MIT To Make All Faculty Publications Open Access 164
Death Metal writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica:
"If there were any doubt that open access publishing was setting off a bit of a power struggle, a decision made last week by the MIT faculty should put it to rest. Although most commercial academic publishers require that the authors of the works they publish sign all copyrights over to the journal, Congress recently mandated that all researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health retain the right to freely distribute their works one year after publication (several foundations have similar requirements). Since then, some publishers started fighting the trend, and a few members of Congress are reconsidering the mandate. Now, in a move that will undoubtedly redraw the battle lines, the faculty of MIT have unanimously voted to make any publications they produce open access."
Thank you! (Score:5, Insightful)
This should put to rest any concerns that closed access journals protect the interests of the authors.
Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a major blow to an industry with an outdated business model. Scientific publication is starting to move beyond the need for the middleman, and I am extremely glad to see it happen.
That said, the major publishers will scramble to try and patch this hole in the business model, and they will probably make the overall situation worse before it really starts to improve.
Oh well. Got to start that process at some point. Go MIT.
Re:Thank you! (Score:5, Insightful)
What about them, huh? Are they not people too?
Unanimous? (Score:4, Insightful)
De facto standard already? (Score:2, Insightful)
Too f&*(ing right ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a major blow to an industry with an outdated business model. Scientific publication is starting to move beyond the need for the middleman, and I am extremely glad to see it happen.
That said, the major publishers will scramble to try and patch this hole in the business model, and they will probably make the overall situation worse before it really starts to improve.
Oh well. Got to start that process at some point. Go MIT.
Nothing personal to you, sir or madame. I see "outdated business model" time and time again on Slashdot as an euphemism for basically saying "not offering something for free".
First of all, business models do not become outdated. They may become worthless because someone has started doing business another way that eliminates one from making money from their current way of doing business. For example, in the beginning of the Internets, folks were charging for content. Then, someone had the brilliant idea that they don't have to charge and they'll have advertising. Thereby making most sites who charged the consumer for the content "outdated" and thereby making everyone else lose money. Then again, tell that to these guys [wsj.com]
Now consider this, many folks are becoming independent contractors and doing crafts and whatnot at home to make a living - just like the pre-19th century factory system. Outdated indeed.
There's no such thing as an outdated business model. MIT is financing these publications by other means, that's all. Also, exactly how much does it really cost to publish this stuff online? The authors aren't paid. What are the costs associated? I don't think this is such a sacrifice for MIT or any other institution that does this.
Re:Good arguments against open access? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good arguments against open access? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd buy point (a) if there wasn't a practice of journals charging authors for the ability to publish (which they pay in order to continue to have a career). I'd agree with point (b) if the peer reviewers were paid. There may be advantages to the closed source model, but neither of those are it.
Re:Computer Science (Score:4, Insightful)
Standard? No. And as there's no standard way for how a web page should be organised, there's no standard way to find such articles, and no guarantee that they won't disappear tomorrow. Would you take the chance to cite a paper that's not even properly published?
MIT's decision will hopefully mean that you'll find the electronic version through the library's database, with persistent links that don't disappear when a professor moves to a different university.
medical is worst culprit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hats of for MIT (Score:3, Insightful)
for computer science I would say yes rice is a better option.
do undergrad there, save the money, then go on to master and postdoc
at either stanford or MIT.
Re:Hats of for MIT (Score:5, Insightful)
My experience has been that there are different tiers. Schools within a given tier are going to have comparable program quality (but one's style might match you better). Generally speaking, going to any school within the top 50 or 100 for a field will result in a good education. Also, some schools are higher in their ranks because of their research. However, graduate students benefit from this far more than undergrad students do.
I will say this, though. Being in the real world with a lot less college debt is nice.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
I do not agree in this case. The model is clearly outdated (in the sens not good for today). It had meaning before when there was no Internet. Accessing articles was expensive because you had to print journal issues.
Today, we no longer use paper version but mainly electronic one. So the only thing the publisher provides is an electronic access to publications. But, universities and laboratories can do that them self.
So why are we still using "private" journals? The only reasonable answer is : reputation. A journal such as Nature or Transaction on computers are well known. It is know that the editorial board only select top quality papers. But, one should recall that the editorial board IS NOT the journal itself but professors and researchers spread all over the world which do the job for free.
Why not switch to per university (but peer reviewed) publication without the editors ?
