Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences
Perhaps you could explain what you mean here as your comment seems rather a non sequitur. M -Original Message- From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] On Behalf Of Karl Fogel Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 9:30 PM To: liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences If we'd all stop using the verb publish when we really mean endorse, much conversation on this topic would be clearer. (Not aimed at anyone here, by the way; just a general observation :-) .) -Karl Richard Brooks r...@acm.org writes: Part of the problem is the use of publications to drive academic retention, tenure, promotion. Publications should be vetted by a set of peers that only allow publication of quality goods. The journals are supposed to be the gate-keepers and enforcers of quality. This means that the people trying to publish have an incentive to publish as much as they can. Having the authors pay gives the supposed gatekeepers an economic incentive to publish more and lower quality. If costs are not paid by the subscribers (who should in principle only pay for quality goods) then it is hard to find a model that is going to keep the bar high enough. Professional societies (IEEE, ACM, etc.) can probably maintain quality in this scenario. But that decreases the number of journals and the amount of available info... On 04/08/2013 04:19 PM, michael gurstein wrote: I'm wondering whether some global equivalent of the copyright collection societies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_collective might not work although they would need to be updated to reflect current issues around CC and related licensing… Richer institutionscould pay in for access to Open Access journals perhaps on a pay per usage basis and given a relatively modest cost structure for OA journals this might be sufficient to cover operating costs on a Robin Hood basis for poorer and LDC libraries. …just a thought. M *From:*liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] *On Behalf Of *LISTS *Sent:* Monday, April 08, 2013 10:58 AM *To:* liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu *Subject:* Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences Indeed, this would be a problem. However, it's already a problem, which is to say that poorer universities cannot afford subscriptions to EBSCO and whatnot to begin with, and thus their faculty have trouble keeping up with research in comparison to those at richer schools. What I'm suggesting here could at least alleviate this problem, because richer schools would subsidize /access/ to research. Moreover, I'm imagining that the cost of pay-to-publish would be far lower than for-profit schemes like TF and Elsevier, thus enabling poorer school's libraries to save money and actually increase their faculty's ability to do research (assuming that's their mission). However, I don't have numbers on this, so I could be wrong. - Rob Gehl On 04/08/2013 11:52 AM, Glassman, Michael wrote: The problem with this is that faculty from wealthier universities will have much more capability to publish than faculty from less wealthy universities. And those who can get their work supported by those with money have an upper hand of getting more information out than those who do not have their work supported. There is already enough of this in grants perhaps. Maybe we could envision something like low cost subscriptions so that individuals or universities could pay a small fee to journals they use a lot. This works well on a number of political blogs. Michael From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] on behalf of LISTS [li...@robertwgehl.org mailto:li...@robertwgehl.org] Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 1:45 PM To: liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu mailto:liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences Or, potentially, university libraries could shift from buying subscriptions to paying for their university faculty's publication fees. If the ultimate product is an open access publication, then the issue isn't paying for access, but rather paying to produce the public good. - Rob Gehl On 04/08/2013 11:42 AM, michael gurstein wrote: Publishing may be dirt cheap but any systematic/formal e.g. academic publishing isn't free... So the problem is that while there is a
Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences
On 9 April 2013 08:29, Petter Ericson pett...@acc.umu.se wrote: Gettings things published (as in, readable by the public) is no longer a problem Quite. However, they still need to pick-and-choose... which they would then endorse, rather than publish. Which has long been one of the challenges created by democratising publishing text :) Any link suggestions to journals that do this particularly well I may have missed? In my world, Pub Med Central [1] and Bio Med Central [2] - who even have a JSON API [3] for searching papers ! [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/tools/openftlist/ [2] http://www.biomedcentral.com/ [3] http://www.biomedcentral.com/search/results?format=jsonterms=salbutamol -- Love regards etc David Miller http://www.deadpansincerity.com 07854 880 883 -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences
If I understand what you are saying I think you've got it a wee bit mixed up... -Original Message- From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] On Behalf Of Petter Ericson Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2013 12:29 AM To: liberationtech Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences Gettings things published (as in, readable by the public) is no longer a problem, and journals should, frankly, not concern themselves with this any more. [MG] but this is precisely what journals do... i.e. they publish (after selecting what to publish* However, they still need to pick-and-choose among the myriads of published works to get a high-quality and on-topic selection of articles, which they would then endorse, rather than publish. [MG] they pick and choose among the myriad of non-published* works to getetc.etc. The problem is how to make money and repute flow properly through this system, without getting bad side effects (i.e. no publishing for poor people/institutions, no access to what endorsements were made for poor people/institutions, every journal turns (even more) into an echo chamber etc. etc.). [MG] okay... That, at least, is my understanding of it. [MG] er... and mine M Best /P [MG] *publishing of course means something different post-Internet... I think what it means is putting something into a context which authenticates the process of publication i.e. it is published because we/they/someone says that it is being published... But maybe in the end we are saying the same thing but using words in a slightly different way. On 08 April, 2013 - michael gurstein wrote: Perhaps you could explain what you mean here as your comment seems rather a non sequitur. M -Original Message- From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] On Behalf Of Karl Fogel Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 9:30 PM To: liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences If we'd all stop using the verb publish when we really mean endorse, much conversation on this topic would be clearer. (Not aimed at anyone here, by the way; just a general observation :-) .) -Karl Richard Brooks r...@acm.org writes: Part of the problem is the use of publications to drive academic retention, tenure, promotion. Publications should be vetted by a set of peers that only allow publication of quality goods. The journals are supposed to be the gate-keepers and enforcers of quality. This means that the people trying to publish have an incentive to publish as much as they can. Having the authors pay gives the supposed gatekeepers an economic incentive to publish more and lower quality. If costs are not paid by the subscribers (who should in principle only pay for quality goods) then it is hard to find a model that is going to keep the bar high enough. Professional societies (IEEE, ACM, etc.) can probably maintain quality in this scenario. But that decreases the number of journals and the amount of available info... On 04/08/2013 04:19 PM, michael gurstein wrote: I'm wondering whether some global equivalent of the copyright collection societies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_collective might not work although they would need to be updated to reflect current issues around CC and related licensing… Richer institutionscould pay in for access to Open Access journals perhaps on a pay per usage basis and given a relatively modest cost structure for OA journals this might be sufficient to cover operating costs on a Robin Hood basis for poorer and LDC libraries. …just a thought. M *From:*liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] *On Behalf Of *LISTS *Sent:* Monday, April 08, 2013 10:58 AM *To:* liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu *Subject:* Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences Indeed, this would be a problem. However, it's already a problem, which is to say that poorer universities cannot afford subscriptions to EBSCO and whatnot to begin with, and thus their faculty have trouble keeping up with research in comparison to those at richer schools. What I'm suggesting here could at least alleviate this problem, because richer schools would subsidize /access/ to research. Moreover, I'm imagining that the cost of pay-to-publish would be far lower than for-profit schemes like TF and Elsevier, thus enabling poorer school's libraries to save money and actually increase their faculty's ability to do research (assuming that's their mission). However, I don't have numbers on this, so I could be
Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences
Journals semifrequently acquire an exclusive copyright license, meaning that you the author can not actually put your own article up for free downloading. Instead, you need an article subscription to even access the text (except possibly unfinished versions). That, in short, is the difference between publishing and endorsing a specific article. Though, of course, we could just wait for Karl to wake up and tell us what he meant :) Best /P On 09 April, 2013 - michael gurstein wrote: If I understand what you are saying I think you've got it a wee bit mixed up... -Original Message- From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] On Behalf Of Petter Ericson Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2013 12:29 AM To: liberationtech Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences Gettings things published (as in, readable by the public) is