Re: [FRIAM] basin filling

[Marcus G. Daniels]

On Tue, 2014-04-15 at 21:37 -0600, Steve Smith wrote:

> The public is trained to look for simple, linear relationships between
> things and zeroth order effects, I'm just calling for the development
> of a broader and deeper description of these very relevant problems.
> Is it possible that we might operate with more hope, more earnestness,
> maybe even less cynicism if we had models that suggested nonlinear
> response curves and "tipping points" (as Malcom Gladwell
> popularized)?  

You expect people to think and you also intend to model them with
particles?  

Anyway, depends if you want to illustrate results in social science or
do social science.  

Marcus




FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] basin filling

[glen]

On 04/15/2014 08:37 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

What I'm seeking are notional models with more acknowledgement of the
complexities and maybe a qualitative hint  toward any first or second
order "unintended consequences" they might hint at.

Familiar, brutally simple models are on the order of:

 1. White Males get all the goodies, everyone else gets bupkis.
 2. The rich get richer.


There's no reason why we wouldn't pursue both qualitative and 
quantitative models.  I find myself arguing for the idea that all quant 
models are preceded by qual models anyway.  It's a straightforward 
extension of the philosophical problem of degree vs. kind (for those of 
us who think philosophy is useless).


I think the notion of an attractor survives the dimensionality problem. 
 It seems clear that patriarchy is a stable attractor.  I don't know 
why, of course.  But we can speculate then try to hone the speculation 
into hypotheses that can be tested qual, first, and quant for those that 
survive long enough.  Qualitatively, we can test your (1) by translation 
across geography.  Do white males get all the goodies in, say, Peru? 
How about the Central African Republic?  Etc.


On 04/15/2014 03:52 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

A master equation for an economic system will be high dimensional.


I think the concept of a master equation is inscription error.  If you 
look hard enough for such an equation, you will find one.  But it may be 
illusory, which means whatever you find will break for inexplicable 
reasons, until you find the new one or go with an equation-free approach.



For
example, every person has assets to track over time.  There are
many-to-many economic transactions that explode the state space.
Forget about geometry you can visualize.  And a lot of the variables are
not going to be independent.  Time spent at work and time spent with
family will be t and (1-t).  Income will be correlated with t (paid by
the hour).


It's not clear to me that time spent with family is antithetic to time 
spent at work.  There's a long tradition of combining the two... just 
look at the Koch brothers... or the Bush dynasty. ;-)  The curse of high 
dimensionality is even worse than you've mentioned so far in that we 
have no idea which variables are identical, equivalent, dependent, and 
independent.  Indeed, anything we _name_ a variable is suspect.  But 
none of this should stop anyone with the energy and interest.  All we 
need do is hone speculation down to a falsifiable model, falsify it, log 
it in the database, and iterate.


The trick is that the _database_ sucks.  We don't keep track of how 
well/poorly our models are doing.


E.g. this was in the news recently:

Everything Is Permitted? People Intuitively Judge Immorality as 
Representative of Atheists

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0092302

And this was cited as evidence the author (Gervais) is biased:

Mentalizing Deficits Constrain Belief in a Personal God
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0036880

These aren't just qualitative models but it's super easy to 
criticize the choices they made in quantification.  Why?  Because the 
database sucks.



To get at gender culture things various stateful things like affinity to
peers and family need to be quantifiable somehow. Are love and hate a
linear scale or logarithmic?  Maybe it is more like a step function?


You don't need occult qualities like love and hate.  There are plenty of 
almost-quantified qualities to consider first.  Things like the Happy 
Planet Index or the Narcissistic Personality Index are in that fuzzy 
border and could be used to accrue falsified models.  (Things like the 
Gini index may help with Steve's model (2).)



The experiments that would be
illuminating can't be done for practical or ethical reasons.


It's true that the experiments that would be _ultimately_ illuminating 
can't be done.  But there are those that could be _somewhat_ 
illuminating... and I argue that there are lots of psych, social, 
ecological, neuro, and biological experiments that are currently being 
done that help, even with the gender inequality problem.


