
Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals - bookofjoe
https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-uc-elsevier-20190711-story.html
======
notafraudster
I am an academic at a UC who publishes in Elsevier journals. I support this. I
don't want copyright for anything I work on. I also work in a field where
patent/IP stuff would not be relevant, so I view all of my work as public
domain as far as I am concerned. With my code I either do CC0 or MIT licenses.

I have had to publish in journals that are not open access -- mostly I just
make pre-prints available to anyone who wants them and encourage my students
to use sci-hub if they need to find something we don't subscribe to.

~~~
dproblem
Your university commercialization office will disagree. Check with them. From
what I understand, it is illegal to release your code in CC0 or MIT unless you
have taken permission from the commercialization office (Some universities
allow GPL without explicit permission). Have you checked your contract ? Your
work is not yours if it has any value. The value belongs to the university
(mostly) - which also means you have no incentive to work on valuable stuff.

I think Elsevier is least of UCs problems. It's a distraction from the real
ones.

~~~
gisely
Grad student at Berkeley. The commercialization office only takes an interest
if your work is high profile enough and has enough commercialization
potential. Plenty of UC researchers release CC0 or MIT license code without
issue.

Elsevier may be only one of many problems for the UC community, but that
doesn’t mean it’s a distraction—- millions have been wasted every year
subsidizing their profits. And Elsevier’s rent seeking business model is a
problem for more than just the UCs. Hopefully this decision will end up being
Elsevier’s death knell.

~~~
Pfhreak
Aren't you assuming the risk though? Like, in practice they might not care,
but in writing they could care...

~~~
prepend
Assuming risk is part of the judgement required in science.

There’s stuff that requires IRB, then there’s a whole bunch of judgement and
risk.

------
CydeWeys
Sounds like everyone at UC is going to use SciHub now, and most likely won't
switch back once access gets restored?

This seems like a self-defeating move on Elsevier's part?

Incidentally, I heard from someone who worked at Elsevier around four years
ago that the working environment there was terrible, and she couldn't wait to
leave. That doesn't seem surprising.

~~~
xiii1408
Or arXiv. Elsevier authors can post their papers on arXiv and/or their own
website.

~~~
jszymborski
That's not strictly the case. This practice is actually infringing on your
(albeit bonkers) agreement with Elsevier. You can only share copies with those
who requested it as an act of "professional courtesy".

~~~
Vinnl
To all authors: note that it's often possible to modify the contract to enable
it. They'll often not notice or just approve it. See
[https://sparcopen.org/our-work/author-rights/](https://sparcopen.org/our-
work/author-rights/)

~~~
jszymborski
Duly noted! Thanks for the info.

------
apo
The model Elsevier operates on is under attack from a number of sides. In
addition to UC, there is Plan S:

> The plan requires scientists and researchers who benefit from state-funded
> research organisations and institutions to publish their work in open
> repositories or in journals that are available to all by 2021.[4] The "S"
> stands for "shock".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_S](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_S)

The plan is backed by a wide range of European groups.

Elsevier may have a right to license its content as it sees fit, but the
market as turned against its business model. The company now must decide
whether to go down fighting or acknowledge the inevitable.

An of course, there's the ever present Sci-Hub, which presents a comprehensive
selection of research papers far better than Elsevier ever did - and at no
cost to the reader.

~~~
a1369209993
> Elsevier may have a right to license its content as it sees fit

Elsevier doesn't _have_ content of it's own. It takes others' content (without
paying them a dime in most - if not all - cases), _maybe_ runs it through
spellcheck, slaps a legal threat and price tag on it, and milks it for as much
protection money as it can. Elsevier is the very model of modern major
copyright troll.

~~~
wpietri
Exactly. Their business added significant value back when paper was the
primary medium. With the rise of the Internet, their value-add was
significantly decreased, but they somehow decided the right thing was to
double down on being a rentier and extract way more money.

I have zero sympathy for them. As they say on Wall Street, "Bulls make money,
bears make money. But pigs get slaughtered." They've had 20 years to find new
ways to deliver value and it doesn't seem like they've bothered. At this rate
they'll be out of business soon, and I'll enjoy it thoroughly.

------
gumby
This is excellent!

