

Academic publishers reap huge profits as libraries go broke - benbreen
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/academic-publishers-reap-huge-profits-as-libraries-go-broke-1.3111535

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robertwalsh0
I think as time goes on we'll find that journals are able to do more and more
of the work themselves in such a way that disrupts the monopoly as we know it
today. Journals and the academic community already perform the review process
themselves (with little reward) and are finding that the "typesetting" and
"dissemination" value-adds from publishers are things that they can do on
their own as well.

On a large scale, initiatives like PLOS One
([http://www.plosone.org/](http://www.plosone.org/)) are a great example of
this. On a smaller scale, journals like Sociological Science
([http://www.sociologicalscience.com/](http://www.sociologicalscience.com/)) &
([http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/stanford-gsb-experience/news-
his...](http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/stanford-gsb-experience/news-
history/group-sociologists-launch-new-online-journal)) are also being
successful managing the entire toolchain themselves.

While things seem dire now, I'm confident they'll get better. Scholars with
status are increasingly throwing their weight behind Open Access initiatives.
Tim Gowers, that droque mentioned in this thread, is evidence of this.

Disclaimer: I co-founded a startup in the space
([http://www.scholasticahq.com](http://www.scholasticahq.com)) and
Sociological Science uses our platform for managing their peer review process.

~~~
Xophmeister
OT, but:

> droque

Not in the dictionary, Urban Dictionary, Google just tries to translate it
from French. What is a droque?

~~~
Rexxar
An user name, see also "Xophmeister"

~~~
Xophmeister
My bad: I was reading 'that' as a demonstrative, rather than a complementiser.
Thanks

------
christudor
The greatest barrier to a change in the way publishing works is the fact that
tenure still depends on publication in high-impact journals--and high-impact
journals are resolutely not Open Access.

Regardless of how difficult it would be get academics to change how they do
things[1], it's also a problem that we can't agree on an acceptable and
sustainable Open Access model.

The 'green' option sets an embargo (usually 6 months), during which time
universities (etc.) must pay to view the article. After that, however, the
journal article becomes freely available.

The 'gold' option asks academics to pay a small fee (£couple of hundred) to
have their article published--what's known as Article Processing Charges.

The problem with the 'green' option is that in disciplines like science,
medicine and technology, the first six months after publication probably
encapsulate 90% of the article's value--after which point it has been replaced
by something else--which means people would probably continue to pay for these
things anyway.

The problem with 'gold' is that (a) you start publishing stuff based on who
has the ability to pay, rather than academic merit, and (b) it would make
academic publishing the only industry in the world where the supplier is
paying the purchaser/buyer.

[1] A joke about Oxford Uni goes like this: Q. How many Oxford academics does
it take to change a lightbulb? A. Change!?

------
slashnull
> Traditionally, most journals were published by non-profit scientific
> societies. But when journals shifted from print to online digital formats,
> those societies couldn't afford the cost of the equipment needed to make the
> switch. Instead, they sold their journals to large, for-profit publishers

wait, _what_

I can't figure out how it would be possible that shifting from physical paper
to online hosting could be _more expensive_

~~~
dagw
_I can 't figure out how it would be possible that shifting from physical
paper to online hosting could be more expensive_

Developing and hosting something like JSTOR in the early to mid 90's was no
where near as cheap and easy as it might be today (and let's face it even
today it isn't completely trivial). Doubly so if you had no staff with the
relevant skills and had to do everything via consultants.

~~~
jacquesm
That it was expensive in the mid 90's is no reason for it to be expensive
today. Plenty of entities would host that data for free.

~~~
dagw
No, but it does explain why the traditional publishing societies didn't do it
themselves back in the day and instead had to rely on for-profit entities.

~~~
mgr86
Cost is half of it. The other half was very resistant. I am told that when my
office started going digital in the late 80's there was a lot of turmoil and
it split the organization. That attributed greatly to a period where we had 3
presidents for a year. Digitization won of course.

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droithomme
I find the situation quite frustrating since it's difficult to near impossible
for a lot of the public to have access to research. Public libraries don't
generally have subscriptions to the journals, nor do many community colleges.
One has to go to a state university, and that can be a long drive. In my case
it's a 2 hr drive each way, then the only parking available is by putting
quarters into one of a small number of parking meters, which are usually
taken. The university library doesn't allow the public to check out or get
cards or have online access.

Yes, I could get an alumni card at my own alma mater, for a substantial fee,
and check things out there. But then I'd have to take a plane across the
country to have access since like many people I did not stay in the town where
I went to school. Also, they also don't have parking. Oh there's free parking
on Sunday. When the library is closed, so that doesn't help much.

It's also frustrating because most times that I bring this situation up,
people will appear in comments and say I am wrong or lying and claim that
public libraries all have full journal access. It's not true. I've asked. My
public libraries, in the county I live in, and all adjacent counties, do not
have journal access. I've also called all of the colleges and know that the
state university is the nearest location where I can get access. Despite this
there's usually people that will show up and claim that's all wrong and
everyone has access. No, we don't.

Also a lot of the research tucked away was directly or indirectly supported
with public funds. In some cases there is a requirement it be openly
published, but not always. It seems unreasonable to have to support research
and then not have open access to it.

