Re Study finds that for-pay scholarly journals contribute virtually nothing to the papers they publish

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: L Jean Camp <ljeanc () gmail com>
> Date: March 20, 2018 at 3:28:51 AM EDT
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Cc: ip <ip () listbox com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] Re Study finds that for-pay scholarly journals contribute virtually nothing to the papers they 
> publish
> Reply-To: ljeanc () gmail com
>
>
> Please do not confuse fake journals with real journals based on the business model of the actual journals. It is the 
> reviewing process that is valuable not the publication process. 
>
> Calling out reliable publishers as fake through a deeply flawed analysis is not helpful to the current state of 
> affairs. This is not a trivial problem. Bad studies do not help.  And neither does one-liners attacking academics and 
> the tenure process. You publish this today as the House is calling for grant review by non-technical people for the 
> National Science Foundation. Please do not be part of the anti-science problem. 
>
> By filtering *after* the reviewing process of course the primary value of publishing is removed. These are only 
> pre-prints because they have been filtered by editing. It was the filtering that identified these are acceptable that 
> is the value added, and that filtering was done before the sampling. It is like filtering college students and 
> finding that those selected in competitive engineering programs already know calculus, so what are we teaching, let's 
> cancel those useless courses!?
>
> The paper you pointed to has clear contributions to a political agenda and the surrounding discourse but less clear 
> contributions to the discourse of the value of peer review. It examine papers "which were taken from the arXiv.org 
> preprint repository, and compared with the final versions that appeared,"  meaning that the editorial process was 
> disappeared. I would also point out that people regularly update preprints to include the changes made in the final 
> version.  I would argue this badly designed polemic has received more, not less,  attention that it deserves.  It is 
> published in a library journal likely for the resulting discourse because we *know* this is an important and 
> difficult problem, not because this is a well-designed study.
>
> OMG, it is worse than it appears. They only look at  papers with the DOI. You only add the DOI after the editorial 
> process is complete because part of the DOI identified the publisher. OF COURSE THERE WERE NOT CHANGES! "we 
> downloaded PDFs of every pre-print article from arXiv.org with a DOI that could be matched to a full-text published 
> version" means they downloaded identical versions of articles, labeled as identical, and compared these to the same 
> version looking for differences. Mostly these were not the same. Hooray! DOI works!! "So academics are all corrupt 
> fraud whores" does not logically follow.
>
> I do not get paid to edit or review. Payment is associated with journal publication only occasionally and then only 
> in the final round, where some journals allow payment for open access.
>
> There truly are fake journals with pay to publish, actual predatory journals:
> https://beallslist.weebly.com/
>
> archived and updated at 
> https://predatoryjournals.com/journals/
>
> Most of these are >>>>>open access<<<<<, which violates the underlying presumption of your snark STEVE and SHARI -  I 
> call you out on this. 
> None of them would be credited towards tenure. Any decent paper in them is a professional and personal loss. 
>
> Then there are legit journals with a range of business models:
> https://doaj.org/
>
> But 7% of those green-listed journals accepted a request to be an editor from a fake unqualified person.
> https://www.nature.com/news/predatory-journals-recruit-fake-editor-1.21662
>
> Yes, academic publishing is struggling with how to value authors, reviewers, and editors. It is not "pay to publish". 
>
> One other thing that computing academics are seriously struggling with in terms of  "pay for publish" is academic 
> conferences. These charge ~1,000 per person, in addition to travel and lodging. If you cannot afford to attend, you 
> cannot publish. The travel-to-publish conference model is almost unique to computer science. In other disciplines, 
> ironically, remote participation is enabled by having workshops and conferences being very low value, and only 
> archival journal papers being considered valuable. This particular model of travel to publish also systematically 
> excludes care-givers, (including  women with children or first generation graduates who serve as the interpreter 
> between their families and officialdom) in a way those journals against which you and Steve are objecting simply do 
> not. Computer science should be more flexible and inclusive, but in part because of the role of conferences it is 
> less so. 
>
> Certainly academic publishing is struggling to recreate itself. I wrote about this in an extended riff about the age 
> of code versus the age of print after reading Eisenstein:
>
> "Using the historical and sociological analyses of others, which have examined the results of print on perspectives 
> and society, I offer four scenarios for the results of code. The four scenarios focus on the results of "code" on 
> quantitative thought: 
> 1) the divergence of scientific perspective with popular reasoning resulting in reduced innovation;
> 2)  a broad-based popular explosion in innovation expanding the basis of reasoning; 
> 3) cypto-anarchy with those empowered by science corrupted with the power;
> 4)  and a loss of certainty of information with a return to tribalism. 
> The last suggests a new era of ignorance, a moment in modern Dark Ages -- in that an excess of the light of 
> information causes blindness as effectively as its absence. "
>
> I think we have opted for 4) and now call it fake news. 
>
> I released the TrumpRussia network data because I had tenure. No one else on the team had that protection. Global 
> climate change research depends on tenure. Attacking academics and the tenure process as if we were somehow bought 
> and paid for in 2018 is destructive and is aligned with silencing.  Is there not enough irrational hate of science 
> and free speech today? 
>
> Sheesh. 
>
> Thanks for reading. 