Elsevier could have started by extorting smaller, less powerful institutions
but foolishly went after a university they need more than it needs them.

~~~
azernik
Those smaller, less powerful institutions haven't dared to confront Elsevier
in the way UC has. Since Elsevier represents the status quo, its opponents are
on the offensive and can self-select. They tend to be either big institutions
(UC) or collectives (several Europe-wide or EU-state-wide programs) big enough
to stand toe-to-toe with the publishers.

------
HeavenFox
Every time I read about the incredibly exploitative scientific publishing
industry, I can’t help but think: can we just make scientific papers not
copyrightable?

Researchers and their institutions don’t benefit from the copyright
protection; they barely make any money from their work.

Sure, someone can take your work and claim it as their own, but we already
handle them as plagiarism rather than copyright infringement.

Currently all the works by the federal government are not subject to
copyright, and many are scholarly work by NASA, Congressional Research
Service, etc, and we never hear problem about it.

It is also not that far fetched. Copyright protects expression of ideas rather
than ideas themselves, and I would argue for most papers, the expression is
the less interesting part of it.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
I honestly feel like intellectual property is harmful in almost every field I
look at. It concentrates wealth and slows innovation (the opposite of what IP
proponents claim). I voluntarily waive copyright protection for most of my
work, but I’d ideally see the dissolution of the concept more broadly. Our
government protects these laws which I see as unjust, and some change to that
would be beneficial I believe.

~~~
api
What I've seen in tech is that a patent is a straw asset to make the bean
counters feel more comfortable. The value of non-capital-intensive tech
companies is almost entirely ephemeral. Even for capital intensive ones most
of the value is usually not in the physical capital but in the brand, ideas,
collective employee knowledge, and customer relationships. A patent looks like
a physical asset on the books so it makes accountants and investors sleep
better even if it doesn't actually mean much of anything.

It'll probably fade away for the most part once a new generation that is
comfortable with the dematerialization of value takes high leadership
positions.

Copyright is a bit of a different beast as it covers a _specific_ work, not an
"idea."

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Copyright is what keeps billions of people from accessing every book ever
written for free.

Google really tried to do this but stopped digitizing books halfway through
the worlds collection because of copyright law. It hurts to think of all the
knowledge we could have shared if this had been permitted.

~~~
marksomnian
Copyright _as an idea_ is fine - as in, how it was described in the
Constitution: "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries", emphasis on
"limited times". It's our current batarnak of an implementation that's causing
all the problems.

Getting rid of copyright and instituting a copy-anarchy would mean that
creatives would have no real incentive to publish (no matter how much you do
for passion, you still need to keep the lights on and put food on the table) -
but our current system, with lifetimes tied to the time since Walt Disney's
death, is a bit of a mess too.

Can there ever be a happy medium?

~~~
michaelmrose
How about a combination of

\- free health care for all

\- universal basic income at a really basic subsidence level

\- voluntary patronage

People define themselves by their art if they can live a reasonable life and
produce they will do it.

~~~
ktaylor
Assuming people will create great works while living off a sustenance-level
basic income is a bit of a stretch. And, it seems to ignore the extreme level
of work, commitment, and persistence it takes to write books, publish science,
etc.

The issue is not whether people should be able to profit off _their own work_
but whether a rent-seeking gatekeeper should be able to hijack others' work
and profit off it.

~~~
michaelmrose
A system designed to artificially limit supply impoverishes the world and most
of the profit inevitably sticks with the middle men whose existence is only
necessitated by the artificial scarcity.

I specifically stated the sustenance level basic income plus patronage as I
expect people must have enough to survive but ought to be incentivized to earn
enough to live better.

I've heard others, not you, express the nonsensical idea that if people had
enough to barely survive they would all quite providing value to society until
the whole pyramid balanced precariously on the backs of the few remaining
working people collapsed. This is a basic mis-analysis of human nature. People
would strive to produce both for reasons of self worth and desire for a better
than basic life.

I expect many to most writers with no readers and no earnings would eventually
tire of the affair and move on to others.

Others would find a way to live a better than subsidence level life via
patronage or doing other work to finance their hobby.

Do you really believe in a world without copyright that Stephen king wouldn't
find any supporters?

