How big is the first-mover advantage in journals? That is, how important is the possibility that if you don’t make an open-access journal first, Elsevier may come and create a closed-access one instead?
My take on this is: we don’t really care. Many if not most people in AI Alignment come from computer science fields, which have traditionally pushed a lot for open access and against traditional publishers. So I don’t believe Elsevier would find editors and papers for starting its journal, and it thus wouldn’t be able to reach the point where publishing there is required for careers.
How big is the first-mover advantage in journals? That is, how important is the possibility that if you don’t make an open-access journal first, Elsevier may come and create a closed-access one instead?
My take on this is: we don’t really care. Many if not most people in AI Alignment come from computer science fields, which have traditionally pushed a lot for open access and against traditional publishers. So I don’t believe Elsevier would find editors and papers for starting its journal, and it thus wouldn’t be able to reach the point where publishing there is required for careers.