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Thread: Posters in the sciences: chat on current journal culture?

  1. #31
    Senior Member Flixy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    No GOP-speak here, I think the model for the natural/chemical/biological (IE non-social) sciences makes sense. As you say, incremental discoveries can add-up to something important. And if our governments are funding this basic research, the results should be public. Though there remains a question of patenting something. Arguably, if you discover it (even while on the dole), it makes sense to have an incentive-system built-in with patents.

    It's in the social sciences that things get fuzzy.
    Err, correct me if I'm wrong, but with panting, isn't the idea to simultaneously protect the inventor, and to spread the information so that others can improve on it (while paying for a license)? Which is why patents are public, so trade secrets aren't patented because they'd be open for anyone to see. So patenting does not go against making the results public, at all.
    Keep on keepin' the beat alive!

  2. #32
    De Oppresso Liber CitizenCain's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Flixy View Post
    Err, correct me if I'm wrong, but with panting,
    You're wrong. The idea with panting is to listen to her voice and get yourself off before she calls you a pervert and hangs up.

    Um, or, so I hear from some of my female friends.

    Quote Originally Posted by Flixy View Post
    isn't the idea to simultaneously protect the inventor, and to spread the information so that others can improve on it (while paying for a license)? Which is why patents are public, so trade secrets aren't patented because they'd be open for anyone to see. So patenting does not go against making the results public, at all.
    I think, actually, the patent system (US, at least) is designed to actually be an exchange. In exchange for a government-granted, time-limited monopoly, the inventor must publicly disclose [in the patent application] what novel thing he's done, and how... so that after the time period on the patent expires, anyone else can copy or build on the invention. Should the patent holder wish to do so, he can sell or license this monopoly instead of trying to directly exploit it.

    It's badly broken at the moment, of course, but that's the idea - disclosing your invention, giving up all rights to protect it later, and you get a government-enforced monopoly now. So society benefits in the future, and the inventor benefits now, instead of the other dynamics where the inventor gets nothing when everyone else copies his idea freely, or where society gets nothing, because the inventor's secret vanishes with him into the grave.
    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

    -- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.

  3. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    Exactly. But do the publishers pay any fees to the people submitting the work?
    People submitting work don't get paid. Publishers pay journals money for right to publish the journals...

    Quote Originally Posted by Aimless View Post
    I hear most articles in the sciences are consumed digitally anyway, and most or at least many reviewers review for free. Moreover, it's clear from the profits of the major publishing houses that costs are offset :P finally, the govt. pays scientists and institutions but they in turn pay the publishers handsomely in order to be able to do what the govt. pays them to do. Indirectly the govt. pays the journals, but, on the bright side, in order to comply with NIH rules scientists receiving NIH grants have to make their work openly and freely accessible to everyone. Or have I missed something?
    Whether they're consumed electronically or not, the journal editors still have to pay money to print paper copies. The costs are offset for the publishers, not the journals.

    Considering that the government controls half the economy, everyone indirectly gets money from the government. Does that mean everyone should be forced to offer some of their services for free?
    Hope is the denial of reality

  4. #34
    De Oppresso Liber CitizenCain's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Loki View Post
    Does that mean everyone should be forced to offer some of their services for free?
    No, that means that if you are DIRECTLY funded with public funds, that work should be made available to the public. Sell it as well, if you like, but the paper or schematics or blueprints ("IP," etc.) belong to the entity providing funding. The public, in the case of tax-payer funding.
    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

    -- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.

  5. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by CitizenCain View Post
    No, that means that if you are DIRECTLY funded with public funds, that work should be made available to the public. Sell it as well, if you like, but the paper or schematics or blueprints ("IP," etc.) belong to the entity providing funding. The public, in the case of tax-payer funding.
    What if I'm using machinery paid by Simo Suomalainen, ie. the public, but am personally funded by a private institution?
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  6. #36
    De Oppresso Liber CitizenCain's Avatar
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    Got an example of such an instance?
    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

    -- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.

  7. #37
    Well, not to be awful specific, but my sweet self, for instance.

    I can muddle it up further, if you'd like, cos I got some samples that're prepared by people paid by public fund, using e-quip-ment paid both by private and public parties, further processed by people on private funding using e-quip-ment paid by tax-payer money. Sent to me with a-fore-mentioned funding situation.
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  8. #38
    Actually, now that I think on it, I think I am paid personally by both private and tax-payer money. So
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  9. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by CitizenCain View Post
    No, that means that if you are DIRECTLY funded with public funds, that work should be made available to the public. Sell it as well, if you like, but the paper or schematics or blueprints ("IP," etc.) belong to the entity providing funding. The public, in the case of tax-payer funding.
    A) You're paid to advance science, not to make your work accessible to the general public. If it should be accessible to anyone, it's the rest of the scientific community.
    B) Yet again, publishers (and even journals) are not directly funded by the government.
    C) Should any (legal) drug that is developed on the basis of government-funded basic research be provided to the public for free?
    Hope is the denial of reality

  10. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by Loki View Post
    C) Should any (legal) drug that is developed on the basis of government-funded basic research be provided to the public for free?
    Heavens to Betsy!
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  11. #41
    Aren't virtually all drugs created on the basis of publicly funded basic research?
    Hope is the denial of reality

  12. #42
    Senior Member Flixy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Loki View Post
    Aren't virtually all drugs created on the basis of publicly funded basic research?
    I thought they were all paid by American consumers who pay the real prices unlike us Europeans?
    Keep on keepin' the beat alive!

