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."
Hats of for MIT (Score:5, Interesting)
now that's the kind of university that one would want his/her children to go to.
its a policy, not a mandate (Score:4, Interesting)
A possible compromise with the journals might be a 6 to 12 month delay before it goes on the MIT site.
Re:Hats of for MIT (Score:3, Interesting)
I've said this many times before:
If you send your kids to MIT, have them study marketing.
MIT's engineering program might be quite good -- I have no reason to doubt this. However, the amount of PR buzz that the school generates is disproportional to the amount of research that they produce, especially compared to similar institutions. Their marketing people must be very good.
As an aside, I should also grumble here about my ethical issues with an institution of learning that charges $45,000/year, and intentionally limits the number of students it takes on, despite having a pool of applicants that (by their own admission) are perfectly qualified to attend.
Re:Unanimous? (Score:3, Interesting)
the article itself says that faculty are caught in the middle between the need for funding and the need for exposure
The article says nothing of the sort. It says the line is being drawn between publishers and funding groups. Funding groups want open access precisely because it brings the papers more exposure, without the barrier of a paid journal subscription.
The publishers are the only ones on the other side. Basically, their business model made sense before the internet, because the most efficient way to read papers was to have a subscription to a journal and read the physical copy. Today, the most efficient method is to just download the thing, and distribution costs are minimum. Peer review can still go on, since most editors for closed journals are volunteer professors (I remember my advisor offloading papers for me to review. He would still look over everything, but it saved him time, and got me experience).
Also, unlike **AA members, authors of scientific papers don't get paid for each individual copy people buy, so all they really want is for their paper to be read by a large number of people, which increases their chances of being cited, of their work getting exposure, and of getting increased funding.
Really...the only people who want closed journals are the owners of the closed journals.
Re:Good arguments against open access? (Score:3, Interesting)
Publishing is expensive. Peer review is expensive. If you want to have high quality widely distributed science you need both. However, as a scientist myself I don't think this on it's own is a good argument against open access.
Bottom line is we need a new way to do publish science, and such a system is evolving. There are a number of journals that are online only, or release copies of work for free (for example JHEP). The current system is only really viable for the big name journals (and many of these are frankly sacrificing the quality of the work they accept to move more copies). This new way probably wont look that different from the old way, but will probably be a similar model to the one JHEP uses now.
Of course things are easier sciences like physics or maths than they are in biology which is why things move faster. For a start, in biology (especially biotech) there is a real push to keep things that might be profitable secret as long as possible. In addition scripts in biological sciences are often provided with no mark up conveying the authors intent. It is much easier to adjust for publication a latex file already marked up for you than it is to deal with a word file (which is why many journals in physics basically insist you hand over a tex file). This and other factors adds to the expense, which makes a more closed process more desirable.
Bottom line is the scientific publishing industry is going to have to change. The scientists all want it to change. They want it to be cheaper to access because they want people to read their work (and cite it!). They want it online because paper copies are a pain in the backside and harder to obtain. And they are by and large both supplier and customer. If journals both big and small don't start moving towards a lower cost, more open system then the internet and new technologies will allow someone else to.
Re:Good arguments against open access? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is good and bad (Score:2, Interesting)
I see this as good and bad.
It is generally a good thing that the research gets out and is seen by as many people as possible. Show me a person off the street who is going to care about some paper on quantum mechanics, however. The scientists and researchers are generally going to have access to these papers in some fashion anyway, via university library electronic journal access or professional groups that they may be a part of (such as the ACM).
The bad thing is that journals may selectively not publish papers they would have previously accepted from a researcher if they require open access. You may not think this is that important. They can find a different place to publish. Things aren't that simple when it comes down to it though. Faculty and research hires and promotions are often based on WHICH journals you publish in as much as how much you publish. As a young researcher I would hate to lose out to someone for a tenured position because they published a few less papers in higher profile journals but I had to publish in lower ranked journals because of open access.
Re:Finally (Score:2, Interesting)
There are better solutions [google.com] for those services too.
Geek girls IMHO are some of the hottest. (Score:5, Interesting)
They may not spend as much time with makeup and outfits as the uberbimbos. But IMHO their bodies are often quite as functional. Even more so: Brains have a lot to do with that.
Tracing the individual variations on peripheral neural pathways and working out their operation is even more fun (for both) when the tracee knows and appreciates what is going on and can give additional feedback beyond the basic flushes, indrawn breath, postures, erections, secretions, etc. And there's such synergy when the partner can reciprocate.
Being able to have an intelligent conversation can be far better afterplay than smoking cigarettes. (Though sometimes it DOES distract.)
Then there's the love for gadgets, tool-making, and tool use. (For instance: It's not a coincidence that some of the largest and most active consensual BDSM communities formed in Silicon Valley and other tech centers and organized over the net and email, or that some of the big names in tech are major participants. Did you really think all that pron on the intertubes was just frustrated geeks who COULDN'T get any? B-) But even if such tastes are more common with geek girls it's far from a universal attraction. So use care bringing it up.)
But one of the hottest things about geek girls is that they can appreciate a geek's mind and tend to be attracted - indeed, turned on - by a good one. If said male geek can reciprocate, treating her as a valued team member rather than someone to play smarter-than-you-nyah mind games on, it's the foundation of a solid long-term relationship.
What about academic freedom? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a big fan of the move toward open access. But I worry about the precedent for academic freedom.
Think about it: a university is establishing rules and giving itself oversight over where faculty can publish. From the article: "Anybody who wants to publish with a journal that refuses to grant these rights will have to submit a written request for an exception to the MIT provost." Imagine 2 faculty members who want to publish papers in journals that do not cooperate with MIT's policy. One does popular research that the provost likes, the other does controversial research that the provost doesn't like. Why should the fate of these 2 faculty's research be left in the provost's hands?
Like I said, I agree with the goal, but I worry that this is a lousy way to reach it.
Re:This is going to hurt smaller research groups a (Score:4, Interesting)
Whether or not editors get paid varies based on the discipline as well as the journal. In my area (mathematics) a few journals may pay editors, but most do not. Editors, just like referees, work voluntarily; except that editors get the prestige of having their name associated with a well-known journal.
Also, I think you vastly overestimate the cost of running a journal. In math there have been a few cases of mass resignations of editorial boards (essentially killing the journal), and a brand-new journal springing up to take its place. Remarkably, these new journals that are basically equivalent to the old ones manage to charge 5 or 10 (!) times less to get the same job done.
Journal prices have been rising out of proportion with actual publishing costs for a long time now.
Re:Hats of for MIT (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, Harvard mandated Open Access in 2008 [harvard.edu].
Dirty communists!