[Open-access] Crowdsourcing request + BMJ OA Policy

Tue Mar 25 08:15:06 UTC 2014

On 25 March 2014 08:07, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> And - note - I don't mind posting material that is then communally
> corrected. It's a discourse , not a formal presentation.

I agree, but only so long as there is explicit and robust versioning.
I don't want to be in a position where I cite Halibutwrangler (2013)
as saying X only to find in 2014 that his paper now says Y. I need to
be able to cite Halibutwrangler (2013:version 12) and know it won't
change.

Of course the old version-of-record system is just the degenerate
version of this scheme, where the only version number is 1.

-- Mike.

>
>
> 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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>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > 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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>
>
>
>
> --
> 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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