  13. #43
    The two aren't mutually exclusive...
    Hope is the denial of reality

  14. #44
    De Oppresso Liber CitizenCain's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Loki View Post
    A) You're paid to advance science, not to make your work accessible to the general public. If it should be accessible to anyone, it's the rest of the scientific community.
    That's not how funding for anything works, let alone science. Hint: when the government gives out a research grant, it has conditions and objectives assigned to it, which tell you what the researchers/company/lab is being paid to do.

    It is explicitly not "to advance science," which is why multi-million dollar grant proposals to "advance computer science" [by geeking out in my underwear, at home, while drinking beer] keep getting rejected.

    Quote Originally Posted by Loki View Post
    B) Yet again, publishers (and even journals) are not directly funded by the government.
    And again to you, this has nothing to do with journals. Journals aren't involved in this in any way, except that there's a potential that journal publishers won't be able (or as able) to price-gouge.

    Quote Originally Posted by Loki View Post
    C) Should any (legal) drug that is developed on the basis of government-funded basic research be provided to the public for free?
    Moving goal posts and false analogy. Try again, or admit that you're wrong and/or not actually arguing on what I've stated.
    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

    -- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.

  15. #45
    Here's another one:

    Let's say I, being funded by both Finnish tax payer and private agencies, utilizing tools mostly paid for by Finnish tax payer, am working with, oh, a Korean scientist and a Romanian* engineer, one funded by a private Korean fund and the other by the state of Romania, on a novel construction material which has been produced by a private Finnish industrial firm. Which nation, if any, should enjoy the fruits of our research and build new houses out of Obtanium? Which nation's tax payer should pay which for this research? Should the nations' tax payers pay the Finnish firm, or vice versa? Should any of the private funding agencies get anything related to Obtanium-research?

    Does the situation change if said Finnish firm is partly owned by the Finnish government (tax payer)?

    *Nations changed to protect privacy!
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  16. #46
    *He's really a Romulan-Romanian

  17. #47
    Boo

    get off the stage

    (I supplanted one ex-Soviet state for another)
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  18. #48

  19. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by Catgrrl View Post
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  20. #50
    , That almost makes me want to watch the original series. I'm more of a Picard fan

    Anyway, sorry for the derailment! I haven't had to access journals since my college days.

  21. #51
    Part of the issue, funnily enough
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  22. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by Nessus View Post
    Here's another one:

    Let's say I, being funded by both Finnish tax payer and private agencies, utilizing tools mostly paid for by Finnish tax payer, am working with, oh, a Korean scientist and a Romanian* engineer, one funded by a private Korean fund and the other by the state of Romania, on a novel construction material which has been produced by a private Finnish industrial firm. Which nation, if any, should enjoy the fruits of our research and build new houses out of Obtanium? Which nation's tax payer should pay which for this research? Should the nations' tax payers pay the Finnish firm, or vice versa? Should any of the private funding agencies get anything related to Obtanium-research?

    Does the situation change if said Finnish firm is partly owned by the Finnish government (tax payer)?

    *Nations changed to protect privacy!
    Good question.

    I'd say most people today would think majority ownership belongs to the private Finnish industrial firm, as the producer. It's convenient that the Finn tax payers are also supplying most of the "tools" for the Finnish production company. That implies a cross-over of "ownership", and shared resources between a Finnish individual/corporation, and its government/tax payer citizens.

    Assuming the private Finnish industrial firm has properly paid the other scientist and engineer as contractors, it can't be isolated who subsidized their expertise, or why their nationality matters much. (A private international benefactor or public nation-state.) The originating and publicly-funded producer Finns should probably give a tax break or huge consumer discount to fellow Finns, for their product. The contractors might have a legal agreement to get a royalty for sale of that product (paying either the person, their nation, or both).

    At least, I think that sounds about how it might go. It would change as soon as patents or trademarks expired, but I don't know enough about how those international legal rules work.

  23. #53
    Regarding some of the online publications, there were times at my old job where I would be looking for some studies on aquatic-based issues, and Google would always land me on a slightly interesting abstract. It did bum me out that I couldn't access the whole article without a subscription, but I guess you gotta pay to play, and I had no budget for such things. I had no ideas about some of the subscription prices on many of these journals, though.

