
German research institutions boycott Elsevier - millettjon
https://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/en/news/details/voraussichtlich-keine-volltexte-von-zeitschriften-des-elsevier-verlags-ab-dem-112017/
======
hannob
The thing is, scientists have a much more powerful tool to stop bad
publishers: Don't give them your texts. And maybe even more important: Don't
demand from your applicants that they have published in high impact journals
from the very same publishers that make your life hard.

That might really change things.

Everyone has been complaining about Elsevier for years now. They still have
publications and they still seem to have no problem to fill them. That's the
problem.

~~~
mattkrause
I would love a world where publishing papers is cheap and reading papers,
particularly taxpayer-funded ones, is free.

However, I'd also like a job and none of the "top tier" biomedical journals
are open access. While I'd like to think that the quality of my work would
speak for itself, the imprimatur that one gets from _Nature_ , _Science_ ,
_Cell_ , and _Neuron_ is worth quite a bit when applying for jobs and grants.

Unless the big names in academia--and the search committees they sit on--
publicly and credibly commit to this, you're essentially asking people (many
of whom are on short-term contracts making $40,000 a year) to take an enormous
career risk.

~~~
BeetleB
>However, I'd also like a job and none of the "top tier" biomedical journals
are open access.

Isn't it a requirement that all NIH funded work _must_ be published as open
access?

~~~
Fomite
It is, but it's after a time. It's _not_ actually weakly enforced - we've been
told we can't take credit for publications on grant reports if they're not in
PMC.

~~~
mattkrause
Don't you need to include the PMC ID number for each paper on the progress
report/renewal? I vaguely remember doing something like this for our last
one....

~~~
Fomite
Yep - you need the ID number, and if its not there, it doesn't count.

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anton_tarasenko
Professors don't care about high prices. Universities pay for subscriptions.
The pricing is political in Europe where education is funded by the public. US
universities pass high prices over to students. Students pay with debt since
good universities have oversupply of applicants anyway.

Elsevier had been buying academic journals for decades. A typical scheme is
like Cell's story.

A professor establishes a journal under a big university's publishing arm.
Then the professor thinks how to make money. Elsevier makes an offer and the
professor accepts it. The journal becomes the property of Elsevier and the
editors keep reviewing papers for free because it's good for their CVs.

Looking at older HN posts[1], Elsevier becomes another Comcast. That said,
boycotts have not reversed the Group's profit trend.

[1]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=elsevier&sort=byPopularity&pre...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=elsevier&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

~~~
mattkrause
I would be surprised if students are funding the library to any substantial
degree.

Most research universities charge F&A ("facilities and
administration")/indirect costs on sponsored projects. This is essentially a
"tax" on grant money that is supposed to cover things like utilities, the
library, and so on. While the details vary a bit from place to place (and
funder to funder), this is often a pretty sizable amount. Yale, for example,
charges a bit under 70%, so if you need $100,000 for a project, you'll need to
get the funders to pony up $170,000.

~~~
toothbrush
If the F&A is 70%, you'd need to raise $333k to have $100k left for your
research budget...

~~~
mattkrause
The details vary _a lot_ , but it's usually calculated as percentage of the
direct costs (like a sales tax). If your grant involves spending $100k on
salaries, reagents, services (etc), the total outlay from the sponsor is
closer to $170k (at 70% F&A). Here's an example from UW:
[http://f2.washington.edu/fm/maa/fa/facosts](http://f2.washington.edu/fm/maa/fa/facosts)