no longer a problem, and journals should, frankly, not concern themselves with this any more. [MG] but this is precisely what journals do... i.e. they publish (after selecting what to publish* However, they still need to pick-and-choose among the myriads of published works to get a high-quality and on-topic selection of articles, which they would then endorse, rather than publish. [MG] they pick and choose among the myriad of non-published* works to getetc.etc. The problem is how to make money and repute flow properly through this system, without getting bad side effects (i.e. no publishing for poor people/institutions, no access to what endorsements were made for poor people/institutions, every journal turns (even more) into an echo chamber etc. etc.). [MG] okay... That, at least, is my understanding of it. [MG] er... and mine M Best /P [MG] *publishing of course means something different post-Internet... I think what it means is putting something into a context which authenticates the process of publication i.e. it is published because we/they/someone says that it is being published... But maybe in the end we are saying the same thing but using words in a slightly different way. On 08 April, 2013 - michael gurstein wrote: Perhaps you could explain what you mean here as your comment seems rather a non sequitur. M -Original Message- From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] On Behalf Of Karl Fogel Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 9:30 PM To: liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences If we'd all stop using the verb publish when we really mean endorse, much conversation on this topic would be clearer. (Not aimed at anyone here, by the way; just a general observation :-) .) -Karl Richard Brooks r...@acm.org writes: Part of the problem is the use of publications to drive academic retention, tenure, promotion. Publications should be vetted by a set of peers that only allow publication of quality goods. The journals are supposed to be the gate-keepers and enforcers of quality. This means that the people trying to publish have an incentive to publish as much as they can. Having the authors pay gives the supposed gatekeepers an economic incentive to publish more and lower quality. If costs are not paid by the subscribers (who should in principle only pay for quality goods) then it is hard to find a model that is going to keep the bar high enough. Professional societies (IEEE, ACM, etc.) can probably maintain quality in this scenario. But that decreases the number of journals and the amount of available info... On 04/08/2013 04:19 PM, michael gurstein wrote: I'm wondering whether some global equivalent of the copyright collection societies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_collective might not work although they would need to be updated to reflect current issues around CC and related licensing… Richer institutionscould pay in for access to Open Access journals perhaps on a pay per usage basis and given a relatively modest cost structure for OA journals this might be sufficient to cover operating costs on a Robin Hood basis for poorer and LDC libraries. …just a thought. M *From:*liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] *On Behalf Of *LISTS *Sent:* Monday, April 08, 2013 10:58 AM *To:* liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu *Subject:* Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences Indeed, this would be a problem. However, it's already a problem, which is to say that poorer universities cannot afford subscriptions to
[liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences
From: Nathaniel Poor natp...@gmail.com http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html The scientists who were recruited to appear at a conference called Entomology-2013 thought they had been selected to make a presentation to the leading professional association of scientists who study insects. But they found out the hard way that they were wrong This has been a problem for a while, but now it's big enough to be a newspaper story. --- Nathaniel Poor, Ph.D. http://natpoor.blogspot.com/ https://sites.google.com/site/natpoor/ -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences
Indeed, this would be a problem. However, it's already a problem, which is to say that poorer universities cannot afford subscriptions to EBSCO and whatnot to begin with, and thus their faculty have trouble keeping up with research in comparison to those at richer schools. What I'm suggesting here could at least alleviate this problem, because richer schools would subsidize /access/ to research. Moreover, I'm imagining that the cost of pay-to-publish would be far lower than for-profit schemes like TF and Elsevier, thus enabling poorer school's libraries to save money and actually increase their faculty's ability to do research (assuming that's their mission). However, I don't have numbers on this, so I could be wrong. - Rob Gehl On 04/08/2013 11:52 AM, Glassman, Michael wrote: The problem with this is that faculty from wealthier universities will have much more capability to publish than faculty from less wealthy universities. And those who can get their work supported by those with money have an upper hand of getting more information out than those who do not have their work supported. There is already enough of this in grants perhaps. Maybe we could envision something like low cost subscriptions so that individuals or universities could pay a small fee to journals they use a lot. This works well on a number of political blogs. Michael From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] on behalf of LISTS [li...