[math-fun] OT: Elsevier
[OT, because this is not a "fun" subject] http://www.thecostofknowledge.com/ I got aware of this through the (German, not in-depth) news article: http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/0,1518,820819,00.html
This is only one symptom of a much larger disease -- the exorbitant cost of higher education -- very little of which money ends up in professors' or grad students' pockets. The solution to the journal problem is "just say no" & publish only in open journals. Tell your politicians to make govt-sponsored research available to all w/o the Elsevier tax. Make your research available via Wikipedia & the Khan Academy. It took years, but U.S. patents finally became available on the internet, so there is no reason why other innovation publications can't do the same. At 02:37 AM 3/16/2012, Joerg Arndt wrote:
[OT, because this is not a "fun" subject]
http://www.thecostofknowledge.com/
I got aware of this through the (German, not in-depth) news article: http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/0,1518,820819,00.html
[off-list as "no fun"] * Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> [Mar 16. 2012 16:28]:
This is only one symptom of a much larger disease -- the exorbitant cost of higher education -- very little of which money ends up in professors' or grad students' pockets.
I do think a specific issue, even if part of a larger problem, should be (usually) addressed as such. Case in question: addressing the whole issue at once makes it easy for lobbyists to paint you as having a dubious agenda (think "communist").
The solution to the journal problem is "just say no" & publish only in open journals.
Apparently this is problematical for young scientists in some areas where the top journals are just the expensive ones. Personnaly I can live with low-price journals (such as, a random example, the Fibonacci Quarterly) that 1. allow to put the preprint online 2. have their older volumes open access (with moving wall) Some highly reputed Journals offer an open acess option as well, you just have to throw in about 3000 Dollars. arxive is a must, but how many entities view arxiv "preprints" as equivalent to "published" even if in a perfect shape?
Tell your politicians to make govt-sponsored research available to all w/o the Elsevier tax.
Europe is on the brink of eating ACTA, SOPA, the US (software/ideas) patent system. It is (in my opinion) optimistic to assume that the open access issue can be communicated to a nontrivial amount of politicians (actually any issue that requires the activity of two functional brain cells for five consecutive minutes). The EU committee on legal affairs (my translation from "EU Rechtsausschuss") just had a vote regarding orphaned works and the decision was highly surpring in that participation in the vote was 113 per cent. The vote will not be repeated.
Make your research available via Wikipedia & the Khan Academy.
Activities like this (Khan Academy, arxiv, and others) will in the end replace the current system of publications (and partly teaching). However, I do not expect to see the complete change in my lifetime. Wikipedia is certainly no place to publish scientific results (and "original research" is an explicit no for the articles).
It took years, but U.S. patents finally became available on the internet, so there is no reason why other innovation publications can't do the same.
Very different thing (patent's are issued by state bureaucracy). Journals are company owned: even if everything would be published as open access starting tomorrow we'd still have to wait 75(?) years to even have the theoretical chance to make the existing corpus (of today) freely available. Sorry for the all-over-the-place-ness I am a bit to lazy to rearrange everything (I'd likely mess things completely up in the process). Regards, jj
At 02:37 AM 3/16/2012, Joerg Arndt wrote:
[OT, because this is not a "fun" subject]
http://www.thecostofknowledge.com/
I got aware of this through the (German, not in-depth) news article: http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/0,1518,820819,00.html
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
Omitted from the list: (1) won't buy, (2) recommend that library discontinue subscription. -- Gene
________________________________ From: Joerg Arndt <arndt@jjj.de> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 2:37 AM Subject: [math-fun] OT: Elsevier
[OT, because this is not a "fun" subject]
http://www.thecostofknowledge.com/
I got aware of this through the (German, not in-depth) news article: http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/0,1518,820819,00.html
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
I forgot to mention my favorite idea for mathematics publication in the future: Wikiproofia. A mechanism built into Wikipedia that can mechanically _check_ submitted proofs. This needs to be done anyway, to 1) raise the standards of mathematical proofs; and 2) reduce the load on peers for peer-review. The peer review then becomes more editorial & stylistic rather than proof-checking, but with a nod to Hilbert, perhaps elegance is better left to the tailors... At 10:44 AM 3/16/2012, Eugene Salamin wrote:
Omitted from the list: (1) won't buy, (2) recommend that library discontinue subscription.
