
UCLA asked faculty to consider declining to review for Elsevier journals - faitswulff
https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Talks-With-Elsevier-UCLA/245311
======
kevinventullo
I think this is great, but another way UCLA could put its money where its
mouth is would be to publicly commit to giving higher weight to OA vs Elsevier
publications when making hiring/tenure decisions. That is, a potential hire
should not be penalized because they opted not to submit their paper to an
Elsevier journal.

~~~
hueving
This has much a much smaller effect than you think (at least in the
departments I'm familiar with) because very little attention is paid to venue
if it's research older than a few months, in which case citations and your
ability to _sell_ the research is taken much more seriously.

Your (unspoken) job as a tenure track professor is to raise money via grants
and get students excited to do research and apply to join your group. A
professor bringing in 4x the NSF grant money of a professor getting published
in top journals/conferences is always going to get the higher priority. That's
the reality of academia.

I've worked with professors considered to be the top of their departments who
were completely incompetent but they were amazing at grant writing and selling
their work. They brought in way more money to the school than anyone else so
they were rewarded for it. :/

------
jancsika
I'm probably missing some finer points, but I just cannot make sense of the
problem here.

Editors of $prestigous_journal are the most prestigious professors in their
field themselves, no?

So let's say $prestigious_journal is one of the journals that the university
students/faculty get access to from Elsevier. University pays Elsevier,
university gets access. Fine.

Now, suppose the editors of $prestigious_journal care about open access. But
given the current arrangement with Elsevier they cannot become an open access
journal _tomorrow_.

Is that the problem?

If so, the obvious next chess move I see is this:

Editors of $prestigious_journal resign from $prestigious_journal today.
Tomorrow, they start $prestigious_journal1 (modulo some new name-choosing
scheme) and post a website or whatever.

Granted I'm biased-- is the problem that the editors don't know how to publish
content on a website?

If so, then the obvious chess move is to use whatever turnkey open source
journal publishing system exists.

What is it, and why hasn't _every_ prestigious journal already changed its
name and started publishing _there_?

The argument cannot be, "Well, no one would know where to find the new
journal." They are the most prestigious editors-- their field will know
immediately where they went. Everyone else will follow from there.

The only sticking point I can see is that $prestigious_editors can't take
their previously published work with them to redistribute over their new
website. But they still get career credit for their previous publications, and
they/students/faculty can still access that through Elsevier. And all their
new publications can be accessed and redistributed under a liberal license by
all, for a publishing fee approaching zero dollars.

We have a rich history of big software projects making much more disruptive
changes _in a single day_. E.g., Mambo became Joomla. The fact that
prestigious journal editors haven't done likewise in droves leads me to
believe they are saying one thing about open access in public and saying
something much more important by doing very little to change the status quo.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
It has been done. For example, a case I know is $prestigious_journal = Lingua,
$prestigious_journal1 = Glossa.
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=22162](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=22162)

And there have been some more cases, e.g. in mathematics (a field where single
authorship is common, see below why this can be relevant).

But why is this the exception and not the rule, at least for now? I can
venture several contributing factors (probably not the whole picture, as it's
a quite complex issue, but I think these are at least among the most
influential factors):

1\. As an academic, I can tell you that a universal characteristic of
academics (and even more so of those relevant enough to be in prestigious
journal editorial boards) is that we are starved of time. Most of us are
already quite overworked and there is no way in hell we are going to find time
to inform ourselves about web journal publishing systems and set one up.

2\. To officially be a "prestigious" journal in some countries, including
mine, you have to be in the ISI JCR impact factor list. And that list is for
profit, among other requirements journals have to pay to be there. So there is
the additional hurdle of figuring out how to get the money.

3\. Even if you can solve points 1 and 2 (which by the way could definitely be
done if universities or even states got involved, providing support for open
access journals), there is still the problem that establishing "prestige"
(impact factor) takes time (a journal takes several years to be indexed).
During this time, your community will lose a journal to publish in and get
points in your CV. For a senior academic this might not be a big deal, but the
problem is that senior academics typically work with PhD students, postdocs,
young professors looking for tenure... and for these, the major journal of
their specialization suddenly imploding and having to wait 4-5 years for the
new one to get an impact factor can be a huge deal for their careers.

Believe me, the overwhelming majority of academics aren't happy about the
status quo. After all, we are working for free for these journals, spending
hours and hours of our time writing papers, polishing them and especially
reviewing, only to see how they reap the profits and even try to charge us to
read our colleagues' papers. I don't know any academic who likes that. But in
the hyper-competitive arena of academia, where not publishing enough papers
can pretty much mean the end of your career (and if you have reached
stability, you almost always have other people that depend on you whose career
is at stake) they pretty much have us by the guts.

In my view the solution has to be top-down. It has to come from university
boards and governments, who are the ones controlling the incentives that make
publishing in profiteering journals pretty much mandatory. Set up public open-
access journals maintained by universities or states; change the requirements
for hiring, tenure, etc. so impact factors issued by private companies are not
taken into account and to incentivize publishing in said public journals, and
the problem would pretty much be solved. But there doesn't seem to be the
political will to do it (although at least the EU and some universities, as
seen here, are pushing a bit towards it, which is good news).

