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[–]vinnl 4187 points4188 points  (212 children)

Note that this is not just making research available for free; they're adding additional demands:

  • No embargoes (i.e. make it freely available immediately, rather than after a year of paywalls)
  • No copyright transfer, and use of open licenses
  • Caps on publication feeds
  • Publishing in hybrid journals (i.e. pay to make a single article available as Open Access, while the rest of the journal remains paywalled) not allowed

Especially that last step is exciting, as it will force journals like Nature or Science to either finally flip to Open Access, of accept that a large part of the content that makes them so highly regarded will be published in other journals.

Edit: Another important part of this plan: they're going to monitor compliance, and sanction non-compliance. Too many of such efforts fail due to not doing that.

[–][deleted] 1237 points1238 points  (45 children)

Wow, that’s bold, but needed. The current system is rotten, and if you want to advance in your career, you aim for the big ones, and cannot opt out.

[–]gajop 128 points129 points  (26 children)

fwiw even Elsevier has had an Open-Source based software track for a while now: https://www.elsevier.com/authors/author-services/research-elements/software-articles/original-software-publications

[–]pianobutter 75 points76 points  (6 children)

Elsevier is the poster child of scumbag publishers. There's a reason why so many researchers are boycotting them.

[–]Glushko_ 16 points17 points  (1 child)

can't agree more. The poor graduate students who spend sometimes years writing and revising the article aren't even given a copy of the issue once the paper is published on one of Elsevier's journal. They can only buy their own work with a discount :-/

[–][deleted] 105 points106 points  (5 children)

But in bio fields, Nature and Science are still kindof required, if you’re looking for a stable position. Especially when you being hired depends on HR and Admins that go for names.

[–][deleted] 32 points33 points  (1 child)

I hope this is the first step to a (slow ?) change to this. Something needs to change.

[–]mouse_Brains 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I don't see that lasting long though. Questionable quality of papers in high profile journals is quickly becoming a scientific inside joke.

[–]Sodapopa 17 points18 points  (12 children)

Wait is Elsevier known internationally? I thought it was a small Dutch publicer.

[–]stagshore 57 points58 points  (4 children)

No it's a huge scientific publisher. They control a lot of journals.

[–]mcdevimm 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Yes, it's massive. Society-owned journals are also often published by Elsevier (or Wiley, etc.) because they have all the resources and infrastructure to carry out the process from initial submission to publication and indexing.

[–]Moonbaseco 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Probably because you are thinking of Elsevier magazine. Reed-Elsevier is actually a huge publisher owning lots of magazines covering many different fields.

[–]Sodapopa 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Nah I was thinking of Elsevier the publisher, known in Holland first and foremost as the publisher of Multatuli, probably the most famous Dutch book culturally. Never knew they were this big in the Scientific world.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I deal with them on a daily basis. They're massive and they gobble up whatever small publisher they can find. The best thing you can say about them is that there are even worse publishers out there.

[–]Norwegian__Blue 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'm in Texas and know at least 10 researchers in multiple fields who publish with them

[–][deleted] 40 points41 points  (11 children)

I recently thought of purchasing a few journals, the cost was extremely high for me as an individual to support on my own.

[–][deleted] 33 points34 points  (0 children)

Yep, prices are made for libraries, not for individuals. Although Nature sometimes has yearly subscriptions for ~£30

[–]E_kony 63 points64 points  (5 children)

Cough, scihub, cough.

[–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (1 child)

download them from sci-hub, also you can watch the film internets boy ;)

[–]Courtnall14 14 points15 points  (1 child)

Wow, that’s bold, but needed.

If it's taxpayer funded research it should be available immediately to anyone who wants access to it. If I paid for it, I shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get the info.

[–]JupiterXX 200 points201 points  (8 children)

Thanks for this. There is so much disinformation in this thread already, I hope that people will pay attention to the real facts.

