让我惊喜却疑惑的期刊邀稿 最近科学网很多博主对一些出版社和期刊进行了点评,姑且不论这些期刊究竟如何,既然合法存在,就有市场。抵不抵制,它都在照常出版;费用再高,它都同样有稿源。 给作者们发邮件邀稿,可能是推销期刊和提高期刊知名度的一种不可或缺的方式吧。最近我也收到了各式各样期刊的邀稿,咋一看邮件主题,煞是兴奋,竟然会有期刊邀请我投稿?作为学生,那点点自豪感蹭蹭跳。可打开邮件一看,期刊的名字闻所未闻,但听起来都蛮高大上的,惊喜之后更多的是疑惑。好奇心驱使下,我又花费些时间去仔细查查这些期刊的信息,发现有几个共同特点: (1)这些期刊的名字取得很好,让人感觉是领域内的牛刊,而实际上业内人士一眼即可识破; (2 )这些期刊所属的出版社,至少我从来没听过(可能我就局限在RSC,ACS,IOP,Elsevier,Springer,AIP,ASP等等几个出版社吧),而且这个出版社下的期刊数量一般不小; (3)这些期刊很多是新创刊的,一般是OpenAccess的,费用不低,但邮件里经常着重提醒,在某天之前投稿免费,过期就要缴费咯; (4)有些期刊还欺骗说是SCI,还列出了IF值,手段高明哪,对我们这些需要文章毕业的学生诱惑不少喔,每次看到小心脏不免砰砰一下; (5)会议邀请,顺带挂上期刊,当然了,交钱就发EI的诱惑还是很大滴,曾经就听说过硕士评国奖靠这东东的传言。 盛情的邀稿就笑纳了,但囊中羞涩,又无适合贵刊的工作,还是挤挤牙刮刮肚,投那些不用掏银子的期刊吧。 最后,要致谢那些向我邀稿的期刊和会议,下面隆重介绍他们: 1.Journal of Materials Scienceand Engineering with Advanced Technology 【Scientific AdvancesPublishers】 2. 2014 2nd InternationalConference on Materials and Manufacturing Research 【 AdvancedMaterials Research 】 3. 2014 4th InternationalConference on Advanced Measurement and Test 【 Applied Materialsand Research 】 4. International Journal of Engineeringand Innovative Technology (ijeit, florida, us, issn 2277-3754) an iso 9001:2008certified international journal: impactfactor: 2.137 5. 2014 年计算机科学与人工智能国际会议【本会议论文集将由 DEStech Publications 出版,并全部提交 EI 和 ISTP 检索 , 优秀论文将推荐 EI 期刊或 SCI 期刊发表】 6. International Journal ofEngineering Inventions (IJEI) 7. International Journal ofEngineering Science and Innovative Technology (IJESIT)ISSN 2319-5967An ISO9001:2008 Certified International Journal IMPACTFACTOR:1.913 8. 2015 3rd InternationalConference on Recent Trends in Materials and Mechanical Engineering (ICRTMME2015) 【 ICRTMME 2015 已经进入教育部科学网列表】 9. 2015 International Conferenceon Intelligent Materials and Manufacturing Engineering(IMME2015) 【 AppliedMechanics and Materials 】 10. 2015 计算机网络与信息系统国际会议【所有被录用的文章将由 IEEE CPS(Conference Publishing Services) 出版,并由出版社提交 EI 和 ISTP 检索。优秀文章将被出版社选上并推荐至 EI 或 SCI 期刊。】 11. International Conference onNetwork and Information Systems for Computers 【所有被录用的文章将由 CPS(Conference Publishing Services) 出版,并由出版社提交 EI 和 ISTP 检索】 12. Research and Reviews inMaterials Science and Chemistry 【 JYOTI ACADEMIC PRESS 】 13. 2015 International Conferenceon Energy and Environmental Systems Engineering(EESE2015) 【 All ThePapers Accepted By EESE2015 Will Be Published In The WIT Transactions On Engineering Sciences(ISSN: 1743-3533) And Indexed By EI Compendex, ISI and SCOPUS 】 14. Annual Review of Nanoscienceand Nanotechnology 【 Gosciences 】 15. Journal of Nanotechnology 【 HindawiPublishing Corporation 】 16. Journal of Powder Metallurgy Mining 【 Omics Group 】 17. Journal of Astrophysics Aerospace Technology 【 Omics Group 】 18. Graphene 【 Google-basedImpact Factor: 2.23 】【 Scientific Research 】 19. Journal of Experimental Physics 【 Hindawi Publishing Corporation 】 20. 3rd International Conference onBiomedical Engineering and Biotechnology 【 All accepted papersand abstracts will be published in ISI indexed journals 】 21. Journal of Solid State Physics 【 HindawiPublishing Corporation 】 22. Crystals 【 MDPI - OpenAccess Publishing 】
http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/authors --Author guideline CO-SUBMISSION In the l imited number of instances in which a paper is potentially appropriate in scope for the readership of two different Cell Press titles, Cell Press offers authors a unique opportunity, not provided by any other journal group , to submit a manuscript for joint consideration at two journals at the same time . Authors interested in pursuing this option should contact the editors of both journals for further information.
Publications发表了第二篇文章 “ Types of Open Access Publishers in Scopus ”,现将其中的一些内容贴出来,供有兴趣的读者阅读, “此项研究分析了Scopus数据库中2010种开放获取期刊的出版社的类型,共分为六种类型:professional, society, university, scholar/researcher, government, and other organizations”。 以下是论文的数据部分: 免费全文链接 http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/1/1/16
随着网络等新型媒体的快速发展,传统出版和网络媒体之间有一场你死我活的较量。 以前关注过 维基百科和大英百科全书之间的较量 ,现在的中文媒介的 百度百科 和 互动百科 也很发达。 同时, 亚马逊网站 的发展也是比较神速,占领了世界很大的市场,这里关注一下传统纸质出版媒体企鹅出版集团( Penguin Group )和兰登书屋( Random House )的结合,对抗亚马逊。 欧盟企业竞争事务管理机构星期五(4月5日)批准了世界著名出版商企鹅出版集团和兰登书屋合并的计划。 两家公司的合并将创造全世界最大的出版集团,新创建的企鹅兰登书屋将控制全世界大约四分之一的大众图书市场。 欧盟委员会发表的声明说,这项合并计划“不会引起竞争方面的担忧,而合并后的新企业仍将面对数个强大的竞争对手”。 分析人士表示, 合并后的企业将会控制全球26%的大众图书市场,而法国出版商拉加代尔将以17%的市场份额名列第二。 在欧盟做出上述决定之前,美国企业竞争事务管理当局已经在2月份批准了这项合并计划。加拿大企业竞争事务局和其他管理机构目前仍然在评估合并可能产生的影响。相信不久必然批准。 一起对抗亚马逊 在企鹅出版公司和兰登书屋合并之后,作为兰登书屋母公司的德国贝塔斯曼传媒集团将拥有新公司53%的股权,这将涵盖两家公司目前在美国和其他6个国家的所有出版单元。 贝塔斯曼传媒集团星期五发表声明,对欧盟的最新决定表示欢迎。 这项合并计划被广泛看成是针对著名网购公司亚马逊(Amazon.com)发动的反制行动。 此前,亚马逊以低廉价格出售网络书籍,引起国际出版商的严重不安。 这次合并将不仅仅涉及两家公司在美国的出版单元,还还导致在加拿大、英国、澳大利亚、新西兰、印度、南非的两家公司出版单元的联合运作。 合并还将涉及企鹅出版集团在中国的业务,以及兰登书屋在西班牙和南美洲的业务。 两家公司最初是在2012年10月宣布这项合并计划的,预料整个计划能在今年下半年完成。 小资料: 企鹅出版社 成立于1935年,总部在伦敦,目前在全世界15家分支机构,雇员3500人,年销售数目110百万本,2011年交税10亿英镑。 兰登书屋 成立于1925年,总部在纽约, 目前在全世界15家分支机构,雇员5300人, 年销售量400百万(包括书本,音频和数码), 2011年交税15亿英镑。 英文报道: Penguin and Random House merger approved by Brussels he proposed merger of Penguin and Random House has been given the go-ahead by the European Commission.
《PLoS One 的商业后手对中国》博文(链接: http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=spaceuid=825582do=blogid=655957 )谈到PLoS One是一家商业出版社。 那么,商业定价是否应该受至质疑?一个商家是否有根据不同地域市场自由定价? 再观众多仪器、试剂进口厂家卖得都比国外贵(按美元报价*10作为人民币报价)。它们是否也应该受到谴责?它们从中国多挣的钱可要比PLoS One 多多了。
http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-287752-260231.html 固体物理作为物理专业的一门基础课程,对以后从事物理科研有着重要的意义。根据我的了解,给大家推荐一些书。 中文书籍: 1、黄昆原著韩汝琦改编,《固体物理学》,高等教育出版社,1988. 2、阎守胜著,《固体物理基础》(第二版),北京大学出版社,2003. 3、陆栋、蒋平、徐至中著,《固体物理学》,上海科学技术出版社,2003. 另外中文书籍还有: 谢希德、方俊鑫著,《固体物理学》,上海科学技术出版社,1961 方俊鑫、陆栋著,《固体物理学》(上下册),上海科学技术出版社,1980. 蒋平、徐至中著,《固体物理简明教程》(第二版),复旦大学出版社,2007. 顾秉林、王喜坤著,《固体物理学》,清华大学出版社,1989 徐毓龙、阎西林著,《固体物理》,西安电子科技大学出版社,1990 朱建国、郑文琛、郑家贵、孙小松、王洪涛著,《固体物理学》,高等教育出版社,2005 陈长乐著,《固体物理学》(第二版),高等教育出版社,2007 王矜奉著,《固体物理教程》(第三版),山东大学.2003. 吴代鸣著,《固体物理习题详解》,吉林人民出版社,1983. 黄波、聂承昌著《固体物理学问题和习题》,国防工业出版社,1988. 徐至中著,《固体物理学习题解答》,上海科学技术文献出版社,1989. 王矜奉著,《固体物理概念题和习题指导》,山东大学.2001. 张永德主编,《固体物理及物理量测量》(物理学大题典⑦) ,科学出版社,2005. 英文书籍 1、Charles Kittel ,《Introduction to Solid State Physics》(8th Ed),John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2004. 2、 Neil W.Ashcroft and N David Mermin, 《Solid State Physics》,Holt Rinehart Winston,1976. 3、G. Grosso and G. P. Parravicini , 《 Solid state physics 》, Academic Press ,2000. 4、J. R. Hook and H. E. Hall,《Solid State Physics》(2nd,Ed), Wiley,1995. 英文书籍还有: Philip Phillips,《Advanced Solid State Physics》,Westview Press,2002. S Doniach and EH Sondheimer,《Green's functions for solid state physicists》,Imperial College Press,1998. Max Wagner,《Unitary transformations in solid state physics》,Elsevier Science Ltd,1986 Yuri M. Galperin,《Introduction to Modern Solid State Physics》,lecture note。 László Mihály and Michael C. Martin,《Solid state physics problems and solutions》(2nd,Ed), Wiley, John Sons, 2009. 本文引用地址: http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-287752-260231.html mandelu 2011-7-20 20:00 我这人很不喜欢做练习,我同学说不行。看来我得好好改一改这个毛病!谢谢! �ٱ� mandelu 2011-7-19 07:51 我想问一下,要自学物理书假设《固体物理》,怎么自学法?是反复看课本,大概看懂后,做课后习题加深理解?希望解惑下 博主回复(2011-7-19 19:18) : 课本是基础,要多看反复看,一开始可以稍微看些和反复看讲解清晰和详细的课本如方俊鑫、陆栋著,《固体物理学》(上下册),上海科学技术出版社,1980。网上一些老师的讲义和视频也不错如吴代鸣老师的。英文Neil W.Ashcroft and N David Mermin, 《Solid State Physics》,Holt Rinehart Winston,1976也不错。 然后做题,再看书,反复这两者的过程。 我的固体几乎也是自学。要多下功夫和吃苦。很多知识点的理解需要量子力学的。 IP: 218.104.96.* �ٱ� bjmjh 2010-10-30 20:27 楼主推荐的这些书都不错,可有些在网上下不到。 3、陆栋、蒋平、徐至中著,《固体物理学》,上海科学技术出版社,2003. 这本书的电子版,我找了好长时间,还是没找到。 考博要用。请问楼主有没有,可否传给我,感激不尽,邮箱674825389@qq.com 博主回复:不好意思,我也没有电子版的。 IP: 222.205.74.* �ٱ� flymice 2010-6-3 14:47 黄昆院士那本很不错,就是没有附题目在后面,所以要用韩教授改编的那本。 博主回复:呵呵 �ٱ� 王晓明 2009-10-10 03:55 固体物理书读起来很麻烦的一点,每本书都有自己的notation。。。 博主回复:也不是啊,当你熟读一两本会找到共同的东东哟
做科研,看文献是必不可少的,如何获取文献也成了科研工作者日常生活中的头等大事。下面仅以我自己为例子,说说如何获取文献。 1.学校订阅,这是最简单的了,学校订阅了某某出版社(数据库)的内容,而要找的论文恰好在其中,没的说,直接下载就行了。 可是,这样的情况或许不多,大部分还是没有下载权限的,怎么办? 2. google搜索 ,现在的问题是我们知道了文章的题目是xx,作者是yy,但是没有下载权限。那么google是最简单的方法了,直接google,用上限定关键字【 filetype 】指定要找的文件类型,一般也就是pdf,ps和doc呗,"xx filetype:pdf" 或者 "xx filetype:ps",一般能找个60%吧。 3.前面的方法还不行,那就用google的时候去掉filetype,尽量找到作者的主页。看看从作者的主页是否能找到可用下载,现在大家为了推广自己的工作,都喜欢把自己的论文放到主页上,一般能解决剩下的30%吧。同时,很多作者还会把更多的资源放上的,比如程序代码,数据集,甚至演讲用的幻灯片等。 4.作者主页中没有提供下载, 那就给作者发邮件吧。这也是我最喜欢的方式之一 ,不知道为什么很多人却很抵触.......,到目前为止,我索取论文的成功率应该在98%以上。你想,有人对你的工作感兴趣,他很可能会引用你的论文,增加论文的引用量,你还爱答不理?正常人谁还嫌自己论文被引用的过多吗?另外,在我接触的好多作者中,给我发回来的不仅仅是我要的那篇paper,而是几篇,当然都是他发的,多出的几篇是他对我索取那篇工作的进一步深入。而且,有问题,还能随时和作者联系多好。如果对方是大牛,套套瓷,以后申请个博士,博后啥的也不错呀。下面给一个我要论文的模板吧: Dear researcher, I am a 你的职位(比如,Master student啥的) in 你的学校. Currently, our group is doing a project on 研究领域,建议细一点,和所要的论文领域接近. We have noticed your work“ Structural Information Content of Networks: Graph Entropy based on Local Vertex Functionals ”, Computational Biology and Chemistry Vol. 32, 2008 And “ Information-theoretic Concepts for the Analysis of Complex Networks ”, Applied Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 22, (78), 2008 We would love to have a copy of your papers. Thank you very much for your help! Best Regards, 你的名字 你的学校 建议,最好用学校的邮箱,那个一般叫做工作邮箱吧,显的专业些,同时也避免自己的邮件被对方的邮件系统当中垃圾邮件,结果对方没看到就给过滤掉了。如果没有学校邮箱,那么建议gmail或者hotmail吧,尽量不要用qq和163吧。 5.这个方式不想说的,但是你实在是不想跟作者联系,或者作者没有回应,那么可以试试 使用 sci-hub.org 6.你就是懒,那么找找自己的同学吧,看看他们能不能帮你下载到。 PS:可能是计算机专业的原因,对wos没有啥感觉,学校有订阅也没有使用,还是喜欢google.......