But again, why can't we _relate_ these results into some more complex, 
systemic models?  ... because the database sucks.


--
⇒⇐ glen


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] basin filling

[Marcus G. Daniels]

> I think the notion of an attractor survives the dimensionality problem. 
>   It seems clear that patriarchy is a stable attractor.  I don't know 
> why, of course.  

Because it is by definition?  If people are persuaded or forced to
participate in matriarchy, patriarchy, or kyriarchy then it continues
(obviously).  What is the question here?  What are the historical
conditions that lead to one or the other forming?   How to destabilize
such a social system?   An answer to the latter is to vote for
progressive candidates, seems to me, and let (Glen's) `database' grow
from those experiences.  Try stuff, and collectively learn from those
experiences..

Marcus
 



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

[FRIAM] Open Access Publication

[Nick Thompson]

Dear Friammers, 

 

I thought Stevan Harnad's response might interest the Open Access
Publication enthusiasts on this list.  Perhaps we could talk about it on
Friday:  I am wondering what is meant by OA mandates.  

 

From: Stevan Harnad mailto:har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
>

Subject: Re: Research Gate?

Date: April 15, 2014 at 10:19:56 AM EDT

To: Nick Thompson mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net> >

Cc: CC suppressed by NST

 

On Apr 15, 2014, at 12:52 AM, Nick Thompson mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net> > wrote:





Dear Dr. Harnad,

 

I have been watching the development of Research Gate with bemusement.  On
the on hand it seems like another attempt make money off of academic vanity,
but on the other hand it seems to be awfully good at pulling materials into
the quasi=public domain.

 

I am betting you have strong opinions about them, and I am wondering what
those are.

 

Nick Thompson (etc.)  

 

Dear Professor Thompson,

 

Research Gate has managed to use some effective lures to get people to make
their papers OA (mostly vanity indicators), but it does not scale. The same
authors who do not make their papers OA in their IRs  (unless it is made
mandatory) don't upload them to RG. And RG is vulnerable to take-down
notices as a 3rd-party publisher.

 

What would be useful (and will probably happen, though too slowly) would be
if universities used the automated lure/vanity techniques of RG (as well as
those of the https://www.openaccessbutton.org
   they could even set up automatic
google-scholar alerts ) for their own institutional authors as a carrot to
back up their OA mandates.

 

But even that is useless without the mandates themselves...

 

Best wishes,

 

Stevan

 


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Open Access Publication

[Gary Schiltz]

Regarding OA mandates, which I assume stands for “Open Access” mandates, I 
believe some funding agencies require that papers that result from research 
funded by the agency (at least when the actual writing about the results is 
funded by the grant) be made open access. Just a vague memory, so take it with 
a grain of salt…

Gary

On Apr 16, 2014, at 3:36 PM, Nick Thompson  wrote:

> Dear Friammers,
>  
> I thought Stevan Harnad’s response might interest the Open Access Publication 
> enthusiasts on this list.  Perhaps we could talk about it on Friday:  I am 
> wondering what is meant by OA mandates. 
>  
> From: Stevan Harnad 
> Subject: Re: Research Gate?
> Date: April 15, 2014 at 10:19:56 AM EDT
> To: Nick Thompson 
> Cc: CC suppressed by NST
>  
> On Apr 15, 2014, at 12:52 AM, Nick Thompson  
> wrote:
> 
> 
> Dear Dr. Harnad,
>  
> I have been watching the development of Research Gate with bemusement.  On 
> the on hand it seems like another attempt make money off of academic vanity, 
> but on the other hand it seems to be awfully good at pulling materials into 
> the quasi=public domain.
>  
> I am betting you have strong opinions about them, and I am wondering what 
> those are.
>  
> Nick Thompson (etc.) 
>  
> Dear Professor Thompson,
>  
> Research Gate has managed to use some effective lures to get people to make 
> their papers OA (mostly vanity indicators), but it does not scale. The same 
> authors who do not make their papers OA in their IRs  (unless it is made 
> mandatory) don’t upload them to RG. And RG is vulnerable to take-down notices 
> as a 3rd-party publisher.
>  
> What would be useful (and will probably happen, though too slowly) would be 
> if universities used the automated lure/vanity techniques of RG (as well as 
> those of the https://www.openaccessbutton.org  they could even set up 
> automatic google-scholar alerts ) for their own institutional authors as a 
> carrot to back up their OA mandates.
>  
> But even that is useless without the mandates themselves...
>  
> Best wishes,
>  
> Stevan
>  
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Open Access Publication

