
Crispr pioneer among University of California researchers boycotting Elsevier - r0n0j0y
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/crispr-pioneer-among-university-of-california-researchers-boycotting-elvesier-/3010833.article
======
aurizon
These people at Elsevier and their ilk are simple thugs who have leveraged
their oligopolistic power into a web of extortion and coercion. They force the
people who create their content to give them the copyright, even though they
created nothing but the bars of the jail they imprison the content therein.
Firstly, a coercice agreement is not enforceable no matter how they embellish
it with soft language. It is like a robber who asks you if you like his gun?
Look how pretty it is, and how lethal it is and how badly it could hurt anyone
shot by it, so you do not want to get in the way of any bullets do you? By the
way, I see you are carrying a heavy burden of valuables, would you let us
assist to to carry that burden - good. We will watch over the valuable and
test their ability to be spent on good works for the needy (us)

So they are simple thugs to be dealt with by police and the law by exposing
and cancelling their coercive and forced copyright assignment agreements and
placing those copyrights into a copyleft or similar position. This applies to
all prior work and all new work going forward. The cost of running this
process will be less than 1% of the monster eye breaking gougery that the
colleges now bear.

It has to come, they have to go. And recall the way they have kept the poor
contries down by denial of access - that has kept the third worlders with
first world brains, locked in an unethical cubbyhole. In the mead time, get a
few dozen seed boxes online with the last 20+ years of research data indexed
and downloadable for free or very low fees. All well hid by technical means
for anonymity. I wish I could do more, but do this much damage to those evil
thugs is already a good days work,

~~~
bitwize
Elsevier's wickedness goes beyond coercive publication contracts. They set up
a vanity journal for Merck to publish their dubious results concerning Vioxx
in. Merck basically published marketing material as scientific papers in order
to promote Vioxx, while conveniently withholding information about the drug's
dangerous side effects, and Elsevier covered for them, making these
publications look likr an independent journal.

The Vioxx debacle is one of the most blatant and straightforward examples of
"evil big pharma" in the modern era, and Merck holds most of the blame -- but
Elsevier is complicit in the deaths of people who took Vioxx also.

~~~
landonxjames
I'd never heard of this, but wow the details[0] are pretty shocking. It was so
blatant.

[0] [https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/merck-
published-f...](https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/merck-published-
fake-journal-44190)

------
refurb
I find it interesting that Elsevier gets blamed, when authors could simply
publish in alternative journals.

Why don’t they? Because their career is dependent on high impact journals
because their bosses don’t care about lesser publications.

This problem could be readily solved if they turned their anger against the
school administration for pretty much forcing authors to publish in Elsevier
journals.

~~~
impendia
> This problem could be readily solved if they turned their anger against the
> school administration

Not exactly. I'm an academic (mathematics), and I don't care much about what
my bosses think of me. From what I've observed, within my university there
don't seem to be consequences (positive or negative) for much of anything.

So who do I care about impressing then? Well, my bosses, a little. But mostly
my peers within the scientific community. They are the ones who decide whether
or not to invite me to conferences, whether to fund my grant proposals, and
whether to interview me if I decide to apply for other jobs.

The problem is pretty entrenched. Really, we are ourselves to blame.

~~~
misterdoubt
Kind of. Basically no academics care what the literal name or publisher of the
journal are. What matters is that Journal X and Y are at the top of the field,
so they attract the best papers and the best editorial staff and can pull the
best reviewers.

In theory, if everyone decided that starting January 1, 2021 all the previous
academic effort devoted to Journal X could be instead turned to Open Science
Journal Not-X, the impact on scientific endeavor would be essentially zero.

