Agenda ideas for VSS satellite "Open Access, Open Science, and Publishing: What role for Vision Scientists?"
Alex Holcombe
E.g., discussion question: should the editorial boards of Vision
Research and other Elsevier journals resign en masse and join another
publisher? If so, what publisher should they use?
Alex Holcombe
-the title. Any ideas besides "Publishing, Open Access, and Open
Science" ?
-a blurb (50 – 75 words with a link to more information if you like)
NEEDED IN NEXT FEW DAYS BY VSS ORGANIZERS
--For the hyperlink, I'll set up a blank (for now) webpage at Sydney
University. This will eventually contain the blurb and maybe some
agenda information. Also I want to have links to info there about open
science, Research Works Act, etc. Perhaps it would be good to make it
a wiki, I recently heard about WYSYWIG plugins that make it easier for
newbies to edit.
--blurb depends on what the agenda items will be (see below and
please weigh in. I put names of ppl hoping they can talk to the
topic / lead discussion)
-AGENDA items / TOPICS to explain and discuss (these are ideas, some
mentioned by people before, but please comment)
--open access and the state of science publishing generally and
vision/neuroscience/psychology specifically
---how open access journals are funded (it's not all author-pays,
thanks to research-funder support, scholarly society support, free
publishing platforms like Open Journal Systems)
--the Research Works Act, Elsevier, and Vision Research
---Should the editorial board of VR try to switch publishers? If
so, what publisher/publishing system could they use?
--alternatives to conventional peer review (Kravitz & Baker in the
Kriegeskorte special issue of Frontiers etc- Lee de Wit and Jody
Culham?)
--open science, Michael Nielsen, avoiding scientific fraud,
increasing replicability
--experiment code repository (Jon Pierce?) (BTW one thing you can do
is post your code already on your institutional repository as I did
here: http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/7281?mode=full ,
although a central solution where you can see all psychopy/
psychophysics toolbox code would be better)
--draft a statement of what we'd like to see the field do / strive
for, or for Vision Research or JoV editorial boards to consider (they
are meeting on Saturday or Sunday)
Blurb has to be really short at 50-75 words, so I suppose will be just
a list of the possible topics. How much can fit in an hour? What do
people vote to prioritise?
The web page, and opening presentation at the session (which I suppose
I can start, although I hope others will speak up here if they have
something to chip in) would start with some kind of motivating stuff,
like "The advent of the internet has transformed science publishing
and science communication in some ways, while some elements have
stayed the same. Within vision research, journals like iPerception and
Journal of Vision have gone open access, and research funders in some
countries (NIH, Wellcome Trust, RCUK, Max Planck Society) have begun
to require that the results they pay for be available for free... "
"Recent scandals in psychology have increased the desire among some to
reform the scientific communication system.."
Alex Holcombe
TITLE: Publishing, Open Access, and Open Science
BLURB: Has the internet changed everything? Most publishers and
journals have made only small changes to the way they do business.
Advocates of open science and open access want to see more. Those
concerned about the "serials crisis" claim that for-profit
megapublishers now own many of our journals and charge exorbitant
prices. Should we: Boycott? Change publishers? Open peer review? Come
discuss these issues and (hopefully) create an action plan.
-Alex
Jonathan Peirce
Alternative blurb. I'm honestly not fussed, but I wonder if this sounds
less confrontational?:
We all hope for an open scientific environment in which;
- manuscripts are widely available
- peer review is fair and effective
- copyrights are permissive
- experiments can be fully replicated
- all of this is as cheap as possible
Modern technologies make these goals more possible than ever before.
This workshop will consider ways in which they can be advanced.
Jon
On 14/02/2012 10:45, Alex Holcombe wrote:
> Please comment on the following draft title and blurb (50-75 words):
> TITLE: Publishing, Open Access, and Open Science
> BLURB: Has the internet changed everything? Most publishers and
> journals have made only small changes to the way they do business.
