tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post5107081387616251781..comments2024-03-13T20:44:25.984+01:00Comments on Nick Brown's blog: Open Access journals: what's not to like? This, maybe...Nick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00172030184497186082noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-4531170432699107442015-11-07T06:19:13.893+01:002015-11-07T06:19:13.893+01:00Here's a brief overview of how publications wo...Here's a brief overview of how publications work in Machine Learning: <br /><br />-The most important prestigious venues are conference proceedings, journals aren't very prominent (with a few exceptions). <br /><br />-All papers are shared online (no paywalls)<br /><br />-Double blind. Reviewers bid on papers and reviews are aggregated by area chairs. <br /><br />-I believe that most of the administrative fees are covered by conference attendance fees. Attending the conference has no connection with getting published. <br /><br />-The best few papers are selected for oral presentation at the conference. One or two papers are selected for the "best paper award". Other papers are presented as posters. <br /><br />ICLR is somewhat more radical in that it's single blind, all papers and reviews are posted online (even rejected papers), and any third party can submit non-anonymous reviews. <br /><br />Here's are positive and negative reviews of the system: <br /><br />http://yann.lecun.com/ex/pamphlets/publishing-models.html<br /><br />http://www.cis.jhu.edu/publications/papers_in_database/GEMAN/Ten_Reasons.pdfAlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17327836181389523648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-16752156416082218302015-11-06T10:30:00.619+01:002015-11-06T10:30:00.619+01:00Al, I have no idea how that works. Maybe you can ...Al, I have no idea how that works. Maybe you can explain that model to us?Nick Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266307287741345798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-42423391192420778112015-11-06T08:27:55.811+01:002015-11-06T08:27:55.811+01:00What do you think about the publication model in M...What do you think about the publication model in Machine Learning, especially the new International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR)? Alhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17327836181389523648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-32390519688611802522015-04-03T11:23:54.687+02:002015-04-03T11:23:54.687+02:00You might also be interested in: http://scitechsoc...You might also be interested in: http://scitechsociety.blogspot.dk/2014/01/market-capitalism-and-open-access.htmlAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-29880731717315111462015-04-01T00:33:04.502+02:002015-04-01T00:33:04.502+02:00I probably went a bit overboard on the DOI issue a...I probably went a bit overboard on the DOI issue as that is really a minor thing in your post. I was referring to "even if it doesn't yet have the status of a citable article with a DOI" which, I guess, one does not have to interpret as DOI = citable. <br />There are definitely upsides and downsides to open review. I am trying to propose that it could be used to turn focus to the quality of the paper on its own merits instead of relying on the prestige of the publishing journal. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-30140085406205672432015-03-31T14:45:36.569+02:002015-03-31T14:45:36.569+02:00Katie, it seems to me that OA options allow tradit...Katie, it seems to me that OA options allow traditional journals to "eat their cake while still remaining in possession of the same cake afterwards"(*). They get all the financial benefits of OA, and the kudos that accrues from fans of that model, without having to change the whole publication model of the journal. If your library subscribes to publisher X's journals for $200,000 and the authors of 20% of the articles published in those journals next year decide to take the OA option, will your library get a $40,000 refund? I suspect not. So all the publisher is foregoing by taking $1,000 for the OA option is however many pay-per-view sales they would have made, which I'm guessing is typically less than one per article.<br /><br />I don't worry too much about the amount of money that libraries have to pay. It makes for a big scary bill --- typically more than any of us makes in a year --- to be paid in one shot, but the money has to come from somewhere, and it might well work out more expensive to hand it over in hundreds of waffer-thin slices. If you're at a publicly-funded school then the money has to come from the public purse anyway, whether that's in the form of signing off on the library's budget (which is typically one of the less exciting things for people to talk about in meetings; sometimes there are advantages to being off the radar), or adding a publication fee to the budget of a project. Making it invisible doesn't make things cheaper; in fact, a lot of marketing is all about making it easy to spend money without noticing it adding up (does it feel like $5 when you buy a $5 latte with a contactless card?).