国内不少图书馆近日把InTech列入馆藏: 武大: http://www.lib.whu.edu.cn/news/view.asp?id=2108 上交: http://www.lib.sjtu.edu.cn/view.do?id=3508 …… 赫然看到该出版社被列入“不负责任的Open access出版社黑名单”( http://youth.sciencenet.cn/blog-61772-582329.html ) 评价也看不出个所以然( http://carbon.ucdenver.edu/~jbeall/Beall's%20List%20of%20Predatory,%20Open-Access%20Publishers%202012.pdf ): InTech Open Access Publisher* The subject of much recent debate, this Croatia-based publisher looks and acts like an innovative, scholarly publisher. However, looking under the clever disguise reveals only a sophisticated vanity press, an enterprise where anybody can, for a price, get their work published in a journal or as a monograph.
转载于: http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-61772-582329.html ( 牛登科 老师) 国内很多人误以为向作者收费的期刊就是在卖版面,只要交钱,就可以发论文。科学网的一些网友和我本人多次为开放获取(Open Access)期刊正名。 但也不可否认,开放获取期刊中,为了能收到钱而过度简化审稿过程、对论文放水的比例大于传统期刊。今天的 Science报道了科研人员对抄袭论文放水出版社的调查 。我简单介绍一下,将其所讲的放水出版社名单转载过来。提醒广大网友别误上贼船。 由于网络的兴起,copy-paste很容易,最近几年国内外论文抄袭现象很常见。但是魔高一尺、道高一丈。科学界设计了 很多论文比对软件 。正规的期刊和出版社都陆续采用了论文比对的办法,在审稿过程中检测有意或无意的论文抄袭、自我抄袭。一些科研人员注意到他们遇到的抄袭论文所发表的期刊似乎有一定规律,仔细分析发现,基本上都是Open Access出版社的期刊。这些出版社为了收到钱,对抄袭论文放水。如果连抄袭论文都不在乎,对没造假的研究论文的质量也就不可能有任何把关作用。在稿件的评审过程中没有对论文质量进行考核,就是是没有进行实质的Peer review(同行评议)。我们反对过于苛刻的同行评议,但同行评议是科技论文发表所必需的。没有同行评议,或者表面上有但实际上没有,那就成了存放科学论文预印本的网站。 存放科学论文预印本的网站(如arXiv和Nature Precedings)也是科学界很好的新鲜事物。但它们与Peer review的网络期刊有本质的区别,它们是来者不拒的,人家就不对论文的质量、抄袭与否有任何评估。读者看这些预印本也会慎重一些。可恶的是这些所谓的开放获取黑期刊,有期刊之名,没有期刊之实。它们为什么不干脆叫论文预印本的网站,因为那样它们就没法收费了。人家arXiv等是不收费的。 我提醒大家,开放获取期刊投稿前,要看它是否被SCIE等检索机构收录,主编编委是否出名不能作为参考( 可能很多编委、主编被骗了 )。当然,如果看到其中已经发表了很多有价值的论文,即使SCIE还未收录,也可以放心投稿了。 几句题外话。我给投机取巧者指出一条明路,今后投稿到Nature Precedings上吧。这一投一个准,还可以说有名字中Nature,就像Nature Genetics一样,是Nature的子刊。鉴于此,Nature communications是不是Nature子刊也就没必要争论了。是不是有什么关系呢?姓朱的有朱元璋,也有在破庙中潦倒一生的。 下面是J. Beall建议的黑名单,转载自 http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/ -------------------------------------------------- Beall’s List of Predatory Open-Access Publishers This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. I recommend that scholars not do any business with these publishers, including submitting articles, serving as editors or on editorial boards, or advertising with them. Also, articles published in these publishers’ journals should be given extra scrutiny in the process of evaluation for tenure and promotion. A M Publishers Academe Research Journals Academic and Business Research Institute Academic Journals Academic Journals, Inc. Academic Research Publishing Agency Academy Industry Research Collaboration Center (AIRCC) Academy Journals Academy Publish ANSINetwork Ashdin Publishing Asian Research Consortium Basic Research Journals Bentham Open BioInfo Bioscience Research Educational Institute Canadian Center of Science and Education Centre For Info Bio Technology (CIBTech) Center for the Development and Dissemination of Knowledge Center for Promoting Ideas The Clute Institute Computer Science Journals e-Century Publishing Corporation eLearning Institute Discovery Publishing Group David Publishing Elmer Press EuroJournals Global Advanced Research Journals Global Journals, Inc. (US) Global Science and Technology Forum GlobalOpenJournals.org Greener Journals Herald International Researh Journals Herbert Open Access Journals Human and Sciences Publications (HumanPub) Human Resource Management Academic Research Society iConcept Press Indian Society for Education and Environment Insight Knowledge Institute of Advanced Scientific Research InTech Open Access Publisher - Mirror site Intellectual Archive International Academy of Business Economics International Digital Organization for Scientific Information (IDOSI) International Journals of Engineering Sciences International Journals of Multidisciplinary Research Academy International Network for Applied Sciences and Technology International Research Journals International Scholars Journals Internet Scientific Publications Interscience Journals Interscience Open Access Journals ISRN Jyoti Academic Press Knowledgia Scientific (formerly Knowledgia Review) Macrothink Institute Marsland Press MASAUM Network Medical Science Journals Medwell Journals Mehta Press Noto-are OMICS Publishing Group Online Research Journals OpenAccessPub Open Research Society Pelagia Research Library Prime Journals Research Publisher Scholarly Journals International Sciedu Press Science Knowledge Publishing Corporation Limited Science Alert Science Journal Publication Science Publications ScienceDomain International ScienceHuβ Scientific Academic Publishing Scientific Journals International Scientific Research Publishing SciTechnol Segment Journals Social Sciences Directory Southern Cross Publishing Group Technical Journals Online Thavan E ACT International Journals Universal Research Journals Wilolud Journals The World Academic Publishing World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology (WASET) World Science Publisher World Scientific and Engineering Academy and Society Wudpecker Research Journals Last updated June 12, 2012
国内很多人误以为向作者收费的期刊就是在卖版面,只要交钱,就可以发论文。科学网的一些网友和我本人多次为开放获取(Open Access)期刊正名。 但也不可否认,开放获取期刊中,为了能收到钱而过度简化审稿过程、对论文放水的比例大于传统期刊。今天的 Science报道了科研人员对抄袭论文放水出版社的调查 。我简单介绍一下,将其所讲的放水出版社名单转载过来。提醒广大网友别误上贼船。 由于网络的兴起,copy-paste很容易,最近几年国内外论文抄袭现象很常见。但是魔高一尺、道高一丈。科学界设计了 很多论文比对软件 。正规的期刊和出版社都陆续采用了论文比对的办法,在审稿过程中检测有意或无意的论文抄袭、自我抄袭。一些科研人员注意到他们遇到的抄袭论文所发表的期刊似乎有一定规律,仔细分析发现,基本上都是Open Access出版社的期刊。这些出版社为了收到钱,对抄袭论文放水。如果连抄袭论文都不在乎,对没造假的研究论文的质量也就不可能有任何把关作用。在稿件的评审过程中没有对论文质量进行考核,就是是没有进行实质的Peer review(同行评议)。我们反对过于苛刻的同行评议,但同行评议是科技论文发表所必需的。没有同行评议,或者表面上有但实际上没有,那就成了存放科学论文预印本的网站。 存放科学论文预印本的网站(如arXiv和Nature Precedings)也是科学界很好的新鲜事物。但它们与Peer review的网络期刊有本质的区别,它们是来者不拒的,人家就不对论文的质量、抄袭与否有任何评估。读者看这些预印本也会慎重一些。可恶的是这些所谓的开放获取黑期刊,有期刊之名,没有期刊之实。它们为什么不干脆叫论文预印本的网站,因为那样它们就没法收费了。人家arXiv等是不收费的。(更正一下,有网友eft指出,“arxiv是有负责审查的人的. 极个别的是会被撤稿的. 而且现在还有一项功能, 你会经常发现(在我每天浏览的条目里几乎每天)有文章被标上: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with ......, 有时后面还有 by other authors”。看来arxiv比一些所谓的期刊还认真。) 我提醒大家,开放获取期刊投稿前,要看它是否被SCIE等检索机构收录,主编编委是否出名不能作为参考( 可能很多编委、主编被骗了 )。当然,如果看到其中已经发表了很多有价值的论文,即使SCIE还未收录,也可以放心投稿了。 几句题外话。我给投机取巧者指出一条明路,今后投稿到Nature Precedings上吧。这一投一个准,还可以说名字中有Nature,就像Nature Genetics一样,是Nature的子刊。鉴于此,Nature communications是不是Nature子刊也就没必要争论了。是不是有什么关系呢?姓朱的有朱元璋,也有在破庙中潦倒一生的。 下面是J. Beall建议的黑名单,转载自 http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/ -------------------------------------------------- Beall’s List of Predatory Open-Access Publishers This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. I recommend that scholars not do any business with these publishers, including submitting articles, serving as editors or on editorial boards, or advertising with them. Also, articles published in these publishers’ journals should be given extra scrutiny in the process of evaluation for tenure and promotion. 有的出版社已经从Beall的名单中删除了。出版社给我打电话,要求我也从我的博文中把他们去掉。经核实Beall的网站,确实无误。 考虑到将来Beall还会不断修改其名单,为防止再次出现因为我更新不及时引起的误解,我决定将整个名单从我的博文中删除,关心此问题的网友可以直接访问Beall的网站: http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
如果一个 出版社旗下的一本期刊 没有通过 ISI 的年度评估, 被 ISI 踢出 SCIE 的话 ,那么就得小心投稿了。该出版社旗下的其它期刊将会受影响。 ACADEMIC JOURNALS ( http://www.academicjournals.org )出版社旗下的 Scientific Research and Essays 于 2011 年 3 月 被 ISI 踢出 SCIE , 2012 年 ACADEMIC JOURNALS 出版社旗下的 10 多个 SCIE 源期刊几乎全军覆灭。 如: Scientific Research and Essays African Journal of Agricultural Research International Journal of Physical Sciences African Journal of Plant Science Journal of Cell and Animal Biology Journal of Medicinal Plants Research African Journal of Microbiology Research African Journal of Biotechnology