[Roger Critchlow]

And some which do require Open Access have just recently started to crack
the whip,

http://www.nature.com/news/funders-punish-open-access-dodgers-1.15007

-- rec --



On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 2:55 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:

> Regarding OA mandates, which I assume stands for “Open Access” mandates, I
> believe some funding agencies require that papers that result from research
> funded by the agency (at least when the actual writing about the results is
> funded by the grant) be made open access. Just a vague memory, so take it
> with a grain of salt…
>
> Gary
>
> On Apr 16, 2014, at 3:36 PM, Nick Thompson 
> wrote:
>
> > Dear Friammers,
> >
> > I thought Stevan Harnad’s response might interest the Open Access
> Publication enthusiasts on this list.  Perhaps we could talk about it on
> Friday:  I am wondering what is meant by OA mandates.
> >
> > From: Stevan Harnad 
> > Subject: Re: Research Gate?
> > Date: April 15, 2014 at 10:19:56 AM EDT
> > To: Nick Thompson 
> > Cc: CC suppressed by NST
> >
> > On Apr 15, 2014, at 12:52 AM, Nick Thompson 
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Dear Dr. Harnad,
> >
> > I have been watching the development of Research Gate with bemusement.
>  On the on hand it seems like another attempt make money off of academic
> vanity, but on the other hand it seems to be awfully good at pulling
> materials into the quasi=public domain.
> >
> > I am betting you have strong opinions about them, and I am wondering
> what those are.
> >
> > Nick Thompson (etc.)
> >
> > Dear Professor Thompson,
> >
> > Research Gate has managed to use some effective lures to get people to
> make their papers OA (mostly vanity indicators), but it does not scale. The
> same authors who do not make their papers OA in their IRs  (unless it is
> made mandatory) don’t upload them to RG. And RG is vulnerable to take-down
> notices as a 3rd-party publisher.
> >
> > What would be useful (and will probably happen, though too slowly) would
> be if universities used the automated lure/vanity techniques of RG (as well
> as those of the https://www.openaccessbutton.org  they could even set up
> automatic google-scholar alerts ) for their own institutional authors as a
> carrot to back up their OA mandates.
> >
> > But even that is useless without the mandates themselves...
> >
> > Best wishes,
> >
> > Stevan
> >
> > 
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Open Access Publication

[Russell Standish]

The question I have is what advantage is there in not having your
research work open access?

Given it is such a pain to download a non-open access paper, the open
access papers percolate to the top of my reading list.

The only answers I can think of 

- publishing open access is more expensive (publishers often offer an
open access option for more dollars),

- prestigious journals prevent archiving of papers in arXiv or other
repositories,

- its a fag to upload your paper to arXiv or your institution archive


In my case, uploading my publications to arXiv and linked from my
website is my default option. I will usually amend any copyright
transfer agreement to allow this, if not already allowed. It's a right
PITA when the publisher doesn't accept my amendment, as I then need to
remember that that paper is a special exception :(

Cheers
-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au

 Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret 
 (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html)



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Open Access Publication

[Gary Schiltz]

Maybe you’ll get lucky and someone will make such exceptional papers available 
via BitTorrent or on a Journalz site. Of course, I wouldn’t actually advocate 
that, just sayin’...

