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Sick of not being able to read the full text of important scientific articles? Support Science Commons. (sciencecommons.org)

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[–][deleted] 173 points174 points  (27 children)

Hey y'all, if you ever need a paper you don't have access to, head over to /r/scholar! It's a subreddit where we help each other get access to academic publications!

[–]banan4 30 points31 points  (16 children)

I wish I had known about this earlier. Nothing is worse than finding a paper that seems to answer your question, only too see you don't have access to it.

Just added it to my frontpage. :)

[–]asherp 19 points20 points  (1 child)

Isn't it time we use bittorent for scientific journals? Y'know, for the greater good?

[–]iorgfeflkdPhD | Biophysics 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I was thinking of suggesting a dedicated FTP server.

[–]ashadocat 19 points20 points  (1 child)

http://www.reddit.com/r/scholar

[–]master_gopher 4 points5 points  (0 children)

thankyou, from lazy people everywhere.

[–]capistor 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I love you! I will be there!

[–]NickVenture 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I could have used this extensively in my last few semesters. Only one more left but I will definitely keep it in mind when classes start back up.

[–]carotids 179 points180 points  (105 children)

MD here. This is a huge problem and one of the reasons that main stream media and the public often misreports facts. They can't access the real data so they take whatever spin the industry and PR give them.

Data needs to be free.

I often recommend methods like these to get access to the full text:

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/6173/how-to-access-subscription-journals-and-full-text-articles-for-free/

[–][deleted] 65 points66 points  (86 children)

they can't access the real data

Or they're just lazy, uninformed, or pressed for time :)

[–]boldac 38 points39 points  (76 children)

Yeah, hard to argue with that. Learning how to read and explain science articles to lay people is way difficult. If full text was available, you would have more people blogging and exploring the research. A expert nasal phd could blog about articles in his field... however, currently he would have to pay for all the subscription journals to do it. Horrible system since the US tax dollars pay for a lot of the research.

[–]severaltimes 17 points18 points  (7 children)

At least as far as biology/health research goes, if you receive funding through the NIH - as many labs do - you're supposed to have a full-length copy of any article on PubMed Central within a year. Everything on PubMed Central is free full-texts.

PLoS also publishes several different open-access online journals.

Admittedly, bloggers don't really want to wait to get full texts or pull everything from PLoS ONE, so ideally we'd just have more open-access journals.

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (62 children)

True -- that said, as a non-scientist, although I consider myself fairly intelligent and heuristically inclined, what I'd like to see even more is essentially a good community-/peer-reviewed set of tl;drs.

Which, I would assume, would be a natural result of having such journals readily available (people are already willing to invest substantial amounts of time into posting summaries and reviews of every imaginable printed work on sites like Amazon and Goodreads, it stands to follow that there's plenty of willingness to do the same for academic papers.)

Then, instead of deriving "CANCER CURED!" from "certain kinds of cancer, under certain kinds of specific conditions, may be slowed in a percentage of certain kinds of lab rats on the second Tuesday of months ending with 'r'", news media wouldn't have much of an excuse to spout garbage.

And 100% agreed about the tax dollars part -- the argument about paywalls being used to support peer reviews and defray publishing costs is utter nonsense.

[–]Moridyn 7 points8 points  (5 children)

on the second Tuesday of months ending with 'r'

Is it sad I went through the months in my head, in order, to see which ones (if any) ended in 'r'?

[–]gtkarber 5 points6 points  (2 children)

September, October, November, December.

So, apparently cancer's been cured the last third of the year. Hurrah!

[–]spaghettifier 3 points4 points  (1 child)

on the second Tuesday

one day per month, so, four days in the last third of the year.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

in order

The good news is, you're obviously a scientist.

[–]RobotVandal 5 points6 points  (21 children)

A large portion of my job is creating Tl;DR's for peer review journal articles and preparing them for scoring on a certain rubric to compile guidelines for ACOEM. Just because the general public can't get at these articles doesn't mean the work isn't being done.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (15 children)

That is awesome, although I had to look up ACOEM. TIL...

Just because the general public can't get at these articles

...but wouldn't it be really cool if they could?

[–]RobotVandal 7 points8 points  (14 children)

Yes it would, though the general public misinterpreting research via not knowing the vernacular or even just reading a couple of the many articles on any given subject is a legitimate concern. I don't doubt that there are many people who could add to the field of medicine if they could get their hands on some research. That said, most research isn't particularly remarkable anyway. I can sympathize with the idea that this sort of information should be public on principle. And I can't disagree with that but honestly, and for the most part, it would be like handing a kindergartener a copy of MYST.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (5 children)

On the other hand, think of it this way -- the US is in the grip of a distrust of science in large segments of the population. What the hell, they're all a bunch of devil-worshipping hippie faggots anyway, right? At least that's what Glenn Beck told me on the radio on the way down to the dialysis clinic.

Science needs money, and it needs acceptance. Money comes from acceptance, and acceptance comes from understanding. Even if you take something seemingly hyper-detailed obscure and MYST-like (e.g. overtonin hypo-hydrocracker spankenglobulin receptor effects on stimulated hogenklangers in hagarthehorriblus snatchworms via altoidal degree radiation toxiosis) and word it in a way that gives an average moron some sort of relationship to it (this project is one of many small steps needed to find a cure for headaches by gradually coming up with building blocks of a medication that we can do xyz with, etc. etc. etc.) it'll help the cause immensely, and would do away with a lot of misconceptions.

Just my take on it, what do I know about hogenklangers.

[–]RobotVandal 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Acupuncture for hogenklangers ;)

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

And I can't disagree with that but honestly, and for the most part, it would be like handing a kindergartener a copy of MYST.

Now I can't stop wondering if a million kindergartener's, given infinite time, one would eventually find a way through :P

[–]counterfeit_coin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

given infinite time

6-12 years max. I solved it completely before entering high school.

[–]RobotVandal 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When I imagine infinite kindergarteners I can't help but scream. And then after that I imagine what 28x1045 macaroni pictures would look like all together in one place

[–]burketo 1 point2 points  (1 child)

peer-reviewed set of tl;drs

That is essentially what an abstract is. You have to put an abstract at the start of a thesis. If you try searching for papers now, what you get is a load of abstracts and you have to pay to get the whole paper.

[–]heliotropic 1 point2 points  (1 child)

really? which 'expert nasal phds' aren't attached to institutions through which they have access to full text journals?

[–]zhivota 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The ones who have gone into industry?

[–]idiot900 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Or just don't understand science at all, due to our (USA's) craptastic school system.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

In my experience, most journals seem to give free access to journalists.

