from the paywall-or-not-paywall-that-is-the-question dept.
A new global study from AIP Publishing, the American Physical Society (APS),IOP Publishing (IOPP) and Optica Publishing Group (formerly OSA)indicates that the majority of early career researchers (ECRs) [Researchers with 1–5 years of experience] want to publish open access (OA) but they need grants from funding agencies to do so.
[...] 67% of ECRs say that making their work openly available is important to them. Yet, 70% have been prevented from publishing OA because they have not been able to access the necessary monies from funding agencies to cover the cost. When asked why ECRs favour OA publishing, agreeing with its principles and benefitting from a wider readership were cited as the top two reasons.
Daniel Keirs, head of journal strategy at IOP Publishing said: "The OA views of the next generation of physicists are important as they are the harbingers of change when it comes to scholarly communications. What we see from this study is that ECRs believe that OA is the future, and they want to be able to reap the benefits of unrestricted access to research. Good progress has been made, but the transition to full OA must neither put researchers at a disadvantage nor disregard the costs necessary to produce, protect and preserve the quality and integrity of scholarly articles and the scientific record."
(Score: 5, Informative) by kazzie on Friday July 29 2022, @06:35AM
For those that may not be aware:
Academic journals typically charge (more) for publishing an open-access paper, to offset the loss of income from charging people to access the article.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2022, @06:47AM (4 children)
And, for those not aware, most new memberships to SoylentNews are being blocked by janrinok, to prevent publishing open source, and as a pure AC. Quite sad, really.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Friday July 29 2022, @07:06AM (3 children)
No new memberships have been blocked. However, sock puppets are being blocked.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Jan's_Annoyance on Friday July 29 2022, @07:09AM
This new membership is about to be blocked, nullified, banned, censored.
Wonder why you will never hear from me, again? Censorship.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ghost-of-starchus on Friday July 29 2022, @07:21AM
One truly wonders, how can janrinok inerrently tell the sock-puppets from the new members? Best ban them all, and let God sort them out, eh?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Fluffy on Friday July 29 2022, @07:33AM
Love these little talks we have, janrinok you master censorer, you!
(Score: -1, Troll) by SojournerTruth on Friday July 29 2022, @07:47AM (1 child)
No one goes here anymore, because it is too crowded.
Yogi Berra.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Opportunist on Friday July 29 2022, @10:40AM
Create fewer sockpuppets and it will be far less crowded in a heartbeat.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Friday July 29 2022, @08:35AM (3 children)
So, early career people, they have no citations. So they want to get cited and of course want to get published in some high quality journals. But then maybe they are doing just boring things that only 3 others care about and have grant access through their supervisors, mostly. The supervisors don't care about Open Access for everything because they (the community of researchers) already have access to the other journals anyway (just go to university library and you have access). And it's more important to get published in the niche journal for the field than some larger open access one.
Long story short, OA readership is not going to make some ECR a notable person but like everyone early in their career, sometimes we think we are cowboys on the frontier and want to make a name for ourselves. The reality, like science, is more methodological and pragmatic.
As for physicists, well, for every one place available for a postdoc, there are 5 candidates. This means that 80+% don't end up working in the field anyway. But that's not necessarily a bad thing - physicists tend to be good problem solvers and are useful everywhere you need a brain ;)
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday July 29 2022, @08:43AM
On the other hand, the added value of *journal* is minimal. It's just some stupid gatekeeper arrangement that most academic recruiters use to cut down the number of applications. Might as well just push to arxiv and count citations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2022, @12:53PM
Don't downplay the philosophical angle. As you say, if you are an ECR in an academic setting, you unfortunately need to pay attention to what journals you send your stuff to and play the Q score or whatever metric they're using these days. However, if your career doesn't depend upon publication and you aren't as worried about impact factors and whatnot, the desire to publish OA can have more relative importance. You can do both with some journals, but now we're back to what the article is about, where the journal will list it as OA if you pay an extra thousand bucks or so. My career hasn't depended upon publications, but I certainly would get gold stars for doing it and better chances for quicker career advancement, but definitely nothing like "publish or perish." I certainly strongly feel that I would like my next journal paper to be published OA because I have derived so much value over my career having access to free and open source information. (The rub here is that I probably won't write another journal article before I retire, but I probably will write more conference papers, where thus far I have not seen an OA option offered)
I would love to see the academic institutions take a principled stance and cover the extra OA fees out of overhead. You can argue whether they should have to, or whose responsibility it should be, but in the meantime they should just do it. The amount of money it would be would be tiny compared to the institution overhead they bring in.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2022, @03:47PM
> As for physicists, well, for every one place available for a postdoc, there are 5 candidates.
You are talking about PhD oversupply. And that is a fact - but having been in unis for 20+ years actual physicists are still about the same number as always: not many. Most of the PhD oversupply seems to be for foreign kids to get visas and go onto more training(!) or good paying jobs... that should be going to Americans (or native country).
In other words, a grad degree is a path out of shitholery and into the West, and physics can fuck itself for all they care. Squeeze out 5 turds in low quality journals and get a piece of paper proving you play nice with corporate clowns. They do it worse, they do it cheaper, so what's not to like?
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday July 29 2022, @09:23AM (1 child)
I myself try to publish open access, but as others pointed out the decision will be ultimately pragmatic. OTOH, pre-prints are universally accepted by all journal including medical ones (well, most of them), the latter traditionally being hesitant. I consider it a criminal act as an academic researcher, if you do not put out a pre-print. This and scihub solve the accessibility issue. This would be my recommendation for an early career scientist as well. If you want to spread the word, maybe put up some of your talks on youtube.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2022, @03:58PM
I submitted to an open access journal for the first time a few months ago.
The reviews were... shocking. There was no review - correct a spelling, change some wording, from 3 reviewers. If that's the standard then peer review is over. Training is already over. Untrained students churn out copy to get their PhD and everyone gets paid. Except... the product is useless.
I think we're due a Moneyball moment in science. Nobody can tell a good science from a bad science, so mispricing is rampant. We have waist-coated professors that talk a lot in meetings making $300-400k, while hairy programmers trying to solve problems get nickel-and-dimed then turfed out for not looking the part.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by EEMac on Friday July 29 2022, @10:19AM
- Richard Stallman, The Right to Read [gnu.org]
(Score: 4, Touché) by RedGreen on Friday July 29 2022, @01:14PM
"but the transition to full OA must neither put researchers at a disadvantage nor disregard the costs necessary to produce, protect and preserve the quality and integrity of scholarly articles and the scientific record."
I have simple solution, since the funding of more than a few of these researchers comes from government. They can consider that their payment for the work being done and should be required to give it back to the public who paid for it, not putting it behind paywalls for the benefit of some scumbag corporation. Those who work for and have it paid for by the corporations, no actually those parasite corporations get to deduct all that from the bottom line on the taxes paid as R&D so that thought of them having paid a cent for anything is false, therefore my going to say they pay for it is false too. In short the public always pays for it at all times fuck the corporations, the researchers and their whining how hard done by they are.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen