[liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals & conferences
Richard Brooks
rrb at acm.org
Mon Apr 8 13:36:40 PDT 2013
Part of the problem is the use of publications to
drive academic "retention, tenure, promotion."
Publications should be vetted by a set of peers
that only allow publication of quality goods. The
journals are supposed to be the gate-keepers and
enforcers of quality. This means that the people trying
to publish have an incentive to publish as much as
they can.
Having the authors pay gives the supposed gatekeepers
an economic incentive to publish more and lower quality.
If costs are not paid by the subscribers (who should
in principle only pay for quality goods) then it is
hard to find a model that is going to keep the bar
high enough.
Professional societies (IEEE, ACM, etc.)
can probably maintain quality in this scenario.
But that decreases the number of journals and the amount
of available info...
On 04/08/2013 04:19 PM, michael gurstein wrote:
> I'm wondering whether some global equivalent of the copyright collection
> societies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_collective might not
> work although they would need to be updated to reflect current issues
> around CC and related licensing… Richer institutionscould pay in for
> access to Open Access journals perhaps on a pay per usage basis and
> given a relatively modest cost structure for OA journals this might be
> sufficient to cover operating costs on a Robin Hood basis for poorer and
> LDC libraries. …just a thought.
>
>
>
> M
>
>
>
> *From:*liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu
> [mailto:liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu] *On Behalf Of *LISTS
> *Sent:* Monday, April 08, 2013 10:58 AM
> *To:* liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu
> *Subject:* Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students:
> Fake, pay-to-publish journals & conferences
>
>
>
> Indeed, this would be a problem. However, it's already a problem, which
> is to say that poorer universities cannot afford subscriptions to EBSCO
> and whatnot to begin with, and thus their faculty have trouble keeping
> up with research in comparison to those at richer schools. What I'm
> suggesting here could at least alleviate this problem, because richer
> schools would subsidize /access/ to research.
>
> Moreover, I'm imagining that the cost of pay-to-publish would be far
> lower than for-profit schemes like T&F and Elsevier, thus enabling
> poorer school's libraries to save money and actually increase their
> faculty's ability to do research (assuming that's their mission).
> However, I don't have numbers on this, so I could be wrong.
>
> - Rob Gehl
>
> On 04/08/2013 11:52 AM, Glassman, Michael wrote:
>
> The problem with this is that faculty from wealthier universities will have much more capability to publish than faculty from less wealthy universities. And those who can get their work supported by those with money have an upper hand of getting more information out than those who do not have their work supported. There is already enough of this in grants perhaps. Maybe we could envision something like low cost subscriptions so that individuals or universities could pay a small fee to journals they use a lot. This works well on a number of political blogs.
>
>
>
> Michael
>
> ________________________________________
>
> From: liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu <mailto:liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu> [liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu <mailto:liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu>] on behalf of LISTS [lists at robertwgehl.org <mailto:lists at robertwgehl.org>]
>
> Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 1:45 PM
>
> To: liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu <mailto:liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu>
>
> Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake, pay-to-publish journals & conferences
>
>
>
> Or, potentially, university libraries could shift from buying
>
> subscriptions to paying for their university faculty's publication fees.
>
> If the ultimate product is an open access publication, then the issue
>
> isn't paying for access, but rather paying to produce the public good.
>
>
>
> - Rob Gehl
>
>
>
> On 04/08/2013 11:42 AM, michael gurstein wrote:
>
> Publishing may be dirt cheap but any systematic/formal e.g. academic
>
> publishing isn't free... So the problem is that while there is a necessary
>
> and valuable shift from commercial publishing (and outrageous profiteering)
>
> to open access online publishing there really aren't any good business
>
> models yet to cover the (much less but not totally trivial) costs of the new
>
> forms of academic publishing.
>
>
>
> If for whatever reason (and there are lots including the issues pointed to
>
> here) one doesn't want to go to a pay for play model that leaves
>
> advertising(???) or donations (???) or...
>
>
>
> M
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu <mailto:liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu>
>
> [mailto:liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu] On Behalf Of Richard
>
> Brooks
>
> Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 9:34 AM
>
> To: liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu <mailto:liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu>
>
> Subject: Re: [liberationtech] For everyone and their grad students: Fake,
>
> pay-to-publish journals & conferences
>
>
>
> It's not curious. It is accurate. As the funding model moved from
>
> subscribers paying for access to authors paying for publication, the
>
> financial incentives changed as well. The loosening of standards is an
>
> obvious consequence of this decision.
>
>
>
> The question of how best to publish quality academic information is
>
> non-trivial. Like the question of where to get quality current affairs
>
> information. It will take a while for things to adjust to the ability of the
>
> Internet to make publishing dirt-cheap.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 04/08/2013 12:19 PM, James Losey wrote:
>
> I think it's curious how this article frames the journals as "open
>
> access" rather than a more appropriate "pay to play"
>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 6:05 PM, Yosem Companys <companys at stanford.edu <mailto:companys at stanford.edu>
>
> <mailto:companys at stanford.edu> <mailto:companys at stanford.edu>> wrote:
>
>
>
> From: Nathaniel Poor <natpoor at gmail.com <mailto:natpoor at gmail.com>
>
> <mailto:natpoor at gmail.com> <mailto:natpoor at gmail.com>>
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-w
>
> orld-of-pseudo-academia.html
>
>
>
> "The scientists who were recruited to appear at a conference called
>
> Entomology-2013 thought they had been selected to make a presentation
>
> to the leading professional association of scientists who study
>
> insects. But they found out the hard way that they were wrong...."
>
>
>
> This has been a problem for a while, but now it's big enough to be a
>
> newspaper story.
>
>
>
> -------------------------------
>
> Nathaniel Poor, Ph.D.
>
> http://natpoor.blogspot.com/
>
> https://sites.google.com/site/natpoor/
>
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> ===================
>
> R. R. Brooks
>
>
>
> Associate Professor
>
> Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Clemson
>
> University
>
>
>
> 313-C Riggs Hall
>
> PO Box 340915
>
> Clemson, SC 29634-0915
>
> USA
>
>
>
> Tel. 864-656-0920
>
> Fax. 864-656-5910
>
> email: rrb at acm.org <mailto:rrb at acm.org>
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> web: http://www.clemson.edu/~rrb
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--
===================
R. R. Brooks
Associate Professor
Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Clemson University
313-C Riggs Hall
PO Box 340915
Clemson, SC 29634-0915
USA
Tel. 864-656-0920
Fax. 864-656-5910
email: rrb at acm.org
web: http://www.clemson.edu/~rrb
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