But getting everyone on board for that is a difficult task. Most faculty have
no direct involvement in the allocation of subscription fees, so they don't
really experience much cost (only that of emailing the occasional paywalled
PDF to a less-well-placed colleague). It's easier to just keep on doing what
we've been doing.

~~~
rumanator
> Basically no academics care what the literal name or publisher of the
> journal are.

This is patently false. Some universities and even governments enforce
whitelists of reference publications, and each researcher is evaluated based
on how many papers he manages to publish on them. Failing to meet quotas has a
negative impact on the researcher's evaluation and ultimately may result in
termination. Researchers may not care if a paper they read was from
GloriousJournal or ModestPublication or even arxiv, but researchers without
tenure who need to publish to avoid perishing do care. If you're starting out
and you manage to produce 1 or 2 papers a year, you'll obviously care a lot
where your work will be published

~~~
ska
I think you are talking past each other.

The real problem is network effect and collective action.

Whether it's whitelisting, "impact factor", or whatever, lots of tenure
committees will have evaluation criteria you have to meet. So in that sense
you are very correct.

What misterdoubt was saying, I think, is that nobody in the field actually
actually cares that it is Y Journal of X, what they care about is who is
publishing in it. Elsevier or whomever isn't what makes it a high impact
journal, it's the papers and researchers.

So while what you say is true, it's also true that if everyone in a field
could mostly agree to drop Y Journal of X in favor of X letters, or whatever,
it would work fine and the tenure committees wouldn't take long to catch up.
There might be a year or two of confusion, but that's it.

~~~
rumanator
> What misterdoubt was saying, I think, is that nobody in the field actually
> actually cares that it is Y Journal of X, what they care about is who is
> publishing in it.

No, you did not understood the problem. They do care _a lot_ about if it's
journal X or journal Y. They care because their job depends on it because the
journals that count are regulated into a whitelist and sometimes even into a
legal bill, which is outside of their power to change or influence, and they
do care because getting your paper into a exclusive paper is a mark of
prestige that signals whether your work is worth publishing along with other
meaningful work. It's disingenuous and even clueless to assert otherwise. This
blind and baseless assertion that journals don't count ignores fundamental and
very basic aspects of working in research, particularly how important it is to
have your work accepted into the right publication or venue. Otherwise arxiv
and blogs would suffice, don't you agree?

~~~
ska
FWIW, I understand the problem quite well.

misterdoubt was drawing a distinction between a journal, i.e. the publication
itself, and it's constituent papers & researchers. You are simply denying that
distinction, which isn't an effective refutation of their idea.

To me it seems you are being intentionally obtuse here, so I'll leave it at
that.

------
dmix
I just read that Elsevier made £2.54 billion in revenue last year. I didn’t
know academic publishing was such a lucrative business.

By comparison Penguin Random House makes €3.3 billion euros in revenue last yr
and they sell a ton of books. Simon and Schuster makes $800m/yr.

I guess annuity’s from businesses and non profits using a legacy business
model that predates technology beats selling books. No wonder they want to
protect the business.

~~~
michaelhoffman
It's amazing how much money you can make taking content provided to you for
free, getting academics to review it for free, and then charging outrageous
prices to access it.

------
raincom
As long as there are 1000 applicants for one tenure job, Elsevier will stay
around. Even 100 scientists abandon Elsevier, 10000 PhD students elsewhere
queue up to publish their papers in journals owned by Elsevier.

~~~
MegaButts
That doesn't mean that academics can't slowly tarnish their reputation until
eventually (years, decades, centuries) certain journals are no longer
relevant. Change takes time. That doesn't mean it isn't a worthwhile endeavor.

~~~
raincom
Committees should rely on the quality of published articles, rather on where
these articles are published. As long as the latter mentality persists, it
will take a long time.

------
pvaldes
If I'm understanding the idea correctly they are saying that will not review
more articles for free as peers, for Elsevier journals. There is a difference
between: "I'm boycotting your work" and "[As you bill me for everything] I
don't feel obliged to keep working for free for you"

------
bitwize
Excellent to see. Scientists are hampered by the kind of informational
gatekeeping the current journal system represents, and Elsevier is the most
predatory of the bunch -- the late 90s Microsoft of scientific publication.

Remember, you can't spell "Elsevier" without E-V-I-L.

------
xvilka
Universities should collaborate on creating (or improving existing) open peer
review and publishing platform. It can be based on MIT's PubPub[1] or created
from scratch. Adding more features like in Authorea[2] and Overleaf[3]. Since
PubPub sources are on GitHub[4], it is easy to improve today and now.
Enhancing the existing infrastructure around arXiv and bioArXiv will help too.
Today many universities trying to pursue their objectives or creating their
platforms. But the complexity of the task requires a united effort.

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

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

[3] [https://www.overleaf.com/](https://www.overleaf.com/)

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