We could take the editorial board of a good journal and make an independent journal. The problem is research evaluation. It is currently done through crappy index such as the impact factor. A new publication method will badly perform according to this index and thus research will be badly evaluated.
You need to be a prestigious university to say : "we do not want this model anymore". And that is what the MIT is doing which is great.
PS: The publishers currently propose some minor correction to fit into a given format or to check for grammatical errors. This could be done by universities too. (or research lab, or independant foundation...)
Re:This is going to hurt smaller research groups a (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm quite happy with the current system, warts and all -- we pay the journals to do the insanely laborious task of filtering through all the submissions and providing us with a reasonable subset that represent (with some measurement error) the most salient works.
Do you? Or do you pay journal to organize unpaid reviewers to determine the quality of submissions, and to cover the cost of distribution? Because I thought that most reviewers and editors don't get paid.
The point is that now distribution costs can be close to nil, but subscription prices keep increasing. I don't see why an open-access journal that was not affiliated with a commercial publisher could not accomplish the same thing, and maintain the quality of articles. The "imprimatur" will simply no longer come courtesy of a commercial publisher - the brand name, e.g., "Well-Respected Journal of X" can persist. After all, it is not the publisher that provides the quality, but the editors and reviewers.
Re:Finally (Score:3, Insightful)
I see "outdated business model" time and time again on Slashdot as an euphemism for basically saying "not offering something for free".
I do not speak for the Slashdot gestalt. When I write 'outdated business model', I mean 'founded on pre-internet artificial scarcity'. That doesn't mean free, it just means *both* the supply and demand curves shift quite a bit, and the places in the system where there are profitable opportunities shift. This applies to the MPAA, the RIAA, the scientific publishing industry, and a whole bunch more.
Scientific publishing, in particular, makes money from both the author and the reader. They got greedy, claiming that they are the only way to distribute to the end reader, and that they are also the only way to set up a peer review. Both assumptions are wrong, and are now easy to get around, thanks to the internet.
First of all, business models do not become outdated. They may become worthless because someone has started doing business another way that eliminates one from making money from their current way of doing business.
If a business model was profitable, but now it is not due to advances in technology, it is outdated. Its time has passed. It is an ex-business model. It is pining for the fjords. It has gone to the great golden spike in the sky where all technologically inflexible business models must eventually go.
Now consider this, many folks are becoming independent contractors and doing crafts and whatnot at home to make a living - just like the pre-19th century factory system. Outdated indeed.
You picked a perfect example to illustrate my point. Pre-19th century, if you wanted a sweater, someone had to knit it. 21st century, if you want a handmade sweater, someone has to knit it. But the supply of handmade sweaters, which take a long time to knit, is far outstripped by the demand for sweaters.
There are those of us who, recognizing the lost opportunity cost of spending hundreds of dollars for a handmade sweater, realize that we can get a machine-made sweater for a fraction of the cost. We substitute a similar product.
The price of handmade sweaters is a supply side problem. The price of machine-made sweaters is a demand-side problem. The business models for these things are radically different due to the introduction of technology into the process. Handmade clothes are an art form, and are priced appropriately. Machine made clothes are a commodity and enjoy shatteringly larger profitability due to economies of scale.
Building a business model centered around high demand for high priced sweaters is just silly. It *would* have been a viable business model prior to the industrial revolution and the amazing rise of the textile industry, but it won't work now. It is outdated. That doesn't mean it isn't a business plan - it's just a silly one that won't work any more.
Scientific publishing will change. The publishers will find a way to adapt their business model and continue to publish, or will flail about with an outdated business model and they will perish. As in science, so it goes in scientific publishing: Publish or Perish.
Re:Hats of for MIT (Score:3, Insightful)
WTF? You're complaining that they don't have infinite capacity? There's a limit to how many professors and classrooms even a $45K tuition can buy, you know!
Publishers stewing in their own blood... (Score:3, Insightful)
One can argue that this is a stew of the publishers' own making. When you charge on the order of $20-30+ to receive a copy of a single article (which presumably costs pennies to distribute) then you are asking for a backlash. I applaud MIT for stepping up to the plate and suggest that the other Ivy League schools do so as well. Though the PLoS work which I believe is largely based at Stanford suggests that this is already in progress.
Even PNAS is slowly increasing its public access articles (and with acknowledgement, their archives are largely open). So the public (and students) have much more access to scientific information than they once did. This does not however keep some publishing groups (e.g. Nature) from going in different directions. It appears to me as if Nature is on a path of only publishing commissioned articles [1] for review which may be very difficult for University's or Government's to regulate.