------
patall
I never understood why university libraries are not making the journals
themselves instead of having them done by companies and paying for the
subscription. Every university would have like 5 or 6 journals and pay
everything for those and all the scientific articles would be free. I mean
elife does it and it is great.

~~~
Vinnl
The problem is not _starting_ new journals, the problem is having researchers
submit their work there. And the problem with that is that the name/reputation
of existing journals are currently used as a proxy to judge the quality of
applicants for e.g. tenure tracks. As long as that's not changed, researchers
are incentivised to submit their work to the traditional, "reputable"
journals.

(Disclaimer: I'm part of a project that aims to provide an alternative measure
of quality.)

------
mmastrac
> in the words of Dennis J. Ventry, a law professor at UC Davis who is vice
> chair of the academic senate’s committee on library and scholarly
> communication. He says the publisher’s last offer would have increased UC
> costs by 80% over three years, “hardly cost neutrality.”

> Elsevier says its proposal would have allowed a fivefold increase in the
> number of UC articles it published under open access — from about 350 now to
> 1,750 — while increasing the overall bill to UC by no more than annual
> inflation

One of these two parties is clearly misrepresenting this cost increase.

~~~
DominikPeters
Here is my guess at the UC calculations. UC currently pays $11m/yr. For this
price, UC wants to get all its 5000 papers/yr as open access, but Elsevier
only offers to give them 1750 papers/yr for this price. Elsewhere in the
article Elsevier states that the normal open access fees for 5000 papers are
$15m, so $15m/5000 = $3000/paper. So UC could take Elsevier's proposal and get
1750 papers (+ read access) for $11m, and pay $3000 for each of the remaining
3250 papers, for a total of $21m. With inflation, $21m is about an 80%
increase over $11m.

------
troymc
Meanwhile, everyone involved knows about the black raven in the room (the one
with the reddish key in its mouth). It's just not polite to mention it.

~~~
pizza
I do wonder, though, if more academics working in the UCs know about sci-hub,
than do not? In case not, start spreading the good news!

~~~
ImaCake
I am unsure about senior academics, but younger academics and research
students are all aware of sci-hub these days, even if they don't use it that
much.

------
xvilka
UC should consider using open platforms for publishing, like MIT's PubPub[1].
In fact, so much was discussed already, current publishing model (aside of the
publishers) is a bad fit for modern science. We need better collaboration,
interactivity, and reproducibility. See discussion[2] about this a few years
ago. And a number of followups[3][4][5].

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

[2] [http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/16/beyond-papers-
gitwikxi...](http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/16/beyond-papers-gitwikxiv/)

[3] [http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/27/gitwikxiv-follow-up-
di...](http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/27/gitwikxiv-follow-up-distinctions-
in-academic-tools/)

[4] [http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/22/gitwikxiv-follow-up-
an...](http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/22/gitwikxiv-follow-up-an-open-
attribution-standard/)

[5] [http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/05/20/gitwikxiv-follow-
up-a-...](http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/05/20/gitwikxiv-follow-up-a-path-to-
forkable-papers/)

~~~
tingletech
My group at UC provides [https://escholarship.org](https://escholarship.org)
\-- a 20+ year old open platform for publishing

~~~
xvilka
PubPub is an example of the next generation publishing platform. It provides
much more than plain publishing. And it is open source [1]. Good example of
the similar, but commercial platform is Authorea[2].

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

[2] [https://www.authorea.com/](https://www.authorea.com/)

~~~
tingletech
my product managers tell me LaTex is to STEMy

[https://editoria.pub](https://editoria.pub) is a project we were involved
with with UC Press

We run an OJS instance for our journal program. We are looking a Janeway too.

Manifold also looks interesting in this space.

------
olliej
To clarify, Elsevier is unhappy that they aren't allowed to profit off of
other peoples work.

1\. It costs money to submit to Nature, Cell, Science, etc

2\. Reviewers for journals are not paid

3\. It then costs money to read the published papers

4\. The journals are filled with ads

Literally the entire thing is profit for Elsevier, they are paid by the people
who do the original work, they don't pay for _any_ of the vetting and review
that Elsevier claims you're paying for, and then you have to pay to read the
published papers. And get through all of the ads.

Elsevier is a company that steals from the public.

~~~
jszymborski
I totally agree with your overall point, but I'd be remiss not to mention that
these journals originally were paper-only and mailed to institutions & profs
(and Xeroxed ad infinum). This did involve a cost, but surely nothing like the
million dollar agreements unis are signing with multiple publishing houses.

