I've been having fun lately watching this guy struggle with the 21st century realities of scientific publishing which has a lot of parallels with the struggle that journalistic curmudgeons have - too steeped in the 20th century model to have the courage to think in a new way:
Socialism in science, or why Open Access may ultimately fail:
OK. So here's the argument: Science needs to be made known through publishing. In order for science to be published, we need a team of people who will do the job of supervising the review process, editing, storing, and distributing bite-sized pieces of science called papers. These people need to be paid. Traditional closed access (CA) journals pay their employees from revenues they generate by selling their journal or the right to access it online. OA journals accomplish the same through selling space in their journal to people who want to publish in them. The main question is "Can OA journals publish high impact science, and also break even financially?".
Good people, like Peter Suber and Stevan Harnad respond to some of those misconceptions in the comments. This is followed by the second post:
Socialism in science - Part 2 - I am wiser but not quite convinced:
Thus, it is with sadness that I must conclude I am still skeptical about the chances of the diverse OA initiatives to completely substitute for the current CA publishing models. Call me doubting Thomas, but I want to see proofs of the feasibility of profitable high-impact open access publishing before I jump on the bandwagon and sing songs in praise of OA. All I can see right now is a lot of unfounded hope and plenty of examples to the contrary. Convince me if you can.
Cameron Neylon tries to respond on his blog: What is the cost of peer review? Can we afford (not to have) high impact journals? (FriendFeed discussion here):
The question I would like to ask though is different. The Molecular Philosophy post skips the zeroth order questions. Can we afford high impact publications?
Now the third post is up (with a plea to me personally to post the links and send some traffic): Socialism in science - Part 3 - the Utopian system of post-publication peer review:
Last, but not least, I, and many people I know, like to peruse tables of contents of the most prestigious journals just to get the idea of what is currently at the very forefront of scientific discovery. The papers published in these journals are usually very good science and are a pleasure to read, whether they are directly related to my research, or not. I don't want to give that pleasure up and get a scientific del.ic.ious-like sexiness contest instead.
OK. So I think I know why you guys don't get it. You are good, noble people and you think, after a Greek philosopher or another, that if you show people the right thing to do, they will do it, just like you would. Well surprise, surprise: You are WRONG! Modern psychology makes it clear that people need a stick or a carrot to move anywhere and counting on their intrinsic goodness and noble instincts will get you nowhere. Sure, there will be people like yourselves who will do the RIGHT THING, but if you are set out to take over the world, you'd better have your stick and carrot business sorted out. As an unquestionable authority in the art of rant, Comrade PhysioProf, once said "Academic science is not a Care Bears fucking** tea party!". I'll Amen to that.
Sounds like journalistic curmugeons, doesn't it: "But I like the smell of ink and paper! And you can't live without us!"
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Hi Coturnix,
Thanks for linking to my posts. Carmudgeon. Haha! It's never too late to learn new vocabulary. Anyway, yes I have not seen the light yet, but I am still hoping that somebody will present some real arguments supporting the feasibility of widespread high impact OA. All I have seen so far is a lot of wishful thinking and a few sad stories of failure, with, I admit, one success, PLoS, whose happy story is marred a little by financial insecurity.
I don't know. It's kind of like journalistic curmudgeonism ... but isn't the writer basically just asking:
a) given the increasing costs of peer-review, and the increasing unwillingness of big companies to pay for such a review, can a new model of review accomplish what the old model (supposedly) did-- i.e., generate a filtering mechanism for high-quality science
and
b) can we (meaning, I assume, scientists and authors) make money this way?
These seem like entirely valid questions to me who answers are unclear, at best-- though I admit I have not deeply followed this topic.
Uffda.
Reading Peter Suber's archives first, with great focus and concentration, is necessary requirement for discussing this topic before opening one's mouth - he has covered every detail from every angle many time and noted all proposed solutions to all the problems. And Peter is realistic - my niche in this new ecosystem is to be the crazy visionary for the far future - showing how it could be if we work towards it.
I think your first, starting premise is unexamined by you - you are assuming a priori that having high impact journals is a good thing, or inevitable. Why? We are going to move, very soon, away from IF and from high impact journals to high impact papers and high impact people. The ways to measure impact of individual papers (and later the diffuse, dynamic elements of the paper placed online in various places at various times) are what most of us are focused on right now. Yes, some pre-publication peer-review will probably remain for a long time, but, just as in journalism, it will be post-publication filters that will be most important and we have to devise them in a way that will make them trustworthy and useful.