借用一下Mullis的《心灵裸舞 Dancing Naked in the Mind Field》,我当然是不敢Naked了 : ) 细数了一下,追寻了9年的Mind Matter Relationship了。总的来说,从纯粹的唯物主义(Materialism)开始,慢慢地,Mind的地位越来越重要了。神奇的是,是纯粹的理性分析引导到飘渺绚烂的Mind世界的。 在Mind Field里,最宝贵的莫过于人的情感了,我会转变成一个感性的人吗? 前几天在讨论问题的时候,看到不知道哪年的Nature上有一篇文章,问了一个问题:What Make Us Human?第一反应的回答就是your desire and emotion. 晚上和浦大师闲聊,扯到“缸中之脑”的问题,我觉得像罗素的茶壶,是一个伪命题(nonsense)。或许我们追问的,都是一些茶壶,找不到答案的。但人生在世,还是想探究这些问题。可惜,他已经在实践中放弃了。 Mind or Matter, only Mind matters ! 参考资料: 1.Kary Mullis,徐加勇 汤清秀(译), 心灵裸舞 Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, 上海科技出版社,2006 Mullis发明了PCR,获NB奖。 2. 哲学与《黑客帝国》——“缸中之脑”和邪恶的魔鬼 Morcheeba - Even Though
剽窃有很多种,但是直接copy显然是最笨的。在今天网络发达的今天,这种剽窃如果能发生在国际名期刊就更少见;而这事情就发生了。很奇怪的是如何绕过了审稿人,要知道Elsevier出版社给审稿人赠送了检索系统使用权。 事情是这样的来自印度的作者直接copy了意大利作者发表在一流药物化学杂志JMC的2001的一篇论文,2010年发表在著名的药物化学杂志《欧洲药物化学杂志》。显然躲得初一躲不过初五 ,估计是被读者或者原作者本人举报了,欧洲药物化学杂志主编很生气。这事情对杂志的声誉也是严重的损害。 撤稿理由;This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. Reason: The aforementioned paper carries numerous instances of directly copied text from a previous paper published in 2001 in Journal of Medicinal Chemistry 44 (2001) 4359e4369: 。。。。 The paper published in 2010 by Sahoo and Behera directly copies substantial quantities (practically the entire paper) of the original published by Settimo et al. The 2010 paper should therefore be removed for reasons of excessive and direct plagiarism. 我之前还报道了一次作者“非故意”报道了已经存在的“新化合物”在新领域的应用,后来在引用本该引用的论文后还是发表的故事。见前博文。 http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=spaceuid=51231do=blogid=363247 剽窃声明
最近,科学出版社正式出版了“库姆塔格沙漠风沙地貌”(董治宝等著)。翻阅此书时想起了2010年的烟台会议。会议期间,邻座的林科院卢琦研究员说董治宝研究员最近为库姆塔格沙漠定义了一种新沙丘。当时满脑子是海鲜和啤酒,没太在意。刚才看了看Google Earth和几篇文献,发现了有意思的事情。第一,库姆塔格北部已经被相关人员挖得千疮百孔;第二,研究地点基本相同,不同研究者给出的沙丘类型不一致;第三,可以继续围观。 千疮百孔的库姆塔格 Z. Dong et al., Geomorphology 123 (2010) 122–128. J. Qu et al., Sci China Earth Sci 54 (2011) 1215–1225.
谨慎看待中国道路:对日本兴起的再考察 (已首发于中评网http://www.china-review.com,以及新加坡联合早报网http://www.zaobao.com) 王 键 近年笔者阅读了一些关于日本的书籍,其中就有一本关于明治思想界的书(《明治哲学与文化》,中国社会科学出版社,2005)。读过之后,笔者惊觉在启蒙阶段,中国和日本的差距已是相当之大。这个差距可以这样进行简单概括:日本的明治维新,已领先中国大概50年左右。众所周知,明治维新发生于1868年。此后日本思想界突飞猛进,开始了一段狂飙运动,一直持续到二战之前的时期。而中国虽然在明治维新前后发生了洋务运动和戊戌变法,却未能摆脱失败的命运。直到1919年才发生了五四运动,开始了思想解放的历程。从思想史的角度来观察,五四运动而不是清廷的改革才能够在思想层面同明治维新相匹配。 明治思想界 从明治时期的日本思想界和五四之后的中国思想界的状况来看,虽然已有50年的时差,但中国和日本的差距仍然相当大。纵观该书中列举的当年日本学者的大名及其作品,如西周,加藤弘之,福泽渝吉,西村茂树,井上原了,井上哲次郎,德富芦花,大西祝,内村鉴三,冈仓天心等人,都是些相当有想法的学者,不仅思想精彩,而且文脉深厚,修养水平也都很高。 反观五四前后中国的一群启蒙学者,如陈独秀、李大钊,甚至胡适、鲁迅,包括保守派的辜鸿铭、张君励等人,甚至更早的康有为、梁启超,笔者以为:从总体来看,他们的学识相形见拙,思想不够开明,而修养水平也比较一般。即使是像严复这样的学养较为深厚的中国学者,拿到当时的日本去,水平和境界恐怕也是排不上号的。当然,孰优属劣是个见仁见智的问题。但至少以笔者的学识来进行判断,确有这样的感觉。像福泽渝吉,谈论学问和政治的关系,表达的相当精妙,几乎可和马克斯.韦伯媲美,相比之下,当时的中国学者很少有哪个人可以把问题谈论的如此透彻清明,可见思考问题的清晰度有很大差距。再如冈仓天心,表述了“亚洲一体”的思想,相当大气磅礴,有博采众家之长且一览众山小的感觉,中国的学者却鲜有这样了解亚洲不同文化,即具有雄心壮志,同时又能兼收并蓄的博大心胸。虽然中国也有像鲁迅这样深刻的思想家,但相比之下,鲁迅的修养和心胸似乎不可同日而语。鲁迅入肉三分的幽暗笔锋,也许可解释为当时中国转型之中客观生存环境的产物,但其文字中密布的尖刻、绝望和睚眦必报,确实让人感受不到风度,看不到希望。 相比之下,很多日本学者的表达可堪称典范。如德富芦花在幸德秋水等人被政府处死后所发表的公开讲演,言辞有礼有据,娓娓道来,让人读后仿佛有身临其境且意犹未尽的感觉。再如内村鉴三,作为一名非西方基督徒,阐述自己如何转变为基督徒的个人自传《我是如何成为基督徒的》,甚至已被翻译为多国文字,成为全世界“非西方传道者最优秀的说教”。而他身后留下的墓志铭,也非常耐人寻味,言简意赅却意象无边,充满精神的魅力: "I for Japan Japan for the World The World for Christ And all for God" 总之,像这一类的具有世界影响的学者,在中国近现代史中确实非常罕见。 认知日本的偏差 此外,中国学界在研究日本时,由于受政治正确和民粹主义的干扰,往往不能依据历史事实客观地看待日本,感情色彩干扰了学术研究,对日本的理解囿于一隅,问题视野也相当局促。 比如,通常中国媒体和学界总是认为,近代日本的兴起是“脱亚入欧”思想的产物,而日本思想家福泽渝吉更是脱亚入欧和全盘西化观点的鼓吹手。但笔者对此考察了一番,却发现实际情况并非如此。在福泽渝吉的几部主要著作中,也根本看不到多少所谓脱亚入欧和全盘西化的观点。只是在福泽渝吉晚年所撰写的几篇报刊时评中,可以找到这个“脱亚论”的影子。但这几篇时评的篇幅、力度和观点,并不足以代表福泽渝吉的思想整体。 若从其《文明论概略》一书来观之,福泽渝吉的观点可以概括为两大核心:1、追求不断变革的自由主义观点;2、追求日本自立的独立文明观。也就是说,所谓“脱亚”或者“西化”,根本不算是福泽渝吉的核心观点。在福泽渝吉看来,“脱亚”也好,“西化”也好,只是在特定阶段由于日本文明落后于他人而需要采取的特殊策略,“西化”和“脱亚”本身并不是目的。福泽渝吉也并不否认,在特定的前工业社会阶段,像孔孟之道这样的儒家文明体系,一度起到了非常重要的进步作用,但这并不能改变在工业时代来临之后,儒学体系无法与之相匹配,所起到的非常反面的阻碍作用。 若综而观之,福泽渝吉的观点并不是崇洋媚外的西化派,而是追求变革的自由派,而且非常强调多元主义视角和不同观点的重要。此外,福泽渝吉还非常强调保持日本文明自身独立性的重要性,而绝非随波逐流,沦为其他文明的附庸。从福泽渝吉对学问的独立和个人思想独立的强调来看,这一点也是很容易理解的:如果作为公民,一个人需要保持自身的独立地位,由此才可以不断追求思想和精神的独立,那么以此为基础的一个国家和文明,也应当在这样的个人的不断发展中,追求其文明自身的独立性。从福泽渝吉的逻辑来看,这二者丝毫不会冲突,而非常美妙地结合为一体。 有别于福泽渝吉,日本另一位重要思想家冈苍天心,则是位出了名的保守派。冈苍天心自幼接受西洋教育,精通英文,甚至于他的几部主要著作,都是用英文写作出版,首先在国外发行,然后才有的日本版本。冈苍天心的主要贡献集中在三个方面:1、思想层面,开创了近代日本自我认知的坐标系。2、美学方面,是日本重要的美学家。3、对茶道的理论化,以及向西方的传播。 在思想层面,冈仓天心基本上持有二个主要观点:“亚洲至上论”;以及“日本特殊论”。 观点之一:亚洲至上论,亚洲一体。亚洲至上,冈仓天心认为,亚洲拥有两个伟大文明,中国文明和印度文明。前者拥有孔子式的“共产主义”传统,而后者则拥有“吠陀”式的个人主义。虽然两大文明之间被喜马拉雅的皑皑白雪割断,但亚洲的精神却是一体——追求究极与普遍的爱之扩大,而这种爱是所有亚洲各民族的共同遗产。亚洲的这一思想,也产生了全世界所有的宗教。亚洲文明的形态是复杂而多样的。阿拉伯的骑士道,波斯的诗歌,中国的伦理,印度的思想。还有东亚的佛教,仿佛东亚所有思想之流汇聚起来的观念论的海洋。但实现这一复杂性的统一的则是日本。 观点之二,日本特殊论。冈仓认为,日本实现了亚洲文明复杂性的统一。它同时从印度和鞑靼两个源泉中汲取了养分,使反映整个亚洲的特性成为可能。这是一种天赋的能力。天朝和天皇,历史上从未被征服,以及岛国的孤立于世,都使日本成为亚洲思想和文化的天然储藏库。而在中国和印度,前者历经了王朝的变动,鞑靼骑兵的铁蹄,和愤怒暴民的杀戮,这一切在中国一再发生,除去典籍、史料和废墟,什么都不复存在。后者则经历了匈奴族的粗暴对待,回教徒狂热的偶像破坏,还有欧洲殖民者无意识的文物破坏,使阿育王的时代,佛教的经典,以及诗歌的艺术,再也无法唤回。冈仓由此得出结论:亚洲的文化遗产,只有在日本才得以原样保存。日本是亚洲文明的博物馆,甚至“比博物馆还要高级”。因此,作为“上天”之民的祖国的日本,其天定命运就是保持并恢复亚洲的样式。使日本再生,使日本成为日本,使东洋的世界平安地穿过众多的暴风雨,带领亚洲走向昔日的坚强巩固。 冈苍天心的上述观点,视野相当博大。冈苍天心也开创了日本后来的“亚洲主义”思潮,这一思潮也为中国的政治领袖孙中山所接受。但很遗憾的是,进入1920年代后,日本军国主义以及民粹主义的兴起,最终把“大亚洲主义”变成了对外侵略扩张的工具,这恐怕是冈苍天心和孙中山等人都始料未及的。 在日本兴起的过程中,无论是自由派的观点,还是保守派的观点,实际上思想都较开明,并不像传统观点描绘的那样崇洋媚外或抱守残缺。也许这可以部分地解释,为什么清廷的立宪改革会失败,而日本的立宪改革却能够成功。 现状和差距 回头再看,明治维新已经过去140多年,五四运动也已过去90余年。此后中日两国的发展路径大相径庭,日本经历了二战的失败,在美国的训导下从废墟中再次崛起。中国在内部不和反复争斗的情况下,踉踉跄跄赢得了二战,随后却在内战更大规模的血与火后选择了极权和激进的道路,最终也以另外一种特殊的方式崛起。但事到如今,无论从物质文明的丰富程度来看,还是从精神文明的发展水平来看,日本却仍然远领先于中国。 如果从精神的进步来看,就是同五四时期相比,中国迄今甚至都还没有取得什么非常值得自豪的进展,像当年的陈康、冯友兰、洪谦等一批学者,即使在今天的中国,也几乎仍然没有人能够超越他们。反观日本,虽然在二战之前由于激进势力的兴起导致国内温和派失势,最终招致二战的灾难,但在战后日本还是做了相当深刻的反省,日本的文化、学术和思想界的恢复和进步也相当之快。战后的日本,百尺竿头更进一步,不乏明治思想界的超越者。 日本的状况同中国大陆形成鲜明对比,在明治思想界和五四运动的比较中,中国已经落后了50年。而在20世纪的今天,虽然中国的GDP已经超过了日本,但毫不夸张地,若从思想文化的角度来考察,中国却并没有比五四运动时的状况前进多少,那么,我们还是可以从中得出这个至少50年以上的中日差距。中国目前最大的影响力集中在经济领域,但即使如此,现如今中国GDP占全球总量的比例,也还没能达到1910-1949年期间的峰值。反观1910年代的日本,无论是经济总量占世界的比重,还是思想和文化的影响力,其高度都不是今天的中国能够企及的。因此,中国虽然崛起,但仍和日本有50-100年的差距。这恐怕还是个中国必须要面对的现实。 失败的教训 日本的兴起过程中,明治维新本来是一个很好的开头,但这个良好的开头却未能持之以恒。日本在1920年代之后,在形势本来一片大好的情况下,却连续出现战略失误,最终招致了日本帝国的覆灭。这个失败的教训,既是非常惨痛的,也是非常值得汲取的。当然,日本为何会一步步走上失败的道路,这个问题非常复杂,绝不是本文的三言两语就能够说清楚的。但无论如何,日本在改革的最初阶段顺利进行,国内思想文化也蓬勃发展,甚至政治制度也较同时代的世界绝大多数国家更加先进的情况下(日本当时自由组党,媒体也相当自由),为什么没能走上正确的道路?这是个非常值得深思的问题。 无论如何,从日本军国主义的兴起来看,日本的民意起了很大作用。日本在19世纪20年代后连续发生了多次事变,如1921年的第一位平民首相原敬首相遭到暗杀,1932年的“五一五”事变,首相犬养毅(孙中山的好友)遇刺身亡,1936年发生“二二六”兵变,在这一过程中,一大批温和派官员遭到激进势力的排挤甚至杀害。早在二战之前很久,日本国内已经存在着非常广泛的民族主义和民粹主义倾向。甚至于,犬养毅首相在遭暗杀后,几名青年军人凶手最终被政府无罪释放,而在关押期间还有日本民众集体切掉手指头寄送给当局施加压力,要求释放这些爱国青年军人。 从日俄战争到一战期间,日本同英国结成了英日同盟,在国际形势中,虽然当时美国力图在东亚制衡日本的扩张,但从整体来看日本的前景还是很乐观的。本来有无数机会,但日本国内形势的变化,逐渐改变了日本的正确走向。由于国内特殊的政治气氛和社会环境,在日本逐渐出现了一种持久的“逆淘汰”现象。也就是说,日本的政治精英,凡是更具远见和洞察力的,更支持自由民主的,更强调日本的自我克制,约束对外扩张势头的,这些政治家一个接一个的都被淘汰掉。淘汰的方式是多样的,暗杀是一种方式,还有就是政治上的失势,无所作为。作为二战期间最有远见的战略家之一,石原莞尔的命运是个典范,由于反对东条英机和对华作战,石原莞尔最终从关东军参谋长的职位被赶回了东京大本营,变成了由日本宪兵时刻监护的提前退伍军人。 那么,原因到底在哪里?笔者以为,说一千道一万,这只能归结为当时的日本人在思想上还不够成熟。一个国家总是由一个又一个很具体的人所组成的,最终的表达和决策也是由这些人的言行综合而成。日本尽管在改革之初获得了成功,但随着日本所掌握的力量及其军事实力的不断增长,日本人的思想发展却没有能够跟上它的武力的增长。尽管同当时的亚洲其他国家相比,日本人的思想水准是领先的,但它没有能够同它的更快速增长的力量相匹配。 用个最简单的比喻,如果一个人在思想上很不成熟,还不会很好地使用自己的力量,那么在他不懂得克制不会控制力量的情况下,让他掌握更强大的力量甚至武力这件事情,是不是就很有可能要变成坏事?尽管日本的问题是复杂的,但笔者仍然觉得这个很简单比喻是一目了然的,也是有说服力的。 谨慎看待中国道路 现在,中国正在快速崛起。那么回头再看,现如今的中国人,他们的思想、精神和文化比1910年代的日本又怎么样呢?笔者认为,到目前似乎还不太可能有一个乐观的答案——尽管这个说法很不“政治正确”。但无论如何,中国很快就将获得远超过当时日本在世界范围内所掌握的军事力量。那么,如果同样很不成熟的一群人,掌握了一种如此强大的力量,他们会不会犯下一连串同当年的日本人类似的战略错误呢?如果事实确实如此,那么要是不犯错误,恐怕反倒会是件很稀罕的事情。同样地,怎样才能避免类似的战略错误重现? 显然,一个国家,如果它的制度还存在很多问题,而且大多数民众素质也不是很高,有不少可能自以为是,甚至有一些还非常愚蠢,不懂得包容和宽容,听不了不同意见,无法用既和平但同时又有效的方式来解决观点的分歧——那接下来它就难免会犯下一个又一个的错误——这听起来似乎很刺耳,然而这也正是日本在1920年代之后所发生的现象,而这恐怕也是一种规律——它具有很大的必然性。同样的,在一个国家,那些努力弘扬正义舍身追求真理的人,如果必定会在关键时刻掉链子,连续遭到淘汰——如果这些人总是肯定会玩不转,会一个接一个的完蛋。如果谁敢提不同意见,谁敢反对掌权的,肯定都没有好下场——那这也就意味着,这个国家的命运,难免是一条道要走到黑。而这也是一种不见棺材不掉泪般的命运——正如日本曾踏上的“好局痛失”的错误道路。 目前,尽管在中国学界存在着众多对日本的批评,但总体上看来,中国方面的观点总是倾向于预设“中国比日本更正确”。但现实的情况看来,却未必如此。这就像当年的日本民意,总是预设“日本比中国更正确”一样,实际上是靠不住的。中国对日本的批评,尤其是中国国内的民族主义者群体,往往倾向于用一种外在的视角,将日本看作与中国相对立甚至是敌对的“他者”。但实际上,从日本近代的思想脉络发展来看,其中有相当大的一部分是来源于中国,比如它受儒家思想影响的程度,对中国文明的很多继承和发扬。 而且,2010年代中国主流舆论的思想和认识水平似乎也并没有能够逾越1910年代时日本的认识水平。日本在当时的大好形势中,温和派的主张开始遭到淘汰,日本逐渐放弃互利互惠的对华共赢方针,而采取军事扩张的方式,最终给中国和日本都带来了巨大的伤害。日本当时虽然是亚洲最先进的国家,但它始终未能接受这一现实:中国是亚洲的核心地带,日本若想融入并领导亚洲,必须通过影响和改造中国,最终依靠赢得中国的支持来加以实现。而同时,这种影响和改造应当是不依赖于武力的,是非暴力的。 而进入21世纪,中国在国际影响力不断提升的同时,却始终未能对类似问题形成清晰的认识:尽管中国已经崛起,但它仍然远不是亚洲最先进的国家,中国若想以自身为核心来领导和塑造亚洲,就必须有足够的能力去影响和说服近邻日本——并且这种领导权的实现,必须要依赖于日本这一亚洲最先进国家的支持。而同样的,赢得这种支持也不应当依赖于武力,而应是非暴力的。相反,如果中国不能认识到这一点,而在内部民族主义的不断刺激下走向中日之间的对抗,那么在长期的相互消耗中,中国将会重蹈日本的覆辙。 总之,中国的民族主义者所持有的“外在论”视角是很成问题的,他们并没有意识到:日本所犯下的错误,并没有超出中国历史上国内所曾发生的众多错误,而日本的错误同样也可以成为中国的错误。从一种“内在论”的视角进行考察,中国和日本都镶嵌在亚洲之内,在很大程度上是“一体”的——正如冈仓天心所言。既然如此,中国学界和舆论应当更多地进行自我反省,并从整个亚洲的范围之内来理解日本和中日关系,这也是一种更加成熟和平常的心态。
