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Comment by Knufen | Hacker News Reader

As someone who works in academia (Europe) I understand that scientific papers need hosting and server space and such, but does it really help humanity that all advances will be behind very expensive pay walls? I would argue otherwise. The current trend is not sustainable nor favorable for anyone except parasitic publishers.

Edit: I understand the website was breaking the law, but this seems like symptom treating

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I never understood the argument of “we’ll block this website that host papers because we need revenue to host those papers”. I mean, if you want papers to be hosted just leave people to host them... There might be other arguments and I don’t really find most of them valid as well, but the one about hosting costs just sounds ... absurd

Scientists need to try more "radical sharing"[1] as the member journalists of the ICIJ[2] did in order to report on the Panama and Paradise Papers.

Setting aside ego,etc. I would think result in faster real-world discoveries and applicitions for the good of all.

[1]https://www.icij.org/blog/2016/12/radical-sharing-breaking-p...

[2]International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

The law doesn't operate by going back to first principles ("will it really help humanity?") in every case. We've decided copyright is reasonable as a concept, and we evaluate each case by reference to the rules of copyright, without creating special exceptions all over the place.

Nor are any special exceptions necessary. Absolutely nothing prevents scientists and academics from publishing in open-access journals. Scientists and academics do so to cash in on the prestige of the "branded" for-pay journals. Given that they do this voluntarily, why should the law step in and ameliorate the collateral effects of their conduct?

Because most of the research is funded by tax dollars?

Is 'most' true? It may also matter whose tax dollars they were. Google isn't being helpful.

To be absolutely clear, I'm very much on the side of open publishing. I just want to be able to form a more accurate reasoning so that I can well explain it to others.

So? If the government funds contractors to e.g. clean government buildings, should the contractor automatically be subject to all sorts of considerations "in the public interest" just because it is being paid with tax dollars?

The government, as an economic actor, is entitled to attach whatever conditions it wants on its grants. The reason it doesn't attach conditions such as "you can't publish your results in <list of prestigious publications>" is because that would drive away the best and brightest applicants for the grants.

> If the government funds contractors to e.g. clean government buildings, should the contractor automatically be subject to all sorts of considerations "in the public interest" just because it is being paid with tax dollars?

IANAL, but that's actually true. For example, government contractors are required to have affirmative action programs. See, for example here: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-...

Government procurement requirements have been hugely important in regulating and advancing the state of many industries.

I completely agree with you, in principle. Though sometimes we have to reevaluate the system and a good way to do this is civil disobedience, which I consider what SciHub is doing.

>We've decided copyright is reasonable as a concept

I disagree here, I think copyright is a great idea, but more and more often, executed poorly.

>Absolutely nothing prevents scientists and academics from publishing in open-access journals

To some extent you are correct, but if you want your paper to be read and spread your knowledge this is the only way. And yes recognition and money is also a factor

As for your question, the law should absolutely step in, but just because it's the law doesn't mean it's right and it can't be corrected

Edit: formatting

In reality, quite a lot of factors prevent academics from publishing in open-access journals!

That that is what needs to be fixed.

You're basically arguing for the government nationalize the brand and goodwill of prestigious publications, presumably without compensating those journals for the taking.

This presents some pretty extreme view points as if they're perfectly reasonable.

I doubt you could find any member of the public who would say "Yes" if asked "Should research you paid for cost you money to read?".

No reasonable person would agree with the rules as they are if they were introduced today, we got here because it's not an election issue and special interests and lobbyists have distorted rules written centuries ago massively in their favour.

It's descriptive, not prescriptive. Rayiner isn't endorsing the law itself, he's just telling you how it operates. People often seem to have trouble distinguishing between positive statements ('this is how things work') and normative statements ('this is how things ought to work.')

I agree with you that the laws are corrupt and should be changed, but that's going to involve refactoring the entire legal system on different operating principles, which is a radical change. IT's important to understand that this isn't one bad decision by a court or something that can fixed with a patch. Are you up for such a gargantuan task?

We don't need to rewrite anything.

Instead, just start breaking laws that are corrupt, like copyrite laws, and eventually they will be unenforceable.

