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George Soros Funds Open-Publishing Software
Posted by
Hemos
on Thu Feb 14, 2002 11:46 AM
from the opening-the-channels-of-communication dept.
from the opening-the-channels-of-communication dept.
blair1q writes "BBC has a story reporting that George Soros and his Open Society Institute are funding "open access" media for scientific publishing. These outlets will compete with the quasi-monopolies held by the journal industry and provide information to researchers whose institutions can't afford to subscribe to large numbers of overpriced periodicals. Part of the funding will go to improve the open-access enabling EPrints software, which is under GPL."
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Wonderful (Score:5, Insightful)
Sort of like how Slashdot competes with the quasi-monopolies held by the magazine industry in order to provide information to geeks who can't afford to buy magazines that check their facts, etc. :-)
Scientific journals serve a purpose, despite the rants by frustrated pseudoscientists who can't get their work published. Though the system may not work perfectly, at least they make some attempt to review articles and weed out the crap. Words like "free" and "open" and "no censorship" are not necessarily good for science, because it really just means "hey! we'll publish your manifestoes on how the world *really* works, even if those self-proclaimed scientist types keep telling you to talk to a psychologist..."
Re:Wonderful (Score:5, Informative)
Consider another open publishing project: Nupedia, the open encyclopedia. All the submissions are reviewed by the author's peers. The biggest advantage however, is that subsequent authors are free to quote from and add too the material without fear of a cadre of copyright attorneys descending upon their home.
Open sourcing scientific journals will greatly increase the dispersion of scientific information into the greater pool of human knowledge.
Parent
Re:Wonderful (Score:5, Insightful)
You've obviously never published anything in a scientific journal, or you wouldn't equate "costs several thousand dollars for a year's worth (four) issues" with "checks their facts."
The economy of the situation is that you as the author typically pays the journal to have your work published. This is ostensibly to cover the cost of printing/typesetting at about $20 to $50 per page. The journal charges exhorbitant amounts for a subscription, and the editors and reviewers typically work for free. (Well, in practice that often means that their PhD students work for free.
The only one making any money out of this (and in some cases it's serious money) is the publisher (Springer Verlag is notorious in this regard.)
And that's only when it works the way it's supposed to. In the field of biology for example, there's been a recent outcry about the reviewers actually stealing results and publishing them as their own, from papers they were set to review. It's gotten to the point where papers submittet will be intentionally falsified, to be able to track who's trying to steal what research from whom.
About the only silver lining is that they (at least ACM and IEEE, don't know about Springer) even though they have you sign over the copyright, still let you publish on your own, i.e. via the web. And let me tell you that they'd have a real revolution on their hands if they didn't.
That's why there is growing pressure to revolutionise the system of academic publishing. No-one's talking about doing away with peer-review. It's not like we haven't noticed that no-one doing the actual work isn't getting paid by the publisher anyway! We might as well just publish electronically and be done with the middle man.
Parent
Typesetting costs? (Score:2)
Look inside the front cover of a journal to see the cost of a subscription. Where does the money go? It's not to the writers, the editors, or the reviewers. I claim that it is not to the typesetters. Furthermore, the page costs (paid by the writer, and often between $50 and $100 per page) are supposed to cover the typesetting costs. Why do they cost so much money?
Free access to information is long overdue.
Re:Typesetting costs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh sure some of the "flasiher" ones, i.e. the ones that don't amount to as much scientifically. The ones I'm talking about don't maintain any staff, i.e. they share staff between several. All the real work is done by unsalaried researchers.
Well, that's just the point. With the web we're currently debating doing just that. There have already been a few attempts.
Well, we do "give our research away for free", there's no-one paying us. Not one single journal ever pays for published work, ever. That's the point. And we do also give it away on the side. I cannot remember when I actually had to go to the library to read an article I was interested in last. Since all the journals I'm talking about do allow publishing on your own website, that's where we actually go to get the papers.
Are you on drugs? What gravy train? There's no money to be had in research publication unless you own a publishing house. None, zero, nada, zilch! Re-read my first post, you typically have to pay the journal money to have them print it!They don't pay you to peer review either!