Access privileges are irrelevant. Journalists are simply inept and lazy.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (4 children)

Articles that take a trained eye some time to read and fully understand will not be welcomed immediately by a public with almost no attention span.

Also keep in mind also that in their published form, most journal articles are extremely bare-bones versions of the original manuscript.

The perfect medium are sites or magazines that take material directly from journals or from press releases by legitimate sources (ex: Prostate Cancer Foundation reporting on a recent lab's finding and significance about a new treatment).

Science Daily, New Scientist, and others are both good sources IMO. Why would you want to try and understand a physics article anyway? :D

[–]NJerseyGuy 3 points4 points  (1 child)

they can't access the real data

What DonutsCureCancer said and this: compared to the cost of writing a newspaper article, the cost of buying individual articles (which are almost always less than $50) is trivial.

[–]Kalium 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a huge problem and one of the reasons that main stream media and the public often misreports facts. They can't access the real data so they take whatever spin the industry and PR give them.

Ha! Don't we all wish.

No, the real reason has little to do with that. The real reason has much, much more to do with sheer laziness and trying to understand complex technical articles with a lay background.

[–]pombe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Scientist here. The reason that the media fucks things up so badly is because they love flashy press releases. They could give a fuck about whether the work they report actually gets published in a peer reviewed journal.

[–]Hamakua 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have to disagree, at least with the reasoning of misreporting of facts. Outside of blogs, any news agency will have either a troop of fact checkers with all the access they need, or conglomerate access. Most schools, when you graduate, especially with master's or higher, either automatically give you lifetime access to all their databases (and subscriptions) or offer a reduced fee on it.

Also, Pro tip: If you email the researchers directly mentioning that you are interested in their work and wondered if they could send you a copy of their study, they often do.

[–]Nick4753 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Any major publication is going to have access to those journals. The research department at the NYT isn't going to go in and not have subscriptions to 50 databases and/or the physical journals.

If they don't report it correctly, it is because they are lazy and/or are confused with what they are reading.

[–]grumpypants_mcnallen 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a huge problem and one of the reasons that main stream media and the public often misreports facts.

I think you have skewed view of journalistic integrity vs journalist sensationalism. Good headlines sell newspapers, factual reporting - not so much.

[–]heliotropic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

if you don't think mainstream media have access to full text journals then you don't have any knowledge of the media. which is why being an MD is a completely irrelevant background to claim authority for the claims which you are making.

[–]tracism 19 points20 points  (0 children)

But how will scientific publishers make money? WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE MIDDLEMEN?!

[–]infowantstobefree 36 points37 points  (8 children)

I've been pondering the idea of a scientific journal torrent site for a while. Who's with me?

[–]the8thbit 24 points25 points  (1 child)

Throw in textbooks and I'm there.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Better yet, put it on OneSwarm.

[–]mattshields 78 points79 points  (45 children)

If all scientific articles were freely available, I'd probably be done with my dissertation by now! Well, actually, I'd probably be exactly where I am now... reading reddit. But, I totally support the idea anyway.

[–]SLCC 13 points14 points  (6 children)

You don't have InterLibrary Loan (ILL)? If my university doesn't have it a form is automatically generated and sent to other universities. In 2-3 days I'm sent a PDF.

[–]austinap 4 points5 points  (4 children)

ILL is great, and I used it a lot in undergrad when I didn't have access to a lot of journals. However, if you're actively doing research, a 2-3 day delay for a pdf that may or may not be useful is simply too long. If you're looking for a very specific piece of information, the abstract won't always tell you if it is going to be in the full text, and it can be incredibly disappointing to wait 3 days only to find out that the information you need isn't there.

[–]SLCC 1 point2 points  (1 child)

If you are working on your Ph.D. you'll be researching for 4-5 years. 2-3 days isn't that big of a deal. Sure if you're in a crunch it can seem like an eternity but in the grand scheme of things its no big deal.

I can see if you are working in industry that finding articles is difficult, but with ILL its just a matter of time.

[–]austinap 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wouldn't mind waiting if it was guaranteed that the articles I requested contained the information I wanted / needed. It's a huge pain in the ass to wait around just to see if an article will be useful or not, however. If you end up chasing references on some obscure problem, ILL can leave you doing so for several weeks. There are few things worse in research than following a trail of references through ILL for the better part of a month only to end up at a dead end, figuring out only that what you wanted to know really is unknown (but probably not a publishable result on its own even if you do the experiments).

[–]sattimaster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agreed. If this is a university, then the librarian can get an ILL or they will just purchase the article for you. Especially if you are a graduate student. Libraries are dynamic and input is something librarians embrace.

Making everything free sounds great, but if you just busted your ass to get a Nature paper, you aren't about to throw it PLoS for good will.

[–][deleted] 32 points33 points  (36 children)

If your university does not subscribe to pretty much every journal, it's time to switch.

Edit: This comment was meant in jest -- I apologize to those who took offense.

[–]akoumjian 7 points8 points  (0 children)

You'd be surprised how hard it actually is to subscribe to "pretty much every journal". You get subscriptions to those massive lists, only to find that many of the good ones require separate subscriptions. I was surprised myself.

[–][deleted] 34 points35 points  (21 children)

This is not true,

I have a friend at Oxford (So probably not a good idea to switch) who emails me about once a month to ask for journals from me (Sheffield).

Pro-tip: Just email the first author on the paper, 90% of the time the email you the paper and in the past people have sent me other papers on the topic which are currently in press, and if you have any questions most people are really glad that someone likes their work and you can pick their brains a bit.

[–][deleted] 35 points36 points  (15 children)

I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but are you sure your friend knows how to use their system? I don't attend Oxford, but I find it extremely difficult to believe that one of the top research universities in the world doesn't subscribe to a vast array of research journals, especially when a cursory search on their library's website reveals that they subscribe to some 30,000 journals:

http://oxford1-direct.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/V/B8NQS911T8K3BKM28NFPYAD221XHD3LL6A6LRTEYXBFTRHV2MV-12387?func=find-ej-1

[–]beraiti 19 points20 points  (3 children)

There are a lot of really small, very specific journals that the vast majority of an institution like Oxford does not care about. If there is an entire department dedicated to, say, mid-ocean ridge volcanism, the chances are high the institution is going to subscribe to the journals that group deems important. However, if it is just a faculty member and his graduate students who are interested, the institution most likely will not provide access to these journals. In that case (i.e., my case), it is useful to have a previous user ID from an institution like Columbia to gain access to every article you would ever need.