> Advocates of open science and open access want to see more. Those
> concerned about the "serials crisis" claim that for-profit
> megapublishers now own many of our journals and charge exorbitant
> prices. Should we: Boycott? Change publishers? Open peer review? Come
> discuss these issues and (hopefully) create an action plan.
>
> -Alex
>
> On Feb 11, 3:14 pm, Alex Holcombe<aoholco...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> We need comments on:
>> -the title. Any ideas besides "Publishing, Open Access, and Open
>> Science" ?
>> -a blurb (50 � 75 words with a link to more information if you like)
>> NEEDED IN NEXT FEW DAYS BY VSS ORGANIZERS
>> --For the hyperlink, I'll set up a blank (for now) webpage at Sydney
>> University. This will eventually contain the blurb and maybe some
>> agenda information. Also I want to have links to info there about open
>> science, Research Works Act, etc. Perhaps it would be good to make it
>> a wiki, I recently heard about WYSYWIG plugins that make it easier for
>> newbies to edit.
>> --blurb depends on what the agenda items will be (see below and
>> please weigh in. I put names of ppl hoping they can talk to the
>> topic / lead discussion)
>>
>> -AGENDA items / TOPICS to explain and discuss (these are ideas, some
>> mentioned by people before, but please comment)
>> --open access and the state of science publishing generally and
>> vision/neuroscience/psychology specifically
>> ---how open access journals are funded (it's not all author-pays,
>> thanks to research-funder support, scholarly society support, free
>> publishing platforms like Open Journal Systems)
>> --the Research Works Act, Elsevier, and Vision Research
>> ---Should the editorial board of VR try to switch publishers? If
>> so, what publisher/publishing system could they use?
>> --alternatives to conventional peer review (Kravitz& Baker in the
--
Jonathan Peirce
Nottingham Visual Neuroscience
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Alex Holcombe
And it's also less in-your-face. I would have tried to write
something more like that except I am getting some feedback that people
are not (yet) offended by these discussions, which made me more
comfortable in being direct.
I'm not sure there's room in the blurb for all those bullet points on
separate lines, but generally it might be good to hybridize ours
together. I'm thinking we ought to have at least one provocative
element to the blurb.
Alex
On Feb 14, 11:32 pm, Jonathan Peirce
Jonathan Peirce
--
Dr. Jonathan Peirce
Nottingham Visual Neuroscience
Alex Holcombe
succeed in finding a way to add a provocative element.
We all hope for an open system of science in which:
1. journal articles are inexpensive or free
2. peer review is fair and efficient
3. experiments can be fully replicated by anyone
Achieving these goals is more feasible than ever. This workshop will
include discussion oriented towards advancing these goals. More info:
http://bit.ly/A9mYUL
----------
"Manuscripts" would be a more inclusive term than "journal
articles" (includes institutional repository versions), but I wanted
to use something everybody would know about. Can explain in the
session. So I've started a wiki at http://bit.ly/A9mYUL, and hope
people will contribute.
-Alex
Ariel Rokem
I'm now leaning towards a modified version of Jon's, although I didn't
succeed in finding a way to add a provocative element.
We all hope for an open system of science in which:
1. journal articles are inexpensive or free
2. peer review is fair and efficient
3. experiments can be fully replicated by anyone
Achieving these goals is more feasible than ever.
This workshop will
include discussion oriented towards advancing these goals. More info:
http://bit.ly/A9mYUL
----------
"Manuscripts" would be a more inclusive term than "journal
articles" (includes institutional repository versions), but I wanted
to use something everybody would know about. Can explain in the
session. So I've started a wiki at http://bit.ly/A9mYUL, and hope
people will contribute.
Daniel Baker
Alex Holcombe
We all hope for an open system of science in which:
2. Peer review is fair and efficient.
3. Experiments can be fully replicated by anyone.
Achieving these goals is more feasible than ever, but most publishers,
journals, and researchers have made few changes to the way they do
business. This workshop will include discussion of possible solutions.
