
Springer Nature open access agreement and Elsevier update - lawrenceyan
https://evcp.berkeley.edu/news/springer-nature-open-access-agreement-and-elsevier-update
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cycomanic
The worst part of this has not been mentioned:

>While broad-based open access publishing in the most well-known Nature
subscription journals is not initially included, the deal commits Springer
Nature and UC to a Nature open science pilot in 2021 and to the development of
plans for a transformative agreement for all of the Nature journals to be
implemented in 2022.

So for now this does seem not include Nature and likely neither the field
specific Nature... (physics, photonics, materials...) journals. Which are the
ones that are clearly interesting. This seems very similar to the typical
deals from Elsevier, Springer... to include only sell bundles of journals with
their high profile journals with lots of journals that nobody wants. Just in
this case it's we include open access on all these journals that nobody cares
about, but not in the view journals that everyone cares about.

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kken
Generally this sounds like good progress!

>Under the agreement, all articles with a UC corresponding author published in
more than 2,700 of Springer Nature’s journals will be open access by default,
with the UC Libraries paying a portion of the open access fee on behalf of all
authors. Authors without available research funds for the remainder of the
publishing fee can request that the Library cover the entire amount. Authors
may also choose to opt out of open access publishing if they wish.

However, this seems to be severely limiting. So basically all research
projects have to redirect funds to cover part of the "open access fees" or
they have the dubious option to "opt out". The library only being willing to
pay on case-by-case base means that there will be hidden disincentives in
place.

Essentially that means that projects that are not willing to pay money to
SpringerNature will be at a disadvantage.

I wonder which mechanisms were implemented to prevent them from arbitrarily
increasing open access fees? This is conspicuously absent from the article.

~~~
squarecog
> So basically all research projects have to redirect funds to cover part of
> the "open access fees"

Yes, the cost of publishing results, as well as review, editing, etc, should
be incorporated into the research budget (researchers can of course choose
other means of sharing their findings than through publication). In an open
access model, the publishing costs are offset by money saved in not paying for
access to other articles the research project needs. I would hope that opting
out means that projects have to pay fees on articles they'd otherwise get for
free through this agreement, rather than riding on everyone else doing their
bit.

One would imagine the fee schedule is set in the agreement UCB reached with
Springer (presumably the agreement will be published at some point...)

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pianoben
> Under the agreement, all articles with a UC corresponding author published
> in more than 2,700 of Springer Nature’s journals will be open access by
> default, with the UC Libraries paying a portion of the open access fee on
> behalf of all authors.

So, only the most widely-distributed papers will be "open access", and then
only if the authors cough up an "open access fee"? Doesn't sound very open to
me.

~~~
ajford
Compared to the current state across nearly all academic fields, that is leaps
and bounds more open.

Outside of narrow fields, it was often the case that you would need to cough
up an amount in the thousands to publish as open-access.

Check out Elsevier's own page ([https://www.elsevier.com/about/open-
science/open-access](https://www.elsevier.com/about/open-science/open-access))
where they list a price between $150 USD and $6000 USD depending on journal
and article. On that page you can find a pricing sheet where out of 2340
journals they list, only 83 have an open-access fee of less than $1000 USD.

Springer Nature's fees seem similar, so hopefully this agreement brings down
the cost as well.

The whole of academic publishing is a mess, and really needs large
universities pushing the open access agenda. In a perfect world, academic
journals would be run by non-profit entities and exist solely for the
betterment of academia, but sadly large publishers like Elsevier turn billions
in profit each year, lining their pockets with money leeched out of grants and
universities.

~~~
pianoben
> Outside of narrow fields, it was often the case that you would need to cough
> up an amount in the thousands to publish as open-access.

Itself a tremendous affront to the public, which funds most research.

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PopeDotNinja
Does Elsevier offer any value from the prices they charge? Or are they just an
e-gatekeeper to an object store full of PDFs?

~~~
musicale
1\. Not in my experience. 2. Basically.