On Apr 16, 2014, at 6:53 PM, Russell Standish  wrote:
> … I will usually amend any copyright
> transfer agreement to allow this, if not already allowed. It's a right
> PITA when the publisher doesn't accept my amendment, as I then need to
> remember that that paper is a special exception :(


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Open Access Publication

[Eric Smith]

Hi Russell,

You know what would be a really useful datum, and which probably  
exists though I haven't tried to look for such:


Some simple two-color plot or list of the impact factors of journals,  
grouped according to whether their copyright agreements do or do not  
permit open access.  One could complement that by computing various  
correlation coefficients of impact factor with a dummy variable for  
open/not-open.


My suspicion, which one could start to try to test with such data, is  
that this is not a question of what is the advantage in an overall  
sense to having research open access, but rather is about the  
mechanics of where entrenched power lies, and how that places  
constraints on choices across the system.


There have already been several discussions on this list (with useful  
pointers to data) about why impact factors can be meaningless, or non- 
comparable, or can have meanings that are far removed from the naive  
advertisement, but none of that would be to my question here.  My  
assumption is that, in the research institutional setting as I see it,  
everything is driven toward a boundary of as near pure thoughtlessness  
as the system can tolerate and still grind along, which means that  
what is rewarded is what accountants can accumulate at high volume,  
which means impact factors and things like them.  If, even just for  
purely historical reasons, a high fraction of high-impact-factor  
journals are held by publishers who refuse OA, then those journals  
have (for now) the power to force a trade-off by authors, between  
compliance with a grant regulation, and support by their universities  
for promotion/tenure, probably future grants where program managers or  
reviewers look at impact factor ratings without taking into account  
that they may be in direct conflict with the OA policy, for younger  
researchers, hiring decisions in the first place, or start-up support,  
teaching loads, etc.


If that is the main driver, then it should be purely a matter of the  
combination of institutional design and getting coordination among  
enough players in the system to provide power sufficient to push back  
against the effectively rent-power (a power inherent in existing  
position) of Elsevier, Kluwer, Springer, or whomever.


Like so many other things that seem to fail, it just seems easier to  
get coordination in some kinds of systems (firms, markets) than in  
other kinds of systems (academic communities, civil society), and the  
more-easily organized tend to accumulate power advantages, which can  
sometimes become extreme.


But some data and analysis would probably say whether there is any  
substance in the above guesses.


Eric


On Apr 16, 2014, at 7:53 PM, Russell Standish wrote:


The question I have is what advantage is there in not having your
research work open access?

Given it is such a pain to download a non-open access paper, the open
access papers percolate to the top of my reading list.

The only answers I can think of

- publishing open access is more expensive (publishers often offer an
open access option for more dollars),

- prestigious journals prevent archiving of papers in arXiv or other
repositories,

- its a fag to upload your paper to arXiv or your institution archive


In my case, uploading my publications to arXiv and linked from my
website is my default option. I will usually amend any copyright
transfer agreement to allow this, if not already allowed. It's a right
PITA when the publisher doesn't accept my amendment, as I then need to
remember that that paper is a special exception :(

Cheers
--


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au

Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret
(http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html)



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com




FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Open Access Publication

[Owen Densmore]

I'd be tempted to forward this to Timothy Gowers
http://gowers.wordpress.com/
.. who's been very active in OA research, along with Terence Tao and others.

Their work goes beyond publication but into massive collaboration, "crowd
mathematics" so to speak.
http://polymathprojects.org/

They're quite approachable, generally responding to email and blog post
comments.

My concern with their success is that having establishing a successful
reputation, they no longer need the help of a "power publisher" so to
speak.  A Fields medal certainly helps.