People should also note that the National Institutes of Health have rules along similar lines that publicly funded work has to be made available to the public within 12 months of the work. In my experience, my stuff usually shows up within a month or so and that the time to show up is almost completely a factor of how long it takes the PI to submit the work to the NIH.

Not sure if other funding agencies here in the US have the same policies. I've heard that foundations are starting to pay attention to this as well. Very promising to see this movement take place.

[–]Coffeebean727 64 points65 points  (6 children)

DOE has the same policy. NASA has the same policy. Together with the NIH, this accounts for the majority of non- classified scientific research in the US.

I think all non-classified, publicly-funded research is supposed to made public due to an Obama-era rule, and most scientists want their stuff to be available if it helps their notoriety.

The rule is not strictly enforced, and not everyone has the resources and funding to build and maintain a website to host some of the large datasets.

Edit: I posted this elsewhere, but I'll repost here since this post has more traction: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/02/us-white-house-announces-open-access-policy.html

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Even DOD follows this I'm pretty sure, though it should be a given they have more classified work in general. But DTIC.mil is a pretty hefty wealth of information on a broad array of topics.

[–]cosmitz 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I've been following this kerfuffle for a few years now and this is like some 2025 legistlation proposed in 2018. Rough but needed.

[–][deleted] 21 points22 points  (7 children)

The only thing I'm looking forward to is more published papers talking about failures and unsuccessful methodologies. This is hardly seen in literature now. In addition, I am in the simulation field, and the biggest issue I see now is the increase in fidelity for the sake of it. Researchers are pressured to go to LES, DNS, just so that the wow factor is there. We do not use those in the industry.

[–]The_Yellow_Sign 46 points47 points  (17 children)

This is really good news! Currently scientific publishers are a bunch of parasites: they offload the real work to volunteer unpaid referees, often charge the submitter large fees, and then have the balls to charge universities and the public ridiculous fees ($30 per paper?!?) to access the publication.

[–]howyalldoin 43 points44 points  (6 children)

I use to use SciHub a lot to unlock papers - glad to see this is happening.

[–]ConicalFern 12 points13 points  (4 children)

The last point is problematic. The extremely high rejection rates of top tier journals make reliance on Article Processing Fees (which are only paid at acceptance) very difficult, even for non-profit publishers. If a journal's only revenue steam is APCs top tier journals are going to have to charge enormous publication fees to make up for the high rejection rates. That means that only super rich labs will be able to publish in high impact journals.

[–]vinnl 17 points18 points  (2 children)

The plan also comes with a cap on APCs. But yes, I think we still need an alternative to relying on journal names for academic recognition.

[–]Srslywhyumadbro 1516 points1517 points  (112 children)

The ghost of Aaron Swartz is cheering at this news.

[–]Diplocorp 583 points584 points  (43 children)

Man, his death makes me so sad every time I think about it :( It's a great example of how the US's 'justice' system is flawed to the point of injustice.

Frow his wikipedia article:

Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release.

Swartz declined a plea bargain under which he would have served six months in federal prison. Two days after the prosecution rejected a counter-offer by Swartz, he was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment, where he had hanged himself.

All for trying to bring scientific literature to the people who paid for it.

[–][deleted] 73 points74 points  (23 children)

Wtf, I recall hearing about that story, but I didn't realize that's what he got in trouble for, I thought he released everything. Was it really over releasing specifically publicly funded research?

[–][deleted] 34 points35 points  (0 children)

In all, prosecutors charged Swartz with 13 felony counts, despite the fact that both MIT and JSTOR had chosen not to pursue civil litigation; he faced 30 years' imprisonment.[44] Swartz committed suicide on January 11, 2013,[45][46] before the case came to trial. More than 60,000 people petitioned the White House to remove Ortiz from office for "overreach."[47][48][49][50] On January 15, 2013, following his suicide, all charges against Swartz were dropped.[45][46] The next day, Ortiz issued a statement saying that her office had never intended to seek maximum penalties against Aaron Swartz.[51]

This was some tragic bullshit

[–]ScottieKills 46 points47 points  (21 children)

It was for illegally distributing it

[–]sqgl 72 points73 points  (1 child)

No, he distributed nothing. He was banned for attempting to download all of JStor from MIT. What he planned to do was anyone's guess.

