Re: Short-term protection
"If the research institute wants to publish for profit, let them, but it goes public after something like 4-5 years."
They don't profit. The way the academic publishing world works is:
0) (Depends on field) Researcher gets grant for research,
1) Researcher writes paper.
2) Researcher submits paper for free to a journal. Journals are ranked based on prestige, so that 'better' journals are often those with long histories and were bought by for-profit publishers in the past who then have been putting the prices for subscribing up.
3) Handling editor gives paper a look over for free, decides on who is a good referee.
4) Sends paper to referee who looks at it for free, says whether the results look good, look correct, are good enough for the journal.
5) Paper is accepted by journal.
6) Journals adds page numbers and its title to the top, then puts the pdf on its website.
7) Libraries at research institutions that the researchers from stage 1 work for hand over thousands to access these papers.
8) Trebles all round at journal's board room.
The new model (open access)
0) (Depends on field) Researcher gets grant for research,
1) Researcher writes paper.
2) Researcher submits paper for free to a journal. Journals are ranked based on prestige, so that 'better' journals are often those with long histories and were bought by for-profit publishers in the past who then have been putting the prices for subscribing up.
3) Handling editor gives paper a look over for free, decides on who is a good referee.
4) Sends paper to referee who looks at it for free, says whether the results look good, look correct, are good enough for the journal.
5) Paper is accepted by journal.
5a) NOT HERE BEFORE: researcher hands over thousands to publisher for open access.
6) Journals adds page numbers and its title to the top, then puts the pdf on its website.
7) MODIFIED: Libraries at research institutions that the researchers from stage 1 work for hand over thousands to access these papers, because not all the papers in the journal are open access so they still have to do this.
8) Quadruples all round at journal's board room.
Note that 7 still happens because unless everyone is open access journals still have to be bought. Also note that it's not clear whether stage 5a is preferable to 7, in the sense that it might well cost institutions more under the hybrid model.
How it should work:
0) (Depends on field) Researcher gets grant for research,
1) Researcher writes paper.
2) Researcher places paper on preprint server, such as the arXiv.
3) Handling editors for that area of the arXiv look at paper, decide if it warrants being quality controlled. Note that the paper would still be there, but only some papers would be assessed in this model.
4) Handling editors send paper to a few referees, one for peer review and a few others for a quality score.
5) Refereeing process works as before, with changes made to paper.
6) Paper gets given quality score, which can be used on CVs and promotion committees in the same way as impact factor and h-indices and other metric bullshit is used now.
7) Nobody pays for anything.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