   -- Owen


On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 6:20 PM, Eric Smith  wrote:

> Hi Russell,
>
> You know what would be a really useful datum, and which probably exists
> though I haven't tried to look for such:
>
> Some simple two-color plot or list of the impact factors of journals,
> grouped according to whether their copyright agreements do or do not permit
> open access.  One could complement that by computing various correlation
> coefficients of impact factor with a dummy variable for open/not-open.
>
> My suspicion, which one could start to try to test with such data, is that
> this is not a question of what is the advantage in an overall sense to
> having research open access, but rather is about the mechanics of where
> entrenched power lies, and how that places constraints on choices across
> the system.
>
> There have already been several discussions on this list (with useful
> pointers to data) about why impact factors can be meaningless, or
> non-comparable, or can have meanings that are far removed from the naive
> advertisement, but none of that would be to my question here.  My
> assumption is that, in the research institutional setting as I see it,
> everything is driven toward a boundary of as near pure thoughtlessness as
> the system can tolerate and still grind along, which means that what is
> rewarded is what accountants can accumulate at high volume, which means
> impact factors and things like them.  If, even just for purely historical
> reasons, a high fraction of high-impact-factor journals are held by
> publishers who refuse OA, then those journals have (for now) the power to
> force a trade-off by authors, between compliance with a grant regulation,
> and support by their universities for promotion/tenure, probably future
> grants where program managers or reviewers look at impact factor ratings
> without taking into account that they may be in direct conflict with the OA
> policy, for younger researchers, hiring decisions in the first place, or
> start-up support, teaching loads, etc.
>
> If that is the main driver, then it should be purely a matter of the
> combination of institutional design and getting coordination among enough
> players in the system to provide power sufficient to push back against the
> effectively rent-power (a power inherent in existing position) of Elsevier,
> Kluwer, Springer, or whomever.
>
> Like so many other things that seem to fail, it just seems easier to get
> coordination in some kinds of systems (firms, markets) than in other kinds
> of systems (academic communities, civil society), and the more-easily
> organized tend to accumulate power advantages, which can sometimes become
> extreme.
>
> But some data and analysis would probably say whether there is any
> substance in the above guesses.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
> On Apr 16, 2014, at 7:53 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
>
>  The question I have is what advantage is there in not having your
>> research work open access?
>>
>> Given it is such a pain to download a non-open access paper, the open
>> access papers percolate to the top of my reading list.
>>
>> The only answers I can think of
>>
>> - publishing open access is more expensive (publishers often offer an
>> open access option for more dollars),
>>
>> - prestigious journals prevent archiving of papers in arXiv or other
>> repositories,
>>
>> - its a fag to upload your paper to arXiv or your institution archive
>>
>>
>> In my case, uploading my publications to arXiv and linked from my
>> website is my default option. I will usually amend any copyright
>> transfer agreement to allow this, if not already allowed. It's a right
>> PITA when the publisher doesn't accept my amendment, as I then need to
>> remember that that paper is a special exception :(
>>
>> Cheers
>> --
>>
>> 
>> 
>> Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
>> Principal, High Performance Coders
>> Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
>> University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au
>>
>> Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret
>> (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html)
>> 
>> 
>>
>> 
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at caf

Re: [FRIAM] Open Access Publication

[Nick Thompson]

Hi, Eric, 

What if Professional Societies were to declare that nothing is "published"
until it has been made available to the public.  I might permit a reasonable
handling fee, such as a nickel a page, making the downloading of a paper
roughly equivalent to the cost or Xeroxing it.   And then Universities
follow suit by declaring that nothing goes in your personnel file that has
not been "published".

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2014 6:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Open Access Publication

Hi Russell,

You know what would be a really useful datum, and which probably exists
though I haven't tried to look for such:

Some simple two-color plot or list of the impact factors of journals,
grouped according to whether their copyright agreements do or do not permit
open access.  One could complement that by computing various correlation
coefficients of impact factor with a dummy variable for open/not-open.

My suspicion, which one could start to try to test with such data, is that
this is not a question of what is the advantage in an overall sense to
having research open access, but rather is about the mechanics of where
entrenched power lies, and how that places constraints on choices across the
system.