-- Gene
________________________________ From: Joerg Arndt <arndt@jjj.de> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 2:37 AM Subject: [math-fun] OT: Elsevier
[OT, because this is not a "fun" subject]
http://www.thecostofknowledge.com/
I got aware of this through the (German, not in-depth) news article: http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/0,1518,820819,00.html
="Henry Baker" <hbaker1@pipeline.com> mechanically _check_ submitted proofs
I agree this is a good idea, but have wondered how far off the dream is. To get a sense of this, I considered some simple concrete cases, such as making mechanically checkable versions of familiar proofs of things like: The game of Hex cannot end in a draw, and in fact is a 1st player win. The number of partitions of N into distinct parts equals that of N into odd parts. Contemporary proofs generally consist of prose designed to convince human readers, with backgrounds somewhat comparable to the authors', of the validity of the thesis. They rely on a vast foundation of common sense and shared context, much as other natural language understanding does. Checking the prose that currently is accepted as a proof seems as challenging as passing a Turing test, or at least understanding a news report. For example with Hex we normally start already knowing what "game" and "draw" mean, and can quickly get concepts like "connected path of cells" and see right away how those paths can be geometrically mutually exclusive, and then finally grok "strategy stealing". But then, given that the validation of any "natural proof" must rely on this considerable hidden context, why would we think we can really trust that a proof checks out just because HAL 9000 says it's OK? On the other hand we could instead try to place a greater burden of proof on the authors to express their arguments in a more formal way. However to avoid vast amounts of redundant effort an investment in building up a sharable semantic infrastructure would be needed. For example we could create standard libraries of formal definitions of things like "game" and "path" so each proof doesn't require complete wheel reinvention. But this seems more or less equivalent to capturing the shared foundation that natural language discourse depends on, so it's not clear requiring more formality would really reduce the overall effort needed. Is Wikiproofia's first customer release date inevitably post-singularity?
On 3/18/12, Marc LeBrun <mlb@well.com> wrote:
="Henry Baker" <hbaker1@pipeline.com> mechanically _check_ submitted proofs
I agree this is a good idea, but have wondered how far off the dream is. ... Is Wikiproofia's first customer release date inevitably post-singularity?
There are certainly plenty of projects aimed in this direction --- just search on "automated theorem proving". But I think they're unrealistic, for much the same reasons Marc advanced. If you can't solve the problem, look for an easier one instead. In this case, the easier problem is automatic verification that a computer program implements its specification. Here the universe is extremely circumscribed, and well documented. When we've got that question satisfactorily answered, then it might be time to look seriously at automated theorem proving. I have a vague memory of some bigwig in the UK MoD --- or maybe it was the USA DoD --- announcing grandiosely in public that in future all defence contracts would include a clause demanding that any software be proved correct. That was some time in the 1970's. When we'd all stopped laughing, we said --- quietly, of course --- don't hold your breath! But after all the ballyhoo has been deflated, and the journalists and politicians have departed to look for other mirages to chase, things do eventually come quietly to pass in a lab somewhere out of the spotlight. In the end, Deep Blue defeated Kasparov ... Fred Lunnon
FYI -- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/science/open-science-challenges-journal-tr... January 16, 2012 Cracking Open the Scientific Process By THOMAS LIN The New England Journal of Medicine marks its 200th anniversary this year with a timeline celebrating the scientific advances first described in its pages: the stethoscope (1816), the use of ether for anesthesia (1846), and disinfecting hands and instruments before surgery (1867), among others. For centuries, this is how science has operated  through research done in private, then submitted to science and medical journals to be reviewed by peers and published for the benefit of other researchers and the public at large. But to many scientists, the longevity of that process is nothing to celebrate. The system is hidebound, expensive and elitist, they say. Peer review can take months, journal subscriptions can be prohibitively costly, and a handful of gatekeepers limit the flow of information. It is an ideal system for sharing knowledge, said the quantum physicist Michael Nielsen, only Âif youÂre stuck with 17th-century technology. Dr. Nielsen and other advocates for Âopen science say science can accomplish much more, much faster, in an environment of friction-free collaboration over the