In practice, the rate varies a bit. Capital equipment, like a really expensive
microscope, is often exempt from F&A, but salaries sometimes have an extra
charge (for benefits) attached.

~~~
toothbrush
Okay, i stand corrected! I was being intellectually lazy and assumed that what
you were saying was that 70% of the raised funds were taken by the faculty,
but thanks for the detailed example!

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thomasDE
German researcher here.

There are multiple problems with the offer from VG Wort (which is the German
association "representing" authors and publishers). One is that they raised
the license fee. Another one is that they want to replace the current
"flatrate" (where a university pays a fixed sum for the right to copy books or
parts of books for education) with a individual billing concept. That means,
lecturers have to report to administration for EACH part of a book or paper
that they distribute. This model is not feasible as the administrative costs
exceed the royalties which have to be payed for the copyright.

For this reasons, multiple virtual learning environments (which are used to
distribute books and papers) in Germany might go offline in 2017 because the
copyright situation is currently unclear.

More information (in German): [https://netzpolitik.org/2016/deutsche-
universitaeten-2017-im...](https://netzpolitik.org/2016/deutsche-
universitaeten-2017-im-digitalen-ausnahmezustand-kaempfen-oder-kapitulieren/)

~~~
lorenzhs
Yes, but isn't the VG-Wort §52a UrhG thing a different issue? It's creating a
whole lot of uncertainty right now, no doubt about that, but the article is
about universities failing to reach an agreement with Elsevier. What you're
talking about is a terrible new deal between VG Wort and the
Kultusministerkonferenz about licensing for publication of any kind of
protected material for education and research.

~~~
thomasDE
I think you are right. Thanks for correcting me. I thought the Elsevier thing
was part of the deal with VG Wort as most mails which are currently going
around in my university seem to combine both issues.

------
return0
_[https://sci-hub.ac/](https://sci-hub.ac/) _ is always there for you [edit:
thanks]

~~~
lvs
If you're going to use that service, I recommend using the TLS link
[https://sci-hub.ac](https://sci-hub.ac)

~~~
d0mine
Also, the .ac domain has the expected owner.

~~~
CamperBob2
Lately, sci-hub has been sending me straight to the paywall I'm trying to
avoid. I think the lawyers got to them.

~~~
bainsfather
Still works fine for me, for e.g. Nature articles.

Is it some particular journal(s) that you cannot access?

------
Someone
No, they don't boycott; they play hardball in negotiations:

 _" The DEAL project, headed by HRK (German Rectors' Conference) President
Prof Hippler, is negotiating a nationwide license agreement for the entire
electronic Elsevier journal portfolio with Elsevier. [...] In order to improve
their negotiating power, about 60 major German research institutions including
Göttingen University cancelled their contracts with Elsevier as early as
October 2016."_

~~~
Vinnl
By boycotting?

------
jmcdiesel
Forgive my absolute ignorance on the topic - I genuinely don't understand this
environment even though I'm interested, so please don't take this as a stupid
or inflammatory questions...

Why are these publishers needed? What service do they provide these days? It
seems their role is similar to publishers in other media (TV, movie, music,
etc) that can and have been replaced due to the distribution ease of the
internet. Aside from a distribution platform, what do these publishers
provide?

~~~
udp
The journals have an "impact factor", an arbitrary metric that determines how
noteworthy they are. My impression is that very few journals are actually read
directly - most papers are found via Google Scholar and the journal they're in
doesn't matter.

However, in academia, the "prestige" of the journals you have published to is
hugely important. Good journals, in theory, are more selective about what they
publish, so the assumption is that if you have publications in a good one you
must have done more groundbreaking research. To an academic, this is the kind
of thing that affects whether you get grants, whether you get paid more,
whether you can get a job elsewhere.

Some journals are pretty much talked about in hushed whispers, like "that PhD
student got an ___ paper in their first year, they must be some kind of
genius". In reality, research tends to be more about who you know, what kind
of work you're doing, and whether you're in the right place at the right time.

~~~
ianderf
> Good journals, in theory, are more selective about what they publish, so the
> assumption is that if you have publications in a good one you must have done
> more groundbreaking research.

I wonder why nobody created a single peer-reviewed platform for all scientists
to use? Elsevier is just piggybacking on other people's work and funds.

~~~
Vinnl
Because there are more than a single one :)

Obligatory: [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

~~~
ianderf
Even several different peer review systems would be much better than Elsevier.

------
jimmytidey
Elsevier must be extremely conscious that this can only drive the uptake of
SciHub. German academia on the other hand must be aware that SciHub will
soften the blow.

