Posted on 10/14/2003 7:48:32 PM PDT by FairOpinion
A new online science journal aimed at changing the paradigm of scholarly publishing has proved so popular it's been mired in a crush of traffic since its Sunday night launch.
The inaugural issue of the journal, called the Public Library of Science Biology, is the first journal to be published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), a San Francisco nonprofit that's backed by several highly regarded scientists who want to see scientific research freely distributed online.
Instead of charging subscription fees that cost thousands of dollars annually, as do many traditional scientific journals, PLoS charges authors $1,500 per published article. The fee covers peer review, editing and production, while allowing the public to freely access the research. The group wants to compete with established journals while slimming publishing costs and shortening peer-review cycles.
A statement on the site says the Web makes it possible "to make our treasury of scientific information available to a much wider audience, including millions of students, teachers, physicians, scientists, and other potential readers who do not have access to a research library that can afford to pay for journal subscriptions."
Not surprisingly, the free distribution model seems be going over well. Within the first eight hours of the journal's launch, traffic on the site spiked to more than half a million hits, said Nick Twyman, director of information technology and computer operations at PLoS. The traffic has overwhelmed the group's servers, causing PLoS to direct visitors to other sites, where they can access simplified versions of the journal. Twyman said he hopes to get the site up and running again by Wednesday.
"We always expected a lot of interest, but we're surprised by this response," Twyman said.
One reason the journal has generated so much attention is a report it contains about brain implants in monkeys that enable them to control a robotic arm with their thoughts.
PLoS, which plans to launch a medical journal next year, is focusing initially on biomedical literature. The group may eventually expand into other areas, such as computer science, Twyman said.
Leading scientists who are involved in PLoS include Dr. Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health and now chief executive officer of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, along with Dr. Patrick Brown of Stanford University, who co-founded the new journal.
Brown agreed with Twyman. "It was sort of a surpise," he said, "yet all along, we felt this is so obviously the way to go that I would say we never doubted it would be a success. If you have to have a problem, (too much traffic) is a good one to have."
It is a bigger issue than just trying to get out of paying what is often a subscription cost closer to $1000, not $500. With the proliferation of online journals, including those journals w/print and online versions, libraries have to:
1. decide if they can afford both formats
2. if they opt for the online version, they only have a license for use for that year. once the license is up, the library patrons no longer have access to that journal. previously, if a library stopped paying for a journal, all of the past years' print journals would be available. however, if the license lapses, you have NO access, even to journals for the years for which you had the license.
3. because students and scholars prefer the ease of access of online resources, libraries often feel they must license the online versions. this move to online resources is costing libraries thousands each year - and decreasing the amount of books and other non-electronic resources (including librarian services) that they can purchase.
It is not just some feel good socialistic desire to 'stick it to the man,' that prompts this effort to provide less expensive research.
There have been major changes in academic publishing in the past 10 years or so. Due to increased specialization, there are many more journals. At a research institution, everyone wants 'their' journal, not just 'a' journal in their field. The move to online resources - driven by patrons - creates hard choices for libraries of all types and budgets.
I think the cost of author's publishing could be borne by the grant funding the research, as someone posted above. In addition, it does seem they are willing to work with a sliding scale. Finally, you don't have to publish in this journal. There are plenty of others out there.
This needs to be said again. Most scientific journals have per-page charges which can be several hundred dollars per page.
In some cases academic authors are charged less than authors in industry. Most companies will gladly pay the charges for anything published by their employees.
Most journals will publish the articles and then send a bill to the authors. If it is not paid, there is little effort expended to collect it. This is not an up-front barrier to publication.
The idea of charging for publication of an article does not detract from the value of the article, and should not cause these articles to be viewed as worth any less than ones printed in paper journals.
think the cost of author's publishing could be borne by the grant funding the research, as someone posted above.
You have a distorted picture that most published research is supported by grants. It is not.
You, as well as the poster I replied to earlier, also have an impresion of grants as if they were water coming from a faucet. Even if my work is supported by a grant, why should the granting agency absorb the costs of the consumers? Should we extend this idea to apples? paper? housing? Let's just all apply for grants: just turn the faucet --- and there it is!
You are thus shifting the burden not to the researchers that have grants but to taxpayers. Why shoud a farmer in Nebraska pay for the interest on the part of some Dr. Jim Smith in my work on high-energy physics?
Finally, you don't have to publish in this journal. There are plenty of others out there.
That remains to be seen. There is an old Gresham's Law, according to which bad apples drive out the good. If the moneyed researchers switch to e-journals, these journals will become prestigious, and publishing in the old journals will not count for the promotion of tenure-track faculty. Your model is too simple.
I think they are legit, and that universities will be paying the fees.
