
France signs a five-year national deal with Elsevier - p4bl0
http://scoms.hypotheses.org/301
======
fermigier
Genevieve Fioraso, French Minister of Higher Education and Scientific
Research, had declared just 18 months ago:

"Au regard de l'importance des enjeux, sur les plans scientifique, économique
et sociétal, le gouvernement français réaffirme son soutien au principe du
libre accès à l'information scientifique."

Or

"Given the high stakes - scientific, economic and societal - the French
government reaffirms its support for the principle of open access to
scientific information."

Reference: [http://www.enseignementsup-
recherche.gouv.fr/cid66992/discou...](http://www.enseignementsup-
recherche.gouv.fr/cid66992/discours-de-genevieve-fioraso-lors-des-5e-journees-
open-access.html)

Shame that she didn't follow through!

------
joelthelion
As a Frenchman, this is a real disgrace.

I just don't get it. These editors offer no real added value (paper formatting
and a website is not worth 172 Million a year), and we do nothing about it?

~~~
fdej
As an author, the added value is the name of the journal. The pedigree of the
journals you have published in is one of the primary qualities that grant and
hiring committees look at. The whole system is obviously a scam, but you have
to play the game if you want a career in science.

~~~
p4bl0
This is why we have to fight for the right Open Access model.

Most publishers offer "Gold Open Access", which is "authors pay" instead of
"readers pay", and of course the price is decided by the publisher…

This is not what Open Access means, and it doesn't solve the main problems.

Diamond Open Access focuses on the real problems.

1- It should be free to publish, free to read, free to reuse. The Diamond Open
Access model implies free licenses such as Creative Commons BY for articles
and data.

2- Rather than being owned by publishers, the journals have to be owned by
their editorial board, which itself has to be a legal entity of some sort.
This would avoid problems such as prestige inertia which forces researcher to
publish with asshole publishers: if the scientists actually running the
journal own it, they could have switched to open access and/or to a different
publishers when needed.

Apart from that, we of course have to fight against bibliometrics…

~~~
blumkvist
And where does the money come from?

~~~
p4bl0
Instead of having each university pay millions each year to subscribe to
privately owned journals, we use (a part of) this money to develop and
maintain the necessary infrastructures (servers, software developers,
librarians, …). The rest of the money could be used for additional research.

------
RA_Fisher
I wonder if it'd be possible to short-circuit this process? It'd be difficult,
but many states have public document laws. If the manuscript is written
physically using state-university equipment, I'd hope there's a nexus for the
public to get that document. To try this I'm thinking about submitting a
request to my alma mater for one such document. The request might need to be
massaged and resent a couple of times. At that point, what's preventing me
from asking for say the top 100 papers that are cited on GScholar? Hacking the
system in this way could be pretty interesting.

~~~
p4bl0
Actually, it should be checked by a lawyer, but it is entirely possible that
the copyright transfer agreements that scientists sign when publishing in
asshole-publisher owned journals have no legal value in France. The reason for
that would be that: 1- the form is only signed by one party (the authors), 2-
there is no counterparts to the copyright giveaway, and 3- the signature of a
single authors is sufficient to give the consent of all the others, who may be
from a different institution or even country.

~~~
a_bonobo
Normally, scientists retain the copyright to their work, but sign an exclusive
license to publish the work.

Often this license is based on the additional work done by the journal (minor
proof-reading and formatting), that's why preprint servers always serve the
unformatted version (or in the format of the preprint server).

For Science, for example: >Authors can immediately post the accepted work to
their personal or institutional archive. >The accepted version is the paper
that was accepted for publication by AAAS, including changes resulting from
peer review, but prior to AAAS copyediting.)

Source for Science:
[http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/lice...](http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/license.xhtml)

Same goes for Nature: >NPG does not require authors of original (primary)
research papers to assign copyright of their published contributions. Authors
grant NPG an exclusive licence to publish, in return for which they can reuse
their papers in their future printed work without first requiring permission
from the publisher of the journal.

[http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/license.html](http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/license.html)

~~~
greeneggs
I don't know that it is normal yet for authors to retain their copyrights.
Certainly, Elsevier's policy is to require a copyright transfer unless the
authors pay an open-access fee.

[http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-
re...](http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-
responsibilities)

------
jalcazar
While France signs with Elsevier, many scientists around the world have been
protesting against Elsevier in a movement called "The Cost of Knowledge".

The Open Journal ([http://theoj.org](http://theoj.org)) is an example of doing
open science well and efficiently. All the papers are hosted in arXiv, which
means they are publicly accessible. And the review is performed using their
own open source platform.

------
sfermigier
Genevieve Fioraso, French Minister of Higher Education and Scientific
Research, had declared just 18 months ago:

"Au regard de l'importance des enjeux, sur les plans scientifique, économique
et sociétal, le gouvernement français réaffirme son soutien au principe du
libre accès à l'information scientifique."

Or

"Given the high stakes - scientific, economic and societal - the French
government reaffirms its support for the principle of open access to
scientific information."

Reference: [http://www.enseignementsup-
recherche.gouv.fr/cid66992/discou...](http://www.enseignementsup-
recherche.gouv.fr/cid66992/discours-de-genevieve-fioraso-lors-des-5e-journees-
open-access.html)

Shame that she didn't follow through!

------
induscreep
A solution would be for universities to host the journals. They can hire
salaried staff for proof reading/marketing etc. Scientists can volunteer for
peer review. The journal can be as selective as it wants. Once an article is
accepted for publication, it's hosted on the university website.

The indirect costs from grants can cover the salaries of the admin staff - and
very few staff are needed because the authors themselves can give the staff a
good head start by using latex to prepare the manuscript.

Why can't this be done?

------
knz42
Also relevant, an article from earlier this year:
[http://www.bibbase.org/network/publication/poss-altmeyer-
tho...](http://www.bibbase.org/network/publication/poss-altmeyer-thompson-
jelier-academia20removingthepublishermiddlemanwhileretainingimpact-2014)

------
fapjacks
WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS?! This is disgusting.

------
return0
What makes them think that Elsevier will be publishing _any_ scientific
articles in 5 years from now?

~~~
pyrois
Because it has survived for more than two centuries, publishes several hundred
thousand scientific articles a year, and has huge profit margins? There are
problems with the Elsevier-model of scientific publications, but longevity
doesn't appear to be one of them.

~~~
Someone
I do not disagree with the gist of your argument, but Elsevier isn't centuries
old. It was founded in 1880. Also, it only entered the scientific publishing
business in 1933.

~~~
pyrois
Today I learned, yet again, that I can't do simple subtraction. Thanks for the
correction.

~~~
Someone
I thought you were thinking of the Elsevier family, who started printing in
1583 (the modern Elsevier company recycled the name; see
[http://www.elsevier.com/about/history](http://www.elsevier.com/about/history))

------
tempodox
Elsevier? Aren't they the bastards who hijacked scientific publishing? We
should all boycott them.