《自由主义》中的几个瑕疵 (已发表于“爱思想”网(天益思想库)) 王 键 此前的一段时间,我抽空又重读了一下《自由主义》这本书。该书的出版商为中国社会科学出版社,作者则是北大政府管理学院的李强教授(主攻政治哲学、自由主义)。上次读这本书还是很多年前的事,这次重读有了些新想法。最重要的是,发现了这本书中的几个瑕疵之处。特此将这些瑕疵指出来,希望各位感兴趣的朋友一起思考。 第一个瑕疵: 对历史主义和自发秩序的混淆 在该书第119页,作者针对哈耶克的理论提出了质疑。其中第二点指出:“哈耶克关于构建理性主义与反自由主义之间的联系也十分牵强”。在该部分中,作者李强试图表明:在一方面,被哈耶克列入构建理性主义行列的思想家,本身往往就属于自由主义营垒,而且做出过重要贡献;因而,哈耶克的这一区分在理论上很难成立。而在该部分段落的最后,作者又从另一方面提出了有利于自己观点的另一个证据:“另一方面,许多自由主义的坚定的批评者往往并不是从建构理性主义出发,而是从某种类似渐进理性主义的进化理论或历史主义出发。我们可以举出黑格尔、马克思对自由主义的批评为例”。 但是,问题恰恰就出在这段话里:实际上,作者在这里混淆了自生自发秩序理论和其它的一些思想的异同。 在哈耶克那里,“历史主义”是有特指的,它大概包含了两种倾向: 1、指一种类似历史决定论倾向的观点 2、则指一种类似历史相对主义倾向的观点 在其中,第1种所针对的对象应当是黑格尔、孔德、马克思等学者;而第2种所针对的则是德国历史学派。这里的问题在于,对于“自由主义”的含义需要一个清晰的界定,否则很难来明确谁是自由主义者,谁又是反对者。比如卢梭,可以理解为自由主义者,也可以理解为反对者。这要具体地分析,从什么样的理论层面和问题切入点来看卢梭?可以说,在这里,作者有可能没搞清楚哈耶克的观点到底是什么意思,把哈耶克提出的自生自发秩序和某种构建理性主义或历史主义的观点混为一谈。哈耶克所谓的自由主义的反对者,一般来说是带有理性中心主义或乌托邦情节的学者,这些人倾向于脱离开具体的微观有效竞争机制,来以宏观的方式建构宏大叙事。正式在这个意义上,哈耶克认为它们同反自由主义观点之间存在密切的联系。 而实际上,哈耶克的自生自发秩序的发生需要一些理论上的前提和预设,比如个人财产的分立,大规模的市场机制的建立,维持市场秩序的法治,知识的私密性、分散性甚至不可通约使得中央集权式决策行为的不可行,等等。但无论黑格尔还是马克思,也包括众多自由主义的批评者们,一般来说是并不完全赞同如上所述的这些哈耶克的理论预设的。正是这样,黑格尔、马克思等人才会从一种整体主义的角度出发,绘制出一副规模宏大的“进化论”图景。比如绝对精神的发展如何要经过几个阶段,又如何回归。或者人类社会如何经过普遍的阶级斗争,经由几个阶段进入一个完美的乌托邦社会,如此等等。 表面上看起来,一些乌托邦理论也存在“进化”。但这些进化并不是基于自由市场的,也不是基于法治的。可以说,此“进化论”非彼进化论。哈耶克的自生自发秩序和黑格尔马克思们不能混为一谈的。这恐怕是书中的一个瑕疵。 第二个瑕疵: 关于方法论的个人主义 在该书的第163页,作者又谈到了方法论的个人主义,并指出“霍布斯是最早明确阐释方法论个人主义的哲学家”;“霍布斯指出,社会是一个复合体,是由个人组成的。只有理解个人的特性与性质,才可能理解社会的特征与性质”。 但是这一部分的阐述,似乎和其它一些学者相关观点不十分吻合。也同样是按照哈耶克的观点,个人主义存在“真”与“伪”的区分,所谓“伪个人主义”,就是如同卢梭这样的观点,把社会看成有孤立的原子式的个人所组成的复合体,这些人再通过契约构建成为社会。而所谓“真个人主义”,恰恰要反对这种伪个人主义,因为哈耶克认为伪个人主义最终必然要导向形形色色的整体主义或集体主义,以及相应的奴役和暴政。伪个人主义观点的问题在于:它没能认识到自生自发秩序的问题,那它就必然要诉诸理性所推行的完美设计,最终自然就逃不出在理性之名下推行的强制。 在哈耶克那里,所谓真个人主义也就是一种方法论上的个人主义,而它的本质特征并不在于强调理解组成社会的抽象前提究竟是个体还是集体,而是强调如何去理解自生自发的秩序。也就是说,如何去理解自发秩序这一维系个体与社会的最重要的纽带?离开了自发秩序这一重要概念,个人主义是没有意义的。在这一点上,哈耶克与霍布斯完全不同。因此,霍布斯的个人主义观点,无法同哈耶克的观点联系在一起。 如果只是从“理解社会的前提是不是个人”这个角度来看方法论的个人主义,那显然不足以与种种伪个人主义的观点划清界限,自然也就容易让人对方法论个人主义这一概念本身产生出一些疑惑。但从哈耶克的界定和理解来看,真个人主义和伪个人主义肯定是完全不同的,因为所谓伪个人主义最终免不了是要和整体主义或集体主义殊途同归。 第三个瑕疵: 对 "Libertarian" 和 "Libertarianism"两个词语的翻译 这是一个小问题,书中对于“极端自由主义”这个词的用法颇得斟酌。与这个词对应的,有两个英文词:"Libertarian"和"Libertarianism"。 一些英文词典的相关解释如下: "one who believes in freedom of action and thought" "an advocate of the doctrine of free will" "a person who uploads the principles of individual liberty especially of thought and action" 常见的与之对应的中文译法如下: “自由论者”,“自由意志主义者”,“行动自由论者”“自由意志论”,等等。 我觉得作者在书中把它和“极端自由主义”这个词对应起来,是不太合适的。实际上,"Libertarianism"这个词指的是应该从“亚当·斯密 -- 门格尔 -- 哈耶克 -- 诺奇克”这条线上的自由主义思想家们,他们往往都具有较强的保守主义气质。这样看来,把这两个词似乎翻译成“自由至上主义者”和“自由至上主义”更为妥当。此外,在国内学者秋风等人编译的自由主义著作中,也就是将 "Libertarianism"译成自由至上主义的。而且从其具体观点来看,翻译成“极端自由主义者”这样一个词,带有一定贬义,更是非常不妥,也容易让人们把它们和激进的无政府主义的思想相混淆。这就完全不相关了,很容易引起不必要的误解。 综上所述,大致找到了这么几个可能还算不上瑕疵的瑕疵。当然学术有争论,究竟是不是瑕疵,还需要学界众家的反复检验。还特别需申明的是:本人对李强老师是非常尊敬的,对李老师的为学为人也非常欣赏,指出这几个瑕疵,只是为了有助于自由主义思想在中国的顺畅流通和广泛传播,并没有针对任何个人的意思。学无止境,即使在百尺竿头,也总还需要更进一步。更何况,“自由主义”这么大的话题,让任何人去写作,恐怕都难以不留下几个瑕疵,窃以为如是。 而据我所知,李强老师写就的这本《自由主义》,不但是国内这方面最早的著作之一,而且已然称得上一部中文写作中的经典之作了。我相信这几个挑出的瑕疵,也算是在鸡蛋里挑出的骨头碴吧。
OnMay 11, under the invitation of Science Press of China and the Publication Committee under Chinese Academy of Sciences, James Testa, vice president of Thomson Reuters Science, Technology, andMedicalInformation Group visitedthe Science Press of China and made a presentation. In the morning, Science Press of Chinaheld aSCI journal recommendation meeting.Counterparts from the Science Press of China,fromjournals of Science in China andother SCI-journals, and five non-SCIjournals publishedby the the SciencePress of China, attended the meeting. Editors from the five non-SCI journals introduced their journals fromthe perspectives of journal features, the member composition of the editorial boards,manuscript source,respectively.Thenjournal editorshave a short discussion with delegates from Thomson Reuters.(see 汤森路透科技与医疗信息集团James Testa一行访问科学出版社 ) After the morning meeting, we several edtiors from geologcial and geographical journals ( Journal of Geographical Sciences,Journal of Arid Land, Chinese Journal of Oceanology and Limnology , Advances in Polar Science,Journal of Mountain Science )had a lunch together. As it's the first time for me to get to know some of them, EIC Yu made a brief introduction on the other several editors.Then I made a brief introduction about our journal and our institute, and welcome them tovisit Chengdu and our institute in the future. Prof. Yao from Journal of Geographical Sciencesmade aninteresting and accuratesummary forthis gathering: our several journals hererepresent the vastness ( Journal of Geographical Sciences, Journal of Arid Land ),the depth( Chinese Journal of Oceanology and Limnology ), and the height of geographical sciences( Advances in Polar Science,Journal of Mountain Science ). In the afternoon, under the invitation of Director JIN Jianhui,the Academic Activities and Publication Committee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences,James Testa made a presentation about the SCI journal selection standards and process,and exhibited somecomparative researchresults based on the SCI index database.Jamses Testaalso gave some suggestions on how to improve journal quality and journal impact factor.After the presentation, the meeting attendees were active in asking questions related to SCI journal selection and elimination. On the question how to improve journal impact factor,James Testa has aquip answer: Select the best manuscripts; Provide better service!
对于做实验的童鞋来说,平时看综述必不可少,可是如何获得自己想要的却并不是一件容易的事情,这里整理并推荐几种行之有效的方法: ; ) [: Z2 Q" z8 F" t; s* a ) b7 qL9 G' K/ F% `: n4 l 2. http://scholar.google.com.hk/ 直接google关键词加review加PDF或者doc。 Google 学术搜索提供可广泛搜索学术文献的简便方法。您可以从一个位置搜索众多学科和资料来源:来自学术著作出版商、专业性社团、预印本、各大学及其他学术组织的经同行评论的文章、论文、图书、摘要和文章。Google 学术搜索可帮助您在整个学术领域中确定相关性最强的研究。 3 Y l8 l1 D7 Y% U0 w ?m " k( Y8 u$ u9 M6 X8 z; CY" S 3. http://isiwebofknowledge.com/ 可以搜素ISI,然后选择review类型的文献。大部分优秀的期刊都被ISI收录,因此我想这种方法可以搜素到大部分的所需要的review。IP地址控制访问权限,全所范围开通(属随意通用户可访问资源)THOMSON ISI公司出版,《科学引文索引(SCI)》的网络版,收录5900余种期刊文摘和引文,内容涉及自然科学、工程技术的各个领域。ISI Web of Knowledge是一个基于Web所建立的整合的数字研究环境,为不同层次、不同学科领域的学术研究人员提供信息服务。 4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed Pubmed MEDLINE 上输入关键词直接搜索,文献出来后可以根据类型(Article or Review直接分类筛选。美国国立医学图书馆(National Library of Medicine,NLM)是目前国际上最重要的生物医学文献信息服务中心。由于其用户界面友好,收录文献范围广、数据库更新速度快,链接点多、部分还可在网上免费直接获得全文,于是成为网上检索生物医学文献使用频率最高的免费医学网站,也是检索生物医学文献最重要、最理想的工具。 5. 可以搜索综述类型的期刊及ISI,Elseiver,Springer, EBSCO(ASP、BSP、ERIC等) ,Kluwer online等; 6. 如果学校买了Scopus,搜Review或其他文章也很方便,感觉比web of science好用一些,主要是可以同时打开多个全文链接 7. 国外的习惯是一些期刊会找某个方向的大牛写综述这样的综述科学性和权威性很好 ...如不是free的,可找通讯作者要: Dear Prof. 5 O6 D4 [* o3 ^+ c$ |2 q I am very interesting in you newly published review article"论文题目" in the current issue of 杂志名.Unfortunately, our university hasn't subscribe thejournal.Would you mind provide this article to me? Thanks a lot.Best regards! 6 D0 {0 h h: ?( z" J7 @% A Your name
昨天晚上收到 Elsevier 出版社 Sara Khan 女士的伊妹儿,告诉我被选为 2010 年度 Phys. Lett. B 最具价值审稿人之一 ( One of the Most Valued Reviewers of 2010 )。作为小小的鼓励,他们将赠送我一张亚马逊网站的价值 60 美金或 40 英镑的可兑现购物券。女儿听到这个消息,立马从床上爬起来,上网调研了亚马逊网站的商品目录,并语重心长地出了几个60美金怎么花的建议。我老人家顺水推舟,那什么,把这份意料之外得来的购物券送给女儿当作新年礼物的一部分好了,她可比我会花钱,买东西的时候 只买贵的、不买好的 。 Phys. Lett. B 是欧洲物理学会主办的老牌高能物理期刊之一,目前的影响因子为 5.083 。我老人家回国后已为该期刊审稿十一年。其实我把绝大部分稿件交给了自己的学生和博士后来审阅,审好之后讲给我听,最后由我来修改他们写的审稿意见,再提交给编辑部。并非我老人家不够负责任,而是通过这个练习,让初出茅庐的年轻人有机会见识一番世界级学术杂志的稿件并给出自己的理解和意见。这是很好的锻炼机会,孩子们可以借此了解投稿和审稿的基本技巧。 除了和我渊源最深的 Phys. Lett. B (因为我老人家绝大多数最好的文章都发表在了这本期刊上),这些年来我老人家也受累为 JHEP 、 JCAP 、 Eur. Phys. J. C 、 J. Phys. G 和 Prog. Theor. Phys. 等国际著名专业期刊审稿,并担任了亚太地区理论物理期刊《 Mod. Phys. Lett. A 》与《 Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 》的编委,算是为国际学术界的多元化与文明化进程做出了一点贡献。