Nowadays, publishers still put out paper versions, but their worth does indeed
revolve around scientist giving them material for them to build a catalogue of
copyrighted material.

I look forward to their fall.

~~~
olliej
The modern paper versions are also filled with very expensive ads - the only
part of this that is not profitable is the review stage, but that’s just
because it doesn’t produce revenue - which they manage by not paying reviewers

------
filleokus
I’ve always thought that a more reasonable model for academic publishing would
be to disconnect the availability of the content from the peer review /
“publishing”.

Couldn’t the PDF’s be hosted in the open, in a repository similar to arXiv,
and then be “published”. Being published would then just basically mean that
your paper gets tagged in the repository as “Published in Journal of X”,
almost like a Twitter verification mark but more granular [0].

Some publishing fees would remain, and pay for the curation and costs
associated with the peer review.

[0]: Of course the journal could still be compiled and published separately as
well.

~~~
Vinnl
Sure, and those are usually referred to as "overlay journals". They exist, but
the thing that has been keeping the entire system in place now is how existing
journals have a reputation upon which the academic career evaluation process
is built. That allows publishers to charge ridiculous amounts of money, so
they're quite keen on the current situation.

More here: [https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-
ca...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-can-make-or-
break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a)

------
Havoc
The journals are gonna lose this fight.

Academics are one of the few groups that can afford to be idealists.

------
dan-robertson
Is this the first time Elsevier has cut off a major group of universities? In
all the similar past occasions I know about, Elsevier would threaten to cut
off access but not flow through, out of the kindness of their hearts and for
the good of academia (or rather for fear that the universities might discover
they don’t get much value out of Elsevier)

One thing Elsevier builds their strategy on is bundling: that to get the
journals a university really wants, they also have to subscribe to lots they
don’t want. This would mean for Elsevier that they could keep charging high
prices until all disciplines don’t care about them. A university can’t say
“well all our mathematicians just use the arxiv and email so we don’t want any
mathematics journals” and have this work.

Another common theme is universities joining together into larger groups to
negotiate a deal together. But this means individual universities can’t really
choose to not subscribe to any Elsevier journals (because others in the group
want to subscribe), so often they still get what many inside consider a bad
deal.

~~~
Vinnl
No, although it has indeed threatened to do so and then did not do it often in
the past, in July 2018 they cut off several institutions in Germany:
[https://www.projekt-deal.de/elsevier-news/](https://www.projekt-
deal.de/elsevier-news/)

Similar things have happened in a few other European countries.

------
betterunix2
Death throws of a dying and unnecessary industry.

~~~
zadokshi
I can’t tell if by “dying industry” you mean universities or journal
databases.

~~~
hyperbovine
Honest question: why do commenters here frequently seem to bear a chip on
their shoulder when it comes to institutions of higher learning?

~~~
hirundo
An attempt at an honest answer:

In my case it's related to the continual drumbeat of news stories that seems
to show them being transformed from bastions of free inquiry into centers of
political indoctrination. It's been reinforced in the last couple of years by
a friend who sent his sweet, friendly, apolitical hard working daughter to a
liberal arts college, and she returned as a politicized tattooed pierced foul
mouthed social warrior who despises her family and home community. While that
anecdote has applied for generations it seems to have become more rule than
exception. There are an increasing number of parents who feel that sending
their kids to college amounts to parental malpractice.

This "chip" may sound like a form of bigotry in that it paints many remaining
fine scholars with the same broad brush, but you can't enroll in just that
part of a school.

While the STEM fields that most publish in Elsevier are less affected by this
trend they seem to be moving in that direction. Simply researching human
intelligence, sexual dimorphism, heritability or a constantly shifting range
of other topics has become career threatening. The idea that merit should play
a predominant role in hiring is becoming scarce in faculty hiring committees.

I'm a product of a university but looking back I see that my degree did little
for me in terms of either increased human capital or of signalling, in that I
learned to code outside of class and my degree is of ever less value in
getting hired. If I could go back and whisper in my high school ears while I
was applying to college I might say "skip it". And that's separate from the
ideological angle.

Meanwhile it has become much more expensive in the era of federal financing.
Both sides of the cost benefit ratio are moving in the wrong direction.

