Re: Survey on publishers for ISWC [responses welcome]

I probably shouldn't ... but I'll reply anyway.


What publishers do is a service. That service comes with a cost. That's 
the case also for ceur-ws or Dagstuhl.

The cost (for the provider/publisher) is dependent on the service 
provided (quality and scope). Little service (e.g. just putting it on a 
webserver for the public) comes with less cost, of course.

Somebody has to pay for the cost. I don't know who that is e.g. for 
ceur-ws or Dagstuhl, though I'd guess that it includes German taxpayers?

So you can ask a few questions then.

* How much service do you need?

* What is a good service/cost trade-off? Branding (reputation of the 
provider) in fact comes into this as well.

* Is (for a particular provider), the cost reasonable wrt. the service 
provided?

* Is a commmercial or a non-profit or a public provider the best solution?

I don't think that any of these questions have obvious answers. For me, 
it is interesting to see that there are providers that have arisen out 
of professional academic associations, that feel to me like more of a 
rip-off than some commercial publishers.


For me, one of the key issues in today's landscape is that some 
commercial providers charge a multiple of the cost for their services. 
They rely on momentum (like, it's easier to work through familiar 
channels; very high reputation of outlet/journal), or on mechanisms like 
lower per-proceedings cost if there's a high number of proceedings in a 
series, but then not passing on these cost savings. For the commercial 
model to do really well, competition needs to increase.

This said, compared to publication costs in journals or conference 
proceedings, a much higher cost factor are in-person conferences, 
including participation fees, travel costs, accommodations. Not to 
mention the "working time lost" by people in transit. Compared to that 
(in computer science) publication costs are not that big of a deal at 
the moment. So if there's an argument made to decrease cost, I'd say 
that low-cost hybrid conference options are a way to go.

Pascal.

On 1/16/2024 10:49 AM, Sarven Capadisli wrote:
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> 
> On 2024-01-16 17:13, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
>> It would have been useful to make the survey better for those of us 
>> who do not have research funds.
> 
> 
> Perhaps. I'd think of it as an inherit issue with how the whole this 
> particular Semantic Web/Web Science research space has been operating. 
> The survey just reflects that.
> 
> Conferences like ISWC/ESWC, .. journals like SWJ .. all essentially 
> operate with the understanding and need that's highlighted in the 
> survey, i.e., the certification and rating system:
> 
>  >The choice of publisher should not directly affect ISWC's CORE rating.
> 
> Let's see what happens when we remove that variable. Decoupling 
> certification from registration.
> 
> The existing system lacks fairness and inclusivity, especially when 
> scholarly communication has been relying on third-party (for-profit) 
> services, all meanwhile the read-write Web has been available for 
> decades at the fraction of costs.
> 
> With respect to this survey, transitioning to the use of Dagstuhl for 
> publishing represents a good / significant step. Or actually *investing* 
> in ceur-ws.org (you still can!)... or alike.
> 
> Any numbers on how much (taxpayer) money and rights that got stolen by 
> using the for-profit publishers to date?
> 
> It is the age old issue of for unknown wild excuses Web researchers not 
> having the incentive or motivation to ... publish and communicate their 
> findings on some sort of a global information superhighway for all to 
> access.
> 
> Recycling an obligatory quote by *the* Web developer:
> 
>> From: timbl@info .cern.ch (Tim Berners-Lee)
>> Newsgroups: alt.hypertext
>> Subject: WorldWideWeb: Summary
>> Date: 6 Aug 91 16:00:12 GMT
>>
>> The WWW project merges the techniques of information retrieval and 
>> hypertext to
>> make an easy but powerful global information system.
>>
>> The project started with the philosophy that much academic information 
>> should
>> be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing 
>> within
>> internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by
>> support groups.
> 
> 
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/1991/08/art-6487.txt__;!!On18fmf1aQ!1T4f-kRl8XnK2nHBsg_VHN6j41t_KFLC8dTZzeEBC9wTqn_UMbEdkA-bqMSUKQuA0mJ_Fji2NEldmUhK2s7P4w$
> 
> Aidan, thanks for sharing the survey and the underlying considerations.
> 
> -Sarven
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://csarven.ca/*i__;Iw!!On18fmf1aQ!1T4f-kRl8XnK2nHBsg_VHN6j41t_KFLC8dTZzeEBC9wTqn_UMbEdkA-bqMSUKQuA0mJ_Fji2NEldmUhigY7xAg$

-- 
Pascal Hitzler
Lloyd T. Smith Creativity in Engineering Chair
Director, Center for AI and Data Science CAIDS
Co-Director, Inst. for Digital Agriculture and Advanced Analytics ID3A
Kansas State University   http://www.pascal-hitzler.de
http://www.daselab.org    http://www.semantic-web-journal.net
http://k-state.edu/ID3A   https://neurosymbolic-ai-journal.com

Received on Tuesday, 16 January 2024 17:17:00 UTC