因为要考博的缘故,我最近花20天的时间“翻完”了范里安的《微观经济学:现代观点》(中文,第六版,上海三联),感慨万千! 以 前在读多恩布什的《宏观经济学》(中文)(详见站内链接http://www.pinggu.org/bbs /dispbbs.asp?BoardID=48replyID=11484id=2251skin=0)、范里安的《微 观经济学(高级教程)》(经济科学出版社)和罗默的《高级宏观经济学》(中文版,商务和上海财经大学)时,我就感受到了翻译版教材的“糟糕”!这次的经历 足使“翻译之害”让我刻骨铭心! Varian的 《Intermediate Microeconomics》在经济学界口碑很好。在这次“痛苦之历”之前,我学习过这本英文教材。虽然当时只是挑核心部分读,但其连贯的逻辑和优美的 文笔已给我留下深刻的印象!但存在一个问题:虽然读懂了,但记不住!这样肯定经不起考试的检验。于是,我只好抱着一种诚惶诚恐的心理翻开中文版的教材!我 发誓,如果不是考试,我绝不会读翻译版教材! 有 人可能会问,“20天’翻完’这本教材,不可能吧?”我对此问题的回答是:你不完全对?对的一面是:从第三十章“交换”开始,我就翻不动了;为了赶进度, 我硬着头皮翻了下去,虽然很多时候都不知道它在说什么,不知道它的逻辑;错的一面是:我精读过高鸿业编的《西方经济学》、平狄克等著的《微观经济学》(中 文)、蒋殿春的《高级微观经济学》,阅读过一些经济学文献,有一定的基础,所以就翻得快。详细情况,且听我细细道来: 总 体上讲,这是一本内容比较全的中级微观经济学教材。与高的《西经》和平狄克等的《微观》相比,它新增的内容主要体现在不同偏好的具体讨论、显示性偏好理 论、斯勒茨基方程、等利润线、福利经济学定理等。因为“好”是一本教科书理所当然的责任,所以我就没必要再为它树碑立传了!再说,市场已经强有力地证明了 这一点!我要说的是它做得相对不够好的地方! 首 先,很多地方写得不够细致!例如,它没有明确边际替代率MRS12的下标的经济含义。MRS12指消费者为再获得一单位商品1而愿意放弃的商品2的最大数 量,或者指要消费者放弃一单位商品1而必须付出的商品2的最小数量。他的这个小疏忽在许多地方给学生的理解带来了麻烦!这一点在其复习题中体现得最为明 显。如第3章后的习题9,What is you marginal rate of substitution of ﹩1 bills for ﹩5 bills?显然,答案是-1/5,因为我们为了多得一单位的1美元钞票至多愿意放弃-1/5美元的5美元钞票。但是他给出的答案是“-1/5或者-5, 这取决于你把哪种商品看作横轴”。还有第31章后的习题4,“如果鲁滨逊的椰子和鱼之间的边际替代率是-2,……”;看到这个题干,我马上就会想到 MRS12=-2(1代表椰子,2代表鱼),但他的答案的理解跟我恰好相反!想一想,如果这是考试,谁该对我的差成绩负责?高的教材在这点上做得很好。再 者,“成本曲线”那一章就没有高的教材写得好;(顺便提一下,我对高的教材的评价越来越高!)“垄断行为”、“寡头垄断”那两章跟平狄克的教材相差甚远! 当然,这些都可能是它为“内容全面”而必须付出的代价! 其 次,有些地方出现了错误!翻译版在开始讲线性需求曲线加总(pp.219)时,说明了两个线性需求函数加总后得到的需求函数会出现扭者,但在讲线性价格歧 视时(pp364、pp.365),它忽略了这一点,简单的把它们加了起来。这种做法肯定是错误的,因为如果边际成本足够大,那么就这种做法会导致错误的 答案。书上的答案之所以正确,是因为边际成本小!在第29章讲足球赛中罚点球的混合策略均衡(pp.423-426)时,作者也出现了不少错误!图 29.4的反应曲线,把行和列的标反了(pp.427)!可能因为前面的部分“翻”得相当快,所以没发现什么错误。 最 后,关于翻译!译者的翻译能力确实很强,佩服!个人认为,此书总体上翻译得比《微观经济学高级教程》(经济科学)和《高级宏观经济学》(商务、上财)要好 很多,但比平狄克的《微观》要差那么一点。在读平狄克的《微观》时,我没遇到很多拗口的句子,但读此书时,遇到的不知所云的句子实在太多了。下面以最后一 章《不对称信息》为例具体谈谈。 开头第一段 (pp.544),“在前面所有的关于市场的研究中,我们舍弃了信息不同引起的问题。假设购买者和销售者对于市场销售的商品的质量都有完全的信息。如果商 品的质量很容易检验,这个假设就可以获得辩解。如果容易指出哪种商品是高质量的商品和哪种商品是低质量的商品,那么商品的价格就能做出反映质量差异的调 整”。有一定经济学基础的人都知道这段话是什么意思,但是读起来相当拗口!!谁和谁“信息不同”,哪里的“信息不同”,“信息不同”到底指什么东西?“一 个假设可以获得辩解”这样的句子在中文中几乎没有出现过。让我们看看原文吧!“So far in our study of markets we have not examined the problems raised by differences in information: by assumption buyers and sellers were both perfectly informed about the quality of the goods being sold in the market. This assumption can be defended if it is easy to verify the quality of an item. if it is not costly to tell which goods are high-quality goods and which are low quality goods, then the prices of the goods will simply adjust to reflect the quality differences.”整段三句话,里面的词汇没有一个超过高中生水平的。虽然我不是英美人,但读起来就是舒服。我翻译如下:“在前面所有关于市场的 分析中,我们没有考虑交易者拥有的信息量不同所带来的问题,因为我们假定了买卖双方都完全了解市场上交易的商品的质量。如果很容易判断商品质量的高低,那 么这个假定就是合理的。如果判断商品质量的高低的花费不大,那么商品价格就会根据质量差别做出调整。”大家也可以试着翻译下,但无论你翻译得怎样好,还是 会遗漏原文所表达的一些信息。这是任何语言之间的翻译都面临的一个共同问题。 36.3 逆向选择最后一段(pp.548),“事实上,存在着许多有助于解决这种市场低效率的社会机构。一般情况是,雇主把保障计划作为一揽子附加福利的组成部分 提供给他们的雇员。保险公司能够将它的费率建立在这些雇员的平均风险的基础上,同时又确保所有的雇员一定参加保健计划,因此,逆向选择被排除”。我硬是没 法理清最后一句话的逻辑!且看原文,“In fact there are social institutions that help to solve this market inefficiency. It is commonly the case that employers offer health plans to their employees as part of the package of fringe benefits.The insurance company can base its rates on the averages over the set of employees and is assured that all employees must participate in the program,thus eliminating the adverse selection.”理解最后一句话的关键在于弄清“and is assured that”所表达的含义。按照字面意思,“保险公司被保证”,所以“and”连接的两个部分不构成并列关系,将“and”翻译成“同时”是不妥的。实际 上,后面部分是前面部分的条件状语。通过仔细分析发现,整段包含三个行为个体:雇主、保险公司和雇员。保险公司是保险人,雇主是投保人,雇员是被保险人。 被动语态“is assured that”中的主语是雇主。于是,最后一句可以翻译为:“如果雇主保证所有雇员都参加了保险计划,那么保险公司就可以基于雇员的平均风险水平确定费率,从 而避免了逆向选择问题。” 36.4道德风险最后 一段(pp.549),“同标准的市场分析相比较,这也是一个似非而可能是的结论。……而如果消费者连续采取相同量的提防行动”。我相信,大家看到这两句 话时的感觉一定很不爽,可能还会在心里嘀咕“连我小学时的水平都不如”。第一句话的英文是“This is also a paradoxical result when compared with the standard market analysis”,大家顺口就会翻译出“与标准的市场分析相比,这又是一个自相矛盾的结论”(在前面存在逆向选择的情况时,出现过一个自相矛盾的结论, 所以这里用“又”)。为了追根到底,我用爱词霸搜索,结果如下:“paradoxical,似非而可能是的,反论的,荒谬的,自相矛盾的,诡辩的”。看来 作者是直接用了第一个词条。 还有几个零星的翻译错误:福利那章32.4的标题(pp.486)英文为Individualistic Social Welfare function,此书译作“个人社会福利函数”。咋一看,个人和社会并列在中文上是对立的两个概念,怎么能放在一起呢?实际上,这里译作“个人主义社会 福利函数”,意为“个人的福利水平只与它本人的配置状况有关”,所以是个人主义的。32.5节经它一翻译,应有的前后对应关系全没了,大大影响阅读。 32.6节第4段将“swap”译作“交换”也是不妥的,因为在中国学生脑子里,“交换”对应的单词是“exchange”,而不是“swap”,而这两 个单词之间的差别相当大。 时间关系,其它翻译不当支出就不一一指出了。 在 上面具体举例论证时,我都试着对相应段落做出了翻译。虽然我的翻译水平和经济学水平跟原书译者不能相提并论,但我敢肯定,就上面具体几点而言,我翻译得要 比原书译者好!虽然大家可以提供更加“信、达、雅”的译法,但任何译法肯定都不可能完全传达原文所包含的信息量。实际上,英文和中文是两种差别很大的语 言。例如,英文在叙述两个以上的连续动作时是不管时间先后的,而中文通常是按照动作先后顺序依次描述的;英文为了追求逻辑关系的严密性,常常使用结构繁杂 的长句,而这在中文中很少见;等等。如果大家想获得语言上的美感享受,如果大家想领略经济学的美妙和趣味性,如果大家想学好经济学,还是直接看英文版教材 吧!英文并不像你想象中的那样难,英文版经济学教材中的生词也并不像你想象中的那样多! 最 后还要提醒大家的是,读翻译版教材的后果不仅仅是学不好经济学,而且还会影响大家的中文写作水平。我自己就深受其害!如果你看了这篇帖子,就知道我受到的 毒害有多深!(我以前的写作水平要比现在强,得过全校性的征文大赛二等奖,在学校刊物上发表了不少“文学作品”)。我是在和导师讨论我的拙作时突然意识到 这一点的。我导师60多岁了,对论文中的“的、地、得”都做区分。他当时感叹我的写作能力,我顺口而出“看翻译的资料多了,在所难免啊”!其实,大家只要 稍加留意就会发现,《经济研究》、《经济学(季刊)》等名刊上的有些文章文笔也很糟糕!我估计,他们也是译作的受害者! 注: 考试完毕,我又把几个以前没敲上去的“不当之处”加上起了。如果您们发现了“不妥之处”,请您把它在此贴贴出,然后我把它都加进楼顶!相信通过我们的共同努力,可以为今后开始学经济学的学子提供一些有用的帮助。
这是本期《波士顿评论》的一篇重头文章,资料翔实,论点也很精辟,展现了当整个出版业被一个超级在线书店所掌控时... 当读者像买罐头一样地买书时,读者和出版商最终会明白出版业的未来将糟糕到何种程度 。 现把它原汁原味地转载过来。 http://www.bostonreview.net/BR35.6/roychoudhuri.php Books After Amazon Onnesha Roychoudhuri The man sitting next to me takes out his new Kindle. How do you like that thing? I ask. He instantly becomes animated, angling the Kindle toward me so that I can better see its face. Its great, he says. I can download tons of different books and magazines. Then, eyeing my hefty, hardback of John Dos Passoss USA trilogy, he adds, Cheaper than that, too. $9.99. There, our conversation ends. I am unsure of where I fall on the Luddite spectrum, but Ill admit to inhaling the odor of leather-bound volumes. Having moved over a dozen times, though, Ive also found occasion to curse their weight. So, too, has Jeff Bezos. Bezos calls the Kindle a response to the failings of a physical book. He told attendees of a technology conference in New York: Im grumpy when Im forced to read a physical book because its not as convenient. Turning the pages . . . the book is always flopping itself shut at the wrong moment. His conclusion? Its had a great five-hundred-year run . . . but its time to change. That Bezos is unencumbered by reverence for the physical entity should be no surprise. The book has always been an object of convenience to Bezos, whose principal interest is capturing market share. In 1994 Bezos set out to create a new kind of online business. The specific product was irrelevant; what was important was how it would be marketed, sold, stocked, and shipped. He made a list of the items he could carry, including CDs, videos, computer software and hardware, and books. Books won out because there were so many, and demand was steady. The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) also allowed him to organize and index the millions of books in print. No catalogue or bookstore could possibly have it all, Bezos reasoned, but he could. Amazons ascendance no doubt is a function of its nontraditional ways. Though neither a publisher nor strictly-speaking a bookseller, it has become the worlds largest retailer of books in any form. And it has done so as a software company that offers great deals on Vienna sausages as well as hardbacks. Bezoss customers come for the low prices, not to fondle, sniff, or otherwise interact with the product. The most one can do is browse some pages electronically. Bezos thinks pleasing the customer is all that matters, and his strategynearly endless inventory at rock-bottom pricesis working. Today an estimated 75 percent of online book purchases in the United States are made through Amazon, and its overall market share in book sales is astonishingly high. Some publishers make more than half of their sales through Amazon. So when Bezos rang the death knell for the physical book, people paid attention. Even before the Kindle, Amazon wielded enormous influence in the industry. Now it is positioned to control the e-book market and thereby the future of the publishing industry. What happens when an industry concerned with the production of culture is beholden to a company with the sole goal of underselling competitors? Amazon is indisputably the king of books, but the issue remains, as Charlie Winton, CEO of the independent publisher Counterpoint Press puts it, what kind of king theyre going to be. A vital publishing industry must be able take chances with new authors and with books that dont have obvious mass-market appeal. When mega-retailers have all the power in the industry, consumers benefit from low prices, but the effect on the future of literatureon what books can be published successfullyis far more in doubt. For decades the publishing world has been anxious about the end of books. Industry consolidation has led to a much-lamented shift to a business-oriented ethos, particularly at some of the larger conglomerates. With corporate ownership came a demand for profit margins that the book-publishing world had never seen. Yet even if new management is nothing like that of the pastgentlemen with large fortunes who became gentlemen with small fortunespublishing remains an intensely people-driven business, the kind where folks meet face-to-face. Even today most people involved in publishing are there because they love good books. For most of their modern history, the primary goal of publishers was to find brilliant writers and produce books. Publishers left it to other book loversindependent bookstores across the countryto sell the fruits of their labors. Booksellers not only carried books tailored to their local audiences, but also promoted their favorite new books through personal recommendations to their customers. All indies ordered books at a standard discountsomewhere around 40 percent off the list price. In the 70s and 80s the number of new book titles grew steadily, as did the number of independently owned bookstores. Where once a publisher had to worry about competing for shelf space, now its entire list of books could be available to customers. But this trend came to a halt when chain superstores such as Barnes Noble and Borders began taking over in the late 80s. They set up shop down the street from successful independents, lured customers with a broader array of books and lower prices, and put their competitors out of business. In the early 90s there were roughly 6,000 independent bookstores across the country. Today, that number is closer to 2,200. There is not a whole lot of mystery behind these stores runaway success. Barnes Noble wasnt getting rich by offering caffeine with the classics; it was negotiating better discounts from publishers. In 1994 the American Booksellers Association (ABA), a group that represents independent bookstores nationwide, filed suit against five major publishing companies for offering discriminatory discounts that werent justified by costs. One large publisher, for instance, was requiring that bookstores order 3,000 of their books in order to get a 48 percent discount. A smaller order would net a 40 percent discount. That meant that smaller stores, making smaller orders, could not afford to meet larger retailers prices. With even the higher-volume indies unable to compete, small bookstores across the nation were forced to close their doors. While publishers were guilty of providing two-tiered discounts, there was reason to believe that the chain stores were using strong-arm tactics to demand these discounts of larger publishers. Bruce Spiva, one of the lawyers who brought the ABAs case, recalls hearing that the chain stores had threatened to remove publishers books from stores if they didnt cooperate. The five publishers (Houghton Mifflin, Penguin USA, St. Martins, Rutledge Hill, and Hugh Lauter Levin) settled, but in 1997 the ABA found that the chain bookstores were still demanding and receiving discounts that werent being made available to independent bookstores. The ABA sued Barnes Noble and Borders directly for leveraging discriminatory discounts. In 2001 this lawsuit, too, was settled, on the condition that a large amount of the evidence the ABA had collected against the chain stores be destroyed. This era of publishing consolidation and chain growth also marked the rise of promotional allowances or co-operative advertising (co-op). Big chains pressured bookmakers to pay for top placement in outlets$20,000 for two weeks in the front of the store, sayor to provide customers special in-store discounts. Such promotions are now standard, with roughly 4 percent of publishers net revenue devoted to them. As the focus shifted to the bottom line throughout the industry, the ABA and many others in the publishing community worried about the effect of revenue-obsession on what would get published, and with good reason. It has become common practice for representatives of large retailers to weigh in on everything from book covers to sample chapters of manuscripts. In some cases, retailers even demand changes. One editor at a major publishing house, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity for fear of employer sanctions, told me that agents of Barnes Noble, Borders, and Target are frequent participants in meetings about potential books. Without their buy-in, the publisher is unlikely to go forward with a book. Ideas that excite independents might be scrapped if they dont get a chains stamp of approval. As a result of this pressure, major publishers have become less inclined to take a chance on new authors and more wary of published authors whose previous works were only moderate sellers. Jamie Raab, publisher of Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books) for 24 years, says that without the independent bookstores to help in the process of discovery and nurturing, it became riskier to invest in a talented but unknown writer. Although smaller houses often pick up promising new authors, they dont always have the resources to pay for preferential status in mega-stores. A full range of new works and authors make it into print, but breakout books for smaller publishers are now rare. And the emergence of Amazon, the biggest of the big-box retailers, has exacerbated these effects while introducing a slew of new headaches for publishers of every size. In 1995 Bezoss new online model had the book world atwitter. Where once a publisher had to worry about competing for limited shelf space, now its entire list of booksold and new alikecould always be available to customers. This was a godsend for small publishers as well as self-publishers, who otherwise had few ways of finding a retail audience. Its because of them that our backlist lives, explains Margo Baldwin, president of Vermont-based Chelsea Green Publishing. Amazon has been hugely important to us. If you go in as a small publisher and sell to Barnes Noble or Borders, you have a set of buyers who may or may not take your books. made the marketplace accessible to everyone in a pretty equal way. When Ten Speed Books refused to give Amazon a higher discount, its books disappeared from the Web site. Publishers were also excited about not having to take so many returns. Bookstores typically order stock from publishers on consignment and return unsold copies, but most of the books Amazon ordered from publishers were non-returnable. Yet, before long, the mood soured. Over the course of the next decade, Amazon pushed standard discounts to 5255 percent, with some as high as 60 percent. In contrast, bookstoreseven the chainsget discounts that usually top out around 50 percent. That small margin can mean the difference between surviving another day or folding, particularly for a publisher doing modest print runs. In addition to pushing discounts up explicitly, Amazon began to get creative about what constituted co-op. In 2004 Publishers Weekly reported that publishers were being asked to pay higher co-op rates to Amazon, and those who didnt sign up would be subject to such changes as Amazon not selling their books at a discount and not having their titles surface in various merchandizing and advertising programs. There was more: Amazon also may turn off the search options to publishers books, making it possible to find a title only when the correct name of the book or the ISBN is entered. What publishers were supposed to get in exchange for this co-op, was, essentially, not being made to disappear from the Web site. Winton calls the tactic a discount grab in the guise of getting co-opin other words, a way of getting around antitrust laws that put a cap on the discount a retailer can demand. Dennis Loy Johnson, head of Melville House Publishing, was one of the publishers approached by Amazon and encouraged to sign on to the new program. He refused and two weeks later received a visit from a cadre of Amazon employees at a book convention. It was one team of guys one day and then another team of guys the next, he recalled, when we spoke in May of 2009. They kept saying, Why arent you participating in the program? in this really heated, aggressive way. I told them we couldnt afford it. They countered that Johnson couldnt afford not to. When Johnson returned from the convention, he discovered that the entire catalogue of Melville House books had disappeared from Amazon.com. I just didnt believe they were going to play hardball like that, he told me. Even a search for ISBNs failed to bring up Melville Houses books. Johnson gave in and agreed to the new plan. Soon after, his books reappeared. In a recent article in The Nation , Johnson says that when he refused to sign onto the new program, Amazon reps told him they were keeping an eye on him and advised him to get in line. Johnsons story is familiar to Phil Wood, former publisher of Ten Speed Press in Berkeley. Wood received a phone call from Amazon around the same time as Johnson. What it amounted to, Wood says, is that they wanted more discount. When Wood refused, the Amazon flunkyas Wood puts itthreatened to delist all of Ten Speeds books. I didnt even know what that meant, Wood says. I told him to go fly a kite. Ten Speeds books then disappeared from the Web site. For about a week, Wood fielded panicked calls from his authors, wondering where their books had gone. Never a fan of computers or email, Wood sat down to pen a letter to Bezos. I described what his company had done, and I said this was not the way gentlemen treat gentlemen, Wood told me. He informed Bezos that his next letter would be to The New York Times . After a week Wood received another call from Amazon, further pressuring him to agree to the new terms. When Wood again refused, Amazon relented, and agreed to continue doing business with Ten Speed on the original terms. High co-op fees allow Amazon to claim higher discounts without asking for them, but sometimes the company doesnt bother with pretense. Two years ago an Amazon buyer told Kristen Frantz, vice president of sales and marketing at Berrett-Koehler, a San Franciscobased publisher of business titles, that her companys discounts werent high enough. Frantz checked around and found that Berrett-Koehlers discount to Amazon was about average. She brought her concerns to her distributor, Ingram Publishing Services, and her representative there was able to go to bat on her behalf, arguing to Amazon that Ingram, as Berrett-Koehlers distributor, should be handling the terms and that the discount should stay as-is. Once we made that clear to them, they left us alone, Frantz says. I think they just try to squeeze everything they can out of publishers, and if youre small or on your own, youre going to be much more vulnerable. Frantz might be right. Scale seems to matter to Amazon. Ten Speedresponsible for bestsellers such as What Color Is Your Parachute and the Moosewood Cookbook was doing at least three million dollars in annual business with Amazon. Melville House was doing less than a hundred thousand. But Amazons punitive tactics may be more arbitrary than that. A number of publishers have said no to Amazon and lived to tell the tale, suggesting that publishers ought to push back harder. Of the 20,000 employees at Amazon, just one is a full-time liason between the company and publishers. Nonetheless, cases of disappearance continue. Amazon doesnt always go as far as delisting books entirely. Sometimes it just makes them impossible to purchase by taking the buy button off a titles page. In 2008 two huge British publishersBloomsbury and Hachettehad their buttons pulled. That same year, Amazon also removed buy buttons from any printon-demand publisher that didnt use Amazons on demand printer, Book-Surge, a move that led to an antitrust lawsuit in which Amazon agreed to pay a settlement to a competitor, though it admitted no wrongdoing. The Authors Guild recently launched WhoMovedMyBuyButton.com in order to keep track of buy buttons. On the front page of the site is a note greeting visitors: See, the folks at Amazon have a headlock on the online book world, and they tend to get carried away. Thats why we developed WhoMovedMy-BuyButton.com. Well keep an eye on your Buy Buttons, checking daily to make sure theyre safe. If theyre AWOL, well let you know by e-mail. Well also let you know when they return. Buy-button disappearances are just one of the tensions that have emerged between publishers and Amazon. Publishers accustomed to the more bibliophilic operators of independent stores and even Barnes Noble find it jarring to deal with Amazons lawyers. Woods frustration at Amazons lack of gentlemanliness is echoed by many other publishers who wonder why Amazon keeps putting the screws to them. (The majority of publishers contacted for this article chose not to speak on the record, citing their fear of retribution for divulging Amazons tactics, which one publisher described as a You do this, or well fuck you over approach.) In a July 2009 interview, Mike Shatzkin, a publishing consultant and author of the popular publishing blog The Shatzkin Files , put it this way: Amazon sell all kinds of things besides books; they sell their technology. They have a lot of fish to fry besides the fish that the people in the publishing business think about. And as Amazon has grown in clout, these differing priorities have caused more and more anxiety. Theyre not quite family to the same extent that the retailers have always been in the business, Shatzkin says. Publishers who once met directly with Amazon representatives find they can no longer reach anyone at the company, even by phone. Many publishers with distributors dont even know the name of the person who buys their books at Amazon. The relationship is almost exclusively handled by the distributor. Indeed, of the 20,000 employees at Amazon, just one is tasked full-time with working as a liaison between the company and publishers. Jeffrey Lependorf, Executive Director of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and of Small Press Distribution, suggests that the difference between Amazon and brick-and-mortar bookstores is most evident in how they market books: I think even people at Amazon would say that its essentially a widget seller that happens to have begun by focusing on books. Many people, like me, will say you cant sell a book the same way you sell a can of soup. At the heart of the soup-can analogy are the algorithms that Amazon uses to recommend books to customers. Most customers arent aware that the personalized book recommendations they receive are a result of paid promotions, not just purchase-derived data. This is frustrating for publishers who want their books to be judged on their merits. I think their twisted algorithms that point you toward bestsellers instead of books that you might actually like a shame, Gavin Grant, cofounder of Small Beer Press, laments. Algorithms can also affect how much customers pay for books. Individual customers may get different discounts on the same book depending on their purchase history. The practice is euphemistically called dynamic pricing. According to Roger Williamsthe former sales director at Simon Schuster, and one of the first salespeople to deal directly with Amazonthe complexity of the algorithms is such that, Amazons employees sometimes dont know themselves what is going to show up in some of the pages that appear. In addition to selective pricing and sponsored recommendations, Amazon uses its sales rankings to sell books. One might think that at least these are sacrosanct, generated exclusively from hard numbers. But last year Amazon de-ranked hundreds of gay- and lesbian-themed books. Without a sales rank, the visibility of the titles plummeted. Initially, Amazon claimed this was the result of books being tagged as adult material, even though many of the books did not contain content any more explicit than other books that remained ranked. Soon after, the company changed its tack and denied that it had any such adult-material policy. In the end Amazon called it a glitch but did not explain what the glitch was, or how it could be prevented in the future. Amazon had to cede pricing control to Macmillan because the publisher has a monopoly over their own titles. Amazons handling of e-book pricingand publishers responsewill have perhaps the most far-reaching effects on the industry. The situation thus far is not encouraging. To create a new market and generate demand for the Kindle, Amazon set the e-books price at $9.99. Publishers were not consulted. If Amazon had asked publishers what they thought about locking in e-book prices at $9.99, it would have been subjected to a chorus of outrage. Thats because the math behind publishing is seldom in a publishers favor. The sale of a twenty-dollar hardcover nets a large publisher about ten dollars. Royalties run the publisher about three dollars, and the costs of printing, binding, and paper are a further two dollars (more for low-volume titles). Take $1.20 for distribution, two dollars for marketing, and that leaves a publisher with roughly $1.80 to cover rent, editing, and any other costs. A smaller publisher might keep closer to a dollar per book. E-books reduce the cost of printing, binding, and paper, but royalties tend to run higher, and all other costs are largely unchanged. Publishers account for these costs when they slap a price tag on a book, so Amazons decision to set the price irrespective of them set off a wave of anxiety. Amazon, hardly oblivious to these economics, chose to absorb the loss, paying publishers for the price of the equivalent printed book in order to make the deal more appealing. But Amazon has successfully established customer expectations at an impossibly low rate, and publishers worry that at some point the retailer will no longer take on losses to sustain it. Theres no way they can continue to sell . . . at a loss, says Johanna Vondeling, vice president of business and development at Berrett-Koehler. Eventually, theyre going to change their minds on this, and I think all publishers should be worried about what happens when they do. Theyre going to keep that e-book price where it is. Theyre going to turn around and say to the publishers, Tough. All were going to pay you on is the split of $9.99. While the $9.99 price has evolved, it is still the most popular e-book rate on Amazon. And even with elastic pricing, Amazon remains in control, using its algorithms to set the price of e-books. This past January John Sargent, CEO of the publisher Macmillan, met with Amazon executives in hopes that he might regain control over the pricing of Macmillans books. If anyone could sway Amazon, it was Macmillan, a huge bookmaker with imprints such as Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; Henry Holt; Picador; and Times Books. Sargent flew to Seattle and laid out his terms. By the time he stepped off the plane in New York, Amazon had removed the buy button from every Macmillan book on the Web site. Negotiations between retailers and publishers have historically been behind closed doors, so it was that much more dramatic when an irate Sargent wrote a blog on the Macmillan Web site chronicling the messy details. Before long, Amazon announced that it had no choice but to cede pricing control to Macmillan because the publisher has a monopoly over their own titles. Macmillans success is a heartening development. It and a handful of other large publishers have taken over pricing of their own e-books. But smaller houses have not been so lucky. Johnny Temple, founder of the independent press Akashic Books, is not sure whether he will eventually be able to negotiate the same terms that the big publishers have with Amazon. If we had a room full of lawyers, maybe we would be working with them and thinking about the future terms, Temple says. But were just busy trying to stay in business. As is the case with most large retailers, those publishers with a lower sales volume are simply treated differently. The conceit is that the market demands the $9.99 price tag. But in the case of e-books, Amazon is the market. For small publishers Amazon provides unprecedented access to a larger audience of customers. The costs of reaching this audience can, however, outweigh the benefits. For Gavin Grant, keeping Small Beer Press afloat without slashing already-modest author royalties means making cuts in advertising and marketing budgets. Grant isnt shy about Amazons role in keeping him in this tight spot: If I meet a reader and they say, I buy all your books through Amazon, I often say to them, Thats great for Amazon, thats great for the shipper. It does nothing for me, and it doesnt do much for the author. Many in the publishing community mock Amazon as the Wal-Mart of books, but its important to remember that Wal-Mart is also the Wal-Mart of books. Last year, Target, Amazon, and Wal-Mart fought a price war over a handful of new hardcover bestsellers. Books with $25 and $35 retail prices were being offered for nine dollars or less. In response to the price war, the ABA wrote a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ), requesting that it investigate possible illegal predatory pricing. David Gernert, a literary agent who represents the novelist John Grisham and was quoted in the ABA letter, told The New York Times : If readers come to believe that the value of a new book is $10, publishing as we know it is over. If you can buy Stephen Kings new novel or John Grishams Ford County , for $10, why would you buy a brilliant first novel for $25? People who tend to read Grisham and King arent necessarily reaching for a brilliant first novel, but Gernerts point still has some force: devaluing the books produced by an industry already squeezed to the brink is not likely to benefit the reader in the end. The DOJ made no formal reply to the ABA, nor is it likely to (when contacted for this article, a DOJ representative had no comment on the letter). Enforcing anti-trust statutes, particularly in the publishing world, has always been a difficult endeavor. The relevant laws (part of the Robinson-Patman Act) have their roots in the 1930s, an era in which healthy competition was measured not only in low prices but also according to the diversity of retailers. A portion of the Robinson-Patman Act states, for instance, that it is illegal to charge different prices in different geographic areas simply to undersell local stores, a practice critical to the business strategies of large companies such as Wal-Mart. But the DOJ doesnt bring Robinson-Patman cases anymore, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) does so only rarely. John Kirkwood, a former FTC lawyer, explains that the Robinson-Patman Act is thought to be anti-consumer, so courts are skeptical if not hostile. The thinking is that, if prices are getting lower, the consumer must be benefiting. In July Bezos told the press: Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover booksastonishing when you consider that weve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months. The company refuses to release exact figures, so theres nothing to back this claim, but with Amazon cutting the price of the Kindle in order to remain competitive with Apples iPad, there can be little doubt that Kindle salesand e-book salesare up. Though that part about being astonished probably isnt true. Amazons quest is market control, and it goes to great lengths to ensure it. At the end of the day, an Amazon source explained, the market is going to determine what the right price for this content is. The conceit is that that $9.99 price tag is what the market demands. But in this case Amazon is the market, havingwith no input from its suppliersalready dictated the price and preempted the standard fluctuations that competition and improved efficiency impose on prices. It was only through Macmillans negotiating that a new e-book-pricing model emerged, and then only for certain, privileged publishers. Cheap books are easy on our wallets, but behind the scenes publishers large and small have been deeply undercut by the rise of large retailers and predatory pricing schemes. Unless publishers push back, Amazon will take the logic of the chains to its conclusion. Then publishers and readers will finally know what happens when you sell a book like its a can of soup.
出书的哪些事 张学文 2009.7.4 潜科学论坛上最近就出版书的事,引起了一些议论。我这里提供一些认识供参考。 l 出书主要涉及两个方面:作者,出版社。作者的目的,能力,出版社的利益,认同,能力是有关环节。 l 一些学人没有出版过自己的书,难免有一些天真的认识:认为我写的书,一经问世就会轰动,书要再版,我要成名、发财 ,可真的进行了一番苦旅,出版了一册书。其苦味只有自己吞。原先的浪漫认识大多都云飞雨散。 l 确实,科技类的书,如果不是教科书、成功的科普书,急需的参考书,其印量多在 1000 册以下。这个印量对出版社肯定是赔钱的事和难销的书。于是不能赔钱的出版社自然找你要出版费、什么书号费等等,而且全部的书都由你自己拿去,他们没有兴趣把书推向书店、读者。所以,尽管你自己掏腰包出书,如果你最初对这样结局没有精神准备,就很伤心,成绩感被失败感代替。 l 现在的出版社,原则上只要你肯出钱,基本都可以出版你的著作。但是,你显然需要十分审慎行事。写书时就要考虑读者群,要让出版社的认识到这本书的社会需要量超过 3000 册,出版社发生兴趣,不仅可以免收出版费,还可以給你稿费!核心是市场! l 一篇论文的发表,往往要由专业的审稿人裁定,于是有人感到发表难。相比之下,一个书稿是否可以出版,其审核过程,专家的意见退居次要地位。核心是出版社的编辑,而出版社编辑往往不是该领域的权威,他们仅是编辑、出版和经销的行家。从这个意义上讲,出书比发表文章容易通过。自然你写一本系统而没有自相矛盾的书也相当不容易。 l 要考虑出版社的威望,不合适的出版社,可能反而让你的著作降格! l 据说外国的出版社一般不能在国内印刷厂印刷其图书。 l 花 2-3 万,有 20 万字的书稿,找个出版社,出版一本印 1000 册自己全部拿回的书,我估计现在是可以做的到的(包括论文集)。 l 我们这里的电子书出版费是这样的:交 1.2 万元,电子出版社把你給他的电子稿变成电子书(光盘),有正式书号,出版社給你 1000 张光盘(每张标价 38 元)。而光盘的容量是百兆以上,几乎可以把你终生的文字稿都包了进去。 l 如果你有课题费,有确定的销量,购买团体,问题就是另外的情况了。策划人找你来写书,情况又是另外的样子。 l 2008 年本人就个人出书的经历写过 7 篇短稿登在科学网博客 http://www.sciencenet.cn/u/zhangxw/ 上,其第 1 篇的地址是 http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=19269 ,欢迎参考它们。