
French Universities Cancel Subscriptions to Springer Journals - apsec112
https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/52208/title/French-Universities-Cancel-Subscriptions-to-Springer-Journals/
======
fnordsensei
The alternative business model that the world is moving to is Open Access. The
difference being that instead of paying to access the journal or paper, the
researcher or institution that wishes to publish pays up front to have the
paper published.

Open Access has its own problems, such as predatory journals, where
researchers who don't know better or who are desperate to publish are more or
less lied to as to the reach and validity of a journal. It has become an area
ripe for a new kind of scammers. This has prompted efforts such as Think,
Check, Submit[1].

There's also the problem with raising the funds to publish something as Open
Access. It's not always the case that the researcher actually has the means to
pay for Open Access.

Nevertheless, Open Access is clearly the way where the research community is
headed, and we're going to see a steady growth in percentage of research
published as such over the next decade or so. But it does come with its own
set of problems to solve.

1: [https://thinkchecksubmit.org/](https://thinkchecksubmit.org/)

~~~
jfaucett
I'm going to be honest. IMHO publishing a paper should be like doing a PR on
github and there is no reason it shouldn't be.

You do your research, read the "PR" i.e. submission guidelines and submit it,
- sure let the committer and reviewers be anonymized until the PR has been
accepted - then just pull it into a "Repo" aka journal and be done.

How can this process cost tons of money?

~~~
philipodonnell
How would you incentivize peer review with your approach?

~~~
codelord
Do you think Springer pays for reviewing? No publisher does. It's all
voluntary work by the same people who write the papers. It's the modern day
slavery.

~~~
philipodonnell
The parent comment implied that reviewers would be anonymized with this
Github-based approach unless the PR was approved, which seems like it would
lead to more acceptances so that the reviewers could get credit.

------
aj7
What has always underpinned this flawed and collapsing business is that
successfully published works in “prestigious journals” are a form of private
property to the authors. A series of such publications can result in tenure or
lifetime job security and prestige for the author. The PRESENT VALUE of cash
flows associated with such publications is a number of million dollars in
advanced societies, and no cash investment was required on the part of the
beneficiary. And the publishing fees are paid by someone else. So the
researchers went along with the system which only began to crack due to two
factors: (1) Developing economies needed the information but couldn’t afford
it at absurd prices (2) Commercial application began to eclipse government and
defense as a research driver.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Your post lacks crucial detail. I worked in a scientific journal and am
familiar with the pipeline of article creation. Can you elaborate on who
"someone else" is that is paying the publishing fees? These are often derived
from grants authors have received. Furthermore, where is your evidence that
commercial applications have eclipsed government/defense as research drivers?
The vast majority of the studies I reviewed in the scientific journal were not
directly related to commercial applications, but were most often funded by
government organizations of one kind or another (CDC, NIH, defense, tech
innovation funds, etc. from various countries). Your comment just doesn't
square with my experience in the industry.

~~~
killjoywashere
As a government/defense researcher, there is definitely more money available
from industry sponsors. When I go to internal conferences with my bretheren,
their salary is paid for, they have interesting problems, and no money or
political will to organize basic processes, like a common infrastructure.

Meanwhile, my project, a collaboration with industry, has literally anything
we need and more.

------
fermigier
Best move would be to institutionally forbid, or disincentive somehow,
publication in non open access journals.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Look at the UK's regulations. If UK govt money goes into a research project,
it must be open access. They are, to my knowledge, the only country which uses
this policy.

~~~
toufka
That is actually true in the US as well with NIH funded research [1] (the
majority of biomedical research). HOWEVER, the research need only be opened
after a time-embargo (generally a year). Additionally larger universities like
the University of California system also 'require' open access publication [2]
- however waivers to that requirement are often sought and easily granted.

In both cases, the policies (NIH in 2009, UC system in 2013) were shots across
the bows of the large publishers, and permit a gradual easing of the culture
without just blowing it up. So long as the eventual goal of all open-access is
met in a relatively timely fashion, I think the strategy of slowly cinching
down the rule is a reasonable compromise.