The net result is that I've come to discount the value of universities. If
they were all closed tomorrow it would be both a great loss and gain, and I'm
not sure which would dominate.

~~~
titanomachy
Thanks for sharing your experience.

I went to a rather liberal university recently and while the community and
ideology you describe did exist, it always seemed to be on the fringe a bit
(if very loud). For the most part, people were focused on working hard at
school or sex and partying rather than engaging in fringe politics.

Some young people need to rebel for a bit. People's views usually moderate a
bit a few years out, just with life experience.

------
jimbob45
Can anyone steelman the Elsevier side? I don't want to be caught in the
headlights of I have to debate this.

~~~
apo
Elsevier owns copyrighted material, which it licenses to individuals and
institutions for a fee. The fee is negotiated on a case-by-case basis, which
is no different than any other intellectual property such as movies, music,
books, or software.

If a customer is unable or unwilling to pay the prevailing rate, then no
access will be granted.

The argument that Elsevier uses unpaid academic labor and therefore should
fall under some other system is a red herring. Authors signed over their
copyright to Elsevier, and like any other copyright holder Elsevier can
license its property toward any legal purpose that advances its business
interests.

~~~
TehCorwiz
It's not unpaid academic labor, it's actually exploitative labor. They charge
the academics ~$3000 - 5000 to publish via any of their journals.

~~~
rsfern
The other unpaid labor is peer review — keep in mind that reviewers don’t get
paid!

------
Causality1
Papers produced using any amount of taxpayer money should be required to be
publicly available. Not doing so is like stealing a farmer's crops so you can
sell him food made from them.

~~~
corebit
Interesting that you mention farmers crops. Should crops produce with
government subsidies also be publicly available for free?

~~~
arkades
They should be available cheaper than if they weren’t subsidized, proportional
to the degree of subsidy. Which is usually the point of subsidizing
something’s production.

Whereas basic science is almost entirely tax funded, making a pretty good case
for it being a public resource.

------
jasonhansel
Now all that Elsevier has to do is eliminate piracy! Just like how the RIAA
eliminated piracy, and we are all still willing to pay 99 cents for a new song
on iTunes. (sarcasm)

~~~
brighter2morrow
I prefer to buy music legally. Am I alone? I don't want to have to worry about
legal processes when I could just spend a buck to listen to that little diddy
stuck in my head.

------
cybert00th
> UC is determined to operate under an alternative model, in which researchers
> pay to have their papers published but not for subscriptions.

Yep, slowly but surely OpenAccess is beginning to take hold.

The UK publisher I work for has had a couple projects going for a few years
now, looking into ways to rejig their revenue stream.

------
jupp0r
> We know we can provide access to everything through one mechanism or another

Translation: let’s see how scihub works out for people. Good luck getting them
back after they became used to it.

------
buboard
I am writing a review article these days which requires skimming through many
many articles and this situation really is infuriating. What the hell is wrong
with scientists today that they accept this situation? Why aren't all papers
in 2019 hosted as HTML pages (the very thing for which HTML was invented) but
instead hidden behind paywalls, behind a PDF file? Why can't i use annotations
/ search / crossreferences the way i use any website? Why do i have to end up
copying-the title of the paper, googling the name of it and downloading
another pdf, instead of clicking on an HREF link? Why am i forced to use
godawful tools like Mendeley (brought to you by Elsevier now) to conform to
ancient citation formats which were invented for (paper) libraries. Someone
needs to pass a law that invalidates the copyrights of all publicly funded
works, so people other than google scholar can have access to the world's
scientific output and build proper services on top of it. And yeah, i 'm sure
Elsevier, that pretentious club of high horses will be replaced in a day, by a
digital peer-supported "uber for reviews". But first academics will have to
remove the stick of elitism that is up their arse.

------
pixelbash
> Traditionally, the publishers accept papers for publication for free but
> charge steep subscription fees

To my knowledge (academic family and partner in NZ) this is false, publishers
charge for both publication _and_ reading in general.

~~~
patrick5415
I think this must depend on your field. In mine, it’s generally free to
publish, unless you want color figures or go over the page limit.

------
woofie11
Go UC! I wish my alma had a similar backbone.

------
viburnum
Academic publishing is a weird way to evaluate worker performance.

