Just two tangential points on this topic that I've been mulling about and bouncing off my local colleagues.
1. First, the papers we produce are not our research, they are but advertisements of our research. We all know very highly cited papers whose underlying quality of data may not match the elegance of wordsmithery that got it published. However, it is the data itself that is the fundamental component of our research, no? Is there a possible future where data citation rankings will also be used to quantify research output? The more people use my data, the more beneficial it is to the larger community... We can already associate doi values for raw data. 2. Second, and perhaps more fundamental, we have historically chased particular journals in our discipline because they were the sole place to showcase our work. We pay page charges, publication fees, or membership dues and do the reviewing pro bono as pointed out in the Chronicle article. However, there are increasingly large numbers of locations we can put our data, analyses, and interpretations outside just a handful of publications. Many of us no longer get the physical journals each month. I used to thumb through them when they arrived to keep up with the latest and greatest work but now Google Scholar and Web of Science are my primary vectors towards research discovery. The odd thing about this arrangement is that WE are the content creators, not the journals. Without the content then the Chief Executive of Elsevier, Mr Engstrom, wouldn't have received the reported $4.6e6 compensation for 2010. Is there a future where the magnitude of venues for our research results in competition among the journals for good science such that the journals chase the people who actually make content instead of the other way around? Just some thoughts, Rodney On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 4:31 PM, James Farlin <jpfar...@ucdavis.edu> wrote: > Some journals, such as the open access UC Journal Collabra are doing just > that, where a portion of publication fees are set aside for authors and > they can either use that money to compensate themselves ($/review done) or > donate it to a fund to offset those publication fees for other authors with > less funding (UGs, Grad, Post-docs). > > They have a very short video which explains the model on their website: > http://www.collabra.org. > > Encouraging to see from this young scientist. > > James > On Feb 16, 2016 1:21 PM, "David Duffy" <ddu...@hawaii.edu> wrote: > >> >> http://chronicle.com/article/Want-to-Change-Academic/134546?cid=trend_right_h >> >> "So why not try this: If academic work is to be commodified and turned >> into a source of profit for shareholders and for the 1 percent of the >> publishing world, then we should give up our archaic notions of unpaid >> craft labor and insist on professional compensation for our expertise, just >> as doctors, lawyers, and accountants do." >> >> -- >> David Duffy >> 戴大偉 (Dài Dàwěi) >> Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit/Makamakaʻāinana >> Botany >> University of Hawaii/*Ke Kulanui o Hawaiʻi* >> 3190 Maile Way >> Honolulu Hawaii 96822 USA >> 1-808-956-8218 >> > -- Rodney J. Dyer, PhD Department of Biology Center for Environmental Studies Virginia Commonwealth University http://dyerlab.bio.vcu.edu
