

Cornell Will Reveal Secret Academic Journal Pricing - Jd
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110323/02473713592/cornell-library-rejects-non-disclosures-journal-pricing-will-reveal-all-prices.shtml

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stevetjoa
One of the most astounding aspects of academic research, to me, is the price
of journal publication.

When you author a book, you earn some money. Not a lot, perhaps, but some.
When you author a journal paper, not only do you not earn any money, but you
_pay_ the publisher several thousands USD in fees! For example, Nature:
<http://www.nature.com/ajg/open_access_faqs.html>. Even worse, you must sign a
copyright form that transfers ownership to the publisher.

I understand that there is a staff behind the scenes that puts these
publications together -- editors, admin. staff, etc. -- and they need to be
paid. But some journals have acquired such prestige over the years that they
can name their price, and the manuscript submissions will keep coming. So
perhaps these prices are not so surprising.

In the debate over which makes the most impact -- journal vs. conference paper
-- most academics will say the same thing: journal, journal, journal. That
message has been beaten into our heads. But in my opinion, we are entering a
new period of transition similar to what newspapers have been facing. I think
it is possible that conferences and journals with new subscription models will
slowly usurp a share of manuscript submissions away from journals with
traditional models. For example, in ACM and certain IEEE disciplines,
conference papers already reign as the preferred publication format among
researchers.

Of course, in other areas such as law and medicine, there is probably no hope.
Things will remain the way they are.

~~~
TillE
> we are entering a new period of transition

I certainly hope so. I cannot for the life of me understand the economics of
academic journals. They do a bit of editing and send out the papers for peer
review. And that's about it, right? Where's all the money going?

"Curators" are important, certainly. I want respected people to select
articles worthy of publication. I _don't_ want them to then lock those
articles up where they're only accessible to academics and those willing to
pay obscene fees for individual access.

~~~
impendia
You claim not to understand, but I strongly suspect that you have correctly
figured out exactly where all the money's going.

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impendia
"Topology" was the most prestigious journal in its field (i.e., mathematical
topology). It and lots of other journals got bought up by Elsevier, who then
proceeded to raise the prices to stratospheric levels.

The editors decided they didn't feel like playing along:

<http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/topology-letter.pdf>

~~~
light3
Thats awesome, the editors left and started the Journal of Topology, run at
significantly lower cost:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology_(journal)>

[http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/jtopol/editorial_...](http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/jtopol/editorial_board.html)

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keane
This reminds me of the Overprice Tags project by Benjamin Mako Hill of the MIT
Media Lab/Sloan. See <http://mako.cc/fun/overpricetags/>

Students at MIT, Brown, and other schools labelled the journals in their
libraries with pricetags showing the cost the university was paying for each
journal. Nuclear Physics A&B <//elsevier.com/locate/nuclphysa> cost $25,888 in
2005.

Similarly, Students for Free Culture have been working on both the Open
University Project and the Open Access Project, pressing universities to
reform their use of journals. See <http://freeculture.org/>

Lastly, public universities have been known to disclose the cost of journals
they subscribe to -regardless of NDA status- at the issuing of FOIA or CPRA
type requests. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Records_Act>

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markbao
I'm surprised and relieved to see this coming from an Ivy. Huge kudos for
moving science forward while leaving the money leeches behind.

~~~
andrewf
It is Cornell. They run arXiv and host its primary mirror.

~~~
joshes
Indeed. From the university behind arXiv, this is less of a surprise. Having
said that, however, it is obviously a big step and should be applauded by the
scientific community at large.

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patio11
Forgive me for being a cynic, but with tuition bills at about $40k per year,
ground getting broken on $X0 ~ $Y00 million construction projects yearly, and
endowments which rival hedge funds (Cornell's is relatively modest at a mere
$4.3 billion dollars), I have to wonder why $4,000 a year for a journal sparks
moral outrage and why the solution isn't "Alright, screw it, this is so easy
we'll just do it ourselves."

It's like California getting worked up about the number of free donuts they
give state employees. I mean, OK, I get it: high symbolism, makes for a good
headline. But _come on_ , one look at salaries, pensions, or health care shows
where the actual problems are.

Similarly, if one wanted to look at the influence of money on the scientific
community, it is highly nonobvious to me that academic journals are where the
money is uniquely concentrating.

