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* science_publishers
@ 2011-08-31 18:48 Eduardo J. Dubuc
  2011-09-01 12:34 ` science_publishers Michael Barr
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Eduardo J. Dubuc @ 2011-08-31 18:48 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Categories

Just thought some in the list may not be aware.  Greetings  e.d.

===============================================================
Von: David Mumford [mailto:dbmumford@gmail.com]
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 31. August 2011 18:11
An: Caroline Series; Rob Kirby; Don McClure; Peter J Olver; Martin
Groetschel; John Ball; Ingrid Daubechies; Jeremy Mumford;
notices@math.wustl.edu; vicente.munoz@mat.ucm.es; Peter Michor
Betreff: Fwd: Elsevier



Dear Friends,

My son sent me the link below to a very strong and very clear article in
the Guardian about the huge fees charged by technical publishers for
access to journals. It represents how I have felt for a long time, how
the math community among others is being outrageously exploited. I feel
it ought to galvanize scientists/mathematicians to react and would like
to suggest reprinting it in e.g. the Notices of the AMS, the Newsletter
of the EMS, the news email from the IMU, etc. The simple response for
mathematicians is to cease submitting any papers to Elsevier or Springer
journals. (Excuse me but I am sending this to a somewhat random sample
of people that occurred to me and whose email address I had -- eg I
don't have an address for Ewing or Friedlander.)

yrs faithfully,

David

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist
=================================================================



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* Re: science_publishers
@ 2011-09-03 10:46 Marta Bunge
  2011-09-04 10:33 ` science_publishers Steve Vickers
  2011-09-05  2:03 ` science_publishers Eduardo J. Dubuc
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Marta Bunge @ 2011-09-03 10:46 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: edubuc, categories

Dear Eduardo,

I, too, consult ArXiv quite often, but I do so knowing that the articles in question are unrefereed preprints, as are lectures. This may be stimulating but, even as a way to establish priority, it is quite dubious. For instance, in ArXiv, one has the possibility of updating a posting, and so correct mistakes or add comments received privately. I do not know if the new postings replace the old one or coexists with it. The referee system has its drawbacks, but it is normally of use, not only to the  readers and institutions, but also to the author(s). Posting in ArXiv should always be followed by a publication in a refereed journal, but it not always is. As for journals in which the costs of publishing are nil, we categorists have the fortune of having a reputable journal such as TAC where to send our papers. In this I totally agree with Mike Barr. Cahiers is, to a lesser extent perhaps, another such instance, and it can now be accessed electronically (Numdam). There are also refereed proceedings of festshrifts or conferences which may not be rated as high as some journals, but which are part of our community life and, in some sense, a duty  that we have towards our respected colleagues. As for high cost journals, I once signed a pledge not to publish in any Elsevier journal, and advertised my action in categories. Several people in this forum thought this  was stupid, but others praised me. It is a matter of conscience. I do not have a solution, but asking libraries to stop subscribing to prestigious journals is in my view utopic. I already suggested requesting funding agencies and university policy makers to give higher ratings to journals which  deserve to be so considered, particularly when the author gives reasons for choosing such journals rather than the high end ones. Finally, I (and  so, anyone) can access ArXiv postings without any problem- it is not hard to locate what one wants to read in them. An excellent source of information, but it could never replace refereed journals. 