Internet. And despite a host of obstacles, including the skepticism of many established scientists, their ideas are gaining traction. Open-access archives and journals like arXiv and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) have sprung up in recent years. GalaxyZoo, a citizen-science site, has classified millions of objects in space, discovering characteristics that have led to a raft of scientific papers. On the collaborative blog MathOverflow, mathematicians earn reputation points for contributing to solutions; in another math experiment dubbed the Polymath Project, mathematicians commenting on the Fields medalist Timothy GowerÂs blog in 2009 found a new proof for a particularly complicated theorem in just six weeks. And a social networking site called ResearchGate  where scientists can answer one anotherÂs questions, share papers and find collaborators  is rapidly gaining popularity. Editors of traditional journals say open science sounds good, in theory. In practice, Âthe scientific community itself is quite conservative, said Maxine Clarke, executive editor of the commercial journal Nature, who added that the traditional published paper is still viewed as Âa unit to award grants or assess jobs and tenure. Dr. Nielsen, 38, who left a successful science career to write ÂReinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science, agreed that scientists have been Âvery inhibited and slow to adopt a lot of online tools. But he added that open science was coalescing into Âa bit of a movement. On Thursday, 450 bloggers, journalists, students, scientists, librarians and programmers will converge on North Carolina State University (and thousands more will join in online) for the sixth annual ScienceOnline conference. Science is moving to a collaborative model, said Bora Zivkovic, a chronobiology blogger who is a founder of the conference, Âbecause it works better in the current ecosystem, in the Web-connected world. Indeed, he said, scientists who attend the conference should not be seen as competing with one another. ÂLindsay Lohan is our competitor, he continued. ÂWe have to get her off the screen and get science there instead. Facebook for Scientists? ÂI want to make science more open. I want to change this, said Ijad Madisch, 31, the Harvard-trained virologist and computer scientist behind ResearchGate, the social networking site for scientists. Started in 2008 with few features, it was reshaped with feedback from scientists. Its membership has mushroomed to more than 1.3 million, Dr. Madisch said, and it has attracted several million dollars in venture capital from some of the original investors of Twitter, eBay and Facebook. A year ago, ResearchGate had 12 employees. Now it has 70 and is hiring. The company, based in Berlin, is modeled after Silicon Valley startups. Lunch, drinks and fruit are free, and every employee owns part of the company. The Web site is a sort of mash-up of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, with profile pages, comments, groups, job listings, and Âlike and Âfollow buttons (but without baby photos, cat videos and thinly veiled self-praise). Only scientists are invited to pose and answer questions  a rule that should not be hard to enforce, with discussion threads about topics like polymerase chain reactions that only a scientist could love. Scientists populate their ResearchGate profiles with their real names, professional details and publications  data that the site uses to suggest connections with other members. Users can create public or private discussion groups, and share papers and lecture materials. ResearchGate is also developing a Âreputation score to reward members for online contributions. ResearchGate offers a simple yet effective end run around restrictive journal access with its Âself-archiving repository. Since most journals allow scientists to link to their submitted papers on their own Web sites, Dr. Madisch encourages his users to do so on their ResearchGate profiles. In addition to housing 350,000 papers (and counting), the platform provides a way to search 40 million abstracts and papers from other science databases. In 2011, ResearchGate reports, 1,620,849 connections were made, 12,342 questions answered and 842,179 publications shared. Greg Phelan, chairman of the chemistry department at the State University of New York, Cortland, used it to find new collaborators, get expert advice and read journal articles not available through his small university. Now he spends up to two hours a day, five days a week, on the site. Dr. Rajiv Gupta, a radiology instructor who supervised Dr. Madisch at Harvard and was one of ResearchGateÂs first investors, called it Âa great site for serious research and research collaboration, adding that he hoped it would never be contaminated Âwith pop culture and chit-chat. Dr. Gupta called Dr. Madisch the Âquintessential networking guy  if thereÂs a Bill Clinton of the science world, it would be him. The Paper Trade Dr. Sönke H. Bartling, a researcher at the German Cancer Research Center who is editing a book on ÂScience 2.0, wrote that for scientists to move away from what is currently Âa