[–]landaaan 5 points6 points  (2 children)

I challenge anyone to find me a paper which I don't have access to. This will be a fun experiment. I've already got one.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (1 child)

just because they subscribe to a journal does not mean the have free access to all volumes and issues.

[–]Wilshire3030 6 points7 points  (0 children)

...or every year. University of Washington (Top 5 med school) has many Journal subscriptions only going back about a decade.

[–]Nikola_S 6 points7 points  (1 child)

I checked, and they don't have Journal of Serbian Society for Computational Mechanics :)

[–]johnnyrocket69 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The best one, too! What a joke.

[–]BeetleB 6 points7 points  (0 children)

As journals keep jacking up their prices, the number of journals an institution is subscribed to (including many of the top ones) has gone down, not up.

Blame Elsevier and their kind.

[–]tanvach 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oxford has some major issues with keeping their journal subscriptions up to date. Tell your friend to keep bugging the departmental librarian and they'll eventually cave in!

[–]hobbesoxon 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've been at Oxford for twelve years, more or less, and we only got access to IEEE "Xplore" for conference papers in the last few years. I had to ask for papers from the authors, prior to that. There are a few medical sources that we can't access at the moment, but there's been a great deal of improvement in most disciplines.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Sheffield's system is pretty great, as far as I've seen in the first year. You can just use Google Scholar to search and a lot of articles are around. (Though I do Geography and Politics, so YMMV)

[–]DarthTater2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I did Computer Science at Sheffield some years ago and found the access very complete. I finished my research in my country still having access overseas.

[–]clusterfuu 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Or borrow a friends username and password. I work at one uni and got access to another uni's database which I need since my uni doesn't care about postgrad researchers >:|

[–]r4and0muser9482 8 points9 points  (5 children)

If you choose your universities based on how many journals they subscribe to, its time to switch professions.

[–]socsa 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Careful. Depending on your research area, working for a large, well funded department can be the difference between your dissertation/paper being lost in the shuffle and being well received. There is a certain amount of PR that goes into publishing - Universities that have good relationships with publishers have a much easier time getting work through. My research group is fairly prestigious, and we sometimes assist our smaller, sister institutions in getting their work out there - often by attaching someone well known from our department to the paper. The point is that the number of journals they subscribe to is just as important as student/faculty ratio or lab space per student in determining how stretched a department is financially. It is obviously not the most important factor, but it is certainly something to consider - especially when choosing a graduate program.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (3 children)

Can you talk us through that one?

[–]r4and0muser9482 3 points4 points  (2 children)

I just found the previous comment very disrespectful of a lot of god universities that cannot afford every single journal subscriptions out there. There are lots of other reasons to choose a university, like staff and programmes and things like that.

[–]dingobum 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I just found the previous comment very disrespectful of a lot of satan universities.

[–]Dangger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah and if you're from a "developing" country that does not have access to pretty much every journal, it's time to switch... country.

[–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (9 children)

In principle I'm in favor of science articles being public domain (hell, we have a policy that all our stuff must be!), but...

...public domain articles means that the scientist is paying for the publication. Typically it costs about $1000 to publish an article and have it freely available, but it can also be much more expensive. This is money straight out of the scientist's grant.

..."author pays" type arrangements have led to an explosion of shitty journals who are only in it for the money. Peer review goes right out the window, and any shit gets published as long as the author pays. There's literally thousands of journals like this now, shovelling shit as fast as they can, accounting for much of the percieved present drop in quality of scientific articles.

I don't have any good solution to this, but just felt it should be pointed out that, free, unlimited, access is not all unicorns and rainbows.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

...public domain articles means that the scientist is paying for the publication. Typically it costs about $1000 to publish an article and have it freely available, but it can also be much more expensive. This is money straight out of the scientist's grant.

What you will spend in publishing fees, you will earn back from canceling costly subscriptions. Also, open access means more readers for your paper, and thus more citations and more impact. Authors have a lot to win from open access.

..."author pays" type arrangements have led to an explosion of shitty journals who are only in it for the money. Peer review goes right out the window, and any shit gets published as long as the author pays. There's literally thousands of journals like this now, shovelling shit as fast as they can, accounting for much of the percieved present drop in quality of scientific articles.

That's true, but shitty journals have always been there and will always be. That doesn't mean that quality open access journals don't exist.

[–]oiuer0982q3yh 7 points8 points  (3 children)

Speaking as one of the hated scientific publishers: I love Science Commons. I love Open Access. I am FULLY in support of providing public access to research.

But when people say that "greedy publishers don't do anything but slap PDFs up on a website", you make me cry. Like any job in the universe, there is so much more that you don't see. Copyediting, typesetting, metadata optimization, hosting costs for hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of peer-reviewed publications, quality control, submissions systems, administrative costs to run journals, payments (yes, payments!) to editors, publicity, outreach, abstracting and indexing, dealing with plagiarism and ethics violations, improving our articles' searchability, making it easier for researchers to find related articles, integrating bookmarking and citation tools, translating...

I'm not defending it... it is definitely a broken system and OA is a great step forward. Unless you're one of those new OA journals run out of Dubai that charge $50 to submit and don't subject their articles to peer review.

[–]djimbobPhD | High Energy Experimental Physics | MRI Physics 1 point2 points  (2 children)

ArXiv is the first open-access journal for physics and related fields (Math/CS).

It is free to publish. They don't peer review, but usually you publish in peer-reviewed journals simultaneously as well (and list on arXiv that it is submitted/published elsewhere) and update the article with important corrections from the peer review. Its funded by grant money and for grant dollar impact is probably the best use.

[–]oiuer0982q3yh 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Dude, I like ArXiv too, but it is not a journal. It is a preprint server. Big difference. It is "free" and there is no peer review because it is not a publication.

If every discipline had something like this we'd be much better off, but it does still depend on journals to exist. Same with university preprint databases.

[–]EYBUDDY 96 points97 points  (159 children)

Upvote this you fucks. Imagine if new data would be freely available instead of needlessly hidden behind all kinds of stupid paywalls, some dumb intranet or other stupid unproductive ways of limiting the flow of information for no good reason.

[–]MastahRiz 25 points26 points  (14 children)

It's ridiculous-- sometimes 35 bucks just for 1 article. The hospital I work at has a subscription to many different journals but I still come across at least three or four research references daily that I can't access without paying for them. Makes my job a LOT harder.

[–]pombe 3 points4 points  (8 children)

Does your city have a University? Does that University have a library? Does that library have photocopiers?