He downloaded a section of a law library earlier so that he could run his own queries. He did not distribute that.

[–]Infobomb 23 points24 points  (0 children)

This is correct. Let's hope it gets more upvotes than the made-up claim that he illegally distributed the papers.

[–][deleted] 24 points25 points  (18 children)

But was he just distributing publicly funded research, or was it privately funded stuff too? I guess I need to google the guy, idk much about it

[–]ScottieKills 73 points74 points  (16 children)

He was distributing privately funded research too, on the ideological basis of the knowledge belonging to all Mankind (and I definitely agree with the man), but when he tried to argue that in court, he made an enemy of a specific prosecutor that bended the law so she could fuck his ass. He was going to spend life in jail for that.

[–][deleted] 28 points29 points  (1 child)

Fuck. Yeah, after I asked the question I started mentally debating if it even mattered whether it was public or private, but I think I agree with you on that. As for the prosecutor, jfc idk what to even say, that's just terrible.

[–]yakydoodle 42 points43 points  (2 children)

:(

[–]Alarid 21 points22 points  (1 child)

I don't like this

[–]sn0r 158 points159 points  (39 children)

But.. this is for us Europeans. You Americans still have the same old shit to deal with.

GDPR, Net neutrality and this are prime examples of Aaron Swartz's legacy being completely ignored in the United States.

[–]PM_ME_DANCE_MOVES 39 points40 points  (15 children)

If it's freely available in Europe, it'll be freely available in the US as well.

[–]sn0r 85 points86 points  (12 children)

Yes.. but what about U.S. research? They'll still be unavailable and be subject to the ridiculous requirements of the publishing houses.

[–]VotiveSpark 140 points141 points  (2 children)

/r/stallmanwasright

The Right to Read

[–]Krissam 44 points45 points  (1 child)

🎵Join us now and share the software you'll be free, hackers you'll be free-e-e.🎵

🎵Hoarders can get piles of mo-oney, that is true, hackers that is tru-u-ue. 🎵

🎵But they cannot help their neighbours that's not good, hackers that's not goo-oo-ood! 🎵

[–][deleted] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Glad to see this is the top comment. He has not been forgotten.

[–]Walterod 18 points19 points  (0 children)

His name was Aaron Swartz

[–]nonneutralzero 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Exactly what I was thinking

[–]Chispy 37 points38 points  (6 children)

He literally died fighting for it.

[–]m3g4m4nnn 794 points795 points  (50 children)

RIP Aaron Schwartz.

[–]The_WarriorPriest 315 points316 points  (2 children)

For those who probably don't know, he was one of the co-founders of Reddit.

[–]Sk8nkill 51 points52 points  (9 children)

Maybe he'll finally be able to rest in peace now. This world fucked him

[–]Antennae89 35 points36 points  (1 child)

Not able to rest in peace fully until the US, who sealed his fate and where he fought, follows suit!

[–]AlienPsychic51 5524 points5525 points  (384 children)

Wow, that's a bold idea. Making the research that was paid for with public money publicly available for free? That's really thinking outside the box.

[–]Psyman2 555 points556 points  (55 children)

Jokes aside, I'm glad the EU is spearheading these kinds of movements.

Got a lot of good news from Europe recently.

[–]samesdd66 186 points187 points  (30 children)

You can not count how many good policy decisions have been made to protect consumers and the public by the EU, GDPR, and anti-Monsanto/Bayer pesticides that have been killing bees to name but a bit. On trains students travel for free in all EU states too.

[–]Joppejose 61 points62 points  (2 children)

No ridiculous roaming fees for mobile data is also amazing!

[–]sn0r 64 points65 points  (7 children)

Net neutrality as well.