Researchers get their grants elsewhere, their work has already been "paid for" when the publication process begins. The only reason to publish is to have your work submitted to the peer review, and hence measured against the competitors of your field, so that you can get more grants. That you get a dead tree copy of your work, doesn't even enter into the equation. It has no financial bearing on your work what so ever. In my field we don't even publish in journals much, opting instead for conferences.
Well, I for one, have. Haven't you read any of the posts your responding to. Sheesh, no-one peer reviewed your submission, that's for sure.
Re:Wonderful (Score:2)
The facts, as has been documented here and elsewhere, are that reputable scientists are trying to move publication of peer review journals into the future. They know their peers, and can organize themselves on line. If it becomes too much for them, some profesional society will step in and organize it for them but the restrictions on publishing elswhere and great cost of dead trees will become a thing of the past. The internet provides a low cost means of ditributing information and it will be expoited.
One very good example of this is the Journal of the American Medical Association, now online [ama-assn.org] and mostly free [ama-assn.org]. The New England Journal of Medicine is not as available, but is online. The physics people have been doing this for a long time, and everyone is following. Science and peer review will not die with the outmoded dead tree journal publication industry. Abusers like you will be weeded out, as will greedy publishers who abuse their reputations to try to make a few extra bucks.
Have a nice day.
Re:Wonderful (Score:2)
Not a good analogy at all. Open journals will be peer reviewed, just like closed journals. BTW: there is *already* a series of open biological journals that seem quite promising -- Biomed Central -- check them out here [biomedcentral.com]
Has the world gone opensource (Score:2, Interesting)
I find it interesting that areas other than programming are showing signs of the opensource movement. I have to wonder though, would it not be a cheaper endevour to combat established commercial publications with relevant, fresh, quailty content on a new website??
How many more readers does
Just my $.02
Re:Has the world gone opensource (Score:2)
I find it interesting that areas other than programming are showing signs of the opensource movement.
Open, peer-reviewed acacdemic publishing pre-dates open source/free software by many, many decades.
How many more readers does /. get than Yahoo! Internet magazine or Wired?? I would imagine a lot more...
Are you on crack? Slashdot isn't even in the same league as those sites.
Or were you being sarcastic?
If there is peer review, I'm for it (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, I've often wondered why universities pay an outrageous institutional price for the journals, when an individual can pay a lower price (albeit still exorbitant).
This is one of the true monopolies I would love to see end.
Title vs. Content (Score:1)
And who in good will would think that Soros giving money is more important than the actual news that an open access system will be developed. I mean, so what is Soros? Could be Bill Gates, *the* important news for the Slashdot community is that there are people against paying for information and people who is making something against it, by providing it for free.
karma attempt? (Score:1, Troll)
Is 'science' ending? An opinion. (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now, there's increasing pressure for scientists to close themselves off, mainly coming from their employers (companies).
What's happening to science is what happened to software. At first, the source was available, because the supplier didn't know if you could run the binaries and besides, you probably could help improve the code as well. Then, Ma Bell shut off the flow of source and caused the balkanization of Unices. After that, almost all software was binary for a particular platform.
Science started with open information sharing, and is perilously progressing towards a proprietarization of knowledge. Trade secrets are becoming more popular than patents because secrets are more protected. (Trade secrets are highly protected as long as no one else figures out how to do what you can do independantly, whereas patents are open to public inspection and expire. )
Re:Is 'science' ending? An opinion. (Score:4, Informative)
For instance, I am in seismology. My research group puts out arrays of seismometers in the western U.S. The data we obtain is only proprietary (even though we did _all_ the work) for a couple years. After that it is open to the world. If we haven't published yet, tough luck., and if we don't publish, don't count on another grant in the future. This is because we took NSF money to do it.
Parent
Cool... Can he do it for music? (Score:2, Funny)
To wit:
- users must open an account at the music distribution site.
- users must keep a balance of >$50 in their account in order to continue purchasing music.
- music costs $0.50 per track.
- artists are paid when they collect $1000 in payments or once a month, whichever is less frequent, no interest paid on the account (rather, the distribution site keeps any interest the money earns).