~~~
xvilka
A few years ago, there was also an extensive discussion[1] about possible
improvements for the current publishing model and platforms. See several
follow up posts[2][3][4] too.

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

[2] [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/)

[3] [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/)

[4] [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/)

------
peterwwillis
I found this page[1] interesting as it explains some of the costs associated
with UC's use of Elsevier ( _" 5\. Is Elsevier content expensive?"_) along
with Elsevier's view of the negotiation ( _" 6\. What does California Digital
Library want, and what has Elsevier offered?"_)

[1] [https://www.elsevier.com/about/california-digital-library-
an...](https://www.elsevier.com/about/california-digital-library-and-elsevier)

------
bcheung
Why does academia still tolerate the archaic scientific publishing world when
there is the Internet?

The fact that people are still so dependent on these useless hegemonies
sickens me.

It only takes a little bit of courage and everyone else will join. Scientists
are only keeping themselves captive by playing along.

~~~
Fomite
A couple reasons:

\- Elsevier, and other commercial publishers, also publish the journals for
the societies I am a member of. Where my peers are. Where the audience is
clear.

\- "The Internet" has not exactly done a great job of coming up with a
substitute. Every time this comes up on HN, there's all kinds of comments
about academic publishing being "ripe for disruption" and yet somehow nothing
manifests itself.

\- "It only takes a little bit of courage and everyone else will join." People
have tried this, and while it ends up being an admirable principled stand,
it's mostly an affectation of secure senior academics who don't have to
scramble for funding. For the rest of us, it's not "a little bit of courage".
It's "lets detonate your career and hope some people come along."

\- The alternatives put more burden on individual academics. Preprints require
shepherding, and marketing and curation. Open access publishers put the costs
directly on a lab, which especially for new faculty, is often a fairly
substantial portion of their total funding. I can submit a paper to a PLOS
journal - or I can submit a paper to a journal that's potentially better _and_
hire an undergraduate to help with the work for a new project. Or send a
graduate student to a conference.

------
octocop
What is the reasoning for having subscriptions for journals? Does the journal
work like some sort of filtering system to weed out the bad articles and only
provide the user with good articles?

~~~
holy_city
There are a bunch of dubious journals and conferences around the world, and
researching a topic without filtering down to a handful of journals can turn
up a lot of crap.

There's been a number of times where I've been researching niche topics and
found "peer reviewed" publications where the math was incorrect, the code
examples were invalid syntax, and had results/analysis that I couldn't
recreate.

Sometimes I wonder if the authors submit to journals until they find one that
sticks.

That's not to say "good" journals don't have "bad" publications. Some have
various levels of peer review, like full text/abstract only/not reviewed at
all. Sometimes you wind up with content that deserves a tech blog post, not a
journal article. But different strokes for different folks, it's not hard to
filter out mentally once you're familiar with the literature.

~~~
yesenadam
More than a bunch! The scale of it is astonishing and depressing.

See _Inside the Fake Science Factory_

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ras_VYgA77Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ras_VYgA77Q)

------
buboard
31 is too few? Its remarkable that top scientists are among them , but i doubt
busy PIs like her review stuff regularly.

------
avocado4
Why is a European company at the center of this? I thought EU was pro open
access.

------
qwsxyh
Surely if Elsevier was so bad the magical hand of the free market would simply
have solved it by now.

~~~
aurizon
Elsevier has one hand in your pocket and the other firmly grips your b*lls..