@robertwgehl.org] Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 1:45 PM To: liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences Or, potentially, university libraries could shift from buying subscriptions to paying for their university faculty's publication fees. If the ultimate product is an open access publication, then the issue isn't paying for access, but rather paying to produce the public good. - Rob Gehl On 04/08/2013 11:42 AM, michael gurstein wrote: Publishing may be dirt cheap but any systematic/formal e.g. academic publishing isn't free... So the problem is that while there is a necessary and valuable shift from commercial publishing (and outrageous profiteering) to open access online publishing there really aren't any good business models yet to cover the (much less but not totally trivial) costs of the new forms of academic publishing. If for whatever reason (and there are lots including the issues pointed to here) one doesn't want to go to a pay for play model that leaves advertising(???) or donations (???) or... M -Original Message- From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] On Behalf Of Richard Brooks Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 9:34 AM To: liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences It's not curious. It is accurate. As the funding model moved from subscribers paying for access to authors paying for publication, the financial incentives changed as well. The loosening of standards is an obvious consequence of this decision. The question of how best to publish quality academic information is non-trivial. Like the question of where to get quality current affairs information. It will take a while for things to adjust to the ability of the Internet to make publishing dirt-cheap. On 04/08/2013 12:19 PM, James Losey wrote: I think it's curious how this article frames the journals as open access rather than a more appropriate pay to play On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 6:05 PM, Yosem Companys compa...@stanford.edu mailto:compa...@stanford.edu wrote: From: Nathaniel Poor natp...@gmail.com mailto:natp...@gmail.com http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-w orld-of-pseudo-academia.html The scientists who were recruited to appear at a conference called Entomology-2013 thought they had been selected to make a presentation to the leading professional association of scientists who study insects. But they found out the hard way that they were wrong This has been a problem for a while, but now it's big enough to be a newspaper story. --- Nathaniel Poor, Ph.D. http://natpoor.blogspot.com/ https://sites.google.com/site/natpoor/ -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu mailto:compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech --
Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences
The model that most appeals to me at the moment is one that has been talked about for years by Doug Engelbart and others: Researchers publish in open access repositories whose costs are modest and can be funded through grants and institutional cost-sharing. Light moderation classifies articles for appropriateness in categories proposed by the authors. Secondary sites with their own reputations publish reviews, recommendations, and ratings, with trackbacks on the host repository, and these influence reading and citing by other researchers. The infrastructure for this largely exists already (arXiv, SSRN, etc.). Journals, in this environment, would become part of the post-publication review process, giving up the right of exclusivity, and would sink or swim based on whatever funding model they have. Todd Todd Davies *** email: dav...@stanford.edu Symbolic Systems Program *** phone: 1-650-723-4091 Stanford University *** fax: 1-650-723-5666 Stanford, CA, 94305-2150 *** web: www.stanford.edu/~davies USA *** office: 460-040C On Mon, 8 Apr 2013, LISTS wrote: Indeed, this would be a problem. However, it's already a problem, which is to say that poorer universities cannot afford subscriptions to EBSCO and whatnot to begin with, and thus their faculty have trouble keeping up with research in comparison to those at richer schools. What I'm suggesting here could at least alleviate this problem, because richer schools would subsidize access to research. Moreover, I'm imagining that the cost of pay-to-publish would be far lower than for-profit schemes like TF and Elsevier, thus enabling poorer school's libraries to save money and actually increase their faculty's ability to do research (assuming that's their mission). However, I don't have numbers on this, so I could be wrong. - Rob Gehl On 04/08/2013 11:52 AM, Glassman, Michael wrote: The problem with this is that faculty from wealthier universities will have much more capability to publish than faculty from les s wealthy universities. And those who can get their work supported by those with money have an upper hand of getting more inform ation out than those who do not have their work supported. There is already enough of this in grants perhaps. Maybe we could e nvision