>
>
>
>
> > On Sat, Mar 17, 2018 at 1:13 AM, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:
> > Maybe it should say “pay for tenure”
> >
> >
> > Begin forwarded message:
> >
> > > From: Steve Crocker <steve () stevecrocker com>
> > > Date: March 15, 2018 at 3:59:08 PM EDT
> > > To: dave () farber net
> > > Subject: Re: [IP] Study finds that for-pay scholarly journals contribute virtually nothing to the papers they 
> > > publish
> > >
> > > I looked into this briefly several years ago.  The factor that sticks out like a sore thumb is the role these 
> > > journals play in the tenure process.
> > >
> > > Steve
> > >
> > >
> > > > On Wed, Mar 14, 2018 at 8:37 PM, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Begin forwarded message:
> > > >
> > > > > From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> > > > > Date: March 14, 2018 at 4:23:06 PM EDT
> > > > > To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> > > > > Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Study finds that for-pay scholarly journals contribute virtually nothing to the papers 
> > > > > they publish
> > > > > Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
> > > > >
> > > > > [Note:  This item comes from reader Randall Head.  DLH]
> > > > >
> > > > > Study finds that for-pay scholarly journals contribute virtually nothing to the papers they publish
> > > > > from the all-that-glitters-is-not-gold dept
> > > > > By Glyn Moody
> > > > > Mar 13 2018
> > > > > <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180308/03225939387/research-shows-that-published-versions-papers-costly-academic-titles-add-almost-nothing-to-freely-available-preprints-they-are.shtml>
> > > > >
> > > > > The open access movement believes that academic publications should be freely available to all, not least because 
> > > > > most of the research is paid for by the public purse. Open access supporters see the high cost of many academic 
> > > > > journals, whose subscriptions often run into thousands of dollars per year, as unsustainable for cash-strapped 
> > > > > libraries, and unaffordable for researchers in emerging economies. The high profit margins of leading academic 
> > > > > publishers -- typically 30-40% -- seem even more outrageous when you take into account the fact that publishers 
> > > > > get almost everything done for free. They don't pay the authors of the papers they publish, and rely on the 
> > > > > unpaid efforts of public-spirited academics to carry out crucial editorial functions like choosing and reviewing 
> > > > > submissions.
> > > > >
> > > > > Academic publishers justify their high prices and fat profit margins by claiming that they "add value" as papers 
> > > > > progress through the publication process. Although many have wondered whether that is really true -- does a bit 
> > > > > of sub-editing and design really justify the ever-rising subscription costs? -- hard evidence has been lacking 
> > > > > that could be used to challenge the publishers' narrative. A paper from researchers at the University of 
> > > > > California and Los Alamos Laboratory is particularly relevant here. It appeared first on arXiv.org in 2016 (pdf), 
> > > > > but has only just been "officially" published (paywall). It does something really obvious but also extremely 
> > > > > valuable: it takes around 12,000 academic papers as they were originally released in their preprint form, and 
> > > > > compares them in detail with the final version that appears in the professional journals, sometimes years later, 
> > > > > as the paper's own history demonstrates. The results are unequivocal:
> > > > >
> > > > > We apply five different similarity measures to individual extracted sections from the articles' full text 
> > > > > contents and analyze their results. We have shown that, within the boundaries of our corpus, there are no 
> > > > > significant differences in aggregate between pre-prints and their corresponding final published versions. In 
> > > > > addition, the vast majority of pre-prints (90%-95%) are published by the open access pre-print service first and 
> > > > > later by a commercial publisher.
> > > > >
> > > > > That is, for the papers considered, which were taken from the arXiv.org preprint repository, and compared with 
> > > > > the final versions that appeared, mostly in journals published by Elsevier, there were rarely any important 
> > > > > additions. That applies to titles, abstracts and the main body of the articles. The five metrics applied looked 
> > > > > at letter-by-letter changes between the two versions, as well as more subtle semantic differences. All five 
> > > > > agreed that the publishers made almost no changes to the initial preprint, which nearly always appeared before 
> > > > > the published version, minimizing the possibility that the preprint merely reflected the edited version.
> > > > >
> > > > > The authors of the paper point out a number of ways in which their research could be improved and extended. For 
> > > > > example, the reference section of papers before and after editing was not compared, so it is possible that 
> > > > > academic publishers add more value in this section; the researchers plan to investigate this aspect. Similarly, 
> > > > > since the arXiv.org papers are heavily slanted towards physics, mathematics, statistics, and computer science, 
> > > > > further work will look at articles from other fields, such as economics and biology.
> > > > >
> > > > > Such caveats aside, this is an important result that has not received the attention it deserves. It provides hard 
> > > > > evidence of something that many have long felt: that academic publishers add almost nothing during the process of 
> > > > > disseminating research in their high-profile products. The implications are that libraries should not be paying 
> > > > > for expensive subscriptions to academic journals, but simply providing access to the equivalent preprints, which 
> > > > > offer almost identical texts free of charge, and that researchers should concentrate on preprints, and forget 
> > > > > about journals. Of course, that means that academic institutions must do the same when it comes to evaluating the 
> > > > > publications of scholars applying for posts.
> > > > >
> > > > > [snip]
> > > > >
> > > > > Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
> > > > > Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp
>
>
>
> -- 
> Prof. L. Jean Camp
> http://www.ljean.com
> Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/L_Camp
> DBLP: http://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/c/Camp:L=_Jean
> SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=262477
> Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wJPGa2IAAAAJ
> Make a Difference 
> http://www.ieeeusa.org/policy/govfel/congfel.asp
> This message was sent to the list address and trashed, but can be found online.



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