There have already been several discussions on this list (with useful
pointers to data) about why impact factors can be meaningless, or non-
comparable, or can have meanings that are far removed from the naive
advertisement, but none of that would be to my question here.  My assumption
is that, in the research institutional setting as I see it, everything is
driven toward a boundary of as near pure thoughtlessness as the system can
tolerate and still grind along, which means that what is rewarded is what
accountants can accumulate at high volume, which means impact factors and
things like them.  If, even just for purely historical reasons, a high
fraction of high-impact-factor journals are held by publishers who refuse
OA, then those journals have (for now) the power to force a trade-off by
authors, between compliance with a grant regulation, and support by their
universities for promotion/tenure, probably future grants where program
managers or reviewers look at impact factor ratings without taking into
account that they may be in direct conflict with the OA policy, for younger
researchers, hiring decisions in the first place, or start-up support,
teaching loads, etc.

If that is the main driver, then it should be purely a matter of the
combination of institutional design and getting coordination among enough
players in the system to provide power sufficient to push back against the
effectively rent-power (a power inherent in existing
position) of Elsevier, Kluwer, Springer, or whomever.

Like so many other things that seem to fail, it just seems easier to get
coordination in some kinds of systems (firms, markets) than in other kinds
of systems (academic communities, civil society), and the more-easily
organized tend to accumulate power advantages, which can sometimes become
extreme.

But some data and analysis would probably say whether there is any substance
in the above guesses.

Eric


On Apr 16, 2014, at 7:53 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

> The question I have is what advantage is there in not having your 
> research work open access?
>
> Given it is such a pain to download a non-open access paper, the open 
> access papers percolate to the top of my reading list.
>
> The only answers I can think of
>
> - publishing open access is more expensive (publishers often offer an 
> open access option for more dollars),
>
> - prestigious journals prevent archiving of papers in arXiv or other 
> repositories,
>
> - its a fag to upload your paper to arXiv or your institution archive
>
>
> In my case, uploading my publications to arXiv and linked from my 
> website is my default option. I will usually amend any copyright 
> transfer agreement to allow this, if not already allowed. It's a right 
> PITA when the publisher doesn't accept my amendment, as I then need to 
> remember that that paper is a special exception :(
>
> Cheers
> --
>
>

> Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Principal, High Performance Coders
> Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
> University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au
>
> Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret
> (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html)
> --
> --
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group list

Re: [FRIAM] Open Access Publication

[Nick Thompson]

Gary, 

You are correct.  You must not get your mail in HTML, because there was a
link in my message to the Wikipedia entry on Open Access Mandate.  Google
it.  

N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2014 2:55 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Open Access Publication

Regarding OA mandates, which I assume stands for "Open Access" mandates, I
believe some funding agencies require that papers that result from research
funded by the agency (at least when the actual writing about the results is
funded by the grant) be made open access. Just a vague memory, so take it
with a grain of salt.

Gary

On Apr 16, 2014, at 3:36 PM, Nick Thompson 
wrote:

> Dear Friammers,
>  
> I thought Stevan Harnad's response might interest the Open Access
Publication enthusiasts on this list.  Perhaps we could talk about it on
Friday:  I am wondering what is meant by OA mandates. 
>  
> From: Stevan Harnad 
> Subject: Re: Research Gate?
> Date: April 15, 2014 at 10:19:56 AM EDT
> To: Nick Thompson 
> Cc: CC suppressed by NST
>  
> On Apr 15, 2014, at 12:52 AM, Nick Thompson 
wrote:
> 
> 
> Dear Dr. Harnad,
>  
> I have been watching the development of Research Gate with bemusement.  On
the on hand it seems like another attempt make money off of academic vanity,
but on the other hand it seems to be awfully good at pulling materials into
the quasi=public domain.
>  
> I am betting you have strong opinions about them, and I am wondering what
those are.
>  
> Nick Thompson (etc.)
>  
> Dear Professor Thompson,
>  
> Research Gate has managed to use some effective lures to get people to
make their papers OA (mostly vanity indicators), but it does not scale. The
same authors who do not make their papers OA in their IRs  (unless it is
made mandatory) don't upload them to RG. And RG is vulnerable to take-down
notices as a 3rd-party publisher.
>  
> What would be useful (and will probably happen, though too slowly) would
be if universities used the automated lure/vanity techniques of RG (as well
as those of the https://www.openaccessbutton.org  they could even set up
automatic google-scholar alerts ) for their own institutional authors as a
carrot to back up their OA mandates.
>  
> But even that is useless without the mandates themselves...
>  
> Best wishes,
>  
> Stevan
>  
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe 
> at St. John's College to unsubscribe 
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] Open Access Publication

[Eric Smith]

Hi Nick,

Yes, I like ideas of this kind, and there are many that I think are  
eligible and good.