~~~
Yetanfou
One of the solutions to the €journal-implosion problem is to publish in both
€journal as well as the new, open access version and to make this known in the
article. Make this an institutional requirement for publishing in €journal in
the first place and require Elsevier/Springer/Wiley/... to include the
reference to the free version (no reference means no publication in €journal).
The versions published in €journal might be better edited (or it might not,
depending on the journal) but the science published is identical. Do this for
a few years and the open access version will have built up enough of a corpus
and a reputation to become a feasible replacement for €journal. Now you can
either drop €journal cold-turkey style or start off by having the established
names publish exclusively in the open access version while the up-and-coming
still have the choice of publishing in both. Once it becomes known that the
most revered names exclusively publish in the open access version it'll be
game over for €journal. Once this becomes the norm in enough fields it'll be
deemed irresponsible to publish through the likes of Elsevier and the world
will be a better place.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
What you say is kind of being done with open-access repositories like arXiv
(minus the requirement to include reference to the free version), and it has
been a step forward. But publishing the same article in two journals is
severely frowned upon in the scientific community. And even if this changed,
journal publishers like Elsevier, Springer, etc. require authors to sign a
copyright transfer agreement and forbid publication in any other journal.
There is no way they are going to relinquish this.

~~~
dmitriz
> publishing the same article in two journals is severely frowned upon

Posting copy to arXiv or similar is a norm and not regarded as publishing in
another journal.

In some areas like theoretical physics people read mostly arXiv. It does help
to shift content control away from publishers.

------
kmonad
There are now also more and more established PIs who do not publish in the
"usual suspects" journals any longer. That's all well and good for them.
However, it does not work out for the grad students and postdocs.

The way to remove the advantage high impact journals still leverage could
instead indeed be achieved by not reviewing for them if you are an eminent
figure in your field. If these journals cannot claim to publish "the best
science" and highest quality any longer, then what's left? This seems the
right, and maybe the only real way that single established researchers can
directly work towards a (r)evolution of the publishing system. What that would
become remains to be seen, of course.

------
sytelus
Elsevier has become the poster child of villain publisher. But here’s the
problem: Large number of highly respected journals also charge rediculous
amount for access and have refused open access on their properties. This
includes Nature, Science and IEEE. Are these institutes ok with these
journals?

PS: I have no intent to defend Elsevier but it continues to surprise me why
these other massively popular journals escape this.

~~~
wbl
IEEE is a society journal and could stand to improve its practices. But it is
ostensibly run for benefit of the professional society.

~~~
sytelus
IEEE charges significant membership fees and still most publications remain
closed even to member. Typical rate for merely accessing paper is $33. If
author wants to do open access then author gets charged $1500. How a person in
poor African country supposed to pay these amounts _per paper_. A society with
a mission of spreading and sharing scientific knowledge should not be doing
this.

~~~
tedyoung
Can you define "significant membership fees"? I pay less than USD$300 a year
for IEEE Computer Society membership in which ~$100 is for the full digital
library (and similar for the ACM), so I don't consider that "significant".
Sure, I'd rather not pay it, but it's not prohibitively expensive like the
other journals are (where it can be thousands of dollars for a single
subscription to a single journal).

~~~
sytelus
$300 is significant membership fees for mere privilege of being called member
of some society. I'm a member for few years now and have yet to experience any
real value provided by IEEE memberships except to get spammed ruthlessly and
get some discount to even more expensive conferences of theirs. Remember, even
after paying $300 you don't get access to their closed publications (you just
get privilege to pay "discounted" price of $13 _per paper_ ).

All these tells me this is enormously blotted organization mainly providing
vanity and have no real mission. There are tons of non-profits that operate
this way with their lavish expenses and highly-compensated officers.

If Elsevier was non-profit with nicely compensated "officers" then would you
be ok about their ways?

------
smhost
> Some, however, expressed concern about the impact on junior faculty members,
> who must publish to advance their careers. Elsevier’s journals signal
> prestige in the academic job market.

> many existing journals have an established brand, community, and track
> record — all helpful markers for junior scholars in the tenure process.

it seems odd to me that academic prestige isn't controlled by the
universities. you'd think that that's something they can create on their own.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
How would you define “the university?” A central all powerful administrator?
Even in a department, a faculty member is necessarily judged more by their
peers on the outside unless a specialty happens to be concentrated.