Wiki with more info: http://bit.ly/A9mYUL
----------
I will eventually respond to Nick's recent wrap-up message on CVnet,
advertising the satellite and including the blurb. Let me know if you
think anything in particular should be included.
In case the Vision Research community decides to try to leave
Elsevier, I've been exploring options with other publishers, esp. the
few non-profit ones that remain independent of the mega-profitable
mega-publishers, and I'll post about that soon. For my progress as it
occurs see my Google+ (https://plus.google.com/113040210411045341720/
posts) and/or twitter accounts (https://twitter.com/#!/ceptional).
Also, we need contributions of information to the wiki http://bit.ly/A9mYUL
. A large part of getting movement on all this will be educating the
researcher community, as the issues are pretty complicated! Putting
links to authoritative resources on the wiki can help with that.
Sarah McIntyre
Alex Holcombe
discussion open.
Due to the limited bandwidth of the hotel wi-fi , webcasting might not
be possible. However, someone could at least live-blog or live-tweet
it. And if we designate a hashtag people can chip in over twitter.
To me that may be better than a webcast or a recording viewed much
later because in my experience, a video feed of intermittent quality
is less useful than live-tweeting. And we'll write some blog post
reports after. Also, with live-tweeting people would have the option
of saying "that was stupid, please don't tweet that or delete that
tweet" whereas editing things out of a recording is harder.
-Alex
On Feb 15, 11:37 am, Sarah McIntyre <sarah.mcint...@sydney.edu.au>
wrote:
> it could be webcast, or at least recorded and posted online later so that
> those of us not attending can still be part of the discussion.
>
> Does anyone have the skills and inclination to make this happen?
>
> Sarah
>
Alex Holcombe
publishing, especially alternatives to Elsevier and the other mega-
profitable publishers. That issue was also the spark that got the
CVnet discussion going, and the one that is in the news and is likely
to remain so- I'd wager that before May, there will be some journal
editorial boards, in mathematics at least, that will jump ship from
Elsevier.
This consideration, the strong possibility of a real change being
achieved, put me in agreement with the suggestion that the satellite
should concentrate on publishers. Although jumping ship from the more
predatory publishers won't by itself achieve the three goals that Jon
articulated and form our conference blurb, it would both
1) demonstrate that the community can achieve real change, creating
momentum and
2) because such a publisher would be less restrictive, it would put us
in a better position for experimenting with open-access and
alternative peer review things within a viable ongoing operation (an
existing journal).
Having seen how rarely new and somewhat-radical independent
innovations in scientific communication succeed (and experiencing the
uphill battle myself on that front with my own projects of
evidencechart.com and PsychFileDrawer.org), strategically I favor a
pathway of reform from the existing system.
That said, we want people to see the larger goal and all of its
benefits, so I'd want to communicate that larger context during the
satellite. With an hourlong session, we should be able to do that and
discuss it. But the narrower subject of publishers may be time-
consuming enough to occupy all the rest of the time, as there are a
lot of issues to discuss, things people want to sound off about, and
misunderstandings that will need to be cleared up before we could
reach the stage of concrete action.
What are your thoughts? I'm currently researching possibilities for
non-profit but subscription model publishers, and posting notes on the
wiki. I've written to a few publishers but haven't received responses
yet. Next on the list are Cambridge University Press, MIT Press, and
Highwire Press. If anybody wants to volunteer to write to them about
publishing a journal with them or collect some information about what
they offer, that'd be cool.
http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenVisionScience
-Alex
Jonathan Peirce
One thing I'm curious about is why more people haven't signed up to the
boycott, given the number of people clearly unhappy on the CVNET postings.
I'm quite happy that the open-science aspect doesn't come in at all. I
think it's an interesting issue, but it can be saved for another day.
Jon
--