------
kevmo
All research done with public money should be publicly available.

Full stop.

~~~
cvoss
It seems like NSF is working towards that. NSF-funded publications must be
publicly available for free within 12 months after publication. NSF has a
repository for this purpose. This regulation went into effect in 2016.

[https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2018/nsf18041/nsf18041.jsp](https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2018/nsf18041/nsf18041.jsp)

------
ilaksh
I hope UC made some kind of donation to Sci Hub.

------
tempodox
Who gives a rodent's backside what elsevier wants? Just don't feed that
parasite any more, and it will die on its own.

------
mch82
The key to all this is that for a person to get a PhD or grants they usually
need to publish papers. Self-publishing often isn’t recognized, so expensive
journals thrive. Maybe that is slowly changing...

~~~
otherme123
Usually publishing fees are not the problem. The problem is reading papers is
expensive if you're not using Scihub.

In fact, publishing in an open journal (e.g. Plos) cost about twice as much as
an equivalent closed journal, but it's the model that everybody except
Elsevier wants.

When you get a (public) grant, some of the money is reserved for publishing
costs. It's outrageus that public money is used to research and publish but
then the public and other researchers cannot access for free that content.

The Elsevier bussiness model is just perfect, they just sit on their desk
routing papers from authors to other authors for peer review, and create a
PDF. This "work" costs about $1.000. After that, downloading that PDF costs
another $20-30, but the original author receives $0.

Just imagine that applied to regular books: the author pay to publish. The
publisher charges $30 for the PDF. The author never sees a dime.

------
Ice_cream_suit
"What kept the two sides apart was not merely the difference in approaches,
but the question of fees. UC paid $11 million for Elsevier subscriptions last
year — about 25% of its overall subscription budget — while its researchers
spent an estimated $1 million more on publication fees on papers subject to
open access. The university proposed a new deal under which publication fees
and subscriptions would be rolled together for a single sum in a model known
as “read and publish.”"

------
meuk
I don't understand the problem, and the article doesn't really help. If I
understand correctly, universities pay a fee to Elsevier to access papers.
They also submit their published papers to Elsevier. And (this is where I'm
not sure anymore) they have to pay a fee to make their work freely accessible?

Then why don't they just pay for the subscription, but don't submit anything?
Or upload a freely accessible pre-print version like many people do?

------
stebann
Wow, seems like Elsevier move was really stupid. I hope many more join against
this business model. Go UC!

------
KhoomeiK
For those who haven't used it previously, you can use [https://sci-
hub.tw/](https://sci-hub.tw/) to bypass paywalls on almost any scientific
paper

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/m7cTp](http://archive.is/m7cTp)

------
deepsun
Where are Stanford, Harward, Caltech and other, reportedly progressive
universities stand on that issue?

------
tanakachen
It will be ok, as students and faculty know they can simply use Sci-Hub.

------
raveenb
yes, this is the right way to go. public money is used to research and the
public doesn't have access to the results is odd. ArXiv is the way to go at
this time.

------
_bxg1
Can someone explain why an alternative hasn't popped up for these universally-
hated publishers? What's so hard about hosting a bunch of documents?

~~~
rsfern
The problem isn’t document hosting, it’s that the journals serve as a proxy
for research quality, and everyone wants to publish in journals that have high
(perceived and/or actual) impact. To effect real change the editors and
prominent authors will need to leave, like when _Machine Learning_ was forked
into _JMLR_

~~~
_bxg1
So the world's most prestigious universities who have a problem with the
status quo band together and lend their own credibility to a new platform that
they run together. Cut out the middle-man.

~~~
Vinnl
It's not just that the platform needs to be considered credible; it's that
they're used as a proxy for the relative quality of academic research. So an
article in Nature is considered "better" than an article in Humbug's Best
Journal.

Generally, I think the better idea would be to unlink evaluation from
publication - so researchers can publish their articles wherever, and separate
from that, reputable colleagues endorse their works (or not). In the end,
journals derive their credibility from the reputations of their peer reviewers
and editors, so that is a way to cut out the middle man.

The challenge, of course, is getting researchers to actually do that.

(Disclaimer: I'm part of a project that does exactly that.)

