{"id":40865,"date":"2017-10-11T12:59:47","date_gmt":"2017-10-11T19:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=40865"},"modified":"2017-10-11T12:59:47","modified_gmt":"2017-10-11T19:59:47","slug":"publishers-vs-researchgate-academics-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/publishers-vs-researchgate-academics-view\/","title":{"rendered":"Publishers vs ResearchGate: an academic\u2019s view"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nCast your mind back 20 years, to 1997. Tony Blair had just entered Downing Street and in the music industry CDs dominated and the\u00a0A&R<\/a>\u00a0guy was king. Within a few short years, the internet had changed the music industry forever, through the music sharing site Napster. Today, Napster is dead and gone (although the brand name is still used) but the genie of file sharing and online music libraries is firmly out of the bottle.<\/p>\n

So it was with wry amusement that I read in\u00a0Times Higher Education\u00a0<\/em>of the big boys of academic publishing\u00a0planning\u00a0to force ResearchGate<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a website on which millions of researchers share their work \u2013 to remove any content from its site that breaches academic copyright.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s be clear: the publishers have every right to do this. The question though is: is this smart?<\/p>\n

Academic publishing is a weird industry. Where else do the producers of a product not only give it away (for free), but also take time out from their day jobs to act as quality controllers of their peers\u2019 work? The publishers then take the final product and sell it back to the producers (or at least their institutions) with some added packaging.\u00a0ResearchGate circumvents this by making academic content, usually available behind a paywall, free to its members.<\/p>\n

I accept that it gets tricky, because while the academics usually have ownership of a manuscript\u2019s content, the publisher owns the nice packaging of the typeset version \u2013 and no one likes to read a non-typeset manuscript. The publishers have already sought to shut down the\u00a0Sci-Hub repository<\/a>\u00a0(which illegally stores millions of academic papers), and will no doubt continue to try to protect their product. The problem is that academics broadly resent the high fees for journal access, and have always shared papers when they cannot be accessed directly.<\/p>\n

Removing typeset versions from ReseachGate won\u2019t stop this, because academics will simply replace them with pre-publication versions and look for other ways to share their work.<\/p>\n

As a researcher, I watch with wry amusement as the publishers seek to close the stable door. Ironically, it is the publishers who have developed the various metrics (impact factors, SNIPs, citation scores) that we academics chase. These metrics are packaged up and sold back to academic institutions as a way to measure the performance of their academics.<\/p>\n

So the publishers have created a system in which academic success is measured by your ability to get read and get cited.\u00a0ResearchGate offers a service that helps academics to do just that. Yes, it is parasitising the academic publishing industry, but academic publishing appears to be parasite itself (feeding on the juiciest thoughts from the world\u2019s great minds).<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t unmake the academic publishing system. But to quote Bob Dylan, \u201cthe times they are a-changing\u201d. Surely academic publishers would be better off recognising that their industry has to change, and work with companies like ResearchGate to improve access to journal content?<\/p>\n

In the end, paper journals are dead. Pre-print servers are on the rise (ArXiv, BioArXiv, to name two). And in time, the peer-review system could probably function without actual journals. Academics are already responding to these changes and the publishers need to wake up. Or (to quote a great \u201cphilosopher<\/a>\u201d): \u201cIf you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change \u2013 woo!\u201d<\/p>\n

Author Bio: <\/strong>Billy Hunter is Leverhulme early career research fellow at\u00a0Queen\u2019s University Belfast.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cast your mind back 20 years, to 1997. Tony Blair had just entered Downing Street and in the music industry CDs dominated and the\u00a0A&R\u00a0guy was king. Within a few short years, the internet had changed the music industry forever, through the music sharing site Napster. Today, Napster is dead and gone (although the brand name […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":40866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[11071],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-40865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-academic-publishing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPublishers vs ResearchGate: an academic\u2019s view - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/publishers-vs-researchgate-academics-view\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Publishers vs ResearchGate: an academic\u2019s view - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Cast your mind back 20 years, to 1997. 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