<br /><br />It seems to me that having the money in the hands of the librarian, rather than scattered around lots of PIs in small amounts, makes the whole process less susceptible to the kind of consumer-type marketing fads that will (in my opinion) inevitably appear with the commercialisation of the publication process. How long before we see "Publish three original research reports and get one free commentary"? <br /><br /><br /><br />(*) Any other formulation of this saying tends to be very confusing to non-native speakers of English!Nick Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266307287741345798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-37520090260781175272015-03-31T14:20:40.595+02:002015-03-31T14:20:40.595+02:00Hi Nick - Interesting post! I'm wondering what...Hi Nick - Interesting post! I'm wondering what you think about traditional journals with open access options. I have a hard time with the ridiculous amounts of money libraries have to pay for us to be able to read our own work, so it seems like any system that helps move us away from that is an improvement. But I wonder if you see any looming issues with that model (i.e., one that shifts costs from libraries to individual researchers/their funders). <br /><br />P.S. Sorry about all the tech challenges....Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756498878469031374noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-74068018816291145302015-03-31T00:20:11.494+02:002015-03-31T00:20:11.494+02:00I don't think I implied that something with a ...I don't think I implied that something with a DOI is citable. But something that is citable probably ought to have a DOI. I only mentioned this in the context of The Winnower; it's not a major part of my argument.<br /><br />There are upsides and downsides to open peer review; it's part of the debate about how the review process is broken. But it seems to me that a journal's choice to use open review or not is likely to be independent of its choice of payment model; that is, OA doesn't fix this problem either.Nick Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266307287741345798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-25186143612961456162015-03-30T21:59:55.691+02:002015-03-30T21:59:55.691+02:00Thanks, this post is a great conversation starter....Thanks, this post is a great conversation starter. I share your worry that the fact that authors pay publishing charges could persuade journals to accept papers a bit too easily. That being said, I have to disagree with you on some other points.<br />Sadly, you seem to be one of many who equate having a DOI to being citable. It is not the fact that a document has a DOI that makes it citable; you can, as a publisher, get to assign DOIs to just about anything as long as you promise to preserve it reasonably well. It does make a document a lot easier to reference unambiguously, though. What is citable, however, is really up to the journal etc. in which you are trying to cite the document in question. There seems to be a growing perception in online discussion these days that a document having a DOI means we can safely throw source criticism out the window.<br />The fact that the author can decide when a paper is ready and thereby cause it to get a DOI assigned does not mean that everyone has to take it as a seal of approval. You can use the open reviews (or the lack of them) to help you judge whether it is worth citing (or even reading).<br />I think the lines between "respectable" and "spam" journals will begin to blur, but that does not have to be a problem. The problem here is that we are all really subscribing to journals for their main services: prestige and seal of approval. But we borrow the prestige of the journal in the hope that our paper published in it will eventually live up to it - which it probably will not (<a href="https://im2punt0.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/nine-reasons-why-impact-factors-fail-and-using-them-may-harm-science/" rel="nofollow">Nine reasons why Impact Factors fail and using them may harm science</a> - see point 1). With respect to seal of approval, we simply have to take the journal's word for it, because we can in most cases not see what the reviewers said about the papers in them. All that is left for journals to provide is subject classification for easier discovery, and even that is changing (see for example the rise of services like <a href="http://www.sparrho.com/" rel="nofollow">Sparrho</a>).<br />This is also why the problem of distinguishing the good from the bad journals does not have to be such a big problem. The solution to that is to judge papers on their individual merits instead of which journal they are published in. This is easier said than done, of course, since this would make it irrelevant where a paper is published. This would in turn destroy the traditional publishers' business model, so they will of course fight it.<br />My proposal, however, is to make peer reviews open. Of course this also entails problems, as you have also pointed out, because it is hard to attract reviewers. In the end, this could be the value proposition of future journals; the journal that can attract the best and most relevant reviewers wins. If a journal takes care of the review process, the indicator of quality that the reviews provide will be quickly available and you will not have to sit around for years waiting to get cited. So, this provides a qualitative article-level metric that is a lot more useful than wrongly judging a paper by its journal's JIF.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7890764972166411105.post-80041174014931740702015-03-29T23:23:13.928+02:002015-03-29T23:23:13.928+02:00Nick - great post, and I share most of these worri...Nick - great post, and I share most of these worries.<br /><br />One other thing that worries me about the OA model is that it can shift costs away from the developed world (which bought the journal subscriptions) and toward the developing world (whose scientists will have to pay OA fees). Hardship waivers will help, but as you point out, it's not clear why the OA journals will be incentivized to keep providing them.Stephen Heardhttps://scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.com