~~~
smhost
by "the universities", i meant the rituals and ceremonies performed by
academics in general. isn't prestige really just a social construct? the
universities literally contain all the individual high-status academics, the
privileged social circles, and all the peers required for evaluation of merit.
they have all the capital, is what i'm talking about.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Yes, universities are social constructs, so there is no monolithic construct
to change.

~~~
smhost
that seems like a bit of a non sequitur, because monoliths can be constructed.
like how game companies create prestige among a disorganized community by
sponsoring official tournaments, for example. and you don't necessarily need
to deal with a monolith, you just need a popular consensus, which it sounds
like there already exists. so my confusion is how did the universities lose
the ability to decide their own self-worth. how did this get outsourced.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Universities long ago outsourced faculty evaluations based on the impact of
their research measured by conference/journal impact. The system is heavily
flawed, but the inability of an expert in A to judge an expert in B is a very
real problem, so they just look at their academic impact instead, which is
determined mostly by journal acceptance via peer review.

------
tomkat0789
How did the situation in Germany et al work out? Didn't researchers there
start this movement? Google News searches have disappointing me.

IIRC, Finland straight up told their scientists to use SciHub.

------
Nullabillity
Well overdue. Actually, go further: ban citations from commercial journals,
and make authorship in them after a cut-off date a negative during hiring and
promotions.

Make it clear that no serious research is published in Elsevier and co.
anymore.

~~~
rocqua
Banning citations goes wayyyy to far. The journals are bad, but the science
published in them is not. To ban citations would require either plagarizing or
leaving swathes of subjects untouched.

~~~
jacquesm
After a cut-off date.

~~~
rocqua
We currently cite ArxiV, we cite books out of print, we cite websites, heck we
cite 'Mein Kampf' when discussing facism. We cite anything that was used as a
source.

Banning citations means either changing the above practice, or banning certain
sources from being used by academics. That is sacrificing science for the sake
of ideology. We ought to consider sources for their inherent quality, not
whether we like their publisher.

~~~
jacquesm
I get what you're trying to say here, but this is not about work that has
already been done, it is about work that still _will_ be done and to avoid the
sharecropping that will inevitably be the result from those citations. By
giving ample warning it would be clear that those venues are toxic and that
there is a good chance that your work would be better served by seeking an
alternative venue for publication.

~~~
kd0amg
And then when someone does publish work in that venue, are others doing
related research supposed to refuse to acknowledge related published work?
That's a pretty serious ethics breach in itself.

------
aurizon
I think Sci-Hub should compile a set of hard drives that contain the full
contents of various journals from day 1 (or some other start date). With 10
terabyte drives being around $400, I wonder how many years of, say Nature or
Science could fit? Google say that 10TB would hold 750 million pages. If a
journal is 200 pages per issue or about 10,000 per year it looks like it would
hold 75,000 years. So the past 40 years or a few hundred journals would fit.
SCI-HUB could make a number of journal drives based on Physics, Geology,
Biology etc of, say 1 TB size. SCI-HUB could become self financing with these
drives. a new one every year could be 1TB, make and sell a few hundred of the
large starting drive of 10TB or ?? and the annual ones could be 1 TB. Send
them to the stars. The Genii would really be out of the bottle...

------
jknz
These discussions on the evilness of Elsevier and others usually have two
components that sometimes get mixed:

1\. Output of publicly funded research should be open access;

2\. How research is done (how peer-review works, how editors are chosen, how
grants, tenure and other awards are awarded, etc) should be modernized.

Goal 2 is not well defined and some ideas for goal 2 are contradictory, it
often leads to endless discussions with many "ifs". Goal 1, however, is very
clearly defined and I believe the community should focus on solving goal 1,
because goal 2 is still not well defined and doing anything about it will meet
massive inertia.