- the distribution site skims 5% of the transaction.
- for an additional percentage, the site will support automatic payment distribution, such that everyone the musician owes money to gets a percentage of the take (rather than the musician having to do that accounting him/herself.)
I think this would be a moderately profitable business. The key to success is to not be greedy: the only thing keeping micropayments from working is greed.
And George has the bucks to fund the startup. He wouldn't make a shitload of profit, but it wouldn't be unprofitable. He'd have to do it out of a desire for legacy, not to increase his fortunes.
Re:Cool... Can he do it for music? (Score:3, Informative)
Open source vs open science (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand open source and FSF has it's roots in free beer and free speech, and is now only going towards changing for that beer. I think both models are legitamate and should function with each other. Who else is going to edit that Nature or Science journal if you dont pay them? But then again there will always be people who do it for the love of the code, or in this case the research
Extra Time On Earth (Score:2, Funny)
open for us (Score:1)
Putting wealth to good use (Score:1, Flamebait)
Y'know, this guy is a preeminent capitalist. He made his billions (mostly without any moral ambiguities) and has gone on to change the world in positive ways. His generosity and nobility are prime examples of why the "society benefits from selfishness" is such a load of crapola. Soros did it for himself, now he's doing it for others. *That* is a capitalist, my friends.
Obviously I am not the Ayn Rand fan I once was.
Re:Putting wealth to good use (Score:2, Interesting)
If you lived in one of the countries shafted by Soros and his fellow currency speculators you may have a left rosy opinion. How many homes in the UK were re-possessed after our currency crashed in the early 90s and interest rates shot up for the next 5 years?
In fact your comments sicken me. It's rare that has happened on slashdot.
I'm sure the free software movement would generally be appalled by the support of someone like this
Re:Putting wealth to good use (Score:2, Interesting)
You might not like the idea of currency speculators making economic decisions, but the fact is that in practice they do a much better job than most governments.
Re:Putting wealth to good use (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually he is far from an uncritical fan of capitalism. His latest books include 'the crisis of global capitalism'.
Soros was a student of Karl Popper. The Open Society institute is kind of a memorial to his tutor whose most important book was 'The Open Society and its Enemies', these were Plato, Hegel and Marx.
Above all what Soros is opposed to is any group of idealogues who believe they have absolute truth. So having made a fortune from capitalism he goes on to explain the many ways in which it falls short. It is pretty hard not to take notice of his critique of Randian 'free market mania' that infects the GOP. Soros has demonstrated empirically that he understands how markets work and how they fail.
It is also notable that Soros has scored his biggest market coups betting against right wing governments. In particular betting against John Majors attempt to keep the pound overvalued in the ERM.
Re:Putting wealth to good use (Score:4, Interesting)
>
> Obviously I am not the Ayn Rand fan I once was.
Not necessarily. I, too, respect Soros, both for his trading skills and for what he's decided to do with his money now that he's earned it.
But I'd think that even the hardest-core Randroid could appreciate what Soros is doing.
1) He made his money. It's his. It pleases him to do this with his money, and who is anyone else to say he ought to do otherwise?
2) The other simple argument: Soros values the recipients (scientists) of his generosity. It is appropriate for him (in the Randroid sense) to help them.
3) If it's productive virtue that buys self-respect and happiness, and Soros wants to see science done, then this is a way of producing more with his money than he could otherwise produce. He's got enough to satisfy his material needs (and the needs of those for whom he cares) for the rest of his life. Sure, he could probably make a few billion more, but those would be just bits in a database somewhere. Instead, he chooses to use it - to produce something of value (more scientists, by reducing the cost of "becoming a scientist"), and in return, has the satisfaction of knowing that the things (ideas, discoveries, theories, technologies) the scientists go on to build were things he (as a nonscientist) would never have been able to build himself.
If that isn't fair, mutually-beneficial trade, I don't know what is.
(Or to put it another way, producing demand is easy, but boring -- he could spend billions on toys like tourist trips to the Space Station, an OC-192 and 50" plasma display to every room in each of his houses, and he'd probably be bored after the orgy of spending was complete. But producing supply - new scientists to develop space hotels, OC-192s for $50 and 3D holographic displays - is hard. He's chosen to do the hard, but rewarding, thing.)
