“Matted, grey, and disturbing.”
I’ve never understood why academic journals and books whose research is funded by the taxpayer are not required to be open access by law. Some academics do end up having a near copy to their transcript freely available on their university’s website though.
2 Likes
It’s a long and complicated story, but basically journal and book publishers are private businesses, and there aren’t too many viable alternatives.
Back in the BC (before computers) era: journals had to be typed by hand, and copies produced using carbon paper. Someone then had to typeset that, the author had to check the galley proofs, and it would then get printed, bound into the latest issue of the journal, and distributed to subscribers (academic libraries, individuals, etc) It was a very time-consuming manual process.
A researcher who receives government money to do research has an obligation to “make the work public”, but that often meant simply talking about it at conferences or publishing where other researchers could access it. In specific cases (such as research funded by US research agencies) separate reports would be filed with the agency in question, and these could be accessed through the relevant library. Authors would also get a stack of complimentary copies of their article.
It was common practice for those whose academic library did not have access to a journal to simply send a postcard (you could get ones specially printed for the purpose) to the lead author, who’d then send on of their complimentary copies by post. Most good university libraries provided some form of access to members of the public; alternatively, there were places like the British Library and the Library of Congress, where publishers were effectively required to deposit copies of their books and journals.
Fast forward to the AD (after digital) or CE (computer) era:
The digital era has changed a lot of expectations around access to information and publishing, but the central problem still remains: if a journal is digital, it has to be stored on servers; bandwidth has to be provided and paid for; a suitable web interface has to be maintained; network and server admin and security staff need to monitor and update systems…
So, some real cost associated with that. Who pays? The prevailing view seems to be that either the subscriber wantting to access the information still pays, or the AUTHOR submitting the work pays. Fees for publication in reputable journals that actually maintain an editorial staff and do peer review etc. vary, but $1000/page is a pretty typical starting point. Now, if you’re smart and you’re applying for a grant, you include a line item for on-line publishing fees.
There are also some open journals that don’t charge fees to anyone. These fall into one of two camps: reputable journals run as not-for-profits and funded by sponsoring consortiums of institutions (often private universities with pretty substantial endowments); and predatory publishers who publish basically anything (including computer-generated random texts) and make money by fleecing unsuspecting academics attending “prestigious conferences” around the world.
Some of the traditional publishers who have both print and digital versions also off open-access in various different ways. These are mainly the ones run by professional scientific societies, who run a voucher system so that those without the means to pay for open access can get a full or partial waiver.
And then there’s the large publishing behemoths that I actively boycott, who manage to turn yearly profits at obscene levels because they charge an arm and a leg to everybody all the time.
3 Likes
Interesting. I think as a matter of principle that public money should only be used if the public benefits. Does the public benfit from research where logistical and financial restrictions pose in accessing such research? When I replied to @Hattie I was thinking of how it is in the United Kingdom as it reminded me of when one of my former lecturers at university mentioned to the class to never mention you study criminology to a taxi driver. I assumed that the taxi driver had misconceptions on what the discpline is, presumably CSI or psychological stuff. So I mentioned that people outside of the education system don’t have access to those at university. There’s only so much you can preview books on Google, and most journal articles require payment for access. How is this any different from other examples where the taxpayer has funded private enterprises? I don’t know how much it costs to store this information online but it really should come out of the budget for research or the state gives extra money to account for changes. But even then the likes of Harvard and Oxford can afford to pay for those costs anyway. When Elsevier went after Library Genesis I heard ‘alarm bells’. There’s one thing to illegally download entertainment content like music to avoid paying for the real thing, it’s quite another doing the same for academic textbooks that was funded with taxpayers money because you can’t afford it for your course and/or their university library doesn’t have it.
Also, it felt epic winning an abortion debate citing this article even though this was years ago. Articles such as these obviously do provide a benefit to the public even if it isn’t in the same scope as, say, a cure for cancer. And any student aspiring to enter university could use those to see what might lie ahead, although curriculum differences between institutions should be checked. You don’t want to be paying a lot of money for tuition if the course isn’t quite what you wanted.
1 Like
Most of the research I look at (a) wouldn’t mean anything to a non-specialist and (b) probably wouldn’t interest them anyway. It’s all a long way removed from immediate practical applications.