Here is a proposal that tries to achieve goal 1 without trying to change
anything about the structure of academia and its inertia. There should be a
free or ultra-low-cost platform (typically operated as arXiv) that would let
any team of editors of non-open access journal duplicate the journal by a few
clicks. With a few clicks, current editors of pay-walled journals should be
able to create a copy-cat open-access journal, transferring all editors, all
associate editors, to the new platform -- no change in humans, only a change
in the platform and the name of the journal (for instance, prefix the original
journal name with "open"). The change should be effortless for all academics
involved in the former pay-walled journal. Once the editors of the former pay-
walled journal. The next step is to use the pressure of the involved academics
to make sure that no other academics in their field join the former pay-walled
journal as editors, associate editors or referees.

If we want academics to move away from paywalled journals, duplicating these
successful journals should be as easy as creating a blogpost, without changing
the humans involved.

Edit: By the way, the platform used by Elsevier to manage journals and peer-
reviews is terrible from a UX perspective. It would not be hard to do better
and some teams of Editors/Associat Editors may welcome a more usable
alternative.

~~~
buboard
but why would the (paid) editors do that and quit their job ? Also i think you
have a copyright transfer problem

~~~
jknz
In many fields (related to math and computer science) editors are paid by
universities and their editorial work is unpaid.

~~~
buboard
these fields dont have an open access problem to begin with (thanks to arxiv).

------
sytelus
At least for various fields of CS I would really like big tech to come
together and start a non-profit organization that manages journals and
conferences with 100% open access. The big barrier in leaving Elsevier is
having equally reputable alternatives which can consume the outgoing flow.

------
aurizon
With regard to my earlier comment aboutcreating a number of10TB (or 1TB etc)
that contained as much of the printed journals, scanned to these drives, with
a built in browse and search facility built in to be shipped out to many any
places to bypass ISP limits. Updates could be added as needed. To be sure
specialization will create a cohort of these drives. A math person wants math
journals, biology wants bio journals etc, so every small colleg or university
in India or Africa can have this facility on their local web.

------
betterunix2
This is tame; if UCLA really wanted to scare Elsevier they would refuse to pay
for subscriptions. Researchers would still find a way to access the papers
they want to read after a bit of short-term pain and the school could do
something more useful with the money.

------
sn41
This is great news. I hope other universities follow suit.

------
yeukhon
Without school’s library access to articles, I wouldn’t be able to complete my
paper this semester. I did find and cite articles from Open Access so I am all
for ditching paywall publications.

------
apo
If UCLA were serious it would simply walk from the negotiation.

THAT would send a message to all parties. It might actually spur some action
on the part of faculty to get off their collective backsides and consider how
every day they perpetuate an unsustainable system of scientific communication.

This letter and others like it are moves by third-rate negotiators. Faculty
who make publication and review decisions simply don't care about the cost of
subscriptions enough. If they did, Elsevier would be on the ropes, not calling
the shots.

The letter UCLA sent out will receive widespread acclaim by a vocal minority,
and go ignored by everyone else.

~~~
cjensen
UCLA can't walk out and Elsivier knows it. A University which lacks a library
containing the currently published scholarship is going to have a really tough
time attracting PhD students. How are they supposed to cite relevant work
without being able to read the work?

The UC System should work with other schools to mandate open publishing. The
only way to fix this is by removing Elsevier's power.

~~~
ramraj07
I doubt any PhD student would consider that as a potential drawback when
choosing an institution.

I did my phd in an institution with very minimal access to some of these
publishers and while it was annoying I would not take it among the top 50
problems I had in my academic life. I can always request an ILL, or ask one of
my friends in other universities if I wanted a paper badly. If however the
paper is fairly replaceable as a citation I'd just get some other paper that's
sufficient and cite that.

~~~
fyrabanks
> ask one of my friends in other universities if I wanted a paper badly

Surely, you see the problem here?

~~~
tzakrajs
Maybe it is a self correcting problem. Perhaps the moment Elsevier is so out
of vogue that you can’t find a library or peer at another university with
access is also the inflection point where Elsevier loses its network effect.
Why would you license your work to a journal for which your peers and their
institutions have no direct access?

~~~
fyrabanks
If it were ever to reach that point, sure, I'll give you that.

------
burtonator
What percentage of Elsevier documents are published there exclusively but
otherwise public domain or freely license.

I think part of the problem is discovery.

[https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

Polar is an app that people use for PDF and document annotation (supports web
content too).

I'm shipping cloud support early next week.

Anyway, one of the features that's going to come out soon is social document
discovery.

I'd like to use your friends to discover what PDFs to read and this would
bypass the paywall problem.