~~~
anghyflawn
OK, I'll bite. Assuming an average figure of $4,000 per journal per year, how
much does will a university like Cornell spend per year on all journals? I
work at a smallish European university, and even in my smallish field of the
humanities we have access to about a hundred journals (give or take); I dread
to think how many journals the university library subscribes to in total, plus
dissertation databases such as ProQuest, non-academic periodicals archives,
yadda yadda. For something like Cornell, I suspect the figure has to be much
higher (more journals, more subscribers).

Plus, it's fine to think that Cornell can afford it; but can a second-rank
public university? It probably doesn't, it has neither the money nor the
bargaining power. Which means that its academics have limited access to
advances in their fields. How can that be fine?

~~~
justincormack
It is not about second rank universities. It is about universities in the
third world and people who cannot afford to go to universities at all, and it
is about the support of universities for open access to learning.

~~~
anghyflawn
Certainly. Everything that applies to second-rank universities in this respect
applies to even less advantaged institutions and scholars, magnified.

------
leoc
Since copyright only protects expression (at least in countries which haven't
introduced protections for databases), couldn't important papers be liberated
through a cleanroom process? Say that person A reads the original paper and
produces a paraphrase that's intended to be fully accurate and as clear as
possible but contains whatever circumlocutions are necessary to avoid reusing
the choice of expression in the original paper. This paraphrase is then handed
to person B "in the cleanroom" who hasn't seen the original paper. B produces
a concise and well-written paper from A's notes. A then reviews B's work,
informing him of any misunderstandings that have crept in, still without using
the wording in the original paper: this is repeated until A and B are
satisfied. All communications between A and B are monitored and retained to
prove that the cleanroom was not contaminated.

It would be a fairly slow process, so surely only a small proportion of papers
could be put through it. But if the work were focussed on the most
important/high-impact papers which are under restrictive copyrights, might it
not have a meaningful effect?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>" _Since copyright only protects expression [...]_ "

Copyright law protects interests from the effects of copying. Derivative works
are not the original expression but nonetheless are restricted by copyright
laws and treaties.

In your example A is committing copyright infringement. They're creating a
derivative work by copying the original (albeit not slavishly copying). Person
B is arguably committing contributory infringement (commercially enabling A)
and is certainly copying a work created tortuously; consider it like handling
stolen goods.

It's a nice idea but I don't think that copyright law is naive enough to allow
this sort of workaround in practice. If it were then foreign language copies
wouldn't be infringing and I'm pretty sure that they are.

IANACL

~~~
leoc
Yes, I think you're probably right there.

(IANALAA)

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west1737
I'm a big fan of this move by Cornell, but not, I think for the same reasons
as most. First, I can't fault journals for charging fees. After all, they need
to make money, and as long as it's a good value, people will pay it.

I like it because it will add some much needed competition into the journal
pricing. Most likely, Nature is not going to change their pricing. If you have
an article worthy of being published there, most people are going to pay a few
grand and be happy to do so just to have their paper published. Assuming
publishing prices do become transparent, I don't think it will drastically
change the pricing system, but it will allow people to evaluate the value of
such a publication.

The best analog I can think of are colleges themselves (and not just because
of the academic connection). The value of both colleges and journals are
significantly affected by their reputation. The price of the colleges have not
leveled out, nor have they gone to zero (closer the opposite of both), but the
prices do reflect the perceived "value" of that education. Hopefully the same
will happen for journals.

~~~
lazylland
I wonder if the assumption "they need to make money" is necessary. If we agree
that the actual value of a journal (or its 'profit') is the voluntary
participation of renowned scholars, then the journal is at best an
administrative function, or a 'cost center' that has to actually be minimized
!!

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danbmil99
It's about time, these idiot troll publishers are on the level of thugs
charging store owners for "protection" against same thugs.

Who needs a paper journal anymore?