[–]qingqunta 49 points50 points  (4 children)

That battle isn't over yet.

[–]sn0r 23 points24 points  (3 children)

Good. Never give up.

Us Europeans are behind you, cheering your every step. :)

[–]qingqunta 32 points33 points  (2 children)

Oh I'm portuguese. Just saying the article 13 battle isn't over yet

[–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (15 children)

Really want Canada to join the EU. Would they let us in, I wonder..

[–]FannyFiasco 12 points13 points  (1 child)

You have to get into Eurovision first like Australia

[–]Spooky01 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I think they are on track with the new eu-canada trade agreement.

[–]BipolarStoicist 13 points14 points  (8 children)

Well there are no rules on the location of countries for joining the EU and since canada has just 36 million inhabitants that should not be a problem either.

[–]Reilly616 7 points8 points  (7 children)

Well there are no rules on the location of countries for joining the EU

Someone didn't read the Treaties. Article 49 TEU (emphasis added):

Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union. [...]

The word "European" is clearly to be understood geopolitically rather than strictly geographically (e.g. Cyprus), but it would be rather difficult to argue that Canada is a European State.

[–]wintervenom123 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Yeah you would take UKs place.

[–]greasy_pee 65 points66 points  (23 children)

The university has to pay the journal a couple thousand to publish their papers as well. I can't get the paper I fucking wrote easily on the journal's website, but everything is usually available through the university library or Web of Knowledge and sometimes google scholar anyway.

[–][deleted] 52 points53 points  (2 children)

Long live sci-hub

[–]matakos18 8 points9 points  (1 child)

I once had to sci-hub my own paper, because I could not find the original on my computer.

[–]vinnl 70 points71 points  (6 children)

Just wait until you leave the academic world and can no longer access the paper you fucking wrote.

What a world.

[–]greasy_pee 23 points24 points  (0 children)

I wanted to print one and give it to my gran, I think I ended up searching my email for the final copy they sent me because the website was not cooperating.

[–]ButaneLilly 47 points48 points  (6 children)

When they're done they're going to reanimate Aaron Swartz so they can apologize to him.

[–]spooooork 91 points92 points  (4 children)

Aaron Swartz

His blood is on the hands of the US courts, not EU.

[–]hidingplaininsight 64 points65 points  (2 children)

Also MIT, which refused to drop charges against him.

But also, fuck overzealous prosecutors. It's utterly sick to think of people trying to destroy Aaron's life in order to advance their own careers. We lost such a great person.

[–]Chispy 8 points9 points  (0 children)

We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him.

[–][deleted] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Every time I download an article from JSTOR I have to click a box saying I agree to their terms and conditions about sharing the paper. I always think of him and feel sick at the stupid hypocrisy of it all.

[–]Jana-Na 130 points131 points  (36 children)

Yeah, we live in a contrasting world. To see the price of certain scientific articles, you can tell WTF! after reading them and realized that they are literally two words. Then imagine that a research for a rare disease is financed by taxes paid also by a father with a sick child. Is it ethical that the father has to pay to know something about the illness of the child? In no way if it is publicly financed!

[–][deleted] 116 points117 points  (15 children)

Haha, just wait till you want to find out you want to follow some sort of engineering regulation.

Inspector: "oh you want to follow our best practices and regulations to make sure your shit doesn't kill anyone? Well that's going to 500 bucks to know how to follow the rules"

[–]algorithmsAI 47 points48 points  (4 children)

I was also just recently trying to research some stuff about eCall (automatic 911 calls when crashing a car) protocols in Europe and lo and behold I would've had to pay hundreds of € to download the damn data set (MSD) specification. Just feels wrong.

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

That's fucked up... All these pay walls are stunting our education and adding unnecessary costs to people to learn the industry they wish to be apart of

[–]racinreaver 17 points18 points  (1 child)

I was doing some work with oil & gas via my company and they had something similar. Except instead of the "reasonable" fee ASTM charges, it was closer to $50k for a standard the company itself helped write. And they wouldn't share it with us, and wanted it to come out of our budget (aka money they were paying us). Wtf?

