8 ms·

Im not sure why scientists are still publishing in Elsevier journals nowadays. Pre-internet, OK, but now I think journals should be following the model used by

by hokua 15y ago

Im not sure why scientists are still publishing in Elsevier journals nowadays. Pre-internet, OK, but now I think journals should be following the model used by the Journal of Machine Learning Research, open on the internet.

Homunculiheaded 15y ago
Exactly. The only thing holding academics back is themselves. The current state of academic publishing is ridiculous. I recently submitted something that I had to perform full copy-editing and formatting for. I know this is standard practice in engineering, but that's what publishers used to get paid for. In the end I'll have done the research, the writing, the editing and the formatting but of course the end product will in all likelihood be behind a paywall (this is sort of my own stupidity for rushing to get something published under the advice of a prof). There's no reason individual academic communities can't decide that they should establish there own reputable and open access journals.
pedrobeltrao 15y ago
Scientists still publish Elsevier because of the so called "impact factor" of some of these journals. As a young researcher currently looking for tenure-track positions in academia I can tell you that it is still extremely important to publish in some of these journals (ex Cell). Unfortunately there are still very few (or none) open access journals that have the same perceived impact. I try to publish in PLoS journals or other open access journals as much as I can but given the chance to publish in higher impact journals I have to take it or risk not having a job in the future. Once you have the job you need to secure funding and so there is always pressure to publish in the "best" possible journal. The ridiculous thing about this situation is that would be fairly easy to create a new open access and highly prestigious journal in any field if everyone would switch to publishing in these new journals at the same time. You would probably just need to convince some of the leaders in the field to do it. This was how PLoS was born in fact. Unfortunately for the PhD students and postdocs it is hard to do anything about it.
billswift 15y ago
Academia is mostly about signalling, not entirely, but mostly (see Robin Hanson's http://www.overcomingbias.com http://www.overcomingbias.com posts on academia). Making it difficult and expensive to publish increases the signalling effect and helps keep out the riff-raff.

by hokua 15y ago

Homunculiheaded 15y ago

Exactly. The only thing holding academics back is themselves. The current state of academic publishing is ridiculous. I recently submitted something that I had to perform full copy-editing and formatting for. I know this is standard practice in engineering, but that's what publishers used to get paid for. In the end I'll have done the research, the writing, the editing and the formatting but of course the end product will in all likelihood be behind a paywall (this is sort of my own stupidity for rushing to get something published under the advice of a prof). There's no reason individual academic communities can't decide that they should establish there own reputable and open access journals.

pedrobeltrao 15y ago

Scientists still publish Elsevier because of the so called "impact factor" of some of these journals. As a young researcher currently looking for tenure-track positions in academia I can tell you that it is still extremely important to publish in some of these journals (ex Cell). Unfortunately there are still very few (or none) open access journals that have the same perceived impact. I try to publish in PLoS journals or other open access journals as much as I can but given the chance to publish in higher impact journals I have to take it or risk not having a job in the future. Once you have the job you need to secure funding and so there is always pressure to publish in the "best" possible journal. The ridiculous thing about this situation is that would be fairly easy to create a new open access and highly prestigious journal in any field if everyone would switch to publishing in these new journals at the same time. You would probably just need to convince some of the leaders in the field to do it. This was how PLoS was born in fact. Unfortunately for the PhD students and postdocs it is hard to do anything about it.

billswift 15y ago

Academia is mostly about signalling, not entirely, but mostly (see Robin Hanson's http://www.overcomingbias.com http://www.overcomingbias.com posts on academia). Making it difficult and expensive to publish increases the signalling effect and helps keep out the riff-raff.