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I have a PhD in physics. I have zero problem with anyone downloading any of my papers from scihub. My publishers paid me nothing, and also paid the academics wh

I have a PhD in physics. I have zero problem with anyone downloading any of my papers from scihub. My publishers paid me nothing, and also paid the academics who peer reviewed my paper nothing. If I had stayed in academia (I didn't partially because of the toxic nature of publishing) I would also have been expected to peer review other journals for free. Information should be free access information general, but publishers are the least deserving key holders.

azangru 7y ago
> I have a PhD in physics. I have zero problem with anyone downloading any of my papers from scihub. Out of curiosity: why don't you just host your papers on your website then - or, if you do, why don't you think it's enough?
- lrem 7y ago
  Many (most?) do, that's where Google Scholar took its PDFs from pre-scihub.
  - lorenzhs 7y ago
    Google Scholar still gets its PDFs from preprint servers and author's websites. I suppose you meant to say that Google Scholar's web indexing is how many people got their PDFs pre-scihub?
    - lrem 7y ago
      Yes, you managed to unmangle my pre-coffee reply attempt correctly :)
- gewa 7y ago
  Im not sure if it's legally flawless to upload the published journal article to your Website and open it up to the public. As far as i know, you're only allowed to pass it on a personal, per-request basis. This explicitly refers to the final peer reviewed article and not to the manuscript, which can make a great difference.
  - prepend 7y ago
    It’s granted individually on a personal, per http request.
  - Thrymr 7y ago
    Many publishers explicitly allow you to post your own articles on your personal/professional website. Some only allow "preprint" form and not the published version.
  - semi-extrinsic 7y ago
    Most journals explicitly allow preprints or postprints (the final article, but without the layout of the publisher) to be posted on personal webpages.
- martin_vejmelka 7y ago
  > why don't you just host your papers on your website then - or, if you do, why don't you think it's enough? Most publishers prevented you from doing this as of a few years ago (I left academic research around that time). You were not allowed to post any content that contains any work by the publisher (even formatting/editing changes after first round of reviews). Thus you could only publish a "preprint" which no-one can rely on to cite because they don't know what's in the final peer-reviewed version. Some publishers are more lenient than others but there's definitely friction induced.
  - improbable22 7y ago
    The norm at least in parts of physics is to update the arxiv version once the paper is accepted, with a note saying "v3: matches version to appear in XXX", with a DOI link. Where "matches" means the content, but not the journal's formatting, spelling & comma preferences, etc. (And ideally this note would also mention any substantial changes, like "new section 4 explaining..." or "derivation in 3.2 re-written, but no change to conclusions", for the benefit of those who already read v2.)
    - neffy 7y ago
      I do the same (over in comp sci.) - usually the journals will let you put pre-print articles up on arxiv, researchgate, and web pages, and then the final article - sometimes with added spelling mistakes - many of the journals have off shored the editorial process - is on their site.
    - frenchyatwork 7y ago
      I'm curious what would happen if a new paper tried to reference previous papers published in ArXiv instead of the traditional publishers. From a strictly academic perspective, I can't think of any reason why this would be a problem, apart from the existential problem it causes for traditional publishers.
      - improbable22 7y ago
        Citing papers which aren't yet published by their arxiv numbers is routine. (And, before 1991, people did the same using the author's institute's preprint numbers.) If they have appeared in a journal by the time yours is accepted by a journal, then you should add the journal info too. (Although many journals now allow you to leave the arxiv numbers as an additional part of each reference.)
- jhrmnn 7y ago
  I (not OP) do, https://jan.hermann.name/publications/ https://jan.hermann.name/publications/ (note the copyright notices, required by the journals, which pop up when you hover of the pdf link [didn't figure out a good alternative on mobile]). In rare cases, the journals don't allow this at all, in some cases they allow you to self-publish only the submitted manuscript, before any modifications based on peer review. As for why it's not enough—because hiring committees and funding agencies almost never take unpublished (that is, in a proper journal) manuscripts into account when evaluating you and your funding proposals. This is what needs to change in the first place to break the loop.
dna_polymerase 7y ago
Personally I don’t see the quid pro quo nature of peer review (you review in return for your stuff being reviewed) as a problem. But I dislike the fact that the publishers limit access to something that others provided without compensation. Seriously their subscription models are outrageous, nothing they provide alongside the actual content makes it worth it.