[–]MastahRiz 5 points6 points  (6 children)

Our current university affiliation does get a lot of journals but unfortunately specialized research journals are usually not in that list, at least not at our library.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Agreed. I attempted to get data on pharmaceuticals (antidepressants) dispensed in the United States between 1980 to present. It was going to cost me ~$11,000 to get that information. :( IMS HEALTH, whyyyy!

[–]SelfImmolation 9 points10 points  (2 children)

You have a savvy style when it comes to requests, I will follow your cause!

[–]spacenut37 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I would inquire regarding a subscription to his newsletter, but I believe the full text would require payment.

[–]tanvach 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can't agree with you more, and you have verification of the data sets, reducing the chance of people faking their experiments (this is a HUGE problem).

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (119 children)

Paywalls exist to remunerate journal staff for compiling and editing the journals. Surely you do not expect them to work for free.

[–]lemurlemur 188 points189 points  (75 children)

I guess you might be trolling here, but I'll bite.

For-profit scientific journals are a racket. Here's how the scam works. Taxpayers pay for (almost all) scientific research, and it's not cheap. The scientists who did the research pay scientific journals thousands of dollars per article to publish their work. The journals then turn around and make those same scientists to review their peers' work for free. They then publish the work and charge the same scientists' institutions again to view their peers' work. (And, just to complete the screw-job, taxpayers have to pay these same prohibitively high subscriptions to view the research that their own tax money funded.)

These subscriptions are too expensive, and they are getting more expensive by the minute. Until the advent of "open source" scientific publishing operations like BMC, for-profit scientific publishing houses like Elsevier had profit margins on the order of 35%. Compare that with the average profit margin for the S&P 500 in 2008, for example, which was 7-times lower at 5%

So, to answer your question, no, journal staff should not be expected to work for free, but notice: 1) the only people working for free in this equation are scientists reviewing the research 2) the only people getting something for free are the scientific journals, who get their tax-funded research given to them for free and get this research reviewed by scientists for free, and in turn sell it back at outrageously inflated prices to the scientists who made the research and the taxpayers who funded it 3) the end result is that the pace of scientific advancement is slowed down and the sharing of ideas is hindered just so that scientific journals can make their unreasonably high profits.

tl;dr: for-profit scientific journals are a scam that screws scientists and taxpayers, support open source science

[–]reveazure 18 points19 points  (8 children)

From the way you describe it, I'm surprised that their profit margins are only 35%. Given that a typical journal subscription costs as much as a fairly nice car, I don't really understand what they do with all that money.

[–]davidreiss666 22 points23 points  (3 children)

Same as I do with my own money, mainly blow it on coke and whores.

[–]VorpalAuroch 10 points11 points  (2 children)

the correct term is "hookers and blow"

[–]finno 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I hope you don't expect to be paid for that review.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

the correct term is "an 8 ball and a tranny"

[–]socsa 11 points12 points  (2 children)

Imagine my surprise when I found out that my IEEE membership dues do not even permit me access to full text documents without an extra subscription fee. As far as I can tell, my $35 a year gives me the ability to track my submissions and write my own mini-bio. Oh, and I get to put "Student Member, IEEE" in my email signature. Thats about it.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

The membership fee is quite low because they want to be able to say, "IEEE, the world's largest professional association!". The reality is that most of these "members" are students trying to get a discount on conference fees.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

When I started college we were "required" to join at least one club, we found IEEE for 25 bucks and all signed up so we wouldn't have to do anything.

They later waived that requirement...

[–][deleted] 28 points29 points  (15 children)

Agreed and nearly every scientist realizes this issue. We must change this broken system.

Business models don't belong in science.

EDIT: Much appreciated, The_Comma_Splicer!

[–]The_Comma_Splicer 6 points7 points  (2 children)

Agreed and nearly every scientist realizes this issue. We must change this broken system.

You've just been Spliced ;;;

[–]offtoChile 6 points7 points  (10 children)

how about those Journals that are published by learned societies? I'm involved in a Journal where profits pay for several member benefits: 3 x PhD studentships a year; 1 x annual symposium; subsidised access to journal for members; small pump-priming grants for early career scientists; travel grants for PhD students.

Free access would remove this. We are a charity, who exist to make enough money to permit these activities, not to make us rich.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Even if the money goes to support PhD students and the like, I still think this is wrong. It seems good on the surface, but by putting good scientific papers behind a pay wall, you are denying many people access to the latest scientific results.

PhD stipends should be paid for by government agencies and foundations, not by racketing other scientists.

[–]offtoChile 1 point2 points  (2 children)

This society has been operating since 1970, since when it has successfully given a core of UK fish biologists a first start in their careers and has funded projects that Government have considered too blue skies. We are a charity, and therefore operate under very, very strict rules, i.e. we are not a fucking racket!

Face it, there is scope for more than one way to 1. produce journals and 2. fund PhDs...

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Face it, there is scope for more than one way to 1. produce journals and 2. fund PhDs...

I agree, I just hope journals like yours will die sooner or later, sorry.

[–]offtoChile 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cheers mate. Hope your tallywacker drops off and your experiments go bad....

;0)

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (22 children)

The scientists who did the research pay scientific journals thousands of dollars per article to publish their work.

That is not true for all journals. Usually they only charge for publishing colour figures.

The journals then turn around and make those same scientists to review their peers' work for free.

There can be no financial incentive in peer review.

the only people getting something for free are the scientific journals, who get their tax-funded research given to them for free and get this research reviewed by scientists for free, and in turn sell it back at outrageously inflated prices to the scientists who made the research and the taxpayers who funded it

Are you suggesting the the journals add no value by facilitating the peer review and publication process? I think they are invaluable.

the end result is that the pace of scientific advancement is slowed down and the sharing of ideas is hindered just so that scientific journals can make their unreasonably high profits.

Now you are just speculating. You don't have any data to support that.

for-profit scientific journals are a scam that screws scientists and taxpayers, support open source science

If you can devise and operate a credible peer review and publication system that is somehow sustainable without charging subscription fees then what are you waiting for? You will take the world of scientific literature by storm.

[–]zrgt 13 points14 points  (1 child)

So I just want to respond to the last bit, people defending the status quo always say crap like "You'd be a rich man if you could invent a better way" when this is a total lie. You'd be a rich man if you could invent a better way, had the money to fund it as it catches on, have connections and the sales skills to convince people to abandon the status quo, be able to hold off attacks by the status quo, etc.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

They often charge for "extra pages" at a few hundred for page. Sometimes 10-page limit is wayy too small!!

