
UC faculty to Elsevier: Restart negotiations, or else - cracker_jacks
https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/08/07/uc-faculty-to-elsevier-restart-negotiations-or-else/
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rainyMammoth
I don't understand why those journals are still a thing. It seems that almost
all universities in the world agree that Elsevier and similar journals are
predatory.

Why can they not all agree to all switch journals at once to something managed
by committee, similar to what is done in the open source world.

Is the status-quo that difficult to break? In this specific case why are all
those biologist not starting a new journal, pushing other people in biology to
join them and boycott Elsevier?

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DocTomoe
> Why can they not all agree to all switch journals at once to something
> managed by committee, similar to what is done in the open source world.

That would mean that committee being staffed by volunteers - and the people
that are qualified for that kind of job (scholars) already have enough on
their plate.

Elsevier & Co. sell convinience, not scientific articles.

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jhbadger
But the thing is, almost all of the work is _already_ done by volunteers!
Reviewers and even most editors for journals are academics giving their time
for free. Basically the one thing journals due these days is typeset. As weird
as it may sound for those in math and physics, most of the scientific world
doesn't use TeX/LaTeX. Instead, they submit a manuscript in Microsoft Word
that needs to be typeset.

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londons_explore
This would be solved if just a few universities released a statement along
these lines:

* We will not teach, employ, cite, publish or peer review for people published, employed by, or reviewing for the Cell journal after January 1st 2020.

By making the process of being published in the journal affect their careers,
I can bet that very few researchers will publish there. At the same time,
employees will leave, and reviewers will leave.

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olliej
My question is why /any/ UC employees are still working for Elsevier, and why
are they submitting to those journals.

Cus are tax payer funded, and Elsevier makes its money by taking exclusive
right to publish that research and then selling that at 100% profit.

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hjhjkj
just use sci-hub

