Hacker News Reader

These publishers added value back in the days when they actually enabled communication via printing. They should have been abandoned the day after WWW was invented. The "established" publishers literally suck the blood of academia and taxpayer money nowadays. First, they appropriate other people's work in all stages (writing, review, corrections, illustations etc etc.). Then they stymie the development of open-access journals by keeping every good scientist busy reviewing their papers for free (coddling them, showering them with "prestige"). Then they keep the copyrights of work they didn't pay for, they make it impossible for data scientists to collect the experimental data, they hide the papers behind paywalls and they don't even add a comment section where readers can post legitimate q&a's, comments etc. And on top of that they require to be paid for all this free work. If that is not insane, i don't know what is.

The entire reasons you mention have nothing absolutely nothing to do with the value of science. Selling "prestige" in 2015 is a ridiculous thought.

Lastly, consider this. My institution can only afford to pay subscriptions to the most widely read journals, so I find myself using some obscure russian proxy to download them illegally. Apparently there is a need for that, and there are entire websites dedicated to that. This is outrageous.

The HARD thing that need to change is actually simple: it's laziness, and fear, powered heavily by lobbying publishers. Scientists are smart people, all they need is a kick in the butt.

I'm not going to argue with all the reasons you think publishers are insane. However, I will argue with the comment that "selling prestige in 2015 is a ridiculous thought."

Offering prestige in 2015 is even more valuable than it has ever been. There is more research published than there has ever been, from all around the world. The amount of research information is increasing dramatically, just like it is with all information (blog posts, videos published, etc). The value of curation increases with the increase in content, it doesn't decrease. I don't know what the future holds when it comes to how curation is going to be done and how prestige will be awarded, but I'm certain that there will be some mechanism for separating good research from bad research and bestowing prestige. That isn't decreasing in value - on the contrary, it's increasing.

We know. Those who haven't experienced it first hand have only to glance at the exorbitant profit margins. But it is not ridiculous that prestige is valuable. That is not what was claimed. What is ridiculous (although not remotely surprising -- it seems to be a frequently recurring anti-pattern in the modern economy) is that a private body which plays a morally tangential role at best in the production of this particular form of value is allowed to hold the process hostage and simultaneously price-gouge scientists in their roles as researchers, scientists in their roles as reviewers, scientists in their roles as editors, and the general public which funds them in all three stages.

Look out for new US/EU public protections of those private margins. TPP/TTIP/TISA is rumored to criminalize non-commercial infringement, even if the copyright holder does not want to prosecute, http://japanitlaw.blogspot.com/2013/01/tpps-effect-on-fanzin...

"..in practice, it is rare for the police to commence an investigation without a complaint by the rights holder. However, this situation may change. The draft of the request of the US on Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) 15.5(g) stipulates, "its authorities may initiate legal action ex officio with respect to the offenses described in this Chapter, without the need for a formal complaint by a private party or rights holder."

You validated the necessity for prestige in the modern era, but didn't actually comment on whether 'selling prestige' in 2015 is a ridiculous thought.

Ah, sorry, I thought the comment I was replying to was questioning the need for someone to provide prestige at all, as opposed to being focused on the concept of selling that prestige.

In general I don't have a problem with the idea of selling curation/prestige in the form of products and services, so I don't think it's a ridiculous thought (either for 2015 or any other time in history). Let's take another example, say publishing a novel. That's something that has also never been easier to do in a wide variety of ways. But self publishing a novel isn't (typically) enough to become a successful author. You need to somehow get your book to stand out as being better than the million other novels that people publish every year. So if someone can offer you a stamp of approval that the general public trusts, that gives people a reason to believe your book is worth their time more than other books, that's a valuable service. And I have no problem with the idea that whoever can offer that service should be able to charge for it.

I think the ridiculous thing in 2015 is that academic prestige is still almost exclusively tied to the name of the journal in which it is published. That I still have a hard time wrapping my head around sometimes. So I imagine that that will eventually change, but I'm not convinced that the process of separating the good from the bad and bestowing that prestige will inevitably be free.

So if someone can offer you a stamp of approval that the general public trusts, that gives people a reason to believe your book is worth their time more than other books, that's a valuable service

But a big book publisher doesn't just do this for an author. The author gets to leverage the publishers advertising/marketing budget and connections.

Now you are conflating prestige with curation. Journals dont do curation other than an initial check, instead reviewers decide, for free. Publishers' job is basically to make sure that the herd perceives them as prestigious by coddling the big names to publish in their journals (again, for free). This is social engineering. They do not do anything that an openaccess journal can't do. (Look at eLife, open and prestigious).

The quality of the pool of reviewers is not independent on the prestige of the journal I'd say.

You severely underestimate the ability of the greater community to curate given full access to the information.

Look at stackoverflow, hackernews as simple examples in different fields.

You forget that the "greater community" of scientists already curates these articles for free (the reviewers). It's not the curation that's wrong, it's the closed-access.

The entire reasons you mention have nothing absolutely nothing to do with the value of science. Selling "prestige" in 2015 is a ridiculous thought.

I don't find it ridiculous at all. Just because it's intangible doesn't mean it doesn't have economic value. As I mentioned elsewhere, a considerable amount of that economic value comes from non-scientists who can't evaluate work themselves but can look at the organ of publication as a rough proxy for scientific value.

The HARD thing that need to change is actually simple: it's laziness, and fear, powered heavily by lobbying publishers. Scientists are smart people, all they need is a kick in the butt.

Considering the kicking they've been getting from the publishing lobby, perhaps a more emollient metaphor is called for :)

The problem here is that prestige is a real economic good even though you'd rather it wasn't. So boycotting the good journals as an author is a terribly risky strategy. It's free to publish on sites like Arxiv, and scientifically good stuff will get a certain amount of kudos from other scientists, but it's not obvious when you go to Arxiv what's hot and what's not. What you need is something with the openness of Arxiv, the signalling value conferred by the selectivity of journals like Nature, Science, or the leading journals in scientific subfields, and (ideally) some way to winnow out stuff that is clearly total crap. And once you have a basic version of this platofrm (which should not be terribly hard to build, but will cost some money (and should probably not be built by scientists themselves, because they are terrible at making web pages)), is a contractual commitment of some sort to get a critical mass of people to agree tp move to that platform instead of submitting to existing journals. IT's not going to work if people do it in dribs and drabs because nobody wants to be the first person to undergo the experiment which may Destroy Their Career. You need a crowdfunding approach - not so much to raise the actual funds but in terms of creating a tipping point - such that everyone keeps submitting to journals and basically doing what they do now until (say) 30% of working scientists are signed up to the new system. When that target is reached, everyone in that signup group moves to the new platform and sticks with it for an agreed-upon minimum period, come hell or high water. You need some sort of a big bang event to make this work because scientists don't have all that much political capital in the western world, and you're getting into a fight with people who have a lot of economic capital and (frankly) who understand politics better than most scientists.

You may find it instructive to study the history of London stock exchange and its 'big bang': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_(financial_markets)

Guys, i m not saying prestige isnt valuable, but it's just ridiculous to sell it to publicly funded scientists in 2015, as if it s american idol.

On some levels it actually is like American Idol.

Doesn't "publishing with a paywall journal you acknowledge that your field values the prestige awarded by that journal" contract with "it's not the publishers that are dictating the prestige".

Your arguing that if I post it on a blog, it gets lost in a sea of other content. If I publish it, then I get validation.

If I understand correctly, you are saying that one of the fundamental reasons for publishers to exist is because they validate someone's work (citations, vetting, peer approval). Why does this have to happen at the expense of public access, if the research that goes through that vetting process is publicly funded?

> "by publishing with a paywall journal you acknowledge that your field values the prestige awarded by that journal" and then going on to say "it's not the publishers that are dictating the prestige".

No. the grandparent post is pointing out that journals do provide value in practice, because people care that someone was published in the journal. This has nothing to do with the publisher, and everything to do with the people reading the papers.

> If validation is so important, why can't there be a subset of tax dollars towards a committee?

You're confusing "ought" and "is". The system, as it works today, isn't that -- you can push for that change, but as it stands, journals add value in an academic career.

Until a researcher can actually submit their research to a tax dollar funded committee (or whatever other alternative people dram up), and get that weighted as heavily as a journal publication when applying for tenure, journals will not be replaced. Working towards replacing journals may be nice, but the parts aren't in place today.

"Working towards replacing journals may be nice, but the parts aren't in place today."

You're right! Why do I feel these Institutions(including higher education) want us to debate this to death? They know "the system" has made them rich. They know we don't have the power to change. We can debate, argue, cry--they will still charge whatever they can get away with-

I just watched a speaking event at BookExpo America, the publishing industry’s annual trade show, about the use of data in the publishing world--and other topics.

Speaker Scott Galloway(NYU professor, and founder of L2) talked about the price of text books, and tuition at his university. I could tell he felt completely hopeless, and demoralized over just how much money they are charging. He said, 'twenty years ago my students were taking the same marketing class they are taking today; Same information, but instead of paying 6 grand to listen to him lecture; they are now paying 65 grand!'