Laws only work because society mostly follows them. The ones that people DON'T follow, may as well not even exist.

This exactly. The law is a lot like the formal description of an algorithm that processes data. The courts and lawyers are the implementation, and the way in which people behave is the data being fed into the implementation. Overload even a good implementation and it will probably crash.

Careful with this. Having a number of laws people ignore can lead to situations where all of a sudden the existing power structure starts to enforce them arbitrarily (usually against political opponents and/or an 'out' grou p).

USC 2257 compliance comes to mind. With that on the books, a nebulous definition of what it means to be compliant and no precedent for interpretation, I'd hate to be in the adult industry when any administration decides to start enforcing it.

In case anybody else doesn't recognize this, it's the law stating that porn producers must maintain proof-of-age documentation of their performers (at least that's what I think it means). Something like that anyway.

> I doubt you could find any member of the public who would say "Yes" if asked "Should research you paid for cost you money to read?".

Isn't that a claim that the public may have against the researchers, rather than against journals? A journal is merely _offering_ a publishing service, and the public may, if they deem that service unacceptable, demand of the researchers that they do not use it.

> and the public may, if they deem that service unacceptable, demand of the researchers that they do not use it.

Many hiring requirements for researchers is that they have a published paper in X journal. Usually these journals are run by Elsevier, who takes copyright from the researchers. Are suggesting that the public lobby universities to change their hiring practices? (In which case you had better have a good alternative, otherwise you'll most likely be laughed off)

Anyway, your putting the burden on the public feels like just another way of saying "Someone else should do it". You're a member of the public, have you set up anything to demand that researchers not publish in certain journals?

There is no rule (lobbied-for or otherwise) that says that publishers can put publicly-funded research behind a paywall. That they can is simply a result of the fact that all creative works are copyrightable, and people are free to publish copyrighted work on freely-negotiated terms.

If you asked the public "should there be a special law excluding scientific articles from copyright protection," I suspect most people would say "no." Sometimes the public agrees with the general principles of a law, but disagrees with specific applications. In those cases, we give precedence to the legal principles, not the public's opinion on a specific situation.

The US is a corrupt country, the laws are written figuratively or sometimes literally by corporations with the intent on profiting from them.

Given that, it is unsurprising that the laws do not represent the interests of the common person.

Individual scientists don't have a right to screen over the future.

There is a nice combo of fatalistic, libertarianesque schadenfreude. Only the most politically and financially stable scientists can afford to publish in non-impact-factor journals.

You know. Open access just means paid for by the researcher. Not everyone has that kind of money..

There is a non-insignificant amount of work to take a paper from submission to publication. It's hard to determine the exact value / cost of that work, but article publication fees (and subscription fees!) is one way that work is paid for. So while I am sympathetic to your argument, one could then say that "rich" researchers should (based on an arbitrarily chosen morality) pay for open access, and the "poor" ones should go to low APC, subscription journals... I am not sure I like this argument either.

Now, researchers are slowly getting new tools where that cost is accounted for in other ways. I.e. The Winnower, biorxiv, etc. Whether one day one of those, or a future invention will replace academic journals, only time will tell.

You're right that copyright law does not need a special case here. Rather, taxpayer-funded research grants should come with the requirement that all findings will be published open access. If you want to publish in Nature, go get your own research money. Scientists should not have complete personal ownership over subsidized research that they conduct.

> scientific papers need hosting and server space and such

The cost of such things is trivial. A typical article is <<1GB. The cost of storing a GB is about 10 cents at today's prices. If you charged each author $1 to publish a paper you would cover the costs with a 90% profit margin.

Don't forget the peer review and vetting process.

As for the price I don't think it's really that expensive. I've never heard of a research University unable to afford it. And if not for the fees we'd have no journals.

Maybe when we are post scarcity then it'd be free. But until then people's time is not unlimited and is worth something.

> Don't forget the peer review and vetting process.

The peer review often happens by unpaid peers, even for commercial journals. It's really not the dominating factor for costs.

> The peer review often happens by unpaid peers

Do you know of an example of paid reviews? This would seem like a big conflict of interest and I have not heard of any but predatory journals doing that.