Regards, 

Marta



> Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2011 15:26:19 -0300
> From: edubuc@dm.uba.ar
> To: categories@mta.ca
> Subject: categories: Re: science_publishers
> 
> Marta Bunge writes:
> 
> "it is (still) a measure of success by grant giving agencies to have
> published in such journals and, in turn, a measure for promotion
> considerations."
> 
> Michael Barr writes:
> 
> "Finally convince granting agencies to find better ways of measuring
> impact."
> 
> This is just the real problem. Michael, it is not "finally", but "first
> of all".
> 
> Once this is changed, high ranked journals will be in trouble.
> 
> But, I am afraid it will be impossible. There is an arrow in evolution,
> and this arrow points into the fact that journals rankings and impact
> factors are going to be more and more determinant for the academic
> career of 99% of the mathematicians (expet for the future few
> Grothendiecks Serres Cartans and the like).
> 
> Something on the other hand can be attempted:
> 
> 1) Make a strong campaign so to popularize and convince all authors to
> send their papers to the arXiv.
> 
> 2) Convince all libraries to stop all subscriptions to journals, and
> install electronic easy to use catalogs of all arXiv papers, have them
> in stock, and furnish the structure for the immediate printing of
> requested papers.
> 
> Personally, most of the reading I am doing recently are from arXiv
> papers, not from published papers.
> 
> On the other hand, the only papers which are considered for grant
> soliciting, promotions (and even worst, here if you stop publishing you
> loose your job, which is at stake every 7 years) are published papers,
> the more high ranked (impact factor) the journal the better.
> 
> So, to read the work of others, and make your own work known, you will
> use the arXiv, to get ahead in your academic career you will publish
> (papers which nobody will need to buy).
> 
> e.d.
> 
  		 	   		  

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* Re: science_publishers
@ 2011-09-04 15:55 Marta Bunge
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Marta Bunge @ 2011-09-04 15:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: zskoda, categories

Dear Zoran,

 

 

I do not disagree entirely with the idea
of just looking up people that we know and trust wherever they post/publish
their work. But this does not apply to a lot of work posted in ArXiv, and  there
is no guarantee of any sort. One would have to do the refereeing oneself if  one
wanted to quote it. 

 

From what you say below, you also think
that some measure for maintaining a level of control over what is posted in
ArXiv is desirable. I refer to your statement 

 

“Thus we need to get overlay boards to
referee and certify certain version of arxiv papers by usual procedures and
without involvement of commercial journals. We should value author's work
according to the theorems and not according to the journals where they appeared
or did not. We should also make available independent criticism of papers in
forms of discussions, reviews etc. independent from weather the paper has  been
published or not.” 

 

I entirely agree. 

 

You also wrote

 

“I know of lots of published nonsense,
and false statements in hi-impact journals, and massive works which are
valuable and correct and are not in the journals. I am not talking only
Perelman's preprints but far much more.”

 

 

I also agree with your statement above.
One can, however, ignore published nonsense, but what to do with false statements in
high-impact journals if the author does not care to offer a correction or even
post a note indicating that an error has unfortunately occurred? Perhaps with a
dynamic ArXiv this state of affairs would most likely improve the situation, as
it would make such actions less problematic. Indeed there is much valuable work
that is not published.

 

Regards,

Marta

 




Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2011 15:55:24 +0200
Subject: Re: categories: Re: science_publishers
From: zskoda@gmail.com
To: martabunge@hotmail.com

Dear Marta,

I have slight doubts about your reservations about the arxiv you posted on the category list.

First of all, all versions are stamped with a date and the sources of all  versions are non-removable from the main archive (though in some mirrors some of old versions may be non-available). Second, while I agree in the importance of refereeing I do not understand insistence on 

being published as a synonym. Einstein's papers are mainly published and unrefereed. The unpublished paper can be reviewed in detail and in public. Finally the arxiv can evolve and host a circle of boards which would place refereed by that and that board to some versions of arxiv paper. So you can have v1 v2 v3 and v4 refereed by journal xyz which exists only as an overlay  of arxiv. There is nothing bad in having v5 which is improved and updated in author's opinion even over certified version 4. I know some people who are in academia and do not send to journals any more, just to some archive  out of their conviction. One of them tells me, why would some board tell  me what to read, I decide whom I trust and whom I will read. Once I know  a name I can look up on line and find an article, he says. Indeed, I trust every paper with the author name Ofer Gabber much more than a paper with stamp Annals of Mathematics. 


