The document discusses issues with the current academic publishing system. It notes that while technology has made production, diffusion, and access to scholarly works negligible in cost, access to most literature remains expensive. It also distinguishes between the validation of research, which ensures quality, and evaluation, which occurs after publication. While new publishers and self-archiving aim to address costs, true validation requires peer review before rather than after publication to maintain standards and scale effectively. Overall reforms are needed to make the system more economically sustainable while maintaining scientific rigor.

1. Academic Publishing in the Digital Era:
A Couple of Issues
Open Access—Well, Maybe
Andrea Omicini
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Alma Mater Studiorum—Universit`a di Bologna
The (R)Evolution of Academic Publication
Istituti di Studi Avanzati, Bologna, Italy
10 May 2016
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2. The Cost of Writing a Paper
Outline
1 The Cost of Writing a Paper
2 Validation vs. Evaluation
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3. The Cost of Writing a Paper
Availability & Diffusion
The overall amount of scientific products validated by the scientific
community is steadily increasing over the years
Specialised search engines (Google Scholar, Semantic scholar) along
with academic social networks (Academia.edu, ResearchGate) make
meta-information widespread
The push towards multi-, inter-, trans-disciplinary research makes
related literature just explode
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4. The Cost of Writing a Paper
Costs
ICT has made the cost of
production
diffusion
access
of the scientific artefacts negligible, technically
Nevertheless, the cost of accessing most of the literature is still
high—way too high for most of the individuals and academic
institutions in the world
e.g., “Coordination of Distributed Problem Solvers” (Kluver, 1988)
nearly 150 e overall
9 chapters, nearly 25 e each
Is this manageable in any way?
Is this reasonable nowadays?
Omicini (DISI – Univ. Bologna) Publishing in the Digital Era: Issues ISA – 10/5/2016 4 / 15

5. The Cost of Writing a Paper
The Cost of Writing a Scientific Paper
The amount of related work to be accounted for in any scientific
activity is growing fast
Ignorance not allowed
You are supposed to know, read, understand, and frame a huge
number of related articles, chapters, and books, before you can just
claim you advanced somehow the state-of-the-art
What if you are doing multi-disciplinary research?
What if you are a PhD student with no funding of your own?
What if you do not work in a rich country?
Omicini (DISI – Univ. Bologna) Publishing in the Digital Era: Issues ISA – 10/5/2016 5 / 15

6. The Cost of Writing a Paper
Solutions?
Many just ask for free access to everything
Some just circumvent the limitations
breaking the paywall—Sci-Hub, LibGen
exploiting traditional peer interaction
self-publishing
research social networking (Academia.edu, ResearchGate)
No one has yet proposed a process that could be both
scientifically well-founded
economically sustainable
Meanwhile, could some smart moves such as
micropayment
research-funding institutions directly funding open access
different price schemes for different countries
somehow ease the pain?
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7. Validation vs. Evaluation
Outline
1 The Cost of Writing a Paper
2 Validation vs. Evaluation
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8. Validation vs. Evaluation
The Scientific Process
Our huge ego as scientists makes us perceive the scientific process
mostly as the result of an individual (heroic) effort
we often behave like we actually think that our own invention and hard
work is scientific per se
Actually, the scientific enterprise is one of the most relevant and
impressive social achievements of humankind
no work is scientific before validation from the scientific community
[Pop02]
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9. Validation vs. Evaluation
The Actors
Researchers (mostly from public bodies) produce most of the work, at
any level
Public bodies mostly fund the research
Scientific
publishers
associations
control the validation process leading to academic publication
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10. Validation vs. Evaluation
Issues
Researchers think they are the good guys, as well as the smartest
asses—and, in the end, that they are entitled to control everything
Public bodies are also in charge of most of the evaluation processes
Scientific publishers earn as stakeholders, and apparently do not add
anything meaningful to the process—yet, they are the only ones
earning money (potentially)
The planetary scale of the organisational processes makes it difficult
to affect in any way the substantial monopoly of huge
players—publishers such as Elsevier, Springer
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11. Validation vs. Evaluation
Self-Validation? I
Validation is an a priori process w.r.t. scientific publication
Self-publishing – e.g., through open repositories (such as arXiv) –
jumps over validation, by postulating the existence of some sort of a
posteriori validation process
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12. Validation vs. Evaluation
Self-Validation? II
Issues
It just seems to resort to our big egos, again: “I’m a scientist, a real
one, whatever I do is scientific per se”
No pressure towards quality, no interaction before publication, no
selection before diffusion
hardly the premise to good scientific papers—let apart excellence,
whatever it is supposed to be
not a scalable approach
Validation is not evaluation
which hardly understood by researchers even within most of the review
processes nowadays
A posteriori evaluation cannot replace in any way a priori validation
no way to trust literature if not a real expert: the value of scientific
literature is no longer confined to the academia
no way for the process to scale up: just think of the potential numbers
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13. Validation vs. Evaluation
New Actors?
New publishers
ok, predatory publishers, but this is not the end of the story
the case of PeerJ
Expanding the role of scientific associations
Big universities worldwide should step up
Many already do that
What about Bologna?
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14. Bibliography
Bibliography I
Karl Raimund Popper.
The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
Routledge, 2002.
1st English Edition:1959.
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15. Academic Publishing in the Digital Era:
A Couple of Issues
Open Access—Well, Maybe
Andrea Omicini
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Alma Mater Studiorum—Universit`a di Bologna
The (R)Evolution of Academic Publication
Istituti di Studi Avanzati, Bologna, Italy
10 May 2016
Omicini (DISI – Univ. Bologna) Publishing in the Digital Era: Issues ISA – 10/5/2016 15 / 15