------
wofo
It is refreshing to see the scientific community stand against Elsevier. Great
news!

~~~
baldfat
Yes these Journals without the Internet would just sit in boxes in Libraries
(They still do this with print journals) WHY is it cost more to have OLD
Journals then they did when they were first published. It is such an anti-
Education, anti-Science corporate plan based on selfish Win for them and loss
for Science and ideas.

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cknight
This is really cool. I'm no scientist, but it was Uni Göttingen where I was
properly introduced to the world of academia, doing programming for a research
group there. This was just 2-3 years ago, and Elsevier was a regular
discussion point at the lunch table. I'm glad all the talk has translated in
to some real action, and so many have gotten on board.

------
carbocation
People want to publish in high-impact journals. Aside from name recognition
(Nature, Science, New England Journal, etc), impact factor and similar metrics
drive where people want to publish.

If you really want to strike at a particular journal or family of journals,
you could work to convince academics not to _cite_ articles in those journals.
Since all these metrics are some variant of (inward citations)/(publications),
usually over a 2-5 year window, this would have a tremendous effect.

~~~
Fomite
Yeah, I'm not going to back messing up using evidence in scientific papers to
strike back at a journal publisher.

~~~
carbocation
By restricting access to the material whose copyright is owned by a journal
publisher, this is what Germany is doing, to a degree.

~~~
robotresearcher
It's the publisher who restricts access by charging a fee and taking a profit,
not the university for choosing not to pay it.

The author and reviewers gave their work for free. Journals should charge
enough to cover costs and be sustainable, and no more.

~~~
carbocation
I'm fine with that characterization, too. I'm just saying that _any_ barrier
to access will shift the degree to which articles get cited away from what
they (perhaps) "should" be based on their scientific value.

~~~
rsfern
This is a really interesting point. I've definitely passed on reading papers
that seemed potentially relevant because my institution didn't have a
subscription to the journal.

------
captn3m0
While this may be a major hiccup for researchers in Germany, I have to applaud
this. Are the terms of the offered deal public?

------
kumarski
I run a facebook group with 100+
scientists/geneticists/biologists/microbiologists/molecular
biologists/physicists who are founders....

Many of them were excited about this. Germany's making moves in the right
direction.

------
fmax30
Just three days ago my ML Prof (at TU Munich) told us to boycott Elsevier.
Didn't know that this was a nation wide thing.

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jgord
They should just keep going, and other countries join them - but don't do it
as a bargaining tool, actually kill the company.

Its basically a scam, and its holding back scientific progress.

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Vinnl
I wonder if, in a year or two, this will affect the Impact Factor of these
journals - i.e. will their articles be cited less often now academics have
(theoretically) no access to it? And then a few years later, will this the
number of articles submitted drop as well?

(Assuming, of course, that no agreement will be reached at all.)

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thecrazyone
I'm surprised at this being such a painful problem and no one jumping forward
to solve it (pardon my ignorance, if such startups exist but are not well
known, I wouldn't know it).

Why wouldn't blockchain db for receiving and requesting p2p reviews not a good
solution? This journal can be open access and still make boat loads of money
on allied services, ads and so much more. The best part, most of this
can/needs to be automated leading to super low costs of operation.

Am I missing something obvious here?

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vivekchandsrc
Who is going to build "TheFacebook" of academic journals. Journal publishers
have become SCAM artist. Opening countless new journals and charging hundreds
to thousands of dollars to get into open access articles or charging millions
from institutes. This market is ripe for disruption plus scientific data is
going to be the next "refined OIL" in the data and AI economy...

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fogetti
Well, I have never used Elsevier. I always visit Sci-Hub.

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verytrivial
How long could Elsevier survive a German boycott? How long could German
academia survive without these journals?

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swehner
I look at titles and abstracts, not at journal names, in my literature
searches.

~~~
dmichulke
Because that makes sense.

Unfortunately that doesn't matter.

What matters is where the people who have/distribute the money look at.

That last sentence holds in principle everywhere, from company politics to
financial markets.