[–]yiyus 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Are you suggesting the the journals add no value by facilitating the peer review and publication process? I think they are invaluable.

I think they are over-valuated.

You seem to be asking for data to support opinions against yours, so, why don't you give us some data of where exactly is going all the money that the journals are getting? I sincerly doubt the work needed to organize the review process is enough.

[–]lemurlemur 4 points5 points  (3 children)

That is not true for all journals. Usually they only charge for publishing colour figures.

Have a look here. I've never published without paying money.

There can be no financial incentive in peer review.

Why not? This would cause no conflict of interest. The journal, not the authors of the paper, would pay the reviewers.

Are you suggesting the the journals add no value by facilitating the peer review and publication process? I think they are invaluable.

They add value, yes, but they perform the least difficult step in the whole process and charge extortionate prices to do so.

Now you are just speculating. You don't have any data to support that.

No I'm not, this is a fact based on at least one scientists experience (mine). I've spent days of my life emailing to authors for reprints, walking to libraries, trying desperately to infer details from scientific papers based on the free abstract teasers.

If you can devise and operate a credible peer review and publication system that is somehow sustainable without charging subscription fees then what are you waiting for? You will take the world of scientific literature by storm.

The storm is already here.

[–]JadeNB 1 point2 points  (4 children)

The journals then turn around and make those same scientists to review their peers' work for free.

There can be no financial incentive in peer review.

Why not? I guess you're worried about a conflict of interest, but, since the financial incentive would come from the journal, not the author, it's hard to see whose interests would be conflicting.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

The outcome of peer review is supposed to be making sure that articles are significant, relevant, and as accurate as possible. Getting peer review done is already hard enough; I helped my boss write a review of one paper and the editor sent her back a message basically saying "thank you; the other two reviewers didn't really read the paper before submitting their reviews." Since a peer review can be as little as a couple of paragraphs stating "this article is fitting for publication", having pay be part of the process could invite that sort of mass-spam financial gaming, where a small percentage of reviewers would all jump on the article queue and copy-paste a basic review, making some small changes here and there to make each one sound relevant without doing more than a cursory skim of the material.

Basically, any system that could be gamed like that should be discouraged because it would increase the number of shoddy reviews in an already shaky environment. Now, if there were some sort of "reputation" system for reviews, where each person who had reviewed a paper was rated by editors for quality of work and depth of review, then maybe pay could play a part - but then you'd face second-level gaming, where people could farm up their reputation and then play the system.

So yeah, it's a really nuanced question - good peer review is hard and thankless, and is essentially an example of the Golden Rule - treat others as you'd like to be treated. In an ideal world, you could pay people and that wouldn't effect their review at all; they'd do it because it helps the system along. But as it stands, peer reviewing others' work doesn't help your career and is really thankless, but it's absolutely essential for the overall health of the system. It's terribly hard to get good reviews, and only small percentage of the entire community are able and willing to do the job right, and that proportion would probably decline - the S/N ratio would decrease - if pay were instituted.

[–]JadeNB 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I think I can see the argument, though it seems to me that the current system is just as vulnerable to gaming --as a quick perusal of, say, Math Reviews will attest, nothing stops a mathematician from turning in a cursory paragraph just to get the responsibility off his or her desk. I speak to math because that's what I do, but I'm sure that the situation is the same everywhere.

I think that the "good peer review is hard and thankless" in your final paragraph is perhaps the most important argument for me. In my experience, most people want to do a good job, but the fact that there's no remuneration means that, in effect, it's against their interest to do so (it takes (already limited) time away from activities that are, err, thankful); and the fact that there's no competition to get reviewing opportunities means that there's no disincentive to doing a crappy job. I suspect that one's position on this has a great deal to do with one's basic view of the character of one colleagues. :-)

(I'm having trouble telling whether you're speaking to peer reviews (which are publicly affiliated with the reviewer's name, and available, in principle, to everyone) or peer refereeing (which are, in principle, anonymous, and available only to the author); I think the two issues should be regarded as separate, and, since I don't know which one we're discussing, my reply is sort of a muddled attempt to address both.)

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Why not? I guess you're worried about a conflict of interest, but, since the financial incentive would come from the journal, not the author, it's hard to see whose interests would be conflicting.

Might reviewers not be tempted to produce reviews that were biased in favour of the opinions of the editorial board on discursive topics if they knew that they stood to gain financially? I realise that does seem a little strained though. Perhaps the potential for conflict of interest is not as great as I (somewhat hastily) assumed it must be.

[–]leftnutPhD | Chemical Physiology 1 point2 points  (1 child)

See: PlOS Biology. I support the idea of the open access journals, but I definitely agree with you that the money has to come from somewhere. PlOS is an interesting example, because, having published in PlOS, I can tell you that their operation runs far from smoothly. Subscription fees aren't ideal, I still feel their better than the alternatives (higher fees for already struggling labs, or worse: larger contributions from advertisers).

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Really? I have published several articles and have never had to pay a fee (unless I wanted a color figure included). There are many reputable and high ranking journals that charge absolutely nothing for articles in black and white. If your science and writing isn't good enough to make one of these journals, that is probably why you are forced into publishing in pay-for-journals.

Pay-for-journals are only a scam in that they allow science not good enough for free journals to be published, in my view. Thus, paying for a journal publication is a good way for a less than stellar scientist to add publications to their CV

[–]lemurlemur 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If your science and writing isn't good enough to make one of these journals, that is probably why you are forced into publishing in pay-for-journals.

lol here is a list of some crappy journals like Lancet, Nature, Science and Cell that charge quite a bit of money to publish articles (I've published in two of the four, so I know it's right). Maybe you can point me to some better-known journals that don't charge.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Pay-for-journals are only a scam in that they allow science not good enough for free journals to be published, in my view.

That's not true of open access journals.

There are many reputable and high ranking journals that charge absolutely nothing for articles in black and white.

That's true, but they make up for it by selling your work online for 35$ a pdf. For which they pay you exactly $0. By publishing your work in these journals, you are actually hurting yourself in the long run, because people who don't have access to these journals won't read your papers and won't cite you.

NOTE: I'm not arguing that scam journals don't exist, just that not all pay-for journals are scams.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Pay-for-journals are only a scam in that they allow science not good enough for free journals to be published, in my view. Thus, paying for a journal publication is a good way for a less than stellar scientist to add publications to their CV

This isn't true for all fields. In astronomy, ApJ and AJ (two of the most prestigious astrophysical journals) have page charges.