highly integrated and controlled process, a new system for assessing the value of research is needed. If open access is to be achieved through blogs, what good is it, he asked, Âif one does not get reputation and money from them? Changing the status quo  opening data, papers, research ideas and partial solutions to anyone and everyone  is still far more idea than reality. As the established journals argue, they provide a critical service that does not come cheap. ÂI would love for it to be free, said Alan Leshner, executive publisher of the journal Science, but Âwe have to cover the costs. Those costs hover around $40 million a year to produce his nonprofit flagship journal, with its more than 25 editors and writers, sales and production staff, and offices in North America, Europe and Asia, not to mention print and distribution expenses. (Like other media organizations, Science has responded to the decline in advertising revenue by enhancing its Web offerings, and most of its growth comes from online subscriptions.) Similarly, Nature employs a large editorial staff to manage the peer-review process and to select and polish Âstartling and new papers for publication, said Dr. Clarke, its editor. And it costs money to screen for plagiarism and spot-check data Âto make sure they havenÂt been manipulated. Peer-reviewed open-access journals, like Nature Communications and PLoS One, charge their authors publication fees  $5,000 and $1,350, respectively  to defray their more modest expenses. The largest journal publisher, Elsevier, whose products include The Lancet, Cell and the subscription-based online archive ScienceDirect, has drawn considerable criticism from open-access advocates and librarians, who are especially incensed by its support for the Research Works Act, introduced in Congress last month, which seeks to protect publishers rights by effectively restricting access to research papers and data. In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times last week, Michael B. Eisen, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a founder of the Public Library of Science, wrote that if the bill passes, Âtaxpayers who already paid for the research would have to pay again to read the results. In an e-mail interview, Alicia Wise, director of universal access at Elsevier, wrote that Âprofessional curation and preservation of data is, like professional publishing, neither easy nor inexpensive. And Tom Reller, a spokesman for Elsevier, commented on Dr. EisenÂs blog, ÂGovernment mandates that require private-sector information products to be made freely available undermine the industryÂs ability to recoup these investments. Mr. Zivkovic, the ScienceOnline co-founder and a blog editor for Scientific American, which is owned by Nature, was somewhat sympathetic to the big journals plight. ÂThey have shareholders, he said. ÂThey have to move the ship slowly. Still, he added: ÂNature is not digging in. They know itÂs happening. TheyÂre preparing for it. Science 2.0 Scott Aaronson, a quantum computing theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has refused to conduct peer review for or submit papers to commercial journals. ÂI got tired of giving free labor, he said, to Âthese very rich for-profit companies. Dr. Aaronson is also an active member of online science communities like MathOverflow, where he has earned enough reputation points to edit others posts. ÂWeÂre not talking about new technologies that have to be invented, he said. ÂThings are moving in that direction. Journals seem noticeably less important than 10 years ago. Dr. Leshner, the publisher of Science, agrees that things are moving. ÂWill the model of science magazines be the same 10 years from now? I highly doubt it, he said. ÂI believe in evolution. ÂWhen a better system comes into being that has quality and trustability, it will happen. ThatÂs how science progresses, by doing scientific experiments. We should be doing that with scientific publishing as well. Matt Cohler, the former vice president of product management at Facebook who now represents Benchmark Capital on ResearchGateÂs board, sees a vast untapped market in online science. ÂItÂs one of the last areas on the Internet where there really isnÂt anything yet that addresses core needs for this group of people, he said, adding that Âtrillions are spent each year on global scientific research. Investors are betting that a successful site catering to scientists could shave at least a sliver off that enormous pie. Dr. Madisch, of ResearchGate, acknowledged that he might never reach many of the established scientists for whom social networking can seem like a foreign language or a waste of time. But wait, he said, until younger scientists weaned on social media and open-source collaboration start running their own labs. ÂIf you said years ago, ÂOne day you will be on Facebook sharing all your photos and personal information with people, they wouldnÂt believe you, he said. ÂWeÂre just at the beginning. The change is coming.Â
participants (5)
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Eugene Salamin -
Fred lunnon -
Henry Baker -
Joerg Arndt -
Marc LeBrun