He didn't have an answer to the problems, but he said certain industries are ripe for Change. (I don't think he was being melodramatic, nor acting--he literally seemed shocked at the current pricing. It is beyond money--it's on a moral plane now, and they are getting away with it.

So this Dutch University decided to buck the system. They just said no to this overpriced journal. They are taking a risk, but at least they are taking a stand.

Anyways, I'll give the link to the lecture, and pay attention to Scott Galloway's statements(particularly at around 01:04:37). The hopeless that emanated from this professor was chilling. The other speakers were very polite, and professional, but Scott was the most believable.

(http://www.c-span.org/video/?326179-1/bookexpo-discussion-in...)

I think we agree. It would be better if there was a different way to validate the importance/impact of research. Particularly if there was a way to evaluate the importance immediately, as opposed to waiting years to see how the impact plays out (via citations, etc). So if there was a committee that provided that evaluation entirely outside of the publishing ecosystem, that would be great (great from the viewpoint of humanity, maybe not publishers' business models).

Hell, if you were guaranteed that your tenure committee actually read your full papers and then made their decision about the importance of your work entirely on their own, then you don't need any other validation of your work. But at that point we're sadly living in a fantasy world. In the real world academics making hiring decisions need external validation to judge their applicants. Figure out a better way to provide that without losing a ton of money and you're golden.

This makes sense. Thanks a lot for clarifying and taking the time to write your original post.

>> Why does this have to happen at the expense of public access?

I didn't understand from your answer why validation and restriction of public access need to go hand-in-hand. When I left academia, I was no longer able to read tax-payer funded research papers without paying an exorbitant fee per paper. Are you saying that lowering the fees is would lead to "losing a ton of money"? Do you mean the publisher would become unprofitable, or become less profitable?

I'd iterpret that as the fact that right now, any academic or institution who chooses to unilaterally avoid the current system will lose lots of funding, as the publication metrics are actively used by the funding bodies in project evaluation.

I am not aware of any alternative that can replace the current publication metrics for this purpose. The funding bodies have no motivation, capability or resources to make a replacement themselves, so that would have to come as a ready-made replacement in order to be accepted, and actually work (have usable content) for evaluating all current academic disciplines and academics out of the box (which seems rather unrealistic) so that a multi-disciplinary funding body can actually put that metric in their next funding round official evaluation criteria.

They don't have to go hand in hand. Others have pointed out eLife as an example of high prestige open access. There's no reason, other than history and inertia, that the validation has to come at the expense of access. However, I'd argue that I haven't yet seen a good model where the validation isn't expensive (by some definition of expensive). So I definitely think curation/validation can be delinked from the paywall, but I'm not convinced they can be provided free or cheap (and yes, the standard argument that reviewers aren't paid is valid, but the idea that publishers don't have real costs managing that process is simply naive).

I would say that the real value of your work could be measured with something like pagerank: basically if your work is eventually cited, it's prestigious.

What the journals maybe provide is prestige before your work has been widely cited, plus publicity. Even if the article is on arxiv, more people will take a look if you say it will soon be published in, say, Cell. Maybe they shouldn't even bother publishing- just have a list of articles which they would publish if they actually bothered to do so.

You're spot on in that citations are largely the pagerank metric and that's really what "counts", but there's a need for having an earlier metric. Journal impact factor is a computation based on historical citation count of articles in a journal. The leap of faith is then that if you publish in a journal that has a history of publishing highly cited work, that means your work is good and likely to be highly cited. There's any number of ways to argue against that logic, but that's the way it works.

So yes, what journals typically provide is a leading indicator of quality that you can get before waiting for citations to come in. There's a definite demand for such a leading indicator, and I certainly believe there's an opportunity to replace the journal with something else.

That makes sense.

I'm curious what you think about variants on the PageRank idea that address the slowness problem you point out. You state in an earlier comment “so if there was a committee that provided that evaluation entirely outside of the publishing ecosystem, that would be great”. You could theoretically have a PageRank-like system where some nodes are papers, some nodes are committees, and (maybe) some nodes are individuals. Then there could be different types of edges, expressing relations like “has cited this paper” or “deems this to be a quality paper” or “recognizes the competence/authority/prestige/whatever of this person/committee”. Then run PageRank on the whole mess.

There are certainly other data points, once example is Mendeley bookmarks, that can indicate what research is being highly viewed/discussed. If you know what people are passing around organically, and especially if you knew who those people were, then you could apply different weightings to that data. If a leading scientist in the field is digging through your paper, or has started citing it in their unpublished work, that might be an indication of quality that's useful.