something like low cost subscriptions so that individuals or universities could pay a small fee to journals they use a lo t. This works well on a number of political blogs. Michael From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] on behalf of LISTS [lists@robertwgehl .org] Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 1:45 PM To: liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences Or, potentially, university libraries could shift from buying subscriptions to paying for their university faculty's publication fees. If the ultimate product is an open access publication, then the issue isn't paying for access, but rather paying to produce the public good. - Rob Gehl On 04/08/2013 11:42 AM, michael gurstein wrote: Publishing may be dirt cheap but any systematic/formal e.g. academic publishing isn't free... So the problem is that while there is a necessary and valuable shift from commercial publishing (and outrageous profiteering) to open access online publishing there really aren't any good business models yet to cover the (much less but not totally trivial) costs of the new forms of academic publishing. If for whatever reason (and there are lots including the issues pointed to here) one doesn't want to go to a pay for play model that leaves advertising(???) or donations (???) or... M -Original Message- From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] On Behalf Of Richard Brooks Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 9:34 AM To: liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences It's not curious. It is accurate. As the funding model moved from subscribers paying for access to authors paying for publication, the financial incentives changed as well. The loosening of standards is an obvious consequence of this decision. The question of how best to publish quality academic information is non-trivial. Like the question of where to get quality current affairs information. It will take a while for things to adjust to the ability of the Internet to make publishing dirt-cheap. On 04/08/2013 12:19 PM, James Losey wrote: I think it's curious how this article frames the journals as open access rather than a more appropriate pay to play On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 6:05 PM, Yosem Companys compa...@stanford.edu mailto:compa...@stanford.edu wrote: From: Nathaniel Poor natp...@gmail.com
Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences
Part of the problem is the use of publications to drive academic retention, tenure, promotion. Publications should be vetted by a set of peers that only allow publication of quality goods. The journals are supposed to be the gate-keepers and enforcers of quality. This means that the people trying to publish have an incentive to publish as much as they can. Having the authors pay gives the supposed gatekeepers an economic incentive to publish more and lower quality. If costs are not paid by the subscribers (who should in principle only pay for quality goods) then it is hard to find a model that is going to keep the bar high enough. Professional societies (IEEE, ACM, etc.) can probably maintain quality in this scenario. But that decreases the number of journals and the amount of available info... On 04/08/2013 04:19 PM, michael gurstein wrote: I'm wondering whether some global equivalent of the copyright collection societies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_collective might not work although they would need to be updated to reflect current issues around CC and related licensing… Richer institutionscould pay in for access to Open Access journals perhaps on a pay per usage basis and given a relatively modest cost structure for OA journals this might be sufficient to cover operating costs on a Robin Hood basis for poorer and LDC libraries. …just a thought. M *From:*liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] *On Behalf Of *LISTS *Sent:* Monday, April 08, 2013 10:58 AM *To:* liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu *Subject:* Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences Indeed, this would be a problem. However, it's already a problem, which is to say that poorer universities cannot afford subscriptions to EBSCO and whatnot to begin with, and thus their faculty have trouble keeping up with research in comparison to those at richer schools. What I'm suggesting here could at least alleviate this problem, because richer schools would subsidize /access/ to research. Moreover, I'm imagining that the cost of pay-to-publish would be far lower than for-profit schemes like TF and Elsevier, thus enabling poorer school's libraries to save money and actually increase their faculty's ability to do research (assuming that's their mission). However, I don't have numbers on this, so I could be wrong. - Rob Gehl On 04/08/2013 11:52 AM, Glassman, Michael wrote: The problem with this is that faculty from wealthier universities will have much more capability to publish than faculty from less wealthy universities. And those who can get their work supported by those with money have an upper hand of getting more information out than those who do not have their work supported. There is already enough of this in grants perhaps. Maybe we could envision something like low cost subscriptions so that individuals or universities could pay a small fee to journals they use a lot. This works well on a number of political blogs. Michael From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] on behalf of LISTS [li...