Historically, a large cost was typesetting and print publication. However, print is used less and less in favor of online subscriptions and typesetting is mostly using the publisher's LaTeX style file.

The "value" provided by journals seems to be:

- communication with the editor (unpaid, mostly senior peer researcher)

- review (unpaid peer)

- software to manage submissions, reviews etc (commercial)

- proofreading for typos and some fine tuning for figures and layout (useful)

- prestige of having published in an important journal (very valuable for your career)

>As for the price I don't think it's really that expensive.

There are multiple universities spending millions upon millions (which could be used to further science), to buy subscriptions for all the journals. I know my university spends 10 mil euroes a year. And it's not only about pricing, it's the general trend of commercialising research which should benefint all of humanity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Pricing I know Elsevier is not the only one, but they are the frontrunner of parasitic behaviour.

Edit: Formatting

Who does this money go to? Does a percentage go back to the scientists who write the papers?

It depends... Do you consider 0% "a percentage"?

The publisher, essentially the researcher gives the rights to his paper in exchange for publishing. Then the publisher put the research behind a paywall and even the researcher who wrote it will have to pay.

> even the researcher who wrote it will have to pay.

Eh, pay for what? The author already has the article. Often-times, the agreement furthermore permits limited dissemination of the article by the author, possibly even on the author's web page.

Pay for color figures in print, for example (a few hundred per figure if I recall correctly).

Furthermore, you get an author's copy with watermarks with very limited dissemination rights. You don't get a copy of the journal issue unless you pay.

Also, this varies very much by discipline. Math research is pretty universally available on the arXiv, but chemistry or biology is not nearly as pervasive.

I think the only value-add is the prestige of a given journal. So, just brand.

The other comments are saying it's minimal publishing, peer review, and hosting costs. Oh and they spend a bunch on lawyers obviously.

> Don't forget the peer review and vetting process.

Which is almost universally done for free by the editorial/review panel for the given journal.

> As for the price I don't think it's really that expensive. I've never heard of a research University unable to afford it.

It would be nice if everyone had access to research, not just those who happen to work in organisations with deep enough pockets.

> And if not for the fees we'd have no journals.

Why?

> Maybe when we are post scarcity then it'd be free. But until then people's time is not unlimited and is worth something.

The people who put in the time (editorial board) and expertise (reviewers) aren't getting paid. If they're not getting paid then where is all the money going? Personally I think the value is in the bits that are currently all done for free, Im not sure what value the publishers really add.

Sounds like you should start your own free journal. That's the easiest and fastest way of getting these papers out for free.

Someone did. It's called Sci-Hub.

Sci-Hub is not a Journal itself. It is hosting other Journals' data. However https://www.plos.org/ does exist and it is a free to access Journal. Unfortunately it is pay to publish. I am unaware of any completely free Journal on both the reader and author end.

There a few. I published a paper in the Journal of Information Policy once, whose (small) expenses are covered by a grant, IIRC from libraries that would otherwise have to pay through a publisher. Very field specific, though.

Isn't that what the World Wide Web was designed to do, before the web app? Why not just publish online on a university site, or a site for your specialty?

Traditionally journals have required that the author transfer copyright of the paper to the journal upon publication. They no longer have the right to publish a copy on their own university site; some journals allow it, but many stipulate that the full text cannot be available without a paywall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_policies_of_academic...

That's changing, and many journals are moving to open-access policies, but it's slow, and the most prestigious journals often have the least incentive to grant authors published in them copyright of the work.

(There's something fucked up about authors transferring copyright of publicly-funded research to private entities: if the public funded it, shouldn't it be owned by the public in the first place, i.e. public-domain? And if it's public domain, then this whole issue goes away and neither the journal nor the author has the right to restrict access to the research. But this is one example of the capture of public goods by private entities. Hell, maybe this is why a good swath of America wants to de-fund science any chance it gets, when the result of their funding just gets captured by private entities.)

I agree, publicly funded research should be public domain, where the authors cannot legally transfer the copyright to the publishers like that. However, most Journals do offer a way to publish open access, and I bet they would push things that direction. They just cost thousands of dollars, that most of the time is not affordable.

The difference is the peer review. If something is published in Nature, you can reasonably trust that it is legitimate science, and not a random person with no real credentials. Its an interesting cycle. People publish their best work in a prestigious journal because it is the most prestigious and trusted. Thus perpetuating what goes where. And this is also perpetuated by the grant system itself, you need to publish in prestigious journals to get grants to fund further research. You don't get funding to self publish on a university page. (I am not saying I think this is right, just stating the facts behind it)

Yes but why couldn't peer review be organised by a not-for-profit group? Perhaps a society attached to your specialty could provide a panel?

It seems that the publisher's value is curating studies that have gone through this process. If you were to find a study through Sci-Hub would you know that it had gone through editorial/review panel? How do you know that the study is trustworthy?

Surely that's the work of the editorial board? Again, they are largely unpaid as far as Im aware.

This makes interesting reading if you're interested in how a free (or at least very low cost) journal can work https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an...

Peer review has little to no financial impact..

> Which is almost universally done for free by the editorial/review panel for the given journal.

Is there good data on this? (I mean, I guess there is, but would someone present it to ignoramuses such as myself? Thanks.)

I'm not aware of any, though I haven't really looked. My understanding is that peer review is done for free because it's understood that it's a necessary part of science. That is, you review other peoples papers for free because they'll do the same for you.

I guess that falls down a bit because I bet there is a very uneven distribution of peer review work, but it's a nice sentiment at least!

Remember that a lot of us don't work for research universities, and we can't afford $199 per paper just to read the details that are summarized in the abstract.

Also, many landmark papers are several decades old. A lot of time I just want to read the details of an influential paper just to see if I agree with how it is portrayed in popular culture. For example, I recently wanted to read the Dunning Kruger paper to see if it really says what people think it says. And, when James Damore cited research for his Google manifesto - I wanted to see if his conclusions held up.

I'm not sure how an average person can make informed judgments without access to these papers. Without Sci-Hub, we must just believe what is fed to us. Since its creation, Sci-Hub has become an essential part of my life.

Ditto for http://sci-hub.cc/. Another example: for those of us (just about everybody) concerned about our health, how do we access authoritative papers on pharamceutical drugs, nutrition, medical conditions etc., Or do we rely on some journalist's piece which is more often than not biased and patronizing? And the irony is that this is almost entirely tax-payer funded research.

I happen to live near a research university and while I'm not a student nobody seems to object to me wandering in and using the libraries there from time to time. But for most people the cost of accessing a journal article for casual interest is prohibitive, and not everyone has the funds or time to attend a university. The point of the web is to make knowledge available to everyone.

Be realistic, it costs more to read a single article on Nature or Science than it does to buy a book on the topic. That's bullshit.

> But for most people the cost of accessing a journal article for casual interest is prohibitive

And most people don't have access to the facilities to run proper research. R&D is not cheap.

As mentioned we live in a capitalistic society. Time is a scare resource, and the current journal editors are putting a price to their time.

If you have a passion for cheaper research papers, go ahead and compile papers & start your own free journal. That or help another free journal out.

> Be realistic, it costs more to read a single article on Nature or Science than it does to buy a book on the topic. That's bullshit.

Its total bullshit. I dont disagree. This might even be a great YC Startup opportunity :D. Until someone competes it'll continue being bullshit.

Community colleges like the one I work at can't afford the journal fees. One of my assignments involves reading several peer-reviewed articles on a narrow topic and writing an explanation of the research. Every semester I have students that struggle with finishing this assignment because the articles they need are inaccessible.

If the barrier to accessibility is such a problem, why perpetuate it by throwing your students against that wall?

The journals' business model does suck, but you're delivering students to a paywalled garden to retrieve information on what amounts to a proprietary topic. You have the power to change this by redirecting the students' attention elsewhere, either by loosening requirements or changing topics to one with more accessible research...

They choose the topic. I'm fine with anything in biology, medicine, chemistry, and even some social science topics. Some of them run into trouble and others don't depending on what they choose.

I've considered removing the assignment a few times, but there's no skill more essential to success in science than the ability to synthesize different research articles into a coherent whole. I wouldn't feel like I was doing my job if I stopped assigning it.

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