[1]
[https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm](https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm)

[2] [https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-
policy/in...](https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-
policy/index.html)

------
cornholio
In related news, the academic publishing problem is still unsolved. There is
no standard model to fund the resource intensive process of peer review in the
open access journals and their role as a gatekeeper for scientific relevance,
advancement and funding.

~~~
cm2187
Do you really need peer review? Isn’t number of citations a form of peer
review? Of course you sort of need to assign a reputation to these citations.

~~~
TheCondor
You absolutely need peer review. You’d be stunned at some of the rejected
submissions

~~~
barry-cotter
Absolute crap will be roundly ignored with or without peer review. Science and
the Humanities worked fine before peer review and if it’s dropped they’ll work
fine again. If Grigori Perelman puts another paper on arxiv that’s
groundbreaking people will look at it without benefit of peer review, just
like the last one.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> Absolute crap will be roundly ignored with or without peer review.

Things might be ignored, but only after a person has already wasted their time
looking at it and determining it is crap.

It was harder for cranks to publish back when journals were purely physical
and a crank would have to come up with the printing costs himself. Now that
anyone can publish for free on the internet, peer review is even more
important for establishing what content out there is worth paying attention to
and which is not.

~~~
barry-cotter
You neglect the costs of submission, revision, resubmisssion etc. which are
borne by the authors. Even if we assume that all involved are pure of heart
and no one is deliberately delaying publication of their rivals’ work
submission to publication in economics is on the order of two years. This is
insane so the actual intellectual conversation has moved to working papers
with final publication being in a journal being as much for archival and
career progression metrics as anything else. I believe the situation in much
of computer science is similar, with conference papers serving as the
workaround for the fact that pre publication peer review is unbearably slow,
not working papers.

Peer review happens anyway, but faster, and in public, without the insanity of
revise and resubmit.

Journals are not where the action is in Economics or Computer Science. It
works for them. Why not for everybody?

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> You neglect the costs of submission, revision, resubmisssion etc. which are
> borne by the authors.

I neglect those because journals in my own field are both free to publish in
and, more often than not, open-access. I do understand that not everyone is so
fortunate, however.

~~~
barry-cotter
I’m talking about time, not money. Because those costs absolutely are borne by
the authors. Insofar as peer review hinders the free dissemination of ideas it
also hurts the scientific community and those who depend on its research.

------
jzl
No one has mentioned the heroic work of Sci-Hub yet, so here's an obligatory
link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16332139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16332139)

------
gmueckl
Meanwhile, German universities are teaming up for joint negotiations with
journal publishers. Their first target is Elsevier. My university came close
to losing access to Elsevier journals as a part of this move.

~~~
mgr86
I work at a small non-profit anthropological database. Our primary target is
academia. We can only employ a small team of developers (2) and 12-13 total
staff. About a decade ago Germany negotiated with us our only perpetual access
license for all of their universities.

Consortia memberships in the US and Canada are not uncommon either. However,
Germany possess our only perpetual license.

A lot of us desire open access, however, we are not sure how we would fund
ourselves. Our subscription rates are generally very low. Especially compared
to these large journals.

~~~
icebraining
Could you get a grant or two?

~~~
mgr86
>Could you get a grant or two? \--

Re:open-access? Perhaps. I should note that this area is not my expertise.
However, what to do when the grant runs out?

Even so most of our revenue comes from the subscription. A grant may pay for
hosting, but what about the time of the developers. Or those working on the
publication side. We are already on a near skeleton crew. Especially compared
to what we had here in the 1940-80s.

~~~
icebraining
_However, what to do when the grant runs out?_

Well, you get another. Lots of non-profits run only on grants.

Have you thought about applying for EU grants? Open Access is one of the goals
on Horizon 2020, the €80B EU program[1], but even after that there's no
shortage of EU cash being dumped on anything even barely related to
"innovation".

[1]
[https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/sites/horizon202...](https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/sites/horizon2020/files/FactSheet_Open_Access.pdf)

------
notyourday
Science: journals are too expensive! they should be cheaper!

HN: Just do it yourself! It is easy! You already do the hard part! Yay!

- _\- -_ \- -*- At the same time.

Poster: this is how you run your small db

HN: Oursource your databases! Outsource your apps! Oursource your auth!
Outsource your mail! It is difficult!