I would challenge Nature's publishers -- here and in public -- "When and how do you intend to implement an open access policy?"
1. It could be argued that Science is only a step behind.
Evolutionary pressure now comes into play. (Score:3, Insightful)
More universities MUST join this. Preferably, a number of state universities. At that point, congressmen will have a difficult time saying no to this.
IMHO, now that it is started, evolutionary pressure comes into play.
Those who publish their works online, quickly, with broad access, will be more available for reference from other works, compared to those who wait for journal publication. Their good works will get a higher citation rate and sometimes priority. Such feathers in their cap will selectively advance their careers and retard those of their journal-publishing peers. (Just as journal publishing replaced things like anagram-publication to claim priority without actually making the work public.)
This will work even better if the peer-review function can be disconnected from the print-journal publication and ported to an electronic publication model. That would avoid burying the respectable work in the chaff and aid in search filtering as well as re-enabling the manual method at electronic network, rather than print library, speeds.
Editors, Authors, Referees (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you submitted an article to a peer-reviewed scientific journal? Have you been a referee for such an article? I have been in both roles, and more than once. Your view of an editor's work is not consistent with my experiences.
As a referee, I was never harassed by an editor. At first, they simply ask if you're willing to referee a paper, and ask you to suggest a different referee if you are unwilling to be referee yourself. If you accept, you're expected to give a reasoned assessment of the article within a few weeks. They typically use several referees, so if there's a laggard, it does not matter. Most referees are conscientious and timely (I and my colleagues are).
As an author, you are expected to follow the guidelines which the journal publishes. Most of them provide LaTeX or Word templates, and strict typesetting guidelines on figures, headings, citations, captions, etc. If you don't follow their guidelines, your article will be rejected by a secretary who will politely provide the formatting guidelines. It won't even reach the editor and certainly won't go out for peer review.
Oh, I also know editors of a few journals personally (including two journals I have published in, but I met the editors long afterwards at conferences). None of them ever mentioned any need for harassment of authors or referees. They did need to harass their own employees (fill the advertising space, dammit!) and subcontractors (this is printed on SC paper, I said to use coated stock!). That's where the time is spent.
i dunno (Score:2, Insightful)
If I were a publisher, I'd want the smartest minds in the world to publish in my journal.
I'm sure people would want to read what the geniuses at MIT are doing, and the publishers will have to choose between losing subscribers or making the requirements more lax.
MIT's one of the few schools in the world that can pull off something like this. Most people choose schools because of rankings, and rankings are mostly based on the number of publications, so schools are not very likely to risk lowering their ranking for an ideology. But MIT doesn't care. No one would pay any college ranking that doesn't end with MIT or Caltech.
Re:Good arguments against open access? (Score:3, Insightful)
In almost all journals you have to subscribe to it in order to get your paper published.
You also almost always have to sign away your rights to that intellectual property. If you want to go back to that paper and turn it into a book? You have to get permission from the publisher.
Your university wants to make it available to everyone affiliated with the university? The library has to pay to get access to it. So the university (in part, in addition to teaching and such) is paying you to write the paper and get it published and then they are paying a company to get access to it. Of course they get access to lots of other journals too.
there are few if any good reasons for academic publishing to stay closed.
Re:What about academic freedom? (Score:4, Insightful)
But I worry about the precedent for academic freedom.
The fact that I can find all the world's knowledge online except academic publications is far worse! The purpose of a Univeristy is to increase the knowledge available to mankind. Various sorts of academic freedom are important for that goal, but that freedom is a means, not the goal.
Re:What about academic freedom? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to rain on your tirade, but this policy was UNANIMOUSLY approved by the same faculty it would effect. Perhaps the, very bright, faculty of MIT actually liked the policy and felt it was fair to everyone. Perhaps they considered what you have said, and found that the policy was fair or that your issues were unfounded. Somehow, I think that the faculty of MIT understand the ramifications of this policy and feel that it is 'good'.
Not a whole lot can be said against any restrictive policy that has the unanimous support of all of those the policy restricts.
Re:What about academic freedom? (Score:3, Insightful)
Since there is open access, i think the faculty can try publishing at that journal. If that journal asks them to sign over their rights to the publication, they won't be able to.
So actually the journal is preventing them from publishing, not MIT. In fact depending on how open the paper is, can't the journals just reprint the paper?