@robertwgehl.org mailto:li...@robertwgehl.org] Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 1:45 PM To: liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu mailto:liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences Or, potentially, university libraries could shift from buying subscriptions to paying for their university faculty's publication fees. If the ultimate product is an open access publication, then the issue isn't paying for access, but rather paying to produce the public good. - Rob Gehl On 04/08/2013 11:42 AM, michael gurstein wrote: Publishing may be dirt cheap but any systematic/formal e.g. academic publishing isn't free... So the problem is that while there is a necessary and valuable shift from commercial publishing (and outrageous profiteering) to open access online publishing there really aren't any good business models yet to cover the (much less but not totally trivial) costs of the new forms of academic publishing. If for whatever reason (and there are lots including the issues pointed to here) one doesn't want to go to a pay for play model that leaves advertising(???) or donations (???) or... M -Original Message- From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu
Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences
Oh-dear! Up to now, I have figured that the Internet revolution was mostly a good thing... The shakeup of the news paper industry at first seemed like it might help to open up Journalism to in some way perhaps more democratic... As I read here about potential confusion regarding the reputability of Journals... I sense cause for serious worry. ..Most of all for small just starting out journals that have all the intention to establish them selves as reputable. These well intending newer publications will now find them swamped by disreputable competitors that threaten to drag down the whole intellectual publication infrastructure. As for my own disposition as self educated individual, (who does not yet have letters behind his name)... I am truly frightened, as publication of my work in a reputable journal... in the end is all that I might might hope for... So the very last thing any of us would need would be for a sense of confusion as to what journals are considered reputable in the greater public eye... I'm not sure what actions Stanford might help take as an institution that clearly has a stake in the health of the academic publication industry Perhaps along with other institutions forming a fairly decisive advisory board would be good maybe something can be done before the whole pier reviewed publication system begins to falter? -- Peter L On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 1:36 PM, Richard Brooks r...@acm.org wrote: Part of the problem is the use of publications to drive academic retention, tenure, promotion. Publications should be vetted by a set of peers that only allow publication of quality goods. The journals are supposed to be the gate-keepers and enforcers of quality. This means that the people trying to publish have an incentive to publish as much as they can. Having the authors pay gives the supposed gatekeepers an economic incentive to publish more and lower quality. If costs are not paid by the subscribers (who should in principle only pay for quality goods) then it is hard to find a model that is going to keep the bar high enough. Professional societies (IEEE, ACM, etc.) can probably maintain quality in this scenario. But that decreases the number of journals and the amount of available info... On 04/08/2013 04:19 PM, michael gurstein wrote: I'm wondering whether some global equivalent of the copyright collection societies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_collective might not work although they would need to be updated to reflect current issues around CC and related licensing… Richer institutionscould pay in for access to Open Access journals perhaps on a pay per usage basis and given a relatively modest cost structure for OA journals this might be sufficient to cover operating costs on a Robin Hood basis for poorer and LDC libraries. …just a thought. M *From:*liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] *On Behalf Of *LISTS *Sent:* Monday, April 08, 2013 10:58 AM *To:* liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu *Subject:* Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences Indeed, this would be a problem. However, it's already a problem, which is to say that poorer universities cannot afford subscriptions to EBSCO and whatnot to begin with, and thus their faculty have trouble keeping up with research in comparison to those at richer schools. What I'm suggesting here could at least alleviate this problem, because richer schools would subsidize /access/ to research. Moreover, I'm imagining that the cost of pay-to-publish would be far lower than for-profit schemes like TF and Elsevier, thus enabling poorer school's libraries to save money and actually increase their faculty's ability to do research (assuming that's their mission). However, I don't have numbers on this, so I could be wrong. - Rob Gehl On 04/08/2013 11:52 AM, Glassman, Michael wrote: The problem with this is that faculty from wealthier universities will have much more capability to publish than faculty from less wealthy universities. And those who can get their work supported by those with money have an upper hand of getting more information out than those who do not have their work supported. There is already enough of this in grants perhaps. Maybe we could envision something like low cost subscriptions so that individuals or universities could pay a small fee to journals they use a lot. This works well on a number of political blogs. Michael From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu mailto: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [ liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu mailto: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] on behalf of LISTS [ li...