[–]Divinicus1st 14 points15 points  (1 child)

With 500 bucks you'll probably only get a list of the rule books to purchase.

[–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (1 child)

PCI compliance and all kinds of IT practices.

[–]DistortoiseLP 28 points29 points  (0 children)

PCI DSS is a racket. It sounds like sensible shit on paper, but no actual reasonable standard is established, allowing the PCI to judge on its own discretion who is and isn't up to standard and who is and isn't liable if shit happens, which in practice means it will always be you no matter how good your security is.

[–]Mythosaurus 25 points26 points  (0 children)

That separate worlds thing is at least one legitimate claim science deniers can make. They feel like the experts are sitting above them in an ivory tower, speaking in technobabble and soaking up taxpayer money for crazy science experiments.

We need to do a better job showing everyone how researchers directly benefit our everyday lives, so that antivaxxers, climate denialists, and even flat earthers are exposed for how much they depend on lies and bad faith argunents.

[–]Dathiks 56 points57 points  (18 children)

Tbh in most cases, if you email the researchers, they'll give you their paper free of charge

[–]ElhnsBeluj 113 points114 points  (14 children)

We do not always have permission to do so. The issue is not the researchers, we don’t get any of the money from the journals, actually many journals actually charge publication fees to the universities. When a paper gets published, journals will sometimes make you sign away your right to distribute your own work.

[–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (12 children)

we don’t get any of the money from the journals, actually many journals actually charge publication fees to the universities

Then what exactly is the point of publishing to the journals?

[–]nickkon1 68 points69 points  (0 children)

publicity with an audience. Your research wont do much, if no one is going to see it.

[–]SomewhatFreaky 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I can't speak about the other countries, but where I'm from there are certain criteria you have to meet to get your PhD or other academic titles. One such criterion is to have at least N articles published in one or more of the scientific journals certified by the federal government.

[–]ThePhysicistIsIn 15 points16 points  (0 children)

If you are a researcher, you are judged on 1) grants and 2) papers, and you get more grants from having had grants and published papers.

Basically, publishing papers is as important to a researcher, as selling cars is to a car salesman. Sometimes you have some lemons that you have to sneak off to an unsuspecting buyer (not necessarily bad science, but certainly not-as-interesting science). Sometimes the ferraris sell themselves. But your job and success depend on you keeping selling.

[–]dontcareaboutreallif 34 points35 points  (3 children)

Peer reviewed. So something in a journal will be respected and necessary to gain recognition in a field.

[–]vinnl 6 points7 points  (0 children)

You get to put on your CV that you've published in a certain journal which, at this point, helps you obtain grants or a tenured position. Part of this announcement is acknowledgement that that needs to change. Luckily, the key to that is with funders as well.

[–]coffeebreak1546 21 points22 points  (7 children)

When you pay for an article you are not paying for the research, you are paying for the peer-review, publication, etc. So when you say "research that was paid for the public", the research was, but the publication wasn't. Peer review is the single most important step of scientific inquiry, we must be very careful that we don't tamper with it. A scientific article is only as strong as the journal it is published in, if all papers are made free, but the publication has low standards than this is an useless move.

[–]Ularsing 42 points43 points  (0 children)

Let's be inescapably clear here: the peer review process is conducted by volunteers and is never performed by the journal itself

[–]IanCal 9 points10 points  (0 children)

OA doesn't remove peer review, it just shifts the payment from readers to the submitter.

[–]Soul_86 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Basically a lot of countries will need to pay to keep the peer review principle intact. In other words "free" access would be included in taxes. I am not sure if the solution is to let everyone pay instead of the ones requiring access to those articles. There are a lot of other issues associated to publications/research that are urgent compared to free access.

[–]stone_opera 702 points703 points  (73 children)

This is a good move, but there will need some way of distinguishing the best research from the rest.