Parent
Good Thing :) (Score:2, Interesting)
Plus I think the that the point they make, saying: is quite valid. Didn't the NYTimes have to remove a bunch of content from their (paid subscription) database because the people who submitted the articles still had the copyrights, etc? I know those were editorial pieces, and that when you submit journal articles, you give up the copyright, (pretty sure about that part) but isn't the principle of the thing the same?
I really like this part : Thats music to my ears.
This is great but....... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is great but....... (Score:2)
Yes. Printing, distributing and coordinating input from (unpaid) peer reviewers has been expensive in the past.
Fortunately, we have now have this wonderful thing called the World Wide Web, which makes it much easier to do these things and can reduce the afore mentioned costs to a fraction.
You never know, in the future it might be a prerequisite that a science faculty scores 50 karma points for papers posted on ScienceDot.
Re:This is great but....... (Score:2, Insightful)
Top it off with the fact that there are still a lot of older faculty members that hardly know how to check their email, let alone review papers on the web. However, they are still contributing greatly to the scientific community. We have two or three such old guys at my departemnt at Indiana University. Until they finally kick the bucket
Re:This is great but....... (Score:2)
The march of progress is cruel. Even Microsoft, the wealthiest corporation in the world, may not be able to stop the onslaught of the open source movement.
Top it off with the fact that there are still a lot of older faculty members that hardly know how to check their email, let alone review papers on the web. However, they are still contributing greatly to the scientific community.
To be blunt, the will retire. And as you point out, they will die.
Major changes often come with new generations.
Not exactly Copyleft (Score:2)
What about copyleft(ish) licenses for the non-software world?
From the article: "The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment," reads the declaration.
It calls for "free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose".
Nothing in there about modification and redistribution.
Could modification rights work for non-software copyrightable content? I don't know.
But the idea that it could be useful doesn't seem that crazy.
- Maybe you made a wonderful map of a region, but you want to leave open the chance that others will improve on specific areas and pass the whole thing along. (and you're willing to take the risk that they botch the whole thing up)
- Maybe you don't mind if people take your song, add an extra verse, (or change a person's name), and pass it on. (and you're willing to take the risk that some bozo will fill that verse with beowulf clusters and profanity)
- Maybe you've made a simple customized textbook and you'd be pleased as punch if people drop out the half where you didn't really know what you were talking about and replace it with something really informative. (and you're willing to take the chance that they drop out the half where you did really know what you were talking about and leave the junk half).
To me, it seems as though copyleft makes as much sense in the non-software world as it does the software world.
Maybe the problem is just that in the non-software world giving away these freedoms is harder to take. (A comment I _know_ is going to come back to haunt me, since as a non-programmer I have no personal idea at all how hard it is to relinquish control... I'm just talking. er, typing.)
(Or, alternatively, I suppose it could just be that in software the functional aspect of code is a built-in bozo filter for ill-conceived changes? You think?)
Here's what they should do ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, the "Open Access" movement should organize it's own journals. These journals could be formed at any tiem for free by anyone. The journal would mainly consist of a review board that reviews articles. If the review board considers an article to be of a high enough quality and within a certain subject area then the review board can mark the article as being "included" in said journal. This way, while anyone can still publish a paper by uploading it or whatever, people can filter searches by particular journals, giving them a quick way to weed out lots of crap.
For those of you who are wondering about who pays the review board for their time have stumbled onto the problem that faces the open access movement. You need a lot of very smart people to review enough papers to make up good journals, and those very smart people quite often have better things to do with their time.
Mr. Spey
Soros may be a positive influence (Score:1)
Good studies on journal costs (Score:5, Informative)
First, a general overview of costs in the mid-90s (done in 2000, so just imagine how expensive they are now!) can be found here [ucsd.edu].
A more recent review of chemistry journals can be found here [wisc.edu]. It is amazing to think that some of these journals cost ~$4.50 a page (neuroscience journals are even more expensive!).