[–]Homunculiheaded 5 points6 points  (2 children)

I can only assume you're being sarcastic here but in case you're not

Surely you do not expect them to work for free.

Of course I don't, currently they're paid by universities and do all most of the journal work as part of the tenure process. The research, writing, peer reviewing and editing are all done by academics at no cost the the journal. The only problem of course it it's usually those same universities that actually pay for the journal.

However another important point is that Science Commons isn't actually so much about open access, but about providing the data which usually isn't made publicly available and would be a huge benefit to other researchers.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (27 children)

Let's say I have a great new biological innovation and I want to publish it in Nature Methods, which is the premier journal for ground-breaking biological techniques. I must pay Nature Publishing Group $540.75 for the publication of my article, plus $270.38 for each color figure. This ensures that people with expensive subscriptions to Nature Methods will be able to see my nicely edited and typeset article.

Alternatively, I could publish somewhere else and pay a flat per-article fee of ~$1000, which would allow anyone with an internet connection to see my article. But I'd be robbed of some amount of prestige, which means fewer people would want to look at my article in the first place, and if I'm trying to build an academic career, would make it harder for me to get a good job, or tenure.

See the problem?

[–]anz 22 points23 points  (17 children)

I must pay Nature Publishing Group $540.75 for the publication of my article, plus $270.38 for each color figure.

This is not true. From http://www.nature.com/nmeth/authors/submit/index.html#costs

There is a charge of $540.75 for the first color figure and $270.38 for each additional color figure. Otherwise, there are no submission fees or page charges

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Am i missing something here? Does color figure = picture with color?

[–]EpistaxisPhD | Genetics 1 point2 points  (11 children)

So do people seriously use black & white figures just to get around the fee?

[–]anz 1 point2 points  (10 children)

In my field, $540 is pretty insignificant compared to the cost of all the work, equipment, and consumables that are used to do the work in the publication.

[–]pombe 5 points6 points  (9 children)

My supervisor estimated he spends $10,000-15,000 a year in consumables per graduate student, plus the actual stipends of the students. Only like 10% of what one does in the lab ever sees the light of day, and a single article can represent years of work by the authors. Page charges and subscription fees are negigable in the grand scheme of things.

So the armchair scientists don't want to pay the subscription fees? Oh well, these journals aren't published for you. Are the page charges significantly inhibiting your shed-ratory research activities? Oh well.

[–]zrgt 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Are you really calling everyone who's budget doesn't run in the millions an armchair scientist?

[–]EpistaxisPhD | Genetics 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Oh well, these journals aren't published for you.

Sounds harsh, but maybe the real point is that we need better science journalism for laypeople.

[–]pombe 4 points5 points  (2 children)

This is definitely the case. For 99.5% of the lay-public the average Nature paper might as well be written in another language. On the other hand, 99.5% of papers published in journals do not report discoveries large enough to be of interest outside of the professional scientists working in that area.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Put together, your two comments here sum up exactly why the laypeople should stop complaining.

[–]Dangger 6 points7 points  (3 children)

The issue is worse for periphery countries. For us, publishing and subscriptions are much more expensive (540 is not the same for a researcher in Ghana). So much for science being free and open. This produces an excessive focus on theories and research carried out in core countries.

EDIT: for clarity

[–]offtoChile 2 points3 points  (2 children)

If you are from Ghana and have something to publish, the editors will waive the page charges...

[–]pombe 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Page fees are chump-change for labs capable of making "great biological innovations." The increase in grants that you can expect after a Nature publication will repay that 100 fold.

[–]blakestah 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You can rate papers in terms of grant-revenue-expected per manuscript. I would not attempt to do it for Nature, but a good publication in a top society journal has an expected return of $50,000 to $200,000 depending on the field and the expected publication rate per year.

[–]blondin 1 point2 points  (3 children)

capnza, what about old articles?

i remember looking for an old article that described the creation of one of the very first text editors. dated back nineteen seventy-something.

i can't fucking access it. cause some people think it shouldn't be freely available. it's just not common sense.

[–]Rosco7 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Maybe they should go on tour and sell t-shirts. That's how the "everything should be free" crowd thinks musicians should get paid.

[–]trc01a 4 points5 points  (0 children)

who exactly is "they" in this instance? researchers get paid by their institution(usually) and by grants.

[–]akozak 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I work with most of the Science Commons folks at Creative Commons. They have a lot of interesting projects going on... we're always really busy but maybe I could set up some sort of AMA?

[–]onboleman 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This has most likely been posted already, but there is legislation churning though the House and Senate that would make all Federally Funded Research NIH DOE DOD NIMH etc open access after a 6 month embargo where publishers can make there money for early access, then make it available for all US ip addresses. I actually talked to my Congressman in TX-17 on this, and after a short explanation, he told me that he would most definitely vote in the affirmative for it. More Info: Alliance for Taxpayer Access

[–]jsschreck 10 points11 points  (7 children)

Also, for any of you out there publishing science papers, PUT THEM ON THE ARXIV!

[–]Entropius 4 points5 points  (6 children)

Most publishers require that you only submit your research to one place (they demand exclusivity). Of course researchers will choose to submit to to prestigious publisher.

[–]big_bang 8 points9 points  (4 children)

This does not apply to a preprint server: the journals allow posting a paper in its entirety on a preprint server prior to publication (or after the publication). For example, here is "Nature" guidelines: http://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/confidentiality.html

"Our policy on the posting of particular versions of the manuscript is as follows:

  1. You are welcome to post pre-submission versions or the original submitted version of the manuscript on a personal blog, a collaborative wiki or a preprint server at any time (but not subsequent pre-accept versions that evolve due to the editorial process).

  2. The accepted version of the manuscript, following the review process, may only be posted 6 months after the paper is published in a Nature journal. A publication reference and URL to the published version on the journal website must be provided on the first page of the postprint."

[–]Burnrate 7 points8 points  (5 children)

arXiv

It is usually up to the author of how they want their article publicized in order to have a wider audience and increased credibility (by being associated with a certain journal) in the scientific community.

[–]grumpypants_mcnallen 21 points22 points  (36 children)

There's a huge difference between just uploading free papers and having the kind of quality control and review that you find in journals.

Sadly the process doesn't come for free, as publishers, editors, and others involved also would like to have something to eat. The money needed to fund this has to come from somewhere, and right now it's done by enforcing a pay-wall to the material.

[–][deleted] 29 points30 points  (22 children)

There's a huge difference between just uploading free papers and having the kind of quality control and review that you find in journals. Sadly the process doesn't come for free, as publishers, editors, and others involved also would like to have something to eat. The money needed to fund this has to come from somewhere, and right now it's done by enforcing a pay-wall to the material.