I think the idea will evolve, of course. There should be some vested interest greater than $1500 to keep them scrupulous about what they publish. Times will change, editorial staff will change, something more than the goodwill of the current staff is needed to keep something like this from publishing PC trash or sensationalist quackery over the years.
You were presenting a model -- not a formal one, but a model nonetheless.
?Grant money allows for travel to conferences for presentations, why not be able to use some of that for publishing?
I have tried to explain to you the difference in the previous post. Travel (i) has no alternatives given the nature of academic interactions, (ii) benefits the recipient. In contrast, making a journal free to the readers, (i) has alternatives (the present status quo, for instance) and (ii) does not benefit the research process at all.
Researchers tend to still want their research published in prestigious journals. Again, reread my post. There is no such thing as "researchers" --- it's a heterogeneous group. Further, you view "prestegious journals" as static; they are not; prestige of journals varies, oftent rapidly.
However, most research in this country is funded by the government Firstly, if some action is taken, this is not an argument for more of the same. Secondly, you should reflect on the nature of private vs. public consumption. The governmnet steps in to provide public goods only -- precisely because the markets (privaet mechanisms) will not do so. This is true for basic education, for instance, and fundamental (as opposed to applied) research: there are no individuals that are interested in supplying the latter.
Contrast it now with the act of reading already produced research. It's a private act and is presently paid by private individuals. You suggest to make government provide it for us. There is not a single justification for that.
Author fees are rather common; it's not just this journal charging them. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, about as august a journal as there is, used to have (and may still have) a little notice on the front page of each paper, stating that because the author had paid publication fees, the paper had to be legally described as an 'advertisement'.
I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Picking up the last issue of Journal of Magnetic Resonance (a fairly typical science journal), I counted 16 of 20 papers acknowledging grant support from some agency.
Pick up some journals in social sciences and humanities.
Fair enough, but I don't call that research.
Without exhibiting any value judgement, I will say that you are factually incorrect. The work of a musicologist towards finding influences of French music in that of Shostacocitch is very much research. It differs from finding all spinor representations of some group only in the substance of the goal. The empirical side of it is also of the same kind: I do not find visiting archives and working with the original documents much different from lab work in physics (both are equally boring for me --- but that's irrelevant).
Further, all of the present-day physics, where work in finding the truth you undoubtedly call research, is based in part on the Least Action Prinicple: a certain intergral of a function (the Lagrangian density of the action, usually referred to as simply Lagrangian) is minimized. The classical physics, the relativistic correction, and the quantum picture all modify the Lagrangian but continue to adhere to the Principle, do they not? When you go further to field theory, the Lagrangian is written anew, but the Principle remains.
How is that different from economics? Here a person or a group thereof, referred to as decision-maker, maximizes an integral of a Lagrangian, which is called the (von Neuman-Morgenstern) utility function. It is equally hard to find the solution of the latter problem and equally informative to interpret it. In fact, you might find it suprising that the latter problem is harder than in physics for two reasons: (i) a human decision-maker can chose a multiply connected space, whereas G-d has chosen our physical space to be simply connected, and (ii) there are multiple decision-makers in many cases (such as compensation of CEOs, much discussed on FR lately), and several action integrals must be optimized simultanously. How is the foregoing more intellectuall shallow than physics? Or than establishing a metrizability of a certain topology in mathematics?
Perhaps, it is the lack of your familiarity with the fields outside of "hard sciences" that leads you to the false conclusion. It is for you to determine the reason, but your statement is factually incorrect.
Or Shostakovich, even? Or perhaps there's a similarly named composer I haven't heard of?
Regardless, I think you are about 50 years out of date on the topic of what constitutes scholarship in the humanities.
Here are the recent scholarly publications of a colleague of mine from the English Department
Audre Lorde's Zami: A Portrait of the Artist as a Black Lesbian
Being an I-Witness: My Life as a Lesbian Teacher
Teaching What I'm Not: An Able-Bodied Woman Teaches Literature by Women with Disabilities
Crossing the Road, or, What's a Nice Lesbian Feminist Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
No. I don't call this research. I don't even call it scholarship.
Irrelevant blather about Lagrangians deleted. Don't try to snow me, buddy.
Perhaps, it is the lack of your familiarity with the fields outside of "hard sciences" that leads you to the false conclusion.
Nope.
A line I'm unlikely to use.
Sorry I wasted my time: from an earlier post I thought you were a physicist and thought that the parellel given in that post might interest you. What I wrote in that post you will not find anywhere in print and, for an intellectually curious person, should be meaningful.
No need to be defensive: I will not repeat my mistake by writing to you again.
P.S. Sorry for mistyping the name of Shostakovich; I suspect that was not my only typo.
Not really. I found the analogy stretched. Moreover, if I wish to be taken seriously and sincerely , I tend to avoid mixing in condescension to my posts.
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