- Calloutman 7y ago
  You're still providing a valuable service for free. Why can't everyone get paid?
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    Reviewers are getting paid from the university, as are the paper authors. The problem is that the journals exploit the taxpayers and grant providers.
    - chdlr 7y ago
      I would disagree for the first part: Review usually does not happen during paid hours or is even somehow formally accredited by universities.
      - markus92 7y ago
        At my university, reviewing is explicitly mentioned to be on your own time: we cannot write any hours for it.
        pastage 7y ago
        That honestly seems like a bigger problem, if researchers are not paid for reviewing who will do it?
      - prepend 7y ago
        My experience is that reviewers do this as part of their duties and takes place during work hours.
matheusmoreira 7y ago
> My publishers paid me nothing, and also paid the academics who peer reviewed my paper nothing. Why are these intermediaries still around? Peer review is the real value provided by a scientitic journal and the people who do that have no reason to be loyal to these companies since they don't get paid.
- DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
  It's a great question. Inertia/legacy is a big part. But you're seeing new journals pop up with heavy weight support (eLife, PLoS, etc.) that are getting cited more and becoming higher impact. You also now have pre-prints like Arxive and bioarxive. I guess the point is peer-review, modern science moves slow because it takes time to disrupt the trust people put in a Nature, Science, Cell, etc publication. Once higher impact papers start going to other journals, the pre-tenure profs will feel comfortable to follow.
- einpoklum 7y ago
  > Why are these intermediaries still around? Because publishing a decent journal - even online but certainly in the real world - involves a whole lot of work: Administrative, some technical, some networking, some advertizing, maintaining relations within the relevant fields etc. That's all when we ignore the peer review itself which requires domain expertise.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > Administrative, some technical, some networking, some advertizing, maintaining relations within the relevant fields etc. Taking into account that they don't really do peer-review and don't pay for it either, and that their editing is close to nonexistent (and as likely to introduce errors as to improve anything), all the other costs seem to be a self-perpetuating loop - the work is being done just to support itself, with no actual surplus value being produced. It's a resource leak, a circular reference in the economy.
    - afiori 7y ago
refurb 7y ago
Are you planning to publish all of your own papers in open access journals? That would be putting your money where your mouth is. I’ve seen plenty of researchers say “information should be free” and then later publish everything in closed journals because the open access ones have low impact factor. Seems hypocritical to me.
- SeanAppleby 7y ago
  When you say "low impact factor", you're referring to a combination of lack of prestige and lack of readership that leads to few citations and subsequently little influence on the field, right? If so, why is the prestigious curation of the journal that leads academics to reading your paper and taking it seriously inextricably tied to whether or not it's behind a paywall at all? What's stopping someone from building an alternative curation pipeline on top of open access journals that gives academics equal or better signal/noise to the journals they read, and a similar socially accepted prestige for getting into that curation pipeline? I get that there's not a clear path to monetization, but maybe it's possible, particularly if you could execute more targeted curation for academic subfields that are too small to have their own journals, that you could find some donors and lean on academics supporting the curation process themselves out of their seeming discontent with publishing to drive down costs.
  - refurb 7y ago
    Yes, many (but not all) of the top journals are closed. A lot of scientists talk big when it comes to open access, but when it comes time for them to publish their own work, they published in closed journals since they have a bigger impact factor. They basically put their own careers ahead of their belief in supporting open access.
    - qpiox 7y ago
      The publishers want to have some financial income from your papers. So if you want a paper to be openly accessible, so preventing them from a future income from that paper, as an author you will have to pay their potential incomes, and this can cost up to 3000$ per publication. That is a substantial sum even for professors from wealthy countries.
vasili111 7y ago
>If I had stayed in academia (I didn't partially because of the toxic nature of publishing) Which country are you from? Where are you now, in industry? Is there less toxic environment than in academia?