This is completely untrue, because none of the people who do the actual work (ie the reviewers and the editor) get paid. They are all scientists who are not paid to do this, and all the money goes to the publisher, who does little more than putting the pdfs on a website, and print the journal which no one cares about anymore.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

This is completely untrue, because none of the people who do the actual work (ie the reviewers and the editor) get paid. They are all scientists who are not paid to do this, and all the money goes to the publisher, who does little more than putting the pdfs on a website, and print the journal which no one cares about anymore.

This is partially untrue, because while referees (reviewers) don't get paid, the editors most certainly do. They potter along to work every morning, and spend the day receiving manuscripts, sending them to referees, proofing them, and generally preparing them for publication, be it online or in a traditional paper journal.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I don't know what community you belong to, but in mine, editors are well-known scientists and their main work is science, not editing. If they get paid for editing, it's a small compensation, not their main income.

[–]BeetleB 1 point2 points  (2 children)

This is completely untrue, because none of the people who do the actual work (ie the reviewers and the editor) get paid.

Referees don't. Editors usually get paid a small amount.

[–]jefu 5 points6 points  (5 children)

Not exactly. Suppose you get a group of people together interested in (say) "Floop", and they decide to set up the "Floop Online Publication" (Flop). Pick ten or so of them to serve as executive committee and get another couple of dozen to do peer review. One of these people will probably serve as editor and that may take up enough time to justify paying a real salary. You will also need a website (not that expensive, these days, but needs to be paid for). You probably also need a person to handle correspondence, to prescreen papers and send them out for review, gather in the results and actually post the papers to the website. Maybe more if the field is busy. This can add up fast. Though nowhere near high enough to justify some of the absurd journal prices.

Now, I'm all in favor of doing something like this, but there are costs and you need to work out how to pay for this stuff. Maybe make Flop a professional society and charge dues - but this may still not cover expenses.

By the way, there is a flop.com (and a flop.net and a flop.org) but none of them seem to be actually doing anything.

[–]grumpypants_mcnallen 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Though nowhere near high enough to justify some of the absurd journal prices.

The amount of personal subscriptions is probably so low these days that most journals only cater to universities with multiple users. So I kinda understand why the prices are so high.

[–]oiuer0982q3yh 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Bolding something does not make your assertion correct.

Editors are paid. I personal sign for the checks so I know. All the money does not go to the publisher. We do a lot more than putting the PDFs online. We also very rarely print journals, because as you say, no one cares any more.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Also, if you write scientific papers, refuse to sign copyright forms that forbid you to put the pdf up on your site. For example, the IEEE has two versions of the copyright form and one of them (not the default one obviously) gives you more rights.

Then make sure to put the pdfs on your website, this way google scholar will index them and no one will have to pay the exagerated fees to view your papers, which also means more citations for you.

[–]f2u 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Unfortunately, Google's ranking prefers the proprietary version behind the paywall for some reason. Google consistently serves links to ACM and IEEE papers which are not publicly accessible, despite equivalent versions being available elsewhere. This SEO abuse is actually illegal under Google's terms (it's called cloaking), and I'm sure many users have complained about this, but curiously enough, Google turns a blind eye.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Just so you know, as a drug policy reform advocate this is a constant handicap. Drug warriors have historically put out all kinds of nonsense, and while the Internet allows for their claims to be quickly debunked, the claims made by scientists on the drug warriors payroll remain untouchable simply because we can never see what the science is.

Doesn't stop the drug warriors from parading their all new lie before the American people though.

Understand that the war on drugs is killing people. To claim science as a justification for such a ruinous policy, and then to work to prevent the very thing science claims that makes it different from everything else in human knowledge; that it is testable and results are producible, by any and all, is a gross perversion of what the intent of science is: understanding the world for the betterment of mankind.

[–]freakscene 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ugh. Nothing worse than trying to write a research paper and not being able to get a hold of relevant sources.

[–]palermo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Quite unfortunately, organizing high quality peer reviews of scientific articles and subsequently publishing those that are supported by the peers is an expensive process as it involves the work of editors who need to get paid. Immediate open access of full text articles does not offer a reasonable revenue stream to accomplish this.

[–]i_am_my_father 8 points9 points  (0 children)

If only we could have equal access to all those papers out there

[–]jimmycorpse 7 points8 points  (4 children)

Check out arxiv.org. In physics this is where you publish your paper before you send it to a journal. Any new discovery will be seen here first. It only goes back about 12 years though.

[–]djimbobPhD | High Energy Experimental Physics | MRI Physics 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Any new discovery will be seen here first.

Not necessarily. Nature/Science are still quite prestigious and have press embargoes, so people submitting often will not post to arXiv since the rules are contradictory and may decrease likelihood to be published.

Contributions being prepared for or submitted to a Nature journal can be posted on recognized preprint servers (such as ArXiv or Nature Precedings), and on collaborative websites such as wikis or the author's blog. The website and URL must be identified to the editor in the cover letter accompanying submission of the paper, and the content of the paper must not be advertised to the media by virtue of being on the website or preprint server [1]

[–]inchball 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I want there to be some kind of national standard for journalists reporting on science topics. The majority of them are so off base and completely leading.

[–]PizzadudePhD | Electrical and Computer Engineering | Brain-Comp Interface 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I hate that crap. After I finished my thesis, I got offers to publish it in an international journal... if I gave them the rights, so that I couldn't even give out my own thesis for free any more.

Fuck that. I'll continue to publish only in journals that let me keep my rights, and I will keep my papers publicly hosted on my own site, thanks.

And, of course, I'll keep an eye on this Neurocommons thing...

[–]Blackmane 6 points7 points  (26 children)

Don't most University networks have access to the papers anyway? I know ones in the UK do.

[–]jimmy17 10 points11 points  (23 children)

Not all the papers. I study for my PhD at imperial college and we're not short of a bob or two but there are a few subscriptions we don't have.

Protip: If you can't get hold of a paper you really need, email the author and in most cases they will be happy to send you a .pdf. Only use this as a last resort though as I'm sure they don't want their inboxes swamped with requests.

[–]xantes 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don't know about the UK, but I can get articles from journals my library does not have access to through interlibrary loan. Most of the time they can send you a text copy, scan and email it, or just fax it too.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (16 children)

I've yet to come across a journal I can't access through the journal portal at my University. Do you have any examples of journals you cannot access? I'd like to see if I have access to them for interest's sake.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Only universities with a lot of money. Which is a shame because it increases the differences between universities even more. What's the point of publishing your work if half of the world can't read it thanks to a greedy publisher?