Thus we need to get overlay boards to referee and certify certain version of arxiv papers by usual procedures and without involvement of commercial journals. We should value author's work according to the theorems and not according to the journals where they appeared or did not. We should also make available independent criticism of papers in forms of discussions, reviews etc. independent from weather the paper has been published or not. I know  of lots of published nonsense, and false statements in hi-impact journals, and massive works which are valuable and correct and are not in the journals. I am not talking only Perelman's preprints but far much more. 


Sincerely,

Zoran Skoda
  		 	   		  

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* Re: science_publishers
@ 2011-09-05 19:03 Bas Spitters
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Bas Spitters @ 2011-09-05 19:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Jocelyn Ireson-Paine; +Cc: Vaughan Pratt, Categories

Google is joining the citation game. I am not sure whether this is good or bad.

http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/citations.html
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=B7vSqZsAAAAJ&hl=en

Bas

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 9:46 PM, Jocelyn Ireson-Paine <popx@j-paine.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 1 Sep 2011, Vaughan Pratt wrote:
>
>> The solution of authors voting with their feet is a very long-term one
>> which does not address what's already in the literature but currently
>> behind a paywall.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> This issue has a particularly large impact on the current hot-button
>> topic of global warming, where there are a lot of technically minded
>> people without access to the relevant technical journals being cited on
>> blogs by people on either side of the debate who do have access.
>> Many of you will have noticed that a widespread feeling, particularly
>> strong in the US and Australia, has been developing lately that there's
>> a conspiracy between governments and scientists to tamper with the free
>> market economy by inappropriately steering funding towards alternative
>> energy proponents and providers.  Locking influential articles behind a
>> paywall has the unfortunate side effect of amplifying this feeling.
>>
>> For that and other hot-button topics (vaccination and autism, aluminium
>> and Alzheimer's, safety of nanotechnology, etc.), a more immediate and
>> reliable solution would be welcome, in addition to the solution of
>> voting with your feet.
>>
> Here's my suggestion, inspired by the music-sharing software Napster. Set
> up a Web site to which one can upload images of journal pages. Equip it
> with optical character-recognition software that in these images, can
> identify titles, authors' names, and other bibliographic information, and
> that can recognise whether an article is complete or not. Add a program
> that can assemble complete articles from partial page sets uploaded by
> different people. Call it the "Journal Colimit Construction" site.
> Advertise it to fervent believers in open access who are prepared to do
> something practical to support their belief: the something practical being
> to scan and upload an agreed-on number of pages per week from whatever
> journals they can find in their libraries. It might be a good idea to host
> the site in a country that doesn't recognise world copyright conventions.
>
>> The problem is not merely academic, it's also a serious social problem.
>>

....


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-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2011-08-31 18:48 science_publishers Eduardo J. Dubuc
2011-09-01 12:34 ` science_publishers Michael Barr
2011-09-01 18:55   ` science_publishers Steve Vickers
2011-09-02 20:26     ` science_publishers Ronnie Brown
2011-09-04  9:05       ` science_publishers George Janelidze
2011-09-01 14:11 ` science_publishers Mike Stay
2011-09-01 18:24   ` science_publishers Vaughan Pratt
2011-09-02 19:46     ` science_publishers Jocelyn Ireson-Paine
     [not found] ` <CAKQgqTbx-bm+pMHnG=iYDzGZVnZFoeTk+vGnC0ih=GUykUEVjw@mail.gmail.com>
2011-09-01 18:26   ` science_publishers Eduardo J. Dubuc
     [not found] <313_1314877482_4E5F702A_313_50_1_E1Qz5VK-0008UE-FM@mlist.mta.ca>
2011-09-01 13:39 ` science_publishers Marta Bunge
2011-09-03 10:46 science_publishers Marta Bunge
2011-09-04 10:33 ` science_publishers Steve Vickers
2011-09-05  2:03 ` science_publishers Eduardo J. Dubuc
2011-09-04 15:55 science_publishers Marta Bunge
2011-09-05 19:03 science_publishers Bas Spitters

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