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posted by janrinok on Wednesday May 30 2018, @10:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the making-a-stand dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

Academics share machine-learning research freely. Taxpayers should not have to pay twice to read our findings

[...] In my own field of machine learning, itself an academic descendant of Gauss’s pioneering work, modern data are no longer just planetary observations but medical images, spoken language, internet documents and more. The results are medical diagnoses, recommender systems, and whether driverless cars see stop signs or not. Machine learning is the field that underpins the current revolution in artificial intelligence.

Machine learning is a young and technologically astute field. It does not have the historical traditions of other fields and its academics have seen no need for the closed-access publishing model. The community itself created, collated, and reviewed the research it carried out. We used the internet to create new journals that were freely available and made no charge to authors. The era of subscriptions and leatherbound volumes seemed to be behind us.

The public already pays taxes that fund our research. Why should people have to pay again to read the results? Colleagues in less well-funded universities also benefit. Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, has as much access to the leading machine-learning research as Harvard or MIT. The ability to pay no longer determines the ability to play.

Machine learning has demonstrated that an academic field can not only survive, but thrive, without the involvement of commercial publishers. But this has not stopped traditional publishers from entering the market. Our success has caught their attention. Most recently, the publishing conglomerate Springer Nature announced a new journal targeted at the community called Nature Machine Intelligence. The publisher now has 53 journals that bear the Nature name.

[...] at the time of writing, more than 3,000 researchers, including many leading names in the field from both industry and academia, have signed a statement refusing to submit, review or edit for this new journal. We see no role for closed access or author-fee publication in the future of machine-learning research.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2018/may/29/why-thousands-of-ai-researchers-are-boycotting-the-new-nature-journal


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  • (Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday May 31 2018, @01:53AM (6 children)

    by Mykl (1112) on Thursday May 31 2018, @01:53AM (#686561)

    True, but they also sound like virtue-signalling whiners when they do it.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JNCF on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:30AM

    by JNCF (4317) on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:30AM (#686587) Journal

    What something sounds like is quite subjective. Maybe this is case where the problem stems from the listener, rather than the speakers?

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 31 2018, @05:11AM (4 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday May 31 2018, @05:11AM (#686602) Journal

    Only if you understand nothing about scientific publishing and the fact that the cost of many journals is outrageous these days and controlled by a few profit-driven companies.

    If you realize all that and that it's possible for academics to band together like they already do and be an editorial board for a journal with more open policies, it makes perfect sense to point out to the profiteering of mainstream journals and encourage others to find better avenues to share research.

    • (Score: 1) by The Vocal Minority on Thursday May 31 2018, @01:59PM (2 children)

      by The Vocal Minority (2765) on Thursday May 31 2018, @01:59PM (#686729) Journal

      No I think Mykl has something of a point. There does appear to be an issue with the open access movement with respect to acknowledging the problem of predatory journals:
      https://doi.org/10.11613/BM.2017.029 [doi.org]

      Ultimately open access or something similar is the way publishing of research, particularly publicly funded research, needs to go. However solutions to problems such as this need to be found. Unfortunately (if Beall is to be believed) the open access movement seems to have adopted some of the "neo-marxist" approach to advocacy, including virtue signalling and so forth, which makes dealing with the problems of open access publishing more difficult.

      • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:30PM (1 child)

        by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:30PM (#686809) Journal

        Huh? Sorry, but do you know anything about academic publishing? You do realize there are plenty of closed-access predatory journals and publishers too, right? The author of that article in your link obviously doesn't acknowledge that this was an issue long before the internet too. There were always publishers willing to take your money to effectively allow you to self-publish.

        And there are still lots of journals and publishers out there who will take your money. This is not specific to the open-access movement. Yes, it is a problem, but it hasn't been caused by open access... it's just predatory people in general.

        I'll agree with you that there is a difference in that many open-access journals have to charge some fees, so it can be difficult for IDIOTS to figure out which journals are reputable and which are not. I get spammed by dozens of crappy journals and publishers every week. I know they're spam. I know they're crap. If I couldn't publish in a legitimate journal with a known reputation, I wouldn't pay one of those scammers.

        You're basically saying that some people with graduate degrees can't figure out that they shouldn't listen to the equivalent of Nigerian scammer emails.

        Unfortunately (if Beall is to be believed) the open access movement seems to have adopted some of the "neo-marxist" approach to advocacy, including virtue signalling and so forth, which makes dealing with the problems of open access publishing more difficult.

        I really have no idea what you're talking about. Open access means simply that research is available to all. That's it. If that's "neo-Marxist" to advocate for such a thing, then I guess science is fundamentally "neo-Marxist," since the entire foundation of modern science was laid in the 17th century through societies and scholars who SHARED scientific results.

        • (Score: 1) by The Vocal Minority on Friday June 01 2018, @09:28AM

          by The Vocal Minority (2765) on Friday June 01 2018, @09:28AM (#687163) Journal

          I don't claim to be an expert and I thought that was pretty clear in how I wrote my comment but, really, it was in no way a comment someone would make with no knowledge of academic publishing! You have also managed to completely misunderstand the point I was making - I was not saying that open access is "Neo-Marxist" (and in fact stated I was generally in support of the idea), I was using that to describe the tactics used by supporters of open access as described by Beall and linking that to the the post you were replying to. I've not experience that myself - until now I guess.

          To address your other points:
          1. Predatory publishing in this context refers to the behaviour of some open access journals/publishers specifically. Whist other dubious publishing practices exist the driver in this case is the charging of fees to publish.
          2. The majority of open access journals use the gold model which is fees changed to publish*
          3. Good for you that you can identify the scammers, but obviously some do publish, higher degrees do not automatically make one immune.

          * data a few years old and from memory only.

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday May 31 2018, @02:29PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday May 31 2018, @02:29PM (#686748) Homepage
      The problem is that there are too many journals that, in order to protect themselves from each other, have adopted predatory practices (not least incompatible style guides, of course). As you're suggesting, the solution must be for the academics to unite and come up with a new independent (family of) journal(s) with enough support that it will be able to defend itself against those currently in the market.

      This post is brought to you by the number 927 - if that means nothing you you, have a wooooosh.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves