Elsevier 限制加州大學的存取權限

三月的時候加州大學系統 (UC) 因為 Elsevier 不接受 open access 的條件而公開宣佈不續約 (參考「加州大學宣佈不與 Elsevier 續約」),後來 Elsevier 應該是試著看看有沒有機會繼續合作,所以在這段期間還是一直提供服務給加州大學系統。

前幾天在 Hacker News 上看到「Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals (latimes.com)」,總算是確定要動手了:「In act of brinkmanship, a big publisher cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals」。

不過也不是直接拔掉,而是限制存取權,看不到新東西 (以 2019/01/01 為界):

As of Wednesday, Elsevier cut off access by UC faculty, staff and students to articles published since Jan. 1 in 2,500 Elsevier journals, including respected medical publications such as Cell and the Lancet and a host of engineering and scientific journals. Access to most material published in 2018 and earlier remains in force.

UC 提出的商業模式是讓投稿者負擔費用,而存取者不需要負擔,與現有的商業模式剛好相反。UC 提出的模式鼓勵「知識的散佈」,而現有的商業模式則是反過來,希望透過知識的散佈而賺~大~錢~發~大~財~:

UC demanded that the new contract reflect the principle of open access — that work produced on its campuses be available to all outside readers, for free.

That was a direct challenge to the business model of Elsevier and other big academic publishers. Traditionally, the publishers accept papers for publication for free but charge steep subscription fees. UC is determined to operate under an alternative model, in which researchers pay to have their papers published but not for subscriptions.

另外在 Hacker News 上的 comment 裡看到一些專案也正在進行,像是歐洲的「Plan S」也是在推動 open access:

The plan requires scientists and researchers who benefit from state-funded research organisations and institutions to publish their work in open repositories or in journals that are available to all by 2021.

另外「PubPub · Community Publishing」也是 open source 領域裡蠻有趣的計畫,後面看起來也有不少學術單位在支持。

歐洲研究機構的資助者推動研究論文的開放存取

在「Radical open-access plan could spell end to journal subscriptions」這邊看到歐洲 11 個研究機構資助者成立了「cOAlition S」,推動研究論文的開放存取。

目標是在 2020 年開始,由這些機構所資助的研究都必須投在符合完全開放條件的平台上:

cOAlition S signals the commitment to implement, by 1 January 2020, the necessary measures to fulfil its main principle: “By 2020 scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants provided by participating national and European research councils and funding bodies, must be published in compliant Open Access Journals or on compliant Open Access Platforms.

而現在大約只有 15%:

According to a December 2017 analysis, only around 15% of journals publish work immediately as open access (see ‘Publishing models’) — financed by charging per-article fees to authors or their funders, negotiating general open-publishing contracts with funders, or through other means.

用這種方式降低那些收錢才能下載的平台的影響力...

在 ext4 上的 CCFS

在「Application crash consistency and performance with CCFS」這篇看到的東西。

CCFS 目標是拉高 ext4 的 data integrity,並且還是有高效能:

CCFS (the Crash-Consistent File System) is an extension to ext4 that restores ordering and weak atomicity guarantees for applications, while at the same time delivering much improved performance.

如果你需要絕對的 data integrity,你需要用 data=journal 確保資料可以在 system crash 後被 replay,預設的 data=ordered 是無法達到的,而 CCFS 也沒打算達到絕對的 data integrity,而是盡量達到。所以在測試上可以發現 CCFS 大幅改善了 data integrity:

而效能還提昇了 (喂喂):

這真是太神奇了...

翻了一下好像沒 open source 出來 (至少現在沒看到),來等看看有沒有人會實做出來...

利用 Journal filesystem 與 Double write buffer 改善 InnoDB 寫入效能

Percona 的「How to improve InnoDB performance by 55% for write-bound loads」這篇在討論 Journal filesystem 以及 InnoDB 的 Double write buffer。

先講文章內的結論。

ext4 上開啟 Journal filesystem 功能後並且關掉 InnoDB 的 Double write buffer 後,資料的安全性不受影響,但效能上升非常多。而與目前常用的 XFS 比較起來也是領先不少。

要注意的是,這邊的數據是資料大小小於記憶體大小時 tpcc-mysql 的執行數據。

原文還有探討其他的狀況,像是 InnoDB 與 MyISAM 混用的問題,有用到的人應該自己去看看原文。

而目前在公司用 XFS 已經用習慣而且相當穩定,但該來花時間投資在 ext4 了,常常可以看到 ext4 很不錯之類的消息。

用程式產生論文,這次是數學領域...

好像隔一陣子就會有人成功 XD

SCIgen 可以生出 CS 領域的論文,而這次則是 Mathgen 產生數學領域的論文 XD:「Randomly Generated Math Article Accepted By 'Open-Access' Journal」。

論文的 PDF 則是在這:「Independent, Negative, Canonically Turing Arrows of Equations and Problems in Applied Formal PDE」。