To me, though, it is a chess game.

For every visible and consequential change, such as a rule change or a  
shift in orientation by a department or school, a lot of little  
foundation-building has to be done behind the scenes to address all  
the constraints and problems that have caused these changes _not_ to  
be adopted in the past.  An adequate pawn structure has to bet set up  
before moves by the rooks or the queen are advantageous or even  
feasible.  That low-level stuff often is not visible, but unless it is  
done to undermine the current pressures, the higher-level changes  
never become available or desirable to those who need to make the  
decisions.


I imagine a need to coordinate a kind of parallel assault, in which  
libraries refuse subscriptions to high-cost journals so they can  
allocate the funds to open-access fees (discussed earlier on this  
list; but that too requires foundation-building because how do we make  
articles available that currently live in those journals, and which  
researchers depend on); in which academics are willing to take a  
temporary hit to band behind Gowers and forego high-reward journals;  
in which government agencies such as NIH (with its mammoth size) hire  
computer programmers to do accounting on how much of the impact factor  
in the CVs of proposers comes from journals that are specifically in  
conflict with the agency's OA policy, and then require the program  
managers to make a big noise to their panels (their "study sections")  
to "ignore" high impact that conflicts with the agency's policy, and  
so forth.  (This is like telling a jury to "ignore" inadmissible  
comments; of course they can't un-hear them, but by putting them on  
notice maybe it is a step in the right direction.)


These institutions are interlocking like railroad ballast, and I think  
understanding how to be _systematic_ about the problem of unlocking  
them is where much of the complexity lies that we don't understand  
well.  But that makes it deserving of consideration as a science  
problem as well as a social goal.


All best,

Eric




On Apr 17, 2014, at 1:02 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:


Hi, Eric,

What if Professional Societies were to declare that nothing is  
"published"
until it has been made available to the public.  I might permit a  
reasonable
handling fee, such as a nickel a page, making the downloading of a  
paper

roughly equivalent to the cost or Xeroxing it.   And then Universities
follow suit by declaring that nothing goes in your personnel file  
that has

not been "published".

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2014 6:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Open Access Publication

Hi Russell,

You know what would be a really useful datum, and which probably  
exists

though I haven't tried to look for such:

Some simple two-color plot or list of the impact factors of journals,
grouped according to whether their copyright agreements do or do not  
permit
open access.  One could complement that by computing various  
correlation

coefficients of impact factor with a dummy variable for open/not-open.

My suspicion, which one could start to try to test with such data,  
is that

this is not a question of what is the advantage in an overall sense to
having research open access, but rather is about the mechanics of  
where
entrenched power lies, and how that places constraints on choices  
across the

system.

There have already been several discussions on this list (with useful
pointers to data) about why impact factors can be meaningless, or non-
comparable, or can have meanings that are far removed from the naive
advertisement, but none of that would be to my question here.  My  
assumption
is that, in the research institutional setting as I see it,  
everything is
driven toward a boundary of as near pure thoughtlessness as the  
system can
tolerate and still grind along, which means that what is rewarded is  
what
accountants can accumulate at high volume, which means impact  
factors and

things like them.  If, even just for purely historical reasons, a high
fraction of high-impact-factor journals are held by publishers who  
refuse
OA, then those journals have (for now) the power to force a trade- 
off by
authors, between compliance with a grant regulation, and support by  
their
universities for promotion/tenure, probably future grants where  
program
managers or reviewers look at impact factor ratings without taking  
into
account that they may be in direct conflict with the OA policy, for  
younger

researchers, hiring decisions in the first place, or start-up support,
t