[bjackman]

I have had so many "why don't you just" conversations with academics about this. I know the "why don't you just" guy is such an annoying person to talk to, but I still don't really understand why they don't just.

This article pointed to a few cases where people tried to do the thing, i.e. the pledge taken by individual researchers, and the requirements placed by certain funding channels, and those sound like a solid attempt to do the thing. This shows that people care and are somewhat willing to organise about it.

But the thing I don't understand is why this can't happen at the department level? If you're an influential figure at a top-5 department in your field, you're friends with your counterparts at the other 4. You see them in person every year. You all hate $journal. Why don't you club together and say "why don't we all have moratorium on publishing in $journal for our departments?"

No temptation for individual research groups to violate the pledge. No dependence on individual funding channels to influence the policy. Just, suddenly, $journal isn't the top publication in that field any more?

I'm sure there are lots of varied reasons why this is difficult but fundamentally it seems like the obvious approach?

[bglazer]

> If you're an influential figure at a top-5 department in your field ... you all hate $journal.

That's the problem, they don't hate these journals, they love them. Generally speaking they're old people who became influential by publishing in these journals. Their reputation and influence was built on a pile of Science and Nature papers. Their presentations all include prominent text indicating which figures came from luxury journals. If Science and Nature lose their prestige so do they (or at least that's what they think)

This was very apparent when eLife changed their publishing model. Their was a big outpouring of rage from older scientists who had published in eLife when it was a more standard "high impact" journal. Lots of "you're ruining your reputation and therefore mine".

[bjackman]

Maybe I am underestimating the gap in status between the "influential figures" I imagine and the people I actually know.

I see: my friend has 10-15 years of experience in their field, they have enjoyed success and basically got the equivalent of a steady stream of promotions.

I map this onto my big tech/startup experience. I mentally model them as: they are "on top of the pile" of people that still do technical work. Everyone who still has the ability to boss them around, is a manager/institutional politician type figure who wouldn't interfere in such decisions as which journal to publish in.

But probably this mapping is wrong.

Also, I probably have a poor model of what agency and independence looks like in academia. In my big tech world, I have a pretty detailed model in my head of what things I can and can't influence. I don't have this model for academia which is gonna inevitably lead to a lot of "why don't you just".

Same thing happens to me when I moan about work to my friends. They say "I thought you were the tech lead, can't you just decree a change?" and I kinda mumble "er yeah but it doesn't really work like that". So here I'm probably doing that in reverse.

[currymj]

it has been known to happen.

For example, spearheaded by Knuth, the community effectively abandoned the Journal of Algorithms and replaced with with ACM Transactions on Algorithms.

however it's difficult. a big factor is that professors feel obligated towards their students, who need to get jobs. even if the subfield can shift to everybody publishing in a new journal, non-specialists making hiring decisions may not update for a few years which hurts students in the job market.

[abeppu]

I think the call for top-down policy makes sense b/c otherwise this is like every other tragedy of the commons situation. Each of those top-level researchers also has to think, "my department has junior faculty trying to build their publications list for tenure, we have post-docs and grad-students trying to get a high-impact publication to help them land a faculty job, we have research program X which is kind of in a race with a program at that other school lower down in the top 20. If we close off opportunities with the top journals, we put all of those at a competitive disadvantage."

[bee_rider]

For the grad students especially, there’d be a career advancement incentive to still publish in the top journals. The professors might still want to publish in them just out of familiarity (with a little career incentive as well, although less pronounced than the grad students).

I think it’d be a big ask from someone whose role doesn’t typically cover that sort of decision.

[jltsiren]

There are hundreds of reputable research universities around the world. Top-5 departments can't meaningfully change the culture of a field on their own. Top-100 perhaps could, but the coordination problem is much bigger on that level.

[asdff]

Grant funding reporting requirements. It would be easy to say self publish for free via the institutional library. But the NIH would not like that use of their money.

[glitcher]

I like the author's idea:

> So the solution here is straightforward: every government grant should stipulate that the research it supports can’t be published in a for-profit journal. That’s it! If the public paid for it, it shouldn’t be paywalled.

The article then acknowledges this isn't a magic solution to all the problems discussed, but it's so simple and makes so much sense as a first step.

I'm no expert here and there are probably unintended consequences or other ways to game that system for profit, but even if so wouldn't that still be a better starting point?

[bjackman]

I think that's also a good proposal, and I don't think it conflicts with the "prestigious departments stop publishing in $journal" idea at all. Probably we want both.

Only difference is that the author is writing for a wide audience and his best angle to change the world is probably to influence the thinking of future policymakers. While I am just an annoying "why don't you just" guy, my "audience" is just the friends I happen to have in prestigious research groups.

Adam M also probably has lots of friends in prestigious research groups (IIUC although he complains a lot about academia he was quite successful within it, at least on its own terms). And the fact that he instead chooses to advocate government policy changes instead of what I'm proposing, is probably a good indication that he knows something I don't about the motivatioms of influential academics.

[snowwrestler]

Imagine being a scientist and reading “if you take this grant, you cannot publish your results in any of the most prominent journals in your field.” Sounds good?

[bjackman]

But IIUC there are entire fields where basically the whole US ecosystem is funded by federal grants. So if this policy gets enacted those journals are no longer prominent.

(Maybe you'd need an exception for fields where the centre of mass for funding is well outside of the US, though).

[mitthrowaway2]

The result is that open access journals would very rapidly, perhaps instantly, become prominent.

[0xbadcafebee]

I explain here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47250811) but tl;dr it's because Universities need this system to get money and to give money. Nobody has yet proposed a solution which solves the money/prestige problem. With no money there's no research.