exclusion. My tax money supported the research, and I (and I suggest that I and Dr. Voltolini and anyone else should have free access to it, largely because it costs AAAS and the government no additional cost to supply a download). If the law about copyrights to government-supported publications has been outflanked by AAAS and others, it's time for a presidential and/or legislative or court of law rethink, something on the order of tax havens. Aside from the government angle, as a matter of tradition and, considering that we have been transmogrified (apparently while asleep) into a corporate feudal state, the serfs of the world should rise up (or are they?) and see if they can coax a little noblesse oblige out of the keepers of the intellectual gold. Scholarly publication, it seems, has become more and more like a guild and less and less about the advancement of knowledge for the benefit of humankind. WT PS: Here, copied from their website, is a sample of how the Library of the University of California sees the issue of scholarly journals: The Facts: How the Crisis in Scholarly Communication Affects You High costs are a barrier to access Egregious and rising prices of scholarly journals place a barrier between faculty work and their potential readers, putting research and teaching at risk. In the Berkeley library, we have done our best to continue to provide access to materials for our scholars but if economic and publishing trends continue at the same pace, the Library may be required to cancel journals and reduce the number of books purchased. Researchers, in turn, may find it harder and harder to locate materials. a.. The cost of scholarly publications is (and has been) rising at rates that are several times higher than inflation. b.. Significant price increases in journals every year decrease the purchasing power of libraries overall. Serials with high inflation rates negatively impact the overall acquisition of monographs and other serials. a.. Monograph and Serials Expenditures (PDF) Data from the Association for Research Libraries show that from 1986 to 2005: a.. The average cost of serials rose 167%. b.. The average cost of a monograph rose 81%. c.. The consumer price index for this time period rose 78%. d.. Bottom line: prices are going up, and libraries can't keep up. b.. Sticker Shock: to put subscription costs in perspective, consider that a one year subscription to some journals can cost as much as the price of a car (from the UCSF Library). a.. The number of new journals published every year is increasing. b.. Journal inflation rates impact all disciplines: LC Classification Average cost/title 2002 Average cost/title 2006 Percentage increase 2002-2006 Anthropology $300 $416 39% Chemistry $2432 $3254 34% Engineering $1305 $1756 35% History $132 $201 52% Philosophy and Religion $156 $226 45% See the annual Library Journal Periodical Price Survey for an analysis of journal prices. c.. There is a direct correlation between mergers and acquisitions among publishers and rises in serial prices. - Original Message - From: Jane Shevtsov jane@gmail.com To: Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net Cc: ECOLOG-L@listserv.umd.edu Sent: Saturday, May 09, 2009 6:34 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism Approval required Re: [ECOLOG-L] Teaching Biostatistics !!! It is sometimes not practical to publish in open access journals, because of cost or other reasons. (I wish PLoS would say exactly under what circumstances they waive publication charges.) But most of us have web pages. Once you have a PDF of your