The credit problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is that number of publications says nothing about quality.
I have not read a journal publication in the journal for at least five years. I generally read articles as pre-publication preprints or from the author's web site. If the only publication is in dead tree form it might as well not exist in my field.
The problem that online journals have faced is that it takes some time for an online journal to establish prestige and hence attract the type of publication that generates prestige.
Another problem has been that the HTML browser folk were never interested in implementing the HTML math markup which has left scientific publication to pdf form which is pretty useless as a dialogue medium. I can't cut and paste and equation from pdf to mathematica as MathML would allow.
What I would like to see is the rise of different modes of academic publishing that take advantage of the electronic mode. I would like to see enterprises that are structured in the manner of a dictionary or encyclopeadia, providing a systematic and structured description of the state of the art in a particular field as a whole.
professional society must buy into it (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not like people haven't thought of cheap web publishing before. Many thought they could start their own maverick journals for "almost nothing" on the web. But the human intertia of buy-in can be tremendous.
Could /. help? (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest problem I see with this proposal is that the creators of this effort have neglected to give the journals enough credit for the services they do provide: quality controll and topic selection.
A person who reads Journal of Academic Subject X does so partially because that journal has cultivated a reputation for quality in their field. Researchers are busy people, and they don't want to read every article by every crackpot out there. They want to keep current on the groundbreaking research and be aware of the new work that might apply to their own.
In other words, it's probably not enough to just 'get a critical mass' of work, especially if the critical mass is composed entirely of articles rejected for publication by journals. It's also not enough to just have a lot of information available - there must be some way of determining the quality of the work as well.
It seems to me what these guys really need, more than anything, is some sort of peer review process, similar to the moderation process here, that could help to filter out the bad stuff, make the truly groundbreaking work visible, and make sure that articles are categorized correctly. This would be an affordable way of providing the services that the editors of these journals normally provide while keeping the advantages that come with having a large electronic archive.
Soros is a cool character (Score:2)
Re:Soros is a cool character (Score:2)
EPrints.org GPL Software (Score:3, Informative)
The software is pretty generic, it does research papers by default but can be configured *lots*. And it's designed to add your own scripts and stuff (perl).
At one end of the spectrum (what it's funded to do) it generates archives of research papers, although you could practically implement mp3.com with it (and a huge server or two).
Links of interest:
EPrints Home: http://www.eprints.org/
Demo Archive: http://demoprints.eprints.org/
A cynic writes (Score:2)
translates to
These outlets will compete with the quasi-monopolies held by the journal industry and provide publication credits to researchers whose articles aren't good enough to be published in normal periodicals
Soros' Legacy (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes Soros different, how he stands aside from the other giants is in his thoughtful, abstract approach to the mechanisms of profit, and the rise and fall of economies.
His "public works" have taken place throughout his career, not merely as an afterthought. He appears to be quite intelligent, and seems to surround himself with intelligent, critical advisors. Most of his oddball adventures and forays in Europe have been profitable, or at least, had the intention of bringing back some compensation, but there seems to be a broader plan at work.
A naive western observer might see the Hand of Soros offering charity and kindness to a world that desperately needs his help. The natives who've endured his schemes probably see him as a standard-model Ugly American, his interference in their culture and economies don't seem to be quite as welcome as advertised. He appears to regret (sincerely?) the harm he's caused, but his answer seems to be... try new schemes. He quite baldly treats Economics as an Experimental and not a Theoretical science. He seems to take the broad perspective, in his field, that a Machievelli took in the realm of Renaissance politics, though he's had far more success.
I suspect history will look on him with more interest than his contemporaries do; he's one of the most influential single humans on Earth today, but tries to work stealthily and quietly. Whether they will approve or disapprove... ultimately depends on who gets to write those histories.
Re:Soros' Legacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Soros' Legacy (Score:2)
In a 60 Minutes puff piece he bought last year, he was shown deciding with his wife and his hired fund managers which projects would get how much.
In what is certainly a mistake of PR, he is seen to tell the group that he wants to fund only those projects that will work.
Rather than funding projects that need money to find out if they can work, he wants to be the one to cure whatever disease is already proven to be curable but merely lacking in easily raised resources to get the cure to the masses. He won't survey the nation and lay the track, but he insists on driving the golden spike. He plucks the low-hanging fruit, even though his cherry picker is the tallest.
That attitude from someone with almost unlimited resources makes me sick.
--Blair
I work in the journal industry... (Score:2, Informative)
More Soros funded open source projects (Score:3, Informative)
Trying to follow the links can be tedious, but the structure is interesting (snippets cut and pasted from the various websites).
George Soros funds a network [soros.org] of foundations. Among them, Media Development Loan Fund [mdlf.org] (MDLF) assists independent news organizations working in difficult economic and political climates. Of which Center for Advanced Media-Prague [mdlf-camp.net] (C@MP) has been bringing new-media concepts and solutions to independent news organizations worldwide since 1998
Camp is developing and diffusing cost-effective, open-source solutions to independent media through its CAMPWARE [campware.org] initiative. Which brings us to another open source ongoing development project: CAMPSITE [campware.org], an automated web-publishing environment for news media.
Ill gotten gains (Score:2)
Publishing of the future (Score:2)
There will be no publishing houses such as O'Reilly, Addison Wesley, Houghton Mifflin, etc.
All around the country, in malls, airports, bookstores, kinkos, schools, libraries, etc there will be print on demand machines. Next to the print on demand machines will be kiosks (running Linux of course) that allow you to browse books, submit payment, and print them.
There will be two costs. The cost of the content, and the cost to have it printed. Thus, a kinkos, with it's power to buy lots of paper, might charge 4.00 to have a book printed. The content charge might by 2.00. Therefore the book costs 6.00.
An airport, not being a large paper purchaser, might have to charge more for the print costs so its fees might be 4.50. They might also charge a premium because of the captive audience. Likewise, the authors might charge 2.50 because they know that people in airports are desperate and willing to pay more. Total cost is 7.00.
Of course, some of these places could offer extra services, such as special covers, cover art, different paper options, delivery to a home address, etc.
The reason why there will be no publishers is because authors will work with freelance editors and copy-writers. Job boards on the Internet will allow these groups to hook up in ad-hoc ways to find work and get books written. Then they subscribe these books to a distribution system.
This same thing will happen with music, in whatever format you want, but I'll stick to CDs.
Music artists will work with freelance sound engineers and production people who have studio space and equipment, or who can rent such space. They will sell the content on the web, and in kiosks. There cash outlay will be minimal, and they will be able to reach any size audience. These kiosks will burn CDs for the consumer, or the web based consumers will recieve files (and freesoftware) to burn the CD's themselves, or keep them in digital form.
This change in music, and book publishing will occur for many reasons. Two of which are:
1) Reduce costs, increase profits. With no brick and mortars, or large company overhead, sales people, marketing (you could freelance this too), costs are lower.
2) Reach even the smallest audience. I might be a musician of really uncommon music. My world-wde audience might be 20,000. A record company/label woudln't sign me because my economies of scale don't scale. But, in the freelance system I might sell my content for 5.00 each. That is 100,000 per year if I produce each year. Take out the fees for the sound engineers time and whomever else helped me, I might make between 40-70k. Hardly starving artist.
Re:Publishing of the future (Score:2)
In either example, subtract the media cost (CD, paper) and you have the content cost, plus maybe a transaction fee. Then, you receive the product in digital form for your MP3 player, or your ebook reader.
The main point, beyond the disribution medium, is how the Internet will bring together groups of people to collaborate to produce a product. Like eBay finds people on the other side of the country who actually want to buy your crap. It is the full 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon, not the single degree you know personally. That means you will be able to collaborate with anyone who has the time and resources you need.
These mini-collaborations will be created and destroyed just like the pathways of a switched telephone network.
Re:Soros is the man (Score:2)
Soros's speculations have crushed entire economies and destroyed thousands of lives. Bill Gates is a drop in the bucket.
Re:Soros is the man (Score:2)
Bill Gates may be responsible for many things, but fucking up the US economy is not one of them.
Learn to read.