Thanks Rudy for your reply. I agree with you, "who is funding who" is an important question I did not answer to. I tried to explain what I understand about the system in a simple way, but the more I wrote the more I sensed that something was missing. I still don't understand for example what happened (and when) about the power shift that lead to the status quo: when exactly publishers became so "powerful" that they could charge so much money for selling their publications?
You say taxpayers are shareholders, and I agree: but I also think that the majority of taxpayers are not really interested in academic literature, and the readership of that literature is 90% academic (you of course have a lot of professional and journalists who would love to read scientific articles from time to time, and they can't). This is to me one of the complicated things in this complicated mess: you have basically the same people that have different roles/needs in the system (academics) and other players don't have much power or interest to change things. Professors don't speak with librarians, young researchers are "fighting" for power with old professors, and the same researcher could love OA as a reader but need/want to publish in CA as an author... On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 6:51 PM, Rudy Patard <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Andrea, > > I dug it up while writing my thesis on environmental assessment. As you > may read, it is a field where we hear researchers crying for data for > decades but ironically they 'd rather continue crying than acting upon the > situation, i.e they don't do much for making it 'free' (cc-by like). > > " Researchers don’t *sell* their papers. They sell their whole work as > researchers: they teach, they publish, they advise dissertations. That’s > the work they are paid for. But they don’t get money from the papers " > Indeed. > But to be a professor you need to have been publishing in a selective list > of journal (or any secured position researcher you have in the system you > are in, I'm french and do not know italian system. To us it starts at > lecturer MC and continue with professor Pr). > And to receive funding (now that competitive models rule research funding) > you have to show the most impressive list of publications (at least a "more > competitive publishing pedigree than the other competing researchers) > ... well nothing new as you describe that. > But in the end, you seem to skip a bit. > " Ultimately, the *ring that rules them all* is this final process: > evaluation of research, meaning *counting citations*. " > Here, state sentences with subject-verb-complement. > Who is funding what/who > Who evaluate what/who and particularly who decides that evaluation of > research *is* counting citations. > To act on a situation, we have to know the current *actors.* > > When a group of researchers (known ones, leading their field can do so), > decides to quit a publisher (lingua-glossa > <http://kaivonfintel.org/lingua-glossa/> ; JMLR > <https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Machine_Learning_Research> ; > Journal_of_Topology <https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Topology> ; > others > <http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Journal_declarations_of_independence>) , > they state their rules showing who is producing the value. But for the > general case, authors in dominant position > *are in dominant position because they followed the mainstream lucrative > rule.* > So it is more about how power is distributed inside academia than any > other question. > We have the publication system of our academical power system. It is a > struggle against a 'monopoly of scientific competence'. I may read anew > Bourdieu in case 'Questions de sociologie' - "Le champ scientifique" gives > me a new lead. > > In my thesis (if you read french, my .tex are on GitHub), I consider the > situation as a Nash equilibrium. My opinion is it may change as we make the > values of the game change or/and let enter other players. To me, a player > that is currently waiting - wanting on the bench is (some fraction at least > of) 'taxpayers'. > - To read something we/they pay 3 times : 1°) pay the researchers 2°) pay > the subscription fees of researchers 3°) pay what you read as a taxpayer > outside of a subscribing university. > - They/we pay research, but are hardly consulted on "What do you want to > know that we (as a species) do not know yet ?" > - They/we support the consequences of industrial research led for product > development (good or bad according to each-one judgments). > > It is roots of my contributions about making wikimedian spaces tools for > aiding pressure on freeing publication. (for instance : not putting OA > publication in front necessarly, but putting correspondign authors and > funding contacts next to closed access articles with possible open archives > ready to receive them. > > Let taxpayers play a direct role (for instance in institutions that vote > research grants. Here we have, universities grants, regions grants, some > specific institutions as ADEME ... or even in juries for HDR (french > 'title' allowing a university Pr or MC to lead research : enrol PhD student > i.e. go up the ladder of academical capitalism). Do that and the cards of > the publication game may change. > > BR > Rudy > > > > > > On 23 March 2018 at 10:20, Andrea Zanni <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hello everyone, >> sorry for the shameless plug, but few days ago I published a long overdue >> blogpost: >> https://medium.com/@aubreymcfato/academic-publishing-sci- >> hub-and-the-ring-that-rules-them-all-f8a12c29ef9f >> >> I'm sharing this here because I'd welcome feedbacks on it: I spent a lot >> of time trying to figure out *why* we're in this situation, and why we >> can't get out of it. >> I tried to frame academic publishing in terms of power, but I'm not sure >> I succeeded. >> My question always is: what are the power relationships that leads us to >> the status quo? Why can't we change them? >> >> Criticisms/feedbacks/suggestions are welcome. >> >> Cheers >> >> Andrea >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> OpenAccess mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/openaccess >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > OpenAccess mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/openaccess > >
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