azangru 7y ago

> I have a PhD in physics. I have zero problem with anyone downloading any of my papers from scihub. Out of curiosity: why don't you just host your papers on your website then - or, if you do, why don't you think it's enough?

lrem 7y ago
Many (most?) do, that's where Google Scholar took its PDFs from pre-scihub.
- lorenzhs 7y ago
  Google Scholar still gets its PDFs from preprint servers and author's websites. I suppose you meant to say that Google Scholar's web indexing is how many people got their PDFs pre-scihub?
  - lrem 7y ago
    Yes, you managed to unmangle my pre-coffee reply attempt correctly :)
gewa 7y ago
Im not sure if it's legally flawless to upload the published journal article to your Website and open it up to the public. As far as i know, you're only allowed to pass it on a personal, per-request basis. This explicitly refers to the final peer reviewed article and not to the manuscript, which can make a great difference.
- prepend 7y ago
  It’s granted individually on a personal, per http request.
- Thrymr 7y ago
  Many publishers explicitly allow you to post your own articles on your personal/professional website. Some only allow "preprint" form and not the published version.
- semi-extrinsic 7y ago
  Most journals explicitly allow preprints or postprints (the final article, but without the layout of the publisher) to be posted on personal webpages.
martin_vejmelka 7y ago
> why don't you just host your papers on your website then - or, if you do, why don't you think it's enough? Most publishers prevented you from doing this as of a few years ago (I left academic research around that time). You were not allowed to post any content that contains any work by the publisher (even formatting/editing changes after first round of reviews). Thus you could only publish a "preprint" which no-one can rely on to cite because they don't know what's in the final peer-reviewed version. Some publishers are more lenient than others but there's definitely friction induced.
- improbable22 7y ago
  The norm at least in parts of physics is to update the arxiv version once the paper is accepted, with a note saying "v3: matches version to appear in XXX", with a DOI link. Where "matches" means the content, but not the journal's formatting, spelling & comma preferences, etc. (And ideally this note would also mention any substantial changes, like "new section 4 explaining..." or "derivation in 3.2 re-written, but no change to conclusions", for the benefit of those who already read v2.)
  - neffy 7y ago
    I do the same (over in comp sci.) - usually the journals will let you put pre-print articles up on arxiv, researchgate, and web pages, and then the final article - sometimes with added spelling mistakes - many of the journals have off shored the editorial process - is on their site.
  - frenchyatwork 7y ago
    I'm curious what would happen if a new paper tried to reference previous papers published in ArXiv instead of the traditional publishers. From a strictly academic perspective, I can't think of any reason why this would be a problem, apart from the existential problem it causes for traditional publishers.
    - improbable22 7y ago
      Citing papers which aren't yet published by their arxiv numbers is routine. (And, before 1991, people did the same using the author's institute's preprint numbers.) If they have appeared in a journal by the time yours is accepted by a journal, then you should add the journal info too. (Although many journals now allow you to leave the arxiv numbers as an additional part of each reference.)
jhrmnn 7y ago
I (not OP) do, https://jan.hermann.name/publications/ https://jan.hermann.name/publications/ (note the copyright notices, required by the journals, which pop up when you hover of the pdf link [didn't figure out a good alternative on mobile]). In rare cases, the journals don't allow this at all, in some cases they allow you to self-publish only the submitted manuscript, before any modifications based on peer review. As for why it's not enough—because hiring committees and funding agencies almost never take unpublished (that is, in a proper journal) manuscripts into account when evaluating you and your funding proposals. This is what needs to change in the first place to break the loop.

dna_polymerase 7y ago

Personally I don’t see the quid pro quo nature of peer review (you review in return for your stuff being reviewed) as a problem. But I dislike the fact that the publishers limit access to something that others provided without compensation. Seriously their subscription models are outrageous, nothing they provide alongside the actual content makes it worth it.

