
Elsevier’s profits swell to more than £900M - pulisse
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/elseviers-profits-swell-more-ps900-million
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AtomicOrbital
All publicly funded research should be freely available to the public ... its
sad academics have allowed themselves to become enslaved by parasitic
publishers ... academics must launch a full court massive grassroots revolt
away from publishing their research at such journals ... a short term period
of chaos during the transition period over to open journals is a small price
to pay for such freedom

~~~
lewis500
Scholars can often make their work free via pre-print. The issue is that the
published version isn't free, and the pre-print is hard to find and often not
as nice looking.

I made a github repo of my last paper published in an Elsevier journal. This
was cool because I could put the latex and simulation code for others to copy.
[https://github.com/lewis500/distribution-of-trip-
lengths](https://github.com/lewis500/distribution-of-trip-lengths)

The final version differs a little bit because they had a copy-editor go
through and make some good improvements, even after the referees made their
comments. Interestingly, the journal was fine with my linking to the repo
within the text of the paper, as a way to share the code.

There is nothing like real open access though. This journal has wonderful
typesetting and such and is totally free:
[https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/835/860](https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/835/860)

It's funny what tricks they use to justify their existence. Always emailing me
about bizarre author features no one will use. Makes me sad to think of the
engineers sitting in a big room year-on-year polishing features no one will
use.

~~~
AndrewGYork
In the same spirit, our lab is experimenting with a new approach to scientific
publishing via Github:
[https://twitter.com/AndrewGYork/status/965765089373515776](https://twitter.com/AndrewGYork/status/965765089373515776)

No paywall, no delay, straight to the web. Open data, open code,
interactive/animated figures. Transparent, rolling peer review, version
control, CC-BY license, citable DOIs. I was worried no one would read it, but
it turns out science twitter is awesome. Very positive experience, so far.

~~~
greeneggs
That's good, but it is not a substitute for preprint servers. In particular,
preprint servers are archival and more discoverable.

~~~
AndrewGYork
Sounds like we're pulling in the same direction re:improving scientific
publishing. At the risk of debating an ally, do you mean to imply that
preprint servers are "more archival"? I'm guessing you're familiar with
CERN/Zenodo; you trust bioArxiv's continued existence more than CERN's? I rate
them as similar, arguably with an edge to CERN.

My experience with publishing is that discoverability is a stronger function
of advertising and (especially) getting cited than the publication venue. I do
agree that bioarxiv and arxiv are nice advertising venues, but there are lots
of ways to skin that cat.

~~~
greeneggs
I'm actually only familiar with the arXiv, for physics and computer science
research. I don't know much about biorxiv or Zenodo, but they both seem much
better than a personal website or github page.

The arXiv has overlay sites, such as [http://www.arxiv-
sanity.com/](http://www.arxiv-sanity.com/) or
[https://scirate.com/](https://scirate.com/) , that improve discoverability
over the basic arXiv interface; for example, you can browse all the papers in
a given area posted in the last two months, sorted by some proxy for
"interest." Of course there is also Google Scholar, and perhaps there are
better ways.

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choco_leonidas
Sometimes it can be intimidating to see the resources and lobbying power that
these behemoths have. They have a vested interest in keeping the status quo.

At the same time I'm inspired by projects like Discrete Analysis
([http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/](http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/))
and Fermat's Library
([https://fermatslibrary.com/](https://fermatslibrary.com/)) - there are
actually a lot of smart, well intentioned folks pushing for a move towards
more openness and collaboration in science and research.

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candiodari
News like this, despite more than a decade of regulatory and protests against
their locking up of scientific knowledge, really gives one faith in our
collective ability to influence policy. Apparently that doesn't even work on
the very local level.

Really gives one faith in what will happen with things like global warming
policy, or economic cooperation.

~~~
tischler
It is basically the prisoner's dilemma. The free publication platforms do not
yet have prestige because few prestigious researchers publish there; but only
few prestigious researchers publish on free publication platforms because they
are not prestigious enough.

The only way to overcome a prisoner's dilemma is education and trust.

~~~
make3
I'm computer science, everyone is publishing on arxiv.org . why can't other
fields?

~~~
flor1s
arxiv is great, but for getting your PhD and a future career in academia,
publishing there doesn't count nearly as much as publishing in peer reviewed
journals does.

~~~
make3
I mean, in combination with conferences, not just there, obv

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truculation
It's pretty weird that 25 years into the internet age we have students paying
through the nose to attend university and universities paying through the nose
to subscribe to publications.

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ocschwar
As part of my work, I've had t o read (and implement in code) papers from
Elsevier journals.

The authors included Chinese, Turkish and Slavic people. And I didn't even
have to look at their 35 dollars for a paper when they don;t even have the
decency to help authors with some English copy editing.

~~~
ocschwar
Dammit, the browser mangled my comment.

Fixing:

The authors included Chinese, Turkish and Slavic people. Not all of them could
write well in English. And I didn't even have to look at their names to guess
nationality, because they would have English grammar mistakes that would make
it clear what their native language was.

I really resent paying 35 dollars for a PDF from a company that can't even do
some copy editing to help such authors. Elsevier has no respect for the
researchers or their readers.

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amelius
By the way, anyone still able to access scihub?

~~~
jonnybgood
You can always find the working links on Wikipedia.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub)

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IntronExon
Next to Equifax, and Wells Fargo, this is the company I’d most like to see
metaphorically burned to the ground. Wells Fargo at least provides a service,
albeit corruptly, but Equifax and Elsevier are just holes in the ground that
eat money.

Edit: What does it mean that my comment is automatically collapsed?

~~~
paulie_a
In the case of wells Fargo it wasn't just corruption but outright fraud.
Hundreds of people should have been brought up on criminal charges for the
last of their many scandals

~~~
IntronExon
That’s a good point, of course in the last decade the DoJ is all about _not_
prosecuting, and just collecting fines. Sad state of affairs which must
change.