The sad thing about #2 is that said object stores could archive digital
artifacts such as code and data sets, and they could provide an open API for
the development of improved tools and user interfaces, but legacy publishers
like Elsevier don't seem to be interested in such improvements. Technical
societies (ACM, IEEE) don't seem to be much better.

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g-b-r
Has any university/group of researches ever tried to put up a not-for-profit
peer review system, that doesn't hide huge profits behind the excuse of paying
the reviewers/editors/cleaning lady?

~~~
xvilka
MIT has its own publisher initiative that suits modern science - online,
interactive, and open-source. PubPub[1][2] is closer to something like
Authorea[3] and Overleaf[4]. It also includes the peer-reviewing features. UC
just should have joined the project instead of wasting money with Springer.
They seem lack the brave of the MIT management.

[1] [https://www.pubpub.org/](https://www.pubpub.org/)

[2] [https://github.com/pubpub](https://github.com/pubpub)

[3] [https://authorea.com/](https://authorea.com/)

[4] [https://www.overleaf.com/](https://www.overleaf.com/)

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mongol
What is it that gives the publishers leverage in this negotiation?

~~~
hatmatrix
Some journals they publish are associated with a "prestige" factor so
academics don't want to stop publishing there. "What makes a journal
prestigious" has the same answer to the question, what "makes a university
prestigious " \- history. "Prestige" is tied to visibility and chances to
obtain more funding for research, so there is a lot of incentive for academics
to continue down this path.

It's theoretically possible that academics collectively decide that closed-
access journals are off limits and start over with a new set of open access
journals - but I suppose they are rather doing what they can (or relying on
university administrations) to push for publishers to change this
"exploitative" economic model (where the public essentially pays twice - first
to do the research and then second to have access to read it).

While academics define themselves by innovation, there is a very strong
adherence to establishment and institutions (like the traditional peer-
reviewed publishing model, though there are good arguments for this as
evidenced by problems caused by unpeer-reviewed preprints that have hastily
made their way into public discourse during coronavirus). The hope is that
academics don't have to throw away a method for signaling publication quality
(or rather, perceived potential for impact) that has pretty been a part of the
entire history of modern science. Whether it's a true mark of quality or not
is a different matter; the most prestigious journals also have the highest
retraction rates.

In Europe, funding agencies have begun requiring publication in open access
journals as a stipulation for receiving funding, and this has driven journal
publishers to provide an option for authors to pay for the publication (which
is paid out of grant funding). However, this is not still not pervasive
because there are still many funding sources that don't require it.
Publication fees for authors are quite steep (around $3k per article; a
productive lab may publish something on the order of 10 per year), and if the
grant doesn't specify that they would cover open access publication fees then
researchers tend to squeeze everything toward covering costs to do the
research (equipment, personnel, travel to meet up with collaborators or other
researchers).

~~~
ajford
In plenty of cases, administration may require academics to publish in
journals considered "prestigious". Before a shakeup at my undergrad, that was
the case. If you published in something the Chair didn't think was of merit,
it would reflect negatively on a researcher/professor, and could
(unofficially) count against you or set you back in working towards tenure.

I once spoke to someone at a conference on the subject of publishing (maybe
some 6 years ago) who told me about a journal coup where a large majority of
the editors and staff for a journal quit and started their own journal which
was well received in the field and quickly becoming the journal of record. I
can't quite remember what field it was, but I think it may have been related
to neurology (non-human IIRC, as the individual had just given a presentation
on cuttlefish cognition).

~~~
hatmatrix
True - I mentioned the possibility for more funding but promotions is another
thing. Part of the problem is that academic research is so specialized that
it's often difficult to assess the quality of the research articles themselves
- that and the sheer number of academics pumping out papers now - this makes
prestige indicators indispensible for other researchers and administrators to
make quick judgements about the quality of their researchers and also
communicate this percieved quality externally (for university ranking, attract
donors, etc.).

Anyway, for a close community of researchers on a specific topic, it's
possible that they can make such agreement (to start over with another
journal) - but in general it would be quite difficult to coordinate such a
consensus in a larger community.

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musicale
The MIT approach looks like a winning strategy to me.

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AlGnERAl
What is it that gives the publishers leverage in this negotiation?