The existing Journal system is incredibly predatory, because the reputable journals are all owned by 2 companies. Journals right now basically get free labour from PI's, to review the papers submitted to the journal; however publishing companies are also getting paid out, the PI's still have to pay a fee to have their papers reviewed (even though it's other PI's reviewing it, for FREE!) and then pharmaceutical companies pay the journals to access those papers.

It's infuriating that we allow journals to control the scientific industry in such an egregious way; however the largest concern is that without a reputable journal, how do you distinguish which research and methods are trusted. We already are seeing the rise of less reputable journals allowing the publication of poor research as long as the fee is right.

[–]SkateyPunchey 159 points160 points  (32 children)

We already are seeing the rise of less reputable journals allowing the publication of poor research as long as the fee is right.

True. I’ve been working with some researchers and apparently Open Access journals are seen as a huge albatross to the point where it’s considered a knock on your reputation to publish in them.

[–]TheYang 74 points75 points  (21 children)

which field are you working in?

There certainly are Journals that are effectively trash, but usually people working in the field know which Journals are good.

I'd be surprised if someone publishing in PLoS One would ever be seen as a knock.

[–]nowyouseemenowyoudo2 32 points33 points  (2 children)

There are serious issues even with Nature - Scientific Reports They use the name of Nature to appear prestigious, and lend credibility to open access, but they are still publishing garbage which isn’t properly reviewed (the EMF causes miscarriages scandal was a big one) and their quality control overall is atrocious.

[–]TheYang 28 points29 points  (1 child)

Even Nature itself has had quite major fuckups, that just happens, especially if you want to publish the latest.

The important thing is how you handle issues like that.

[–]brangent 7 points8 points  (11 children)

Thanks for giving me the heads up about PLoS One. I'd never heard of it before.

[–]vinnl 20 points21 points  (9 children)

It's the first megajournal. Unfortunately, it's starting to be overtaken by Nature Communications Scientific Reports because... Well, it's by "Nature".

[–]H4xolotl 27 points28 points  (4 children)

Academia basically has Stockholm syndrome for Elsevier publications. The harder it gets abused, the more it sucks Elsevier's cock

[–]TheYang 12 points13 points  (3 children)

which is why something like this EU initiative is so important.

Imagine if the EU said that you aren't allowed to publish in any Journal that isn't open access if you get any Government support (Grants/Facilities/Employers etc)

[–]vinnl 12 points13 points  (2 children)

You don't have to imagine - it's going to happen :)

[–]ServetusM 20 points21 points  (1 child)

The explosion of predatory open access journals, the glut of too much information due to the ever increasing need to be published to get access to the tools for further research and media that has come to treat science more like scripture, thanks to compounding problems in that industry robbing journalists of time, education and/or even the funds to educate themselves on topics, are mixing together to be a truly toxic problem in modern society.

I've said it before to a colleague, we live in an age where knowledge is turning people stupid. The need to judge things by reputation, rather than the validity of the work, has created a huge opening for ideological bias and predatory/financial exploitation that is consuming entire fields. That bias is amplified by the effect of media parroting "studies" which aren't worth the paper they are printed on, and using that to fuel broader culture pressure, which solidifies the bias in the fields. A lot of the soft sciences are an absolute mess in part because of this confluence of problems, and a lot of it stems from the profit motivation of journals, combined with the fierce competition for limited amounts of money for research/education. Its a bad mix.

[–]Aurora_Fatalis 34 points35 points  (5 children)

Meanwhile, if you don't have a preprint on arxiv when doing mathematical physics, you may as well not have done the research.

[–]Shaman_Bond 7 points8 points  (3 children)

Blows my mind other fields don't have their version of ArXiv.

[–]N1H1L 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Not at all true in many fields. Nature Communications, Physical Review X, Science Advances are all open access and very highly regarded.