  24. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by Flixy View Post
    Err, correct me if I'm wrong, but with panting, isn't the idea to simultaneously protect the inventor, and to spread the information so that others can improve on it (while paying for a license)? Which is why patents are public, so trade secrets aren't patented because they'd be open for anyone to see. So patenting does not go against making the results public, at all.
    True, but not all research is patentable. Especially when it comes to non-scientific stuff. Which brings up this issue

    Quote Originally Posted by Loki View Post
    People submitting work don't get paid. Publishers pay journals money for right to publish the journals...
    Seems like it's just another one of those broken-publishing-model issues. Then again, aren't many of these academic journals e-subscription-based anyway for online access?

  25. #55
    Based might be the wrong term, but
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  26. #56
    De Oppresso Liber CitizenCain's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nessus View Post
    Here's another one: [snippy!]
    Is there honestly any point whatsoever to me even trying to untangle that clusterfuck, given how intertwined private and public organizations are in Scandinavistan anyway? If you say there is, I'll believe you, and might even consider thinking about the tangled web of shit that would be created amongst multiple private, public and public/private entities from 3 different nations, but if not, I'm perfectly happy to leave it at "clusterfuck" and not a risk the migraine.

    That's not really the issue I was speaking to or thinking about anyway. When scientist X is given money from organization Y to do experiments Q, R, S, T, and U, organization Y is entitled to documentation Z, from scientist X of the results of QURST. [In academic circles this documentation is usually called a "paper" or a "study," of course.] So when organization Y is the general public, they're entitled to a copy of documents Z, since they paid for QURST in the first place. Same as if organization Y was an individual or a corporation.

    If scientist X wants to try to submit his QURST findings to journal N and publisher M wants to try to skull-fuck everyone by charging obscene piles of money for access to journal N, I don't see an inherent problem in that, or a reason that providing documents Z to the public (which paid for them) is mutually exclusive with that, like Loki seems to be implying it is.

    The rest I don't really have an opinion because I don't know enough about the subject. Is the publisher's role in filtering the gargantuan pile of papers and studies done every year worth the huge stacks of money they charge for that service? Beats me. Is a FOSS-style journal a plausible or worthwhile endeavor? *<shrug>* (And so on.) I was actually kinda hoping the academics and graduates would discuss those kinds of topics, so I could learn something new, instead of focusing on the horrible atrocities one has to commit against one's budget or pocketbook to get access to the academic journals owned by these publishers, which I already knew about.
    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

    -- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.

  27. #57
    I doubt the situation is solely the produce of Scandinavian specialty, given that Finland isn't even a part of Scandinavia.
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  28. #58
    This one doesn't have a direct industrial application like the Obtanium example, but here's one more:

    Professor half-funded by the US, half by Finland. Gives me (with the earlier-mentioned funding conditions) a sample generated by Australian-public funded research, to be studied by myself and a team located in Australia, funded by (for all I know) private and public funds of US, UK and Australia, and I think Japan. Who benefits from this research? Should any nationality here be compensated by another? It's both Finnish and US tax payer giving glory to Australia, on the face of it!
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  29. #59
    De Oppresso Liber CitizenCain's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nessus View Post
    I doubt the situation is solely the produce of Scandinavian specialty, given that Finland isn't even a part of Scandinavia.
    Wut? Yur crazy, woman!

    Scandinavistan includes all three of those countries in Europe's flacid-penis-looking thing up there. Without Finland, it wouldn't look like a limp dick at all, because Finland is the testicle that pulls the whole shape together into that immediately recognizable genital form.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nessus View Post
    This one doesn't have a direct industrial application like the Obtanium example, but here's one more:

    Professor half-funded by the US, half by Finland. Gives me (with the earlier-mentioned funding conditions) a sample generated by Australian-public funded research, to be studied by myself and a team located in Australia, funded by (for all I know) private and public funds of US, UK and Australia, and I think Japan. Who benefits from this research? Should any nationality here be compensated by another? It's both Finnish and US tax payer giving glory to Australia, on the face of it!
    Well, Australian public is entitled to free access to the research they funded. If that research is also given or sold to some other organization, that is, or should be, an issue between the Australian public and the seller/giver, as I see it. The research based on that Australian sample should, I'd think, be freely accessible to all the funders of that research, unless there's some agreement between them to the contrary.

    What they end up doing with the research, of course (making iPods or doing whatever the hell it is governments do with research), is an altogether different matter.
    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

    -- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.

  30. #60
    Quote Originally Posted by CitizenCain View Post
    Wut? Yur crazy, woman!

    Scandinavistan includes all three of those countries in Europe's flacid-penis-looking thing up there. Without Finland, it wouldn't look like a limp dick at all, because Finland is the testicle that pulls the whole shape together into that immediately recognizable genital form.
    To be fair to your heritage, the only "stan" would be Finland anyway, given that Norway's always been in NATO and Sweden has been suckling on that teat as well.
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

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