Re: Re: re The Cost of Knowledge

[Guest guest]

Well said, Helen !

Hi, Lev,

Just a question : How much do the " thousands of people doing the

indexing (mostly in the " developing world " countries) " (sic) earn per

article ? USD 5? USD 10? Less ?

Certainly not the tenth of the indexing bill per article, I presume,

unfortunately.

Whos' starving them ?

Really, authors can do the job (particularly because, usually, it's not

the author him/herself who does this, but his/her students, secretary,

etc.).

Have a nice weekend.

Le 12/05/2012 12:57, Helen Genevier a écrit :

> Hi Lev,

> Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but the indexing bill doesn't sound like

a major barrier to me. Authors already select the basic keywords. They could be

given instructions on how to expand this process to do their own indexing. It is

in authors' interests for their article to be easily found in relevant searches

so I think they would be willing and able to do a good job.

>

> Alternatively, the author could stump up the $1000 to outsource the job out of

his or her research grant. Research reagents and equipment are expensive. As an

ex-researcher, $1000 does not sound so bad to me as a proportion of the cost of

carrying out the research to be published. Publication is obviously a very

valuable part of research.

>

> I understand that the researchers and grant-giving bodies who are leading this

movement realise that publication costs will be higher to authors if they

publish in open-access media rather than in pay-to-access journals. They may

well consider an extra $1000 per article a reasonable cost for free and

efficient access to the knowledge they have generated.

>

> Best wishes,

> Helen Genevier

>

>> ,

>>

>> this looks like a worthy cause - until you take a deeper look at the

>> mechanics of creating databases of scientific (especially medical)

>> publications.

>>

>> Before you can get access to a medical paper (free access, paid access -

>> does not matter), you need a way of finding it. With websites, Google does

>> it. With scientific publications, it does not work that way (no idea why:

>> from the technical point of view, it should...).

>>

>> Instead, someone needs to actually read (or at least briefly scan and skim)

>> the published paper and do the work called " indexing " - in other words,

>> decide which keywords to assign to this paper so that a database search

>> including one or more of these keywords would yield a selection that

>> includes this specific paper. There are helper software programs making

>> this work a bit less tedious - but the final decision is still made by a

>> human indexer.

>>

>> In 2009-2011, I worked as training development manager for a KPO (Knowledge

>> Process Outsourcing) company, and Elsevier was on the list of major

>> customers. The fact that I belonged to the middle management allowed me to

>> attend meetings where some figures were presented.

>>

>> Brace yourself for a shock. It costs customers around a thousand dollars to

>> get a paper indexed. And every month, about fifty thousand new medical

>> papers are published. Do your math - and you come up with some real money:

>> 50 000 papers/month x $1K/paper x 12 months makes roughly US$600,000,000.

>> Over half a billion little green pieces of paper.

>>

>> Someone has to foot this bill, eh?

>>

>> Not to mention the fact that this business gives work to thousands of

>> people doing the indexing (mostly in the " developing world " countries). You

>> don't want them to starve.

>>

>> Now that you know the whole picture, make up your minds. You can of course

>> sign innumerous petitions - but unless you invent a better way of doing it

>> ALL so as not to rock the Titanic-sized boat you better find a worthier

>> target.

>>

>> That said, I would love to have free access to information. And to beer as

>> well. [sigh]

>>

>> (Any petitions there to make beer a free commodity? I will sign it without

>> hesitation!)

>>

>> Wishing a good weekend to y'all -

>>

>> Lev

>> --------------------------------------------

>> Lev ABRAMOV

>> --------------------------------------------

>> http://il.linkedin.com/in/levabramov

>>

>>

>>