> With the cost of publishing now almost zero, there would still be value in the service of evaluating papers to find the good ones, but I don't think any of the research publishers are really providing that service effectively anymore.
Yet career progression still depends on this service. It is not clear to me how this could be replaced by PageRank.
Posted Aug 1, 2010 21:26 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)
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it could be changed to be based on the number of citations of your papers by other papers (which is arguably a better indication of your works worth than simply the number of papers published)
but if you want to count the papers published, that's pretty simple to do, even without the current publishing companies, simply document what you've published.
this doesn't include information about how good the papers are, but I have my doubts about the existing publishers really doing that anyway.
peer reviews
Posted Aug 1, 2010 21:27 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)
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if you really need to hae things reviewed, it would be better to have a system where the person submiting the paper pays to have it reviewed rather than the current system where readers have to pay for access to it.
peer reviews
Posted Aug 1, 2010 23:27 UTC (Sun) by corbet (editor, #1)
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Actually, much peer-reviewed publishing has "page charges" to be paid by the author(s) (or their institution). The publishing industry does its best to collect from everybody involved.
peer reviews
Posted Aug 1, 2010 23:45 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)
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how much, if any, of this money gets to the people doing the reviews?
peer reviews
Posted Aug 1, 2010 23:47 UTC (Sun) by corbet (editor, #1)
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Zero.
peer reviews
Posted Aug 2, 2010 0:24 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)
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what I expected, so it sounds like there should be room for someone to setup something new in this space.
one problem is figuring out how to minimize abuse, but the bigger problem is getting academia to accept it.
University libraries
Posted Aug 2, 2010 2:53 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)
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Professors who contribute to non-Open-Access journals are likely to get the stink eye from the librarian every time they walk in the university library. Library budgets are getting clobbered by increasing subscription prices, as the publishers sell university's own work back to it.
If you're in the USA, please support the Federal Research Public Access Act -- this would at least stop the abuses where federally-funded research is concerned.