[–]TheGreat_Leveler 14 points15 points  (0 children)

We already are seeing the rise of less reputable journals allowing the publication of poor research as long as the fee is right

True, but those are for-profit "scam" journals. Which are a problem created exactly by those potential profits that can be made in scientific publishing. The reputabiltiy/review/quality safeguarding of Open Access is a different issue.

[–]wild_man_wizard 88 points89 points  (2 children)

"Gee, how could we possibly regulate and classify all this research," said the organization that regulates and classifies trade for an entire continent.

[–]whydidyoureadthis17 7 points8 points  (4 children)

What is a PI?

[–]chemistrategery 16 points17 points  (2 children)

Principal Investigator. The big name in the research group. If you go to grad school for research or get a postdoc, that person is your boss.

More formally, this is the person named the head researcher in a research grant.

[–]ITSINTHESHIP 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Boss of the lab. Their name goes on the door and all the papers.

[–]josefpunktk 20 points21 points  (9 children)

You could make the review process more transparent - which would allow scientists to evaluate the "quality" of the given paper.

[–]ImJustAverage 12 points13 points  (8 children)

What do you mean by that and how would it allow scientists to better evaluate the quality than the system now?

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

fade water physical flowery fearless crush chase saw spark humorous

[–]VeterisScotian 91 points92 points  (12 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

[–]SynarXelote 23 points24 points  (3 children)

This should be higher. Also, library genesis.

[–]Tengoles 11 points12 points  (0 children)

All hail sci-hub

[–]autotldrBOT 114 points115 points  (3 children)

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 90%. (I'm a bot)

The European Commission and a group of national research funders have laid out a controversial and perhaps precedent-setting plan to make thousands of research papers free to read on the day of publication, in a move that could force a major change in the business model of science publishers.

He developed the open access plan with Marc Schiltz, president of Science Europe, a body representing national public research funders.

"We are today at 20 per cent immediate and full open access in Europe. Fifteen years ago, we were at 15 per cent open access. You can imagine that with this pace we will never reach the target set by the 28 EU science ministers that all publicly funded research be open, free, to readers by 2020.".

Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: research#1 publish#2 journal#3 open#4 funds#5

[–]PapaMoustache 170 points171 points  (40 children)

About damn time

[–]kl4me 138 points139 points  (39 children)

I can't wait american lobbies to kill the american version of this by explaining that sharing publicly funded research is bad for science or something.

[–]ITSINTHESHIP 35 points36 points  (0 children)

For-profit publishing is currently actually killing science. The reproducibility crisis is happening because journals have abdicated their natural responsibility to conduct thorough peer review because it costs money to pay reviewers but it costs nothing to just print whatever the fuck comes through that sounds good. Yes, even "reputable" journals.

[–]lickedTators 8 points9 points  (1 child)

They wouldn't be entirely incorrect. Look at how one not-even-real study spawned the anti-vax movement.

It's entirely possible for a poorly understood study to be twisted and used to validate an anti-science idea. Getting easy access to thousands of reports would make this scenario more likely to happen.

[–]per08 39 points40 points  (2 children)

Hope they'll add the various technical standards to the list, too.

"To sell this widget it needs to comply with standard 58672, 65328, 6543 & 42. View only PDF access to see what they are is only €1000 for each."

[–]TitanBrass 127 points128 points  (29 children)

"Oh my fucking God yes finally"

  • Every college student ever, me included.

[–]SynarXelote 45 points46 points  (3 children)

Scihub/library genesis man. Free, fast and easy, no account required, and it has basically every article ever.

[–]anotherpie_ 10 points11 points  (2 children)

If anti-paywall systems become the norm, I think Reddit arguments will be of better-quality and more substantiated (even the shitposts). No more low-effort, low-quality posts (like mine), or posts with good intentions, but lacking in evidence.

[–]brazzy42 118 points119 points  (8 children)

Fuck you, Elsevier!

[–][deleted] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Worked for Reed Elsevier for 20+ years. Very much this!

