Re: Free and Open Access [was Re: With footnotes (was Re: Open Access to Journal of Web Semantics (JWS))]

The main problem is due to tradition of high quality peer review being in
closed access journals and journals, but this is an historical accident.

The point of science is to increase knowledge, and peer review by qualified
peers is necessary. Otherwise it's just a blog post with comments. The
point of conferences and journals is not to get people tenure, but to
organize peer review and the dissemination. Of course the Web will disrupt
this model, but the important point is to keep peer review. Peer review is
of couse possible in a free and open environment.

Personally, I care more about the quality of the peer review and knowledge
than whether the latest (and often very flaky) RDF technology is used.
Linking to dataset is a good thing, but it is not enough.

  Yours,
       Harry

On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 2:36 PM David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:

> The open access dilemma *can* be solved: by getting universities to
> commit to an open access policy in their tenure evaluation criteria.
> "If an article is not published in a journal that provides free and open
> access, it doesn't exist", i.e., it will not be counted toward tenure.
>
> This change would actually be in the universities' best interest anyway,
> because they would save money on journal subscriptions and benefit
> science.
>
> The problem now is that researchers are convinced -- quite reasonably --
> that they need to publish in "prestigious" journals for tenure credit,
> so they cave to those journal's closed-access policies.  If that
> perverse incentive is broken by universities adopting an open access
> policy as described above, then we can have a sustainable shift to
> free-and-open access for research publications.  This policy shift does
> not need to happen all at once either.  Individual universities can take
> the lead, and others can follow.  This issue needs to be raised with
> university administrations.
>
> I'm so glad this topic is being discussed!
>
> David Booth
>
> On 08/09/2017 08:47 AM, Sarven Capadisli wrote:
> > On 2017-08-09 14:25, Harry Halpin wrote:
> >> Congrats for that getting this nearly open access policy. My opinion is
> >> that this is about as much as we can expect from for-profit academic
> >> publishers, and I would like to congratulate Ian and the rest for
> >> getting these concessions out of Elsevier. So, I can go back to
> >> reviewing for this journal - and I do think high quality peer review is
> >> important, and see good reason for keeping it anonymized.
> >>
> >> In terms of the rest of the complaints, it should be obvious the
> >> academic publishing world is for profit with all that entails.
> >> Nonetheless, this is better than 99% of the rest.
> >>
> >> In terms of RDF dogfooding, there are unsolved  practical problems
> >> ranging from the failure of MathML in modern browsers (i.e. why
> >> scientific publishing uses LaTeX) to the long history of having
> >> difficulty with RDF uptake in general. I wish good luck to anyone trying
> >> to solve these problems that have been outstanding for about two
> decades.
> >>
> >> If one doesn't use mathematics or academic peer revuew, and wants to
> >> experiment with the magic of RDF, perhaps digfooding a blog is more
> >> productive than complaining about CFPs. Once a great system works and is
> >> production ready, I am sure there would be a sympathetic response from
> >> academics and publishers.
> >>
> >>     Yours,
> >>        Harry
> >
> >
> > You can ignore
> > https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2017Aug/0011.html as
> > you like to fit your agenda. In the meantime, go ahead and obey what the
> > for-profit tells you, and do not question "authority".
> >
> > For those that are not content with the status quo, or are not satisfied
> > with "that's just how things are" (tm), they have a more exciting future
> > ahead. And, we are working on building that instead of being passive or
> > dismissing others for trying.
> >
> > -Sarven
> > http://csarven.ca/#i
> >
>
>