~~~
privong
It isn't a perfect solution, but the arXiv[0] has preprints of papers from a
vareity of disciplines. A similar website exists for cryptography research,
though I can't recall the name right now. Authors in many fields propagate the
copyediting from the journal versions back to their preprints and so the
preprints contain the same information as the "official" published paper.

Granted, not all fields utilize such a preprint server, but in some fields,
the public's access to research results is not as dire as your comment states.
There is, of course, still significant room for improvement, even in fields
that use preprint servers.

[0] [http://arxiv.org](http://arxiv.org)

------
droque
Tim Gowers (and several other mathematicians) called to boycott academic
publishers with The Cost of Knowledge
([http://thecostofknowledge.com/](http://thecostofknowledge.com/)), giving
largely similar reasons. It had some success if I recall correctly.

~~~
mixedmath
Along similar lines, mathematicians (including Timothy Gowers and Terry Tao)
created two free-access journals, the Forum of Mathematics Sigma [1] and Pi
[2] that seek to provide a reputable and free alternative to some of the top-
tier journals that are being boycotted. It's a bit akin to the PLoS journals
--- free and reputable.

Hopefully some reputable open journals will distinguish themselves from the
predatory journals that take advantage of unsuspecting junior researchers (or
worse, that take advantage of unsuspecting people who don't know better).

[1]:
[http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=FMs](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=FMs)
[2]:
[http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=FMP](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=FMP)

------
effie
The researchers themselves should take more action, plainly refuse to
cooperate with publishing companies and establish an independent publication
system on universities' or grant agencies' websites. Sadly, most researchers,
with exceptions, seem to not care that they contribute perpetuating this
absurd money redirection scheme that hurts the society and its benefit from
public-funded research. This is probably also because similarly to the
publishers, they are benefiting from the scheme as well - a publication with
the right journal is "the way" to make researchers' career, get higher social
status and earn more money. The most successful then end up in the editorial
boards of those journals :(

~~~
cafebeen
I think there are two challenges here. First, opting out of major publication
venues is essentially sacrificing your career (no funding/tenure). Second,
researchers simply don't have free time to start up an alternative publication
system. I think the funding agencies can do a lot more here though...

~~~
anigbrowl
OTOH, if everyone who had tenure already cooperated then they would wield
considerable power at low risk.

~~~
privong
Tenure isn't the last step of promotion for faculty. There's still full
professorships, salary increases, named professorships, the chance to advance
to administration (if so inclined). So, while tenured faculty have more job
security, there are still substantial incentives to publish in prestigious
journals.

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Pinatubo
Preston McAfee (head economist at Microsoft) and Ted Bergstrom (an economist
at UCSB) have been studying this for years:

[http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/jpricing.html](http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/jpricing.html)

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akshat_h
In our class, we have discussed repeatedly that the best way to make money
would be to start a new journal with the word "International" in it. The
problem with some open access journals is that they accept anything. Apart
from Computer Science(and physics as mentioned in the article), where most
papers can be found as open access, there isn't an alternative for
universities to buying content, even if open access were to be the new norm
from now due to large amount of historical content.

~~~
x5n1
Is this really a problem that universities or governments could not solve on
their own. Ideally an educational institution, or a syndicate of them should
run academic journals on a non-profit basis, period. They are the users of
this, they are best qualified to know how to actually keep a certain level of
quality.

That being said academia these days is full of shit anyhow. So quality of the
publications reflects the quality of the institution.

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drethemadrapper
The market is rapidly changing even though the household names in the
publishing business have changed their profit-making strategies too. They now
ask authors to pay an author's fee in order to make their articles available
to the public - Open Access. I am seeing a research platform like the
researchgate.net also impacting their profit-making mechanisms as time goes
by.

~~~
asmicom
You are right Dre!

------
Ahwe4
Most 'solutions' to this problem involve an open access revolution where
researchers put their publications online on the arXiv or similar.

This is entirely possible but it doesn't address the need for journal
subscriptions to access _pre-existing_ articles. As I understand it, unless
copyright law changes, if a researcher wants to read online a 1970s paper from
Nature, their library has to subscribe to Nature forever (approximately), even
if everything they produce from today onwards will be uploaded to github.

It seems the only time I'm ever on Springer or Wiley is to read some
conference proceedings from 1992.

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drpgq
Is there some fields where this is way more of a problem (I'm guessing
medicine)? As someone in computer vision you are often dealing with IEEE for
conferences and journals, which has never struck me as that bad, although for
a non-profit and as a member I would prefer they were a little more open. It
is nice that CVPR has been open access for a couple of years.

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aaron695
They forget to mention entire buildings worth 10s of millions are now free of
journals for other uses.

There's far less staff needed to curate the journals.

And the millions saved in time with researchers getting them on line.

Libraries are much better off. They just could be even more so.