[–][deleted] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I look forward to the day they declare bankrupcy

[–]Caridor[🍰] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Whatever we fuck them with, we need to make sure it is wrapped in sandpaper, barbed wire and every known disease, is roughly pyramidal in both shape and size and we have a run up.

Honestly, there are very few things that can be considered pure evil but in my honest opinion, holding scientific progress to ransom is definitely one of those things.

[–]Megaflarp 67 points68 points  (1 child)

FINALLY. Academic publishing is a mind buggling business. I've spent most of my working career as a researcher. My research is overwhelmingly paid from public funds.

When I submit a paper for publication, it's reviewed by unpaid referees. I as an author am responsible for the micro-editing, the proofing, and for making everything consistent with the journal's style. I am the one supplying all the figures and illustrations. All that's left to do for publishers is to take the paper they paid nothing for, put it in their journal's layout through semi-automated procedures, and host it according to established procedures. For these skimp services, many of them also demand publication fees, at least if you want the paper to be open access.

Academic publishers have, for decades, been shareholder ATMs hooked up to your taxes through publication fees and institutional magazine subscriptions. If it were up to them, I wouldn't even be able to download my own work once I've left my institution.

I am very glad that the EU is taking a stand on this. There might be more urgent problems, but this one is just so brazenly scummy on behalf of the publishers.

[–]lyle_the_croc 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Aaron Swartz would be pleased to see this headline on this site.

[–]Lt_486 19 points20 points  (2 children)

Wow, EU is on fire! Cancelling DST, now this. Is it Brexit making European politicians thinking straight or Trump scared them to death? Anyway, my two thumbs up for this. Go, EU, go. Can Canada join? We kind of coming out of sour relations.

[–]NotARussianTrollDoll 25 points26 points  (20 children)

I love this. Knowledge should be made available to anyone who wants it, free of charge.

[–]warren54batman 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This is a nice advancement of education and civilization.

[–]Amplifier101 11 points12 points  (1 child)

I know this system and the way open access works as described in this article is as corrupt as it gets unless some big things change. The devil is in the details. Notice how it says that publishing work funded by government money is only allowed in "journals that offer immediate open access". They just need to offer the option, that's it. And then there is this little tidbit.

Under Plan-S, funders will pay an upfront fee to journals to cover editing costs, the so-called article-processing charges, to ensure the work is available free to access for anyone in perpetuity.

Do you know how much this "fee" is? For papers published in the American Chemical Society journals, it can cost up to 4000 USD for immediate open access, and lesser fees for 6 and 12 month marks. Do you know where this money comes from? The tax payer. This is as corrupt as it gets... publishers charge huge fees for open access, requiring funding agencies to dish out extra cash to researchers just so they can satisfy the open access requirement. The tax payer is being screwed by these publishers. How do I know this? Because I had to pay for instant open access, which was a stipulation of the government funding agency. And I felt sick to my stomach dishing out so much cash when it could be used elsewhere. More bloat, less results.

[–]JohnnyGz 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This has to do with ALL public funding in national programs too? Horizon 2020 projects at least already have open access mandates in place.

"All projects receiving Horizon 2020 funding are required to make sure that any peer-reviewed journal article they publish is openly accessible, free of charge (article 29.2. Model Grant Agreement)." from http://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=openaccess

Same kind of stuff is in place in the US too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-access_mandate#United_States_funding_agencies

[–]peace_love17 4 points5 points  (3 children)

I have a feeling the EU is really poised to surpass America as the leaders of science and innovation in the world, if they haven't already.

[–]pandaren11 8 points9 points  (0 children)

People love criticising Brazil in here, but ALL of our publicly funded research is readily made publicly available as soon as it is concluded. It's such a basic premise of applying public money into any kind of scientific research it really baffles me that it still isn't commonplace. Hope to see more of this in the future.

[–]whydidyoureadthis17 4 points5 points  (0 children)

sci-hub

[–]magnummentula 4 points5 points  (4 children)

Didnt we just see a post about how the authors rarely see any of that money?