Calloutman 7y ago
You're still providing a valuable service for free. Why can't everyone get paid?
- mschuster91 7y ago
  Reviewers are getting paid from the university, as are the paper authors. The problem is that the journals exploit the taxpayers and grant providers.
  - chdlr 7y ago
    I would disagree for the first part: Review usually does not happen during paid hours or is even somehow formally accredited by universities.
    - markus92 7y ago
      At my university, reviewing is explicitly mentioned to be on your own time: we cannot write any hours for it.
      - pastage 7y ago
        That honestly seems like a bigger problem, if researchers are not paid for reviewing who will do it?
    - prepend 7y ago
      My experience is that reviewers do this as part of their duties and takes place during work hours.

matheusmoreira 7y ago

> My publishers paid me nothing, and also paid the academics who peer reviewed my paper nothing. Why are these intermediaries still around? Peer review is the real value provided by a scientitic journal and the people who do that have no reason to be loyal to these companies since they don't get paid.

DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
It's a great question. Inertia/legacy is a big part. But you're seeing new journals pop up with heavy weight support (eLife, PLoS, etc.) that are getting cited more and becoming higher impact. You also now have pre-prints like Arxive and bioarxive. I guess the point is peer-review, modern science moves slow because it takes time to disrupt the trust people put in a Nature, Science, Cell, etc publication. Once higher impact papers start going to other journals, the pre-tenure profs will feel comfortable to follow.
einpoklum 7y ago
> Why are these intermediaries still around? Because publishing a decent journal - even online but certainly in the real world - involves a whole lot of work: Administrative, some technical, some networking, some advertizing, maintaining relations within the relevant fields etc. That's all when we ignore the peer review itself which requires domain expertise.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > Administrative, some technical, some networking, some advertizing, maintaining relations within the relevant fields etc. Taking into account that they don't really do peer-review and don't pay for it either, and that their editing is close to nonexistent (and as likely to introduce errors as to improve anything), all the other costs seem to be a self-perpetuating loop - the work is being done just to support itself, with no actual surplus value being produced. It's a resource leak, a circular reference in the economy.
  - afiori 7y ago

refurb 7y ago

Are you planning to publish all of your own papers in open access journals? That would be putting your money where your mouth is. I’ve seen plenty of researchers say “information should be free” and then later publish everything in closed journals because the open access ones have low impact factor. Seems hypocritical to me.

SeanAppleby 7y ago
When you say "low impact factor", you're referring to a combination of lack of prestige and lack of readership that leads to few citations and subsequently little influence on the field, right? If so, why is the prestigious curation of the journal that leads academics to reading your paper and taking it seriously inextricably tied to whether or not it's behind a paywall at all? What's stopping someone from building an alternative curation pipeline on top of open access journals that gives academics equal or better signal/noise to the journals they read, and a similar socially accepted prestige for getting into that curation pipeline? I get that there's not a clear path to monetization, but maybe it's possible, particularly if you could execute more targeted curation for academic subfields that are too small to have their own journals, that you could find some donors and lean on academics supporting the curation process themselves out of their seeming discontent with publishing to drive down costs.
- refurb 7y ago
  Yes, many (but not all) of the top journals are closed. A lot of scientists talk big when it comes to open access, but when it comes time for them to publish their own work, they published in closed journals since they have a bigger impact factor. They basically put their own careers ahead of their belief in supporting open access.
  - qpiox 7y ago
    The publishers want to have some financial income from your papers. So if you want a paper to be openly accessible, so preventing them from a future income from that paper, as an author you will have to pay their potential incomes, and this can cost up to 3000$ per publication. That is a substantial sum even for professors from wealthy countries.

vasili111 7y ago

>If I had stayed in academia (I didn't partially because of the toxic nature of publishing) Which country are you from? Where are you now, in industry? Is there less toxic environment than in academia?