The other thing that could make citation data more useful earlier might be taking a more complex view of citations. PageRank doesn't equally weight links, ie links from authoritative sources like the NYT count more than random sites. I think there's plenty of room for improvement in applying similar mechanisms to enhance citation metrics. And maybe some of that could start playing into making citation metrics more useful earlier in the process. If you only have one citation, but it's from a preprint article written by a Nobel Prize winner, that should count more than 10 citations from published articles by random postdocs (although I have a feeling that even that idea wouldn't be accepted without a lot of controversy in academia).

Interesting ideas, thanks for the response.

Irony alert: PageRank was originally modeled on the observation of how academic citations are a network. Back on topic - still many works are read, but never cited, despite their contribution to science (that's another nut to crack though).

> having to constantly worry about the next year's impact factor

I'm confused by this bit. Isn't impact factor just a complex indicator of the amount of citations, so really an indicator of the quality of the journal? Why is it "worrying about impact factor", rather than "worrying about publication quality"?

This reminds me of the pleasing the shareholders vs. trying to run a successful company disconnect.

Your analogy is spot on. It's a perverse incentive system. It doesn't make any rational sense, but that's the way it is. Even more ironically, the impact factor of open access journals matters even more than for paywall journals. Once a paywall journal is established it's fairly stable. If it loses its impact factor that's bad, but doesn't mean the death of the journal. But with an OA journal if you have an impact factor and then lose it, your submissions drop off a cliff, which directly ties into your revenue, and that will often be the actual death of the journal.

Beyond that, journals can help financially support their attendant society if they're a society journal, and while it gets dismissed, having a copy editor and a layout person improves papers.

Thanks for pointing this out. The revenue to scholarly societies is another big aspect that people often overlook. One side effect of killing off paywall journals is that a lot of scholarly societies will need to figure out different ways to make money to survive. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I can get behind the idea that a society should not base it's financial existence on revenue from a paywall journal. But that's a reality of today's situation.

That's a good point - although based on anecdotal evidence from a couple editors of scholarly society affiliated journals I've talked to, the societies have largely already lost this revenue stream due to steep declines in subscriptions over the past decade. I'm very much in favor of disrupting the existing model of how academic publishing works (and applaud any efforts to cut out exploitative companies like Elsevier) but for anyone reading this who is working on something along those lines, please remember the scholarly societies and ordinary journal editors! If a new system emerges which allows them to be fairly compensated for the work they do but which cuts out the current corporate intermediaries like Elsevier and Brill, I think the current status quo will rapidly shift in a positive direction.

Prestige only has value if the community upholds it with integrity and warrant. The journals are fundamentally looking to protect their business model and their attachment to the community. Thus the journals' prestige becomes significantly diluted (and with warrant).

Publication prestige originated in the publication's crucial role as a discovery mechanism before the Internet. Now there's a much better discovery mechanism, and the community is adapting well to it. If publications had the community in mind foremost, they'd similarly adapt.

Prestige is a cornerstone of circular reasoning.

you are acknowledging the fact that your field values the prestige awarded by that journal. That's what you're getting, the prestige.

If that is what your field is betting on, then it is utterly doomed. Ephemera such as prestige is mobile.

Trust me, the idea that the prestige currently offered by today's journals might move to an entirely different venue is a top concern.

I'm not convinced that betting your business on the idea of curation (ie prestige) is a bad one, although I suppose I'd agree that betting a business on the idea of paywall journals as the mechanism of that prestige bestowment isn't wise.

Prestige isn't curation. Curation is a genuine functional benefit, but it is one that is getting cheaper year on year. Prestige is really just the upmarket term for cool, and cool is flightly.

edit - another way of putting it, is if curation is what is being relied upon, then they seriously run the risk of being popcornTimed

I'm curious what your view of what academic publishing being "popcornTimed" would look like.

PopcornTime isn't really the mechanism for curation, it's merely one avenue to show the result of a highly complicated curation process that's always occurring. The curation of movies involves big-budget advertising, box-office results (which feed news reports which feed box office results), websites like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, and of course some level of purely "viral" spreading of what's good and bad (social recommendation). PopcornTime/BitTorrent itself is just easier distribution that sits on top of and feed off that curation process.

So if you can only make money off the distribution, I agree you're going to have trouble. But if you can shift your business model to be based on the business of curation I think you're fairly safe. You mention the price of curation decreases year on year, but in the case of something as highly specialized and expertise-based as academic research I'm not totally sure the analogy with pop-culture movies holds. "The crowd" can relatively easily curate movies (which says nothing about its ability to select high vs low quality actually), but I'm not convinced "the crowd" can effectively curate academic research without large changes to the overall system (see publons.com for a way that might change if peer reviews are rewarded and open).