~~~
rsfern
I really like the idea of unlinking publication from evaluation. Especially in
CS people cite arxiv preprints all the time since the field moves so fast. I
do this in my own work as well, but most of my field does not publish
preprints on arxiv. Without real infrastructure, we’re all _de facto_ relying
on google scholar to sort all these things out.

I’m starting to think that open and signed reviews would go a long way towards
moving from review as a gatekeeping mechanism to a means of improving the
overall quality and accessibility of the scientific discourse.

What is the project you’re involved in?

~~~
Vinnl
It's called Plaudit.pub [1] and launched not too long ago. The aim is for
preprint servers (and eventually journals) to display endorsements right next
to the research they host, but more most of them, this currently requires a
browser extension.

Also note that it currently only provides a solution for the endorsement part
of evaluation - you'd still have to use, say, email or a comment form to
provide actual feedback.

[1] [https://plaudit.pub/](https://plaudit.pub/)

------
buboard
Good, time to end this

------
Tomte
Elsevier still hasn't dared to cut off the German Universities, or have there
been developments I've missed?

Might get interesting now.

~~~
Vinnl
Yes they have: [https://www.projekt-deal.de/elsevier-
news/](https://www.projekt-deal.de/elsevier-news/)

------
lifeisstillgood
When you are on a burning platform some advice - shooting at boats fleeing the
fire won't put the flames out.

------
dariosalvi78
Not to mention that journals employ armies of unpaid editors and reviewers. If
Karl Marx were alive, he would have probably chosen this as the perfect
example of how capitalism exploits the masses.

------
ikonoklast
Suicide, quite simply.

------
dariosalvi78
Not to mention that journals employ armies of unpaid editors and reviewers. If
Karl Marx were alive, he would have proy chosen this as the perfect example of
how capitalism exploits the masses.

------
NelsonMinar
Wanted: Sci-Hub for the LA Times.

~~~
raverbashing
It would help with their BS about "this content is not available due to GDPR"

Though to be honest they're not an essential news source, so nothing of value
is lost

------
bcatanzaro
I click on the article and get a big paywall instead of text. So meta!