You can also argue that a great deal of medical research shouldn’t be publicly available until the studies have been scaled up and verified with statistically significant populations. A lot of stuff reported as “Breaking medical news! Cure for cancer imminent!” is actually very small scale preliminary studies, and those have a lousy track-record.
One thing to realise is that governments don’t fund research to educate the general public; they fund research to come up with ideas that can then be converted into the commercial products, medicines, and treatments we’ll need. So there’s often no line item budget (unless a researcher specifically includes it) to pay to have research published in an open-access journal.
It’s not just storage, it’s running the data centres (power, staff), making sure new submissions are properly indexed for search, updating and improving the engines used to find information, etc. I agree that there’s a public good in having information freely available, but then we get into the political decision of where to spend tax-payers money. It gets messy pretty quickly. Of course, the British Library provides free access to everything to members of the public, but you have to actually go there.
And your former lecturer is correct about one thing: a little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing. I’ve seen more snake oil sales pitches fuelled off poorly understood research articles than I would like. The problem is, attaching those citations to what is basically a fake medicine or medical device lends the whole thing an air of legitimacy, and the vast majority of people simply lack the technical background to be able to spot the errors.
Example: A recent Dragon’s Den episode where someone managed to get in a quack medical device. The explanation made absolutely no scientific sense whatsoever. This entry should never have made it through initial screening. Yet not only did it get through, but a bunch of the investors (not scientists) also fell for the scam. It was only after the fact during due diligence that the whole thing fell apart.
I hear alarm bells whenever I hear “Elsevier” - not my favourite publisher for many reasons. (Their shares yield fantastic returns, though). Of course, they were within their legal rights. You can argue all day about whether we should have copyright, how long copyright terms should be, etc - those are all fundamentally political decisions. But unless/until those change, the likes of the big E will continue to thrive.
As an author and occasional composer I do have a somewhat different take on copyright to most: basically, I want to make sure that my work isn’t abused for someone else’s profit, and copyright is the only real tool I have to use for that. I also know from first-hand experience just how much work goes into writing a decent scientific text book, and can tell you that - other than large volume intro course texts or anything related to law or medicine - it is most definitely NOT a lucrative source of income.
2 Likes
1 Like
Found this strangely compelling.
1 Like
Long past time to return to paper ballots. Much more difficult to hack a piece of paper.
1 Like
Remember that thing last week with the Sinclair chain news anchors all reading the same script?
That is beyond messed up and firmly into diabolical territory as far as I’m concerned.
3 Likes
The more things change…
3 Likes
The most interesting part of that is perhaps the New York jurisdiction.
Edit: Seems I may be wrong, appears it’s a federal district court. Damnit.
1 Like
Either way, it’s historic. The FBI does not typically raid the president’s lawyer’s office and home. Personally, I hope the entire thing blows up: I hope Trump goes down, I hope the FB and Justice Department go down, I hope Hillary is drug through the legal morass, too, I hope Congress is exposed for abdicating its Constitutional responsibilities and the leadership goes down.
Why do I hope all this happens? Because our political class of crony capitalists is hopelessly corrupt and among the very worst in our history.
1 Like
So I watched the interview @Raven_Ghosthawk posted yesterday:
Interesting stuff. I have no idea if the facts and figures Tom Bossert cited were correct or not, but he handled a somewhat aggressive interview pretty well and he certainly seemed to be making sense.
And now he’s resigned? Or should I say, “resigned”? Wow.
Trump’s skin is made of paper. Seriously, this man’s inability to stomach any criticism makes me feel a lot better about the time I wept because I got an A- when I was 13
5 Likes
Now awaiting the “President Trump, paper tiger” memes…
1 Like
Dude, who talks like this guy? Oh wait…:
2 Likes
Daily show post about Hannity being the third client named in the Cohen raid.
“Wonder how his show will go tonight…”
3 Likes
I’m not gonna lie, I had a little chuckle when I saw HuffPo’s emoticon-laced alert about this.
No surprise I’ve never been a fan of Hannity but he really seems to have gone off the deep-end lately.
5 Likes
Why are you people paying attention to Sean Hannity, for Christ’s sake? Stop that.
2 Likes