~~~
erikpukinskis
I don’t see the paradox?

~~~
notyourday
People who say outsource everything to techies are the people who tell
scientists to insource their journals.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Aren’t they saying scientists can now insource their journals because
everything but the labor they are already doing has been outsourced to
software?

------
cnees
I’ve been reading these comments because I’m always seeking ideas for how to
distribute peer review and provide signals about paper quality. How could we
leverage the Internet and a large group of authors and papers to show readers
which papers thrown online are of citable quality? Surely there’s something we
can do beyond counting page views.

~~~
berryg
I have not given this much thought or did any research. It is just an idea
that popped into my head reading this thread. Why not just replicate the open
source software model? Author opens a git repository on a github like
repository. Reviewer can comment on the content repository. Article versions
are stored and changes are stored for future reference. Even research data can
be stored in same repository. Reviewers can build up a reputation by reviewing
articles. Articles can even be forked or referenced. Articles with the most
references and reviewed by reviewers with a good reputation can thus rise to
the "top". Technically everything is in place. Or I am too much of a technical
optimist?

~~~
cnees
As a programmer, it’s hard not to wish we had git-for-publishing, git-for-
Photoshop, git-for-homework, etc. it’s just such a powerful system! I think
the steep learning curve is the reason it hasn’t already caught on beyond
where it’s absolutely essential in software engineering. Maybe that means we
need a more approachable git. It would also mean getting people onto the
platform. Maybe a platform that already has the users could gradually
introduce a version control system piece by piece.

~~~
kd0amg
FWIW, I've already got git-for-homework, git-for-academic-articles, git-for-
slide-decks, git-for-lesson-planning, and probably a few other things. I'd be
curious to see what passes for version control in fields other than
software/CS, but I don't think I've heard of any such thing in use. I don't
even hear "git is too complicated" \-- people don't seem to talk about
(anything I recognize as) version control at all.

------
lolc
Good thing when rent-seekers are countered. It doesn't happen enough.

------
dmitriz
Related discussion on the Publishing Reform Forum:
[https://gitlab.com/publishing-
reform/discussion/issues/38](https://gitlab.com/publishing-
reform/discussion/issues/38)

Please help us by expressing your opinion and public support on the forum.
There is still a lot of work needed to convince the journals' editors.

------
harunurhan
Here's an interesting and relevant project, scoap3. It tries to convert high
quality journals to open access with an interesting model.

[1] [https://scoap3.org/](https://scoap3.org/)

Disclosure: I work at the same section as scoap3 team, at CERN.

------
ddavis
Interesting that the publishers are still allowing the universities access (at
least for now) while the universities refuse the publisher's wishes.

~~~
sitkack
Because if the Universities truly leave, the publishers are screwed. This is
cycle of feudalisation or corporatization, unchecked power created an
imbalance, but that imbalance threatens the power holder because their power
is only symbiotic, not absolute.

Publishers need Universities to both _consume_ the product and _create_ the
product. If they cut them off, it will only force the inevitable.

------
ginko
Elsevier and Springer are European companies. I wonder if the EU countries
could just nationalize them.

------
haZard_OS
My hope is that the ethos of FAIR* data sharing principles spreads and
researchers finally replace the current commercial aspect of publications with
an endowment funded system.

* [https://www.monash.edu/ands/working-with-data/fairdata](https://www.monash.edu/ands/working-with-data/fairdata)

~~~
pedrocr
>replace the current commercial aspect of publications with an endowment
funded system

The research itself is funded by the tax payer. The peer review is funded by
the tax payer. What endowment funding is needed to replace whatever Springer
is actually providing?

This whole mess is solvable with a single law. Just have the EU or the US
legislate that any tax payer funded research (including research with external
grants but done by researchers in public universities) needs to be available
free of charge for download to any citizen. The whole "sector" would unravel
pretty quickly after that as it should. Charging the tax payer, through huge
contracts like this one being renegotiated in France, huge sums for access to
the very research the tax payer has already paid for to be done in the first
place is a complete travesty.