~~~
bookofjoe
In act of brinkmanship, a big publisher cuts off UC’s access to its academic
journalsThe bitter battle between the University of California, a leading
source of published research papers, and Elsevier, the world’s largest
publisher of research papers, just got more bitter.As of Wednesday, Elsevier
cut off access by UC faculty, staff and students to articles published since
Jan. 1 in 2,500 Elsevier journals, including respected medical publications
such as Cell and the Lancet and a host of engineering and scientific journals.
Access to most material published in 2018 and earlier remains in force.The
move by Elsevier is the latest development in a conflict that has been brewing
since last year, when the university’s last five-year contract with Elsevier
expired. UC demanded that the new contract reflect the principle of open
access — that work produced on its campuses be available to all outside
readers, for free.That was a direct challenge to the business model of
Elsevier and other big academic publishers. Traditionally, the publishers
accept papers for publication for free but charge steep subscription fees. UC
is determined to operate under an alternative model, in which researchers pay
to have their papers published but not for subscriptions.What kept the two
sides apart was not merely the difference in approaches, but the question of
fees. UC paid $11 million for Elsevier subscriptions last year — about 25% of
its overall subscription budget — while its researchers spent an estimated $1
million more on publication fees on papers subject to open access. The
university proposed a new deal under which publication fees and subscriptions
would be rolled together for a single sum in a model known as “read and
publish.”In part, that was a reflection of concerns over a continual run-up in
journal subscription costs that UC, along with many other academic
institutions, consider to be unsustainable. The very idea of placing
scientific research behind a subscription paywall, moreover, can’t be
reconciled with the idea that research should be made as widely available as
possible. That’s especially so when the same institutions that generate
research papers are made to pay for access to them.“Overwhelmingly the
faculty, who have given this a great deal of thought, know this is a matter of
principle,” says Robert May, a member of the philosophy department at UC Davis
and chair of the UC Academic Council. The council issued a statement Wednesday
expressing its determination for UC to “help change the system of scholarly
communication for the betterment of all.”UC isn’t the only institution to
stage a frontal assault on this model. Open access has been spreading in
academia and in scholarly publishing; academic consortiums in Germany and
Sweden also have demanded read-and-publish deals with Elsevier, which cut them
off after they failed to reach deals last year. Those researchers are still
cut off, according to Gemma Hersh, Elsevier’s vice president for global
policy. Smaller deals have been made in recent months with research
institutions in Norway and Hungary.UC is probably the largest single producer
of research papers to make a stand for open access — and an uncompromising
stand at that. The university says it generates nearly 10% of all published
research in the United States. That has made it a significant partner of
Elsevier, which has published about 18% of all UC output.The traditional model
has been a gold mine for scholarly publishers such as Elsevier. The
scientific, technical and medical publishing arm of its Netherlands-based
parent, Relx, recorded about $1.2 billion in operating profit on about $3.2
billion in revenue in 2018, a gratifying 37.5% operating profit margin.The
clash of policies led UC to allow its Elsevier subscriptions to lapse as of
last Dec. 31. The publisher allowed scholarly access to continue while it
tried to reach a new agreement with the university. With no noticeable
progress having been made, Elsevier finally pulled the plug.The publisher is
rather cagey about its action. In a statement it emailed to UC faculty who
were serving as editors of some of its journals, Elsevier wrote that it “sadly
had to move forward with [UC’s] request to cancel access.” That’s spin that
places the onus entirely on the university: In fact, UC wanted to continue
access, but under new terms.The university, for its part, cited Elsevier’s
“refusal to address in any meaningful way our dual goals of cost neutrality
and open access,” in the words of Dennis J. Ventry, a law professor at UC
Davis who is vice chair of the academic senate’s committee on library and
scholarly communication. He says the publisher’s last offer would have
increased UC costs by 80% over three years, “hardly cost neutrality.”Elsevier
says its proposal would have allowed a fivefold increase in the number of UC
articles it published under open access — from about 350 now to 1,750 — while
increasing the overall bill to UC by no more than annual inflation. Elsevier
says on a website it established to explain its position that open-access
publishing fees for the estimated 5,000 papers UC publishes per year through
the company would run to about $15 million, on top of the $11 million in
subscriptions.“We understand that’s not a feasible amount,” Hersh told me. She
said the publisher’s proposal aimed to move UC “along that journey [to open
access] in a managed and sustainable way.”But university officials say the
proposal also would have required UC to “forgo perpetual access to a
significant number of Elsevier journals” and would have barred open-access
publishing in some especially important journals, including Cell and the
Lancet. “UC is committed to making all the work of all of its authors freely
available,” the university’s office of scholarly communication said in a
statement posted online.University officials acknowledge that the cutoff of
direct access to Elsevier journals will cause some inconvenience on UC
campuses. Almost any article sought by a campus researcher can be found
legally through interlibrary loans, online repositories such as Google scholar
or PubMed, or directly from its author.“We know we can provide access to
everything through one mechanism or another,” says Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, the
university librarian. “We’ve always provided access to scholarly research for
things we don’t have subscriptions to. Now we’ll be doing that for Elsevier
articles.”Securing access may take a few days longer and a small financial
outlay he says, “but there are ways to do it and we’re prepared to make sure
that our faculty and students get to read everything they want to read.”Under
the circumstances, it looks like Elsevier may have picked a fight with the
wrong adversary. While the open-access movement is growing, “the reality is
that the majority of the world’s articles are still published under the
subscription model, and there is a cost associated with reading those
articles,” Hersh says.But it’s hard to imagine that the open-access trend will
slow in the future, much less reverse. Elsevier has been holding its ground,
but with a scholarly behemoth like UC on the offensive, there’s no telling how
long its defense may hold.

------
8note
Is there value in a blockchain based academic journal?

have it be well distributed, and only let universities submit new articles if
they prove themselves doing replication studies against other universities'
submissions

~~~
Vinnl
There have been many, many initiatives based on this thought. However, in my
opinion they don't quite hit the mark.

The problem blockchain solves is wanting to store data, making sure that it is
not tampered with, but without a single party you can trust.

That's not the problem of Open Access though. Everybody _does_ trust Elsevier
not to intentionally tamper with scholarly articles, and they have no reason
to. The problem is the oligopoly they and a couple of other publishers have,
and the ridiculous prices they charge as a result. Those aren't just solved by
adding another failed player; you need to remove the reason the oligopoly can
continue to exist. Blockchains do not do that.

