[Open-access] Crowdsourcing request + BMJ OA Policy

Tue Mar 25 08:07:41 UTC 2014

I think it's probably more that authors are frightened to post their final
versions. But we can ask -  Any impediment is too much. And maybe this list
can give a more authoritative picture - that's why we set it up.

And - note - I don't mind posting material that is then communally
corrected. It's a discourse , not a formal presentation.

On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 8:02 AM, Mike Taylor <mike at indexdata.com> wrote:

> "arXiV works. Many submitters then update their papers to reflect
> better versions. Except that this then the publishers tell scientist
> to remove these."
>
> [citation needed].
>
> If you can show me evidence of this, I promise to blog the heck out of it.
>
> -- Mike.
>
>
>
>
>
> On 25 March 2014 07:53, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> > I completely agree with Bjoern. I have come to the same conclusion and
> was
> > preparing a series of blog posts on it. I'll phrase it differently...
> >
> > The Opportunity cost of all Open Access - as currently practised - is
> huge.
> > [The opportunity cost of Closed Access is several times that].
> >
> > In other words we are spending huge amounts of time on non-science which
> > does not in anyway enhance the process of science. Science isn't BETTER
> > because it's in an Open Access journal. Researchers still spend time
> > reformatting references, redrawing diagrams because the journal wants to
> > compete with other journals. It's appalling that the publication industry
> > has not long ago adopted or created universal ways of authoring.
> >
> > But it's worse. The process of publishing stifles scientific
> communication.
> > Why have journals? because publishers want to compete, not because it's
> an
> > efficient modern process. And the green-OA evangelists repeat the mantra
> of
> > the sacred version-of-reference. This is nonsense. Science is always
> capable
> > of improvement. I deposit my software daily. Mat Todd deposits his
> > antimalarial chemical data daily. If either are capable of improvement we
> > improve it on a daily basis. You couldn't do this in the nineteenth
> century
> > but you can now.
> >
> > So journal-based publication and publisher-based publication have vast
> > opportunity costs. No innovation, little discoverability (we supinely
> wait
> > for Google to index our science) , no semantics, dead science in pixels
> > rather than live objects.
> >
> > The only place it's done properly is arXiv. The APCs costs are trivial (7
> > USD - compare 7000 Elsevier). Authors WANT it (they don't want journal
> based
> > publication). There's no precious formatting. Word and LaTeX are totally
> > sufficient. I have never heard of a scientist who has refused to read a
> > paper because it's in LaTeX or Word rather than double-column,
> > unreformattable, landscape PDF (one of the worst visual interfaces ever).
> > Tables split across 2 pages ?? ARGGH. Diagrams measured with a ruler.
> data
> > omitted because of "space". three graphs crammed into one diagram etc...
> >
> > arXiV works. Many submitters then update their papers to reflect better
> > versions. Except that this then the publishers tell scientist to remove
> > these. You couldn't make this up. Publishers of all sorts now map onto
> Ray
> > Bradbury's firemen in Fahrenheit 451 or Orwell's Ministry of Truth.
> >
> > We are at the start of the Digital Enlightenment. It's touched
> government,
> > creative arts, and many areas outside academia. There Open means true
> > OKD-Open - free to use, reuse and redistribute and offered as a growing
> > point for innovation and community building. It's meritocratic and
> > democratic.
> >
> > Open Access looks backward - it is not part of the Digital Enlightenment.
> > It's authoritarian and debases the author.
> >
> > Bjoern - I am happy to be in the vanguard.
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 1:24 PM, Bjoern Brembs <b.brembs at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Monday, March 24, 2014, 10:53:59 AM, you wrote:
> >>
> >> > That's why publishers so often do things that we hate: the
> >> > fundamentally do not want what we want. It's that simple.
> >>
> >> Precisely!
> >>
> >> In fact, after Richard's interview, I'm seriously considering phasing
> out
> >> all editorial support I've given the new startup publishers. It was fun
> and
> >> some of them were/are very innovative and full of smart and dedicated
> >> people.
> >>
> >> But in the end, I'm slowly starting to realize that it only increases
> the
> >> Balkanization of our infrastructure. Moreover, as we see now, the
> constant,
> >> ongoing license debates will not go away - in fact the more publishers
> and
> >> journals we have, the worse it will be as we'd have to take on every
> single
> >> one of them! And the news this morning about retracting a paper for
> legal
> >> reasons by Frontiers: I mean, that sort of thing just opens so many
> doors,
> >> it seems like if we continue to go down this road of ever more
> publishers
> >> and ever more journals each and everyone doing what they want, soon
> we'll be
> >> bogged down completely just to patch up all the different holes that
> start
> >> springing up all over the place.
> >>
> >> Technically, taking care that text, data and code are accessible and
> >> re-usable is a piece of cake. Do we really want to spend our time
> telling
> >> others how to do it right, correcting them only to then turn around and
> do
> >> the same thing all over again, ad adfinitum, rather than getting it
> right to
> >> begin with?
> >>
> >> Bjoern
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Björn Brembs
> >> ---------------------------------------------
> >> http://brembs.net
> >> Neurogenetics
> >> Universität Regensburg
> >> Germany
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> open-access at lists.okfn.org
> >> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access
> >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-access
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Peter Murray-Rust
> > Reader in Molecular Informatics
> > Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> > University of Cambridge
> > CB2 1EW, UK
> > +44-1223-763069
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > open-access mailing list
> > open-access at lists.okfn.org
> > https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-access
> >
>

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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