[time-nuts] Open Access (was: WWV/CHU)

Attila Kinali attila at kinali.ch
Sat Mar 31 13:01:32 EDT 2018


On Sat, 31 Mar 2018 12:25:34 +0100
"Dr. David Kirkby" <drkirkby at kirkbymicrowave.co.uk> wrote:

> Alexandra Elbakyan makes the very valid point that authors do not get paid
> for submitting papers, reviewers do not get paid for reviewing them, yet
> the publishers charge significant amounts of money for distribution of
> electronic copies of papers. This is VERY different to books or music,
> where authors get royalties from copies sold.

And just to drive another nail into this coffin:
Writing an easy paper takes something like a week (after the research
is done). Writing a difficult one can easily take one or two months until
it's in a form that can be understood. Reviewing takes anything between
half a day (easy, experimental paper) to a week (100 pages of proofs),
for each reviewer! Then there is the guy in India who gets paid a dollar
a day to make the paper's layout fit the journals general rules (and often
botches the whole paper in the process, to the point where the author has
to prohibit its publication). If you want to have it as Open Access, then
publication can cost anything between 1000€ and 5000€, depending on the
publisher and journal. In most countries, that in the order of a months
salary... for what? So far, the only value I have seen, that these
publishers provide is the organisation of double blind reviews. 
Everything else is just make pretend. There is not even have any form
of quality control of the reviews. Heck, I've seen one line reviews of
the form "This paper is stuipd." And I am not talking yet about the
butchoring they do in the name of editing (like replacing minus signs
with dashes or changing the number format such that you cannot distinguish
between a decimal separator and an item separator).

>From all the venues I've seen so far, IEEE was the least hassle.
They demand you to use their LaTeX template. They check whether
you "optimized" it upon upload, and that's it. Yes, their Open Access
fee is still significant, though lower than most others. But at least
they do not pretend to know better than the authors how to format a
paper. And, unlike Springer and Elsevier, IEEE does not seem to care
when an author puts their own papers on their website (though, officially
the copyright asignment prohibits that).

I don't like that sci-hub has to work in a legal dark gray area.
But the way publishers work these days, borders on extortion and is 
IMHO a big waste of tax money (we are talking about several 10's of
millions per year, country and publisher). Honestly, I couldn't care
less if Springer and Elsevier would go bancrupt and didn't exist
anymore, if it wouldn't be for the papers they hold hostage, which
would become completely inaccessible over night. As such, I am glad
that the Open Access movement has got so much traction these days.
It gives me hope that in future, our knowledge will be accessible
to everyone, not just a select few who can afford the fees.

As a researcher, I do not really care where my paper is published,
as long as people can read it (the more people read my paper,
the better). A paper published at a venue that actively seeks
to prevent people from reading papers (I am looking at you, ION!)
is a place I will not publish at. And from personal experience
I can say that it's much more likely that easily available papers
get cited than one that is behind an inpenetrable pay-wall.

</rant>

			Attila Kinali
-- 
<JaberWorky>	The bad part of Zurich is where the degenerates
                throw DARK chocolate at you.


More information about the time-nuts mailing list