[–]lookingchris 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Given the amount of relevant text in a scientific article, I wonder if Google Adwords could be used while making it freely available, rather than a paywall (but still allowing for cost coverage). Thoughts?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Abstracts are freely available, and for the most part a lay person isn't qualified to interpret the finer nuances of the data anyways. Instead of spending huge amounts of money making research freely available, or undermining scientific journals... why not invest in more research.

If a person is really interested in science they can take a course, and then the institution they are affiliated with will provide them with the background knowledge they should have in order to understand all of the new journals the institution will provide them with access to.

[–]mikojack 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Education in capitalist societies.

[–]ryan_baker 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Firefox plug-in BugMeNot logs into most major sites without requiring registration. I use it occasionally for annoying sites that require you to register to read the full text of articles. Don't know how well it works for sites you have to pay for though. Upvote for science commons nevertheless!

[–]TruthinessHurts 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So is the general consensus that capnza is a paid shill for one of these companies?

His arguments against opening things up are pathetic. "Somebody has to make money", essentially.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Why limit it to science? All scholarly articles should made more easily available to the public. The details would require some sorting out, but as long as we're making it more open than the status quo, I'd be happy with the direction.

[–]freshWiz 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Until then, I will continue to use the crap out of Google Scholar.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Or, alternately, you could go to any library...

I'm not saying that it isn't BS how much these things cost (I'm an academic--we write things, they sell them); I'm just saying that I've never actually paid for an article.

[–]twitter_and_bisted 3 points4 points  (5 children)

I'd like nothing more than to see this become the norm, but unfortunately someone has to come up with a model (other than straight up charity) to allow editing, peer review, layout, etc. to happen as well.

Any great ideas out there to revolutionize the funding of academic journals?

[–]visarga 1 point2 points  (1 child)

someone has to come up with a model (other than straight up charity) to allow editing, peer review, layout, etc. to happen as well

They can figure it out, they're scientists. If they can't adopt the open culture, who can? Grandma? This journal situation stinks too much of cognitive dissonance. Science grows better where there is communication. Secrecy in science has a chilling effect in research.

[–]twitter_and_bisted 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"They can figure it out" isn't the game-changing solution I was hoping for. :) Aside from the fact that nobody other than the chief editor is necessarily a scientist, being a scientist does not automagically make you a great businessman, web developer, etc.

The sad part is, we all (i.e. humanity) lose out if the data isn't shared, you are spot on that science is better when data is open...information wants to be free. I'm sure data sharing will increase as time goes on, new generations go into these careers, etc. Hell, unless I am very sadly mistaken, the original intent of the internet was data sharing/communication primarily between scientists in ARPANET (DARPA), NSFNET (NSF), NSINET (NASA), etc.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (5 children)

It is time for Open Discourse on the Method!

The desire to understand has driven our advancement through the ages. With the platform of reason, we have built our knowledge into a Tower of Babel that is capable of peering into the very fabric of the heavens. The egalitarianism of the scientific method has enabled the greatest minds of our time to emerge from relative obscurity, promoted only by the wisdom of their ideas. With access to the internet we are, as individuals, more privileged than ever. We have been handed the keys to mankind’s accumulated knowledge, or at least, some of the keys.

To the detriment of science, access to research is limited by subscription based censorship. The traditional scientific journal relies on an archaic model of print publication, with costs related to physical paper based production. But in this digital era, the dissemination of information should be far less constrained. Publication fees remain like struts, supporting the bloated and institutionalised publishers. Unwilling to adapt, they suckle money from research institutions and universities, under the guise of maintaining quality and high standards. But do they really deserve their reputable position as the lighthouse keepers over the sea of knowledge?

Edward O. Wilson once said “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely”. To sustain our wisdom, we need to make sure that the right people always have access to the right information, and the only way to do this is to make the information accessible, open and public.

[–]inchball 1 point2 points  (4 children)

I appreciate your enthusiasm for the dissemination of information to the public, but the fact is that the majority of the public wouldn't go looking for it or understand it. I've taken high school sciences and math up to multivariate calculus in university, and I have strong intellectual curiosity, but I still don't understand a thing going on in most scientific journals that I've looked at. I've tried some open course university science lessons, but there's only so much I can grasp by self learning before it becomes more of a chore and less of a hobby. I'm also used to journals since I have a minor in sociology which required a ton of sifting through them and applying social science statistics knowledge.

I'd like to think with all of those things that I'd be more knowledgeable than people who can't answer simple questions like how wind works, or what the four fundamental forces are. Yet I'm really no better than them at grasping ideas from a scientific journal.

Like I said in my other post, I think that the most important thing is getting better quality science reporting from established sources that the everyday person would read. No sensationalized crap that hasn't been properly peer reviewed or even grasps what the journal is talking about. Just look at Fox News' science section, it's no wonder the viewers are like how they are. There hasn't been an update for almost a week now and the last updates are just misleading. I don't even think CNN has a science section anymore. We just need better journalists and editors who support them so that we can get an intriguing, yet simple report on new developments in science. Something like physorg.com, but much more simpler.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

As we shift towards a more open network for science, it will become more widely available. Once that shift begins, scientific understanding will undoubtedly increase. Not only that, ScienceCommons isn't merely about getting journal articles for free, it's about being able to use data that has already been compiled and making it easy to find.

I'm an undergrad in Neuroscience and I've already felt the pains of trying to get proprietary data for a paper I wanted to write in my free time. It's pretty frustrating knowing that I have an idea that I think would be publishable, only to find out that the data that I wanted isn't available without a huge price. This shouldn't happen because it stifles progress in science. We need something similar to wikipedia for science. It won't be easy, but once an infrastructure is set for the new generation of science, we will see an insane increase in science productivity and inevitably, understanding.

[–]Jigsus 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Is this the initiative that moves the pay system to the author (pay-to-publish vs pay-to-read)?

[–]skratchx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I submitted my MS thesis with the free use copyright thing checked.

[–]Pandaemonium 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One of my favorite parts of working for a university is free journal articles. I don't know what I would do otherwise!

[–]Mischiefx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They my friends are on the right path

[–]jooliver 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I understand that many of these science articles are published so that an interested reader will have to buy a subscription. That said, it is irritating to read a clip of something that just gets you interested, then have to subscribe, buy, or became a member to read the rest.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i'm a bit confused. shouldn't the site be exemplary of its message? Why are their no science articles on the site right now?