Modern psychology makes it clear that people need a stick or a carrot to move anywhere and counting on their intrinsic goodness and noble instincts will get you nowhere.
Taking the above statement at face value: Scientists review manuscripts for no money and no credit, and without fear of punishment (unless you count irritated e-reminders from editors when the deadline is close.)
Also, has this person seen the soaring impact factors of open-access journals lately?
I'm reviewing a paper for PLoS Med right now. I have never heard of anybody getting paid to review so I'm not sure where the soaring costs are coming from. Especially since many editors are similarly unpaid.
I've just finished a grant with a line in the budget for Open Access Publication. If we get the money I fully intend to get everything open access since the taxpayers have already had to pay for it once.
I'm not sure I agree with Bora that high impact journals are going to go away. I just think eventually they are going to be Open Access or they will die.
Julie,
I invite you to read my posts, because the statements that Coturnix quoted are taken out of context. I have talked about why people want to review papers in quite some detail in my 3rd post of the series, and trust me, there is much more to motivation than just monetary remuneration. I am not sure what soaring impact factors you are talking about, but the only ones I know in the biomed field are from the financially unstable PLoS (I have talked about that in the second post).
Nathaniel,
I suggest you should ask Coturnix to introduce you to any accountant in PLoS and they will tell you how damn expensive it is to run a high impact journal.
Coturnix,
I have read whatever Peter sent my way in quite considerable detail and I think his analyses are biased to some degree by his enthusiasm for OA. You talk about crazy visionary solutions, high impact papers and high impact people, but at some point you are going to have to sit down and think about who is going to decide about what's high impact and what's not and why they will even want to bother to participate in the process. I will want to summarize the outcome of my posts and the resulting discussion in a separate post, so if you are still interested in what I have to say, I invite you, and everyone else, to visit my blog in a couple of days. I would also appreciate it if you would all comment directly on my blog, because I think all of your comments are important contributions to the discussion and I want my readers to see all the different points of view.
Here is his fourth part.
Dear "Online Discussion Expert for PLoS",
When you say this is personal blog and opinions within it in no way reflect the policies of PLoS that is actually utterly nonsense, you are here selling PLoS products so never mind if journalistic curmudgeons phrase came up here. May be open access model is very good for several reason, but sufficiently bad for one reason- associated cost, I mean I can't afford it to publish in PLoS journal even I have very good research work-will you pay for my papers, come on you must be making good money with blog. Open access is not only way to disseminate the knowledge from peer reviewed publications. Heck why don't you sell you 2008 Science Blogging Anthology for free (make it open access), no not at all you are here and there to make money, only difference is you tagged as Open, and some one did not.
Yes, you can publish with PLoS for free - we waive fees for people who cannot pay, no questions asked.
You can read the anthology for free as well - as several bloggers linking here noted, the collection of links to 50 posts is free. The cost of printing those in a book - around 15 bucks - is not that bad for added value of a pretty cover.
And I think I can afford to buy you a beer from my earnings as a blogger.
Now, what's your problem this morning?
Abhishek, You are stark raving mad if you think Bora is making any money from any of this. Trust me, I'm his wife and must support his expensive habits.
Why there so much difference what you write and how you behave, No one is asking you to give print copies for free, but why not soft copies for free? I am well aware about the fact all those 50 posts are free to read but as everybody volunteered for this then why not make it free and open. Same thing is applicable for manuscripts, people make them available on their website then why the hell we need open access journals. Don't make a double standard give a try make soft copy for free. I have no interest if you are making money with this or not, but the ideology you display here, just stand with that and make soft copies open accessible.
Open != Free.
I think you have those terms all mixed up.
If Lulu.com was charging zero, I'd charge zero. Paper and ink cost. I am not going to pay out of my pocket for that cost so you can get for free something that actually costs. Read the posts for free, or pay for the added value of having it nicely edited, typeset, bound and printed.
How do you manage to make the insane connection between Open Access and "free-for-all" boggles my mind.
Lol, here I meet a Open access crank, Open != Free holly crap,
PS: Be little professional (it does not look good when your wife defends you)