@robertwgehl.org mailto:li...@robertwgehl.org]
Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences
If we'd all stop using the verb publish when we really mean endorse, much conversation on this topic would be clearer. (Not aimed at anyone here, by the way; just a general observation :-) .) -Karl Richard Brooks r...@acm.org writes: Part of the problem is the use of publications to drive academic retention, tenure, promotion. Publications should be vetted by a set of peers that only allow publication of quality goods. The journals are supposed to be the gate-keepers and enforcers of quality. This means that the people trying to publish have an incentive to publish as much as they can. Having the authors pay gives the supposed gatekeepers an economic incentive to publish more and lower quality. If costs are not paid by the subscribers (who should in principle only pay for quality goods) then it is hard to find a model that is going to keep the bar high enough. Professional societies (IEEE, ACM, etc.) can probably maintain quality in this scenario. But that decreases the number of journals and the amount of available info... On 04/08/2013 04:19 PM, michael gurstein wrote: I'm wondering whether some global equivalent of the copyright collection societies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_collective might not work although they would need to be updated to reflect current issues around CC and related licensing… Richer institutionscould pay in for access to Open Access journals perhaps on a pay per usage basis and given a relatively modest cost structure for OA journals this might be sufficient to cover operating costs on a Robin Hood basis for poorer and LDC libraries. …just a thought. M *From:*liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] *On Behalf Of *LISTS *Sent:* Monday, April 08, 2013 10:58 AM *To:* liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu *Subject:* Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences Indeed, this would be a problem. However, it's already a problem, which is to say that poorer universities cannot afford subscriptions to EBSCO and whatnot to begin with, and thus their faculty have trouble keeping up with research in comparison to those at richer schools. What I'm suggesting here could at least alleviate this problem, because richer schools would subsidize /access/ to research. Moreover, I'm imagining that the cost of pay-to-publish would be far lower than for-profit schemes like TF and Elsevier, thus enabling poorer school's libraries to save money and actually increase their faculty's ability to do research (assuming that's their mission). However, I don't have numbers on this, so I could be wrong. - Rob Gehl On 04/08/2013 11:52 AM, Glassman, Michael wrote: The problem with this is that faculty from wealthier universities will have much more capability to publish than faculty from less wealthy universities. And those who can get their work supported by those with money have an upper hand of getting more information out than those who do not have their work supported. There is already enough of this in grants perhaps. Maybe we could envision something like low cost subscriptions so that individuals or universities could pay a small fee to journals they use a lot. This works well on a number of political blogs. Michael From: liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu [liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu mailto:liberationtech-boun...@lists.stanford.edu] on behalf of LISTS [li...@robertwgehl.org mailto:li...@robertwgehl.org] Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 1:45 PM To: liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu mailto:liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals conferences Or, potentially, university libraries could shift from buying subscriptions to paying for their university faculty's publication fees. If the ultimate product is an open access publication, then the issue isn't paying for access, but rather paying to produce the public good. - Rob Gehl On 04/08/2013 11:42 AM, michael gurstein wrote: Publishing may be dirt cheap but any systematic/formal e.g. academic publishing isn't free... So the problem is that while there is a necessary and valuable shift from commercial publishing (and outrageous profiteering) to open access online publishing there really aren't any good business models yet to cover the (much less but not totally trivial) costs of the new forms of academic publishing. If for whatever reason (and there are lots including the issues pointed to here) one doesn't want to go to a pay for
