The n-Category Café

Civil disobedience has always been and will always be the most powerful form of dissent. Kudos to these brave gentlemen and women for taking this step. Now if only one could free the stores of precious information that still remains locked up behind paywalls put up by corporate publishing houses. Hardly a day goes by that I am not frustrated in my attempts to read articles written more than 20 or 30 years ago by the greats such as Witten, Zamolodchikov and many others. There is no moral or monetary justification for limiting access to this intellectual depository, which rightfully is the heritage of all of humanity.

Of course, this will be the hardest part of fight but I’m sure that my kids and grand-kids will grow up in a world where they do not have to pay a penny to read the works of Bethe, Einstein, Feynman and countless others, which as of now are accessible only to those with “subscriptions” to journals such as those run by APS, Elsevier and Springer.

In somewhat related news: “Publishers withdraw 2500 journals from free access scheme in Bangladesh”.

Tom wrote:

Unusually, the dispute appears not to have been about price, but poor service.

Clicking the link, one finds that de Gruyter “tried to make copy-editing part of the formal duties of the Managing Editor”.

Many journals have been cutting costs by slacking off on one service that they traditionally provide: copy-editing. But I’d never heard of them trying to make the managing editor do it!

“The power of the press is based on the ignorance of the masses.”

There is already the well-known problem of science-ignorant media, trying to communicate Science to science-ignorant masses. The media regularly take advantage (“scam”) scientists, chopping/splicing interviews into something incoherent. I.e., the publishers implement their own (crackpot) “scientific editorial”, cutting the scientists out of the loop. The smart scientists want editorial control, to prevent this

Science and Science Fiction
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=1208

“Update: Just finished watching Parallel Universes. Wow. Almost
completely free of any real scientific content, and definitely
deserves an award as the most idiotic and ludicrous TV show ever
made that pretends to have something to do with science. Deep into
“what the bleep” territory. The problem is not just Michio Kaku.
Everyone involved in the thing should be deeply ashamed of themselves.”

I can summarize the situation as a “collision of 2 universes”: technical VS non-technical. Over at sci.research.careers many yrs ago, it was brought up that a researcher could get SUED for posting the paper on the university website (since submitting to journal, gives them full copyright!!??).

“Back in ‘73 I had the extreme pleasure of traveling with Isaac Asimov to
an [ solar ] eclipse. He was a lot of fun to talk with and quite intelligent.
Although just a teenager at the time (a tall, skinny one), he spent a
lot of his time with me after I explained that I too wanted to be a
writer of science and science-fiction. Although he was encouraging,
there was one statement he made in a story he related about the
Foundation series and its publication that bothered me then, as it does
today. He said: “Publishers are scum.”. This was an interesting phrase
coming from someone who talked just like he wrote. I think he even held
back a bit. And this was when he was a famous and wealthy writer. I
can add only that after six books published, and 16 years of writing for
magazines, that he was quite correct in his assessment. There are
layers in the industry. The writers tend to be pretty cool. The
editors tolerable. The copywriters and layout people pretty docile.
And the publishers who authorize things are scum.”
– Bill K., eclipse-chaser, private communication

Here is another case of Science VS Journalist:

“Everyone who gave this book one star should realize that this book is
entertainment. Hancock is not a scientist or an academic of any kind - he’s a
journalist! … Of course Hancock tailors the facts to fit his theories - he
is not constrained by truth, science, or even ethics. He is a journalist.

[ the resignation of the Editorial Board was based on unethical behavior: cheaping out “tried to make copy-editing part of the formal duties of the Managing Editor” ]

…This book, and all those like it that preach pseudo-science, appeal to the
majority of people in this world who are scientifically challenged. Most
Americans don’t have enough scientific knowledge to understand the technology
they face everyday, much less untangle the fact and fantasy in this book. It
is entertainment, but it’s dangerous - science interpreted by a journalist!”
– review of “Fingerprints of the Gods”

[ crackpot book about ancient civilizations, with full Discovery Channel episode. Hancock appears on the mega-popular “Ancient Aliens” series on History Channel, along with “leading scientists” (Dr. Sarah Seager/MIT, planetary scientist) ]

Today’s news (via S. C. Kavassalis): the American Physical Society is launching Physical Review X, in order to catch up with the Foundational Questions Institute’s great success at adding X to things. Oh, and also to provide an Open Access journal for the physics community.

Physical Review X (PRX) is a new, global, online-only, open access, primary research journal covering all of physics and its application to related fields. […] Articles in PRX will be published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License; authors will retain copyright to their articles. This license permits anyone, without the need to obtain permission from the author(s) or APS, to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt article content, provided proper attribution is given to the author(s) and to the source of the material. Accepted articles will be published upon payment of an article-processing charge of $1500, which covers the expenses associated with peer review, composition, hosting, and archiving. APS, a not-for-profit society publisher, is committed to promoting responsible, reasonable, and cost-effective pricing policies.

Honestly, the “article-processing charge” model doesn’t seem like a very good idea for physics, particularly at the theoretical end — it’s much better suited to fields like clinical trial reports, in which a thousand-dollar outlay can be swallowed up by the larger cost of doing the research in the first place. I expect this kind of policy to skew the content which gets submitted to PRX, slanting the distribution towards big-budget experiments from large universities.