this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
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Science Memes

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Nature saying the quiet part out loud. (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 73 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Oops, all my research keeps getting leaked online.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

If you're looking at publishing it for free, I'd think it should be fine to put a PDF download in an ordinary blog post with the title and abstract?

Or are there people who won't allow that?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (5 children)

You will transfer the economic copyright to most journals upon publication of the typeset manuscript meaning that you're not allowed to publish that particular PDF anywhere. However, a lot of journals are okay with you publishing the pre-peer reviewed article or even sometimes the peer-reviewed, but NOT typeset article (sometimes called post-print article). Scientific publishing is weird :-)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

The last couple journals I published in let you put the post-print PDF on your web page after an "embargo period". I've never personally seen a journal forbid you from submitting articles whose preprints had been posted in sites like arxiv.org.

But I think scientific publishing isn't "weird", more like "predatory", "exploitative", or at least "antiquated."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

or even sometimes the peer-reviewed, but NOT typeset article

What does that mean? The LaTeX source?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The typeset article is what you'd see if you download the .pdf from, e.g., Nature. See here.

It's the manuscript with all the stuff that distinguishes an article from one journal to another (where is the abstract, what font type, is there a divider between some sections, etc.). Articles that have not been typeset yet can be seen from Arxiv, for example this one: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.04391

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So basically the article you are allowed to release can have its typesetting - it just can't have the journal's preamble/theme?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If I understand you correctly: Yes, the article can have a typesetting like whatever you get out-of-the-box from Latex and that article can then be published anywhere. What is typically not allowed is to openly publish the article that have been typeset by the journal where you've sent in your article. This is probably what you mean by "preamble/theme"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Yup that's what I mean.

Seems like a reasonable limitation then (not that the entire business model of scientific journals is reasonable in the 21st century is reasonable - just this specific limitation). The journal's theme is proprietary, but the paper's authors still have the LaTeX source so they can just slap a free preamble on it and publish it with that.

[–] refalo 3 points 2 months ago

Just leak it before publishing it. Also most authors will give you the pdf for free if you just email them and ask for it nicely.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Why publish through a journal at all? What do they do that WordPress doesn't? Are they the source of your credibility? Do they pay the peer reviewers. Or are you all just whipped?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There are several benefits, but compared to WordPress, I guess the biggest one is outreach: no one will actually see an article if it's published by a young researcher that hasn't made a name for themselves yet. It will also not be catalogued and will therefore be more difficult to find when searching for articles.

Also, calling researchers "whipped" is a bit dismissive to the huge inertia there is in the realm of scientific publication. The scientific journal of Nature was founded in 1869, but general open-access publishing has only really taken off in the last decade or so.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So they are the source of your credibility. And you continue to agree to have it that way.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

No, that's not what I said. You're right that journals, to some extent, also lends credibility to the publication, but it's not the source of credibility. What I said was that an article published in Nature will have many more views than an article published on a random WordPress blog.

Again, saying that researchers "agree to have it that way" ignores the structural difficulty of changing the system by the individual. The ones who benefit the most from changing the system are also the ones most dependent on external funding - that is, young researchers. Publishing in low-impact journals (ones that has a small outreach such as most open-access journals) makes it much harder to apply for funding

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

It's not what you wanted to say, but it is what the words you wrote effectively meant.

Nature doesn't lend you credibility. You and your colleagues read Nature because it's how you filter out the trash.
Researchers agree to have it that way. I will not yield on that argument. You do, you agree to it by majority to this day.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

By this logic, you and everyone else agree to climate change. Everyone in Venezuela agrees to Maduro.

It has nothing to do with majority, it's a collective action and balance of power.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

That's okay. If you view the journals as glorified blogs, I agree that they're unnecessary. They aren't and do more than that even though they're also doing a lot of bad stuff with sky high profit margins. If you're not open for changing your views, I don't see the point of discussing any more. Appreciate the back and forth, tho!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Publications in peer-reviewed journals are how a career in science is built. It's impossible to measure the productivity of a scientist. What is done, is that one looks at their publications. How many publications do they have? How often are they cited? What is the quality of the journal?

This creates very bad incentives, leading to things like publication bias. It also means that you must publish in prestigious journals. You don't have a choice but to accept their terms. Libraries don't have a choice but to stock these journals. It's a straight-forward monopoly racket. These publishers make fantastical profits.

All that money can be used for PR campaigns and lobbying to keep the good times rolling.