
Elsevier – My part in its downfall (2012) - LolWolf
https://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-its-downfall/
======
philjohn
I experienced the other side of this, as someone working for a library
technology company. Getting licenses to index just the metadata of non-open
access journals can be extremely costly, even when the journal publishers
derive a net benefit from the arrangement (if discovery software surfaces a
result from your journal, and the academic clicks through, the library link
resolver records it and the figures are used to justify a continued
subscription).

It's a massive racket, the source material (academic papers) are free, the
editorial staff are not paid, e-journals have obviated the need for printing
and distributing paper copies ... Elsevier and their ilk are a parasite,
feeding on the spoils of academic research that is often publicly funded.

But then, in a "publish or die" mentality that researchers are forced into,
publishing in journals with higher impact ratings help them keep their job;
unless every single researcher agrees to stop publishing in the paid-for
journals and move en-masse to open access this sorry situation will continue
unabated.

~~~
gcr
(edits for structure. disclaimer: these views are my own, not my employers' or
the communities' or publishers')

Publishers do provide a necessary service: financial support for meetings. One
significant problem with "Open Access Everywhere!" is that many conferences
are a huge financial net loss even after the registration fees, so they need
the publisher's financial support to actually hold a meeting. In this way,
most of the smaller conferences that publishers support are subsidized by the
heavy hitters. It would be a shame for those smaller meetings to disappear.

It's easier for top tier conferences to choose how to publish. For example, in
computer vision, CVPR and ICCV (two top-tier conferences in the field) are
currently co-sponsored by IEEE (the publisher) _and_ the Computer Vision
Foundation, which is run by well-respected members of the computer vision
community. As part of this arrangement, papers from these conferences appear
in IEEE Xplore as well as the CVF's open access website, free for everyone:
[http://www.cv-foundation.org/openaccess/menu.py](http://www.cv-
foundation.org/openaccess/menu.py) Of course, only a very small number of
heavy-hitting conferences can afford the kind of leverage that CVPR and ICCV
needed to pull this arrangement off. In their unique situation, everyone
(publishers and academics) benefit from the arrangement. That's not usually
the case.

In an open-access-only "Ditch the Publishers!" world, it's unclear how we can
continue to support smaller conferences. Not every field has big industry
players that can sponsor the meeting, and not many students or advisors have
enough grant money to afford increased registration fees.

~~~
foota
But the academics pay the publishers, who then oh so generously put on these
conferences. If they didn't pay the publishers in the first place there would
be more money for attending conferences. That's eerily similar to a protection
racket or something.

~~~
gcr
Should conferences raise registration fees in such a system?

Most students already can't attend conferences on their own because
registration is so expensive. Making it even more so would prevent the
students that could benefit the most form attending.

~~~
foota
(I should know, I'm a student) One would like to think that there would then
be more scholarship funds available to students interested in attending. Many
conferences I'm aware of also offer reduced registration fees to students. In
my experience the travel expenses tend to be the greater portion for students
attending.

------
abdullahkhalids
A better bottom-up strategy is one based on assurance contracts. Some
scientists might not be willing to immediately part with Elsevier because of
other constraints. But they can publicly declare a promise: if scientists
X,Y,Z (perhaps their direct competitors, or the editorial board of a journal)
promise to not work with Elsevier, neither will I. Scientists X,Y,Z might then
have their own promises. If these promises are recorded publicly, that can
start a growing movement where today no one has to do anything, but in a few
months or years a lot of people have no disincentive not to work with
Elsevier.

~~~
amelius
Great idea. But then Elsevier might refuse to work with people who have such
contracts.

~~~
jonathankoren
I don't think Elsevier has editorial control over the journals.

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seanhunter
Tim Gowers is an amazing mathematician and a person of great integrity, but
this is not exactly news given that the boycott has gone on for so long now
(see the date on the article). More recently, in March 2016 he founded a new
ultra-low-cost journal (Discrete Analysis) which publishes all articles on
arXiv. [https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/discrete-analysis-
la...](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/discrete-analysis-launched/)

------
infinite8s
Note - this from 2012. An update is published here -
[https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/interesting-times-
in...](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/interesting-times-in-academic-
publishing/)

------
freyr
He mentions that the editorial board of _Topology_ resigned to found _Journal
of Topology_. This is counted as a success story, but when I try to read a
paper there I get this message:

"You may access this article for 1 day for US$40.00."

Great deal.

------
freyr
It's tough because academic disciplines are so provincial; each has its own
short list of (typically closed) journals that garner respect.

To get people to switch to an upstart open access journal takes momentum out
of the gate. You need to convince qualified volunteers to do peer review for a
journal they've never heard of and that might vanish tomorrow. You need to
convince influential insiders to submit quality papers. And you need to repeat
this process for each insular sub-discipline.

~~~
sitkack
i like the idea of papers getting stored and cataloged in arxiv. the new-
journals can reference the paper on arxiv. I don't have the links handy but
there was a recent Overlay Journal that did just that.

one could make their own journal from a git repo or subreddit. they are just
lists

~~~
freyr
I like that idea too, but my point's that this isn't a technical problem. It's
a social problem. It's the problem of convincing a critical mass of
influential people to simultaneously put their reputation on the line for a
new e-journal that nobody's ever heard of.

~~~
sitkack
I understand, and agree with you. Almost no problems in the world are
technical. We have everything we need, right here, right now.

The academics that already have tenure need to be the ones leading the charge.
The niche and "low quality" journals all need to go overlay+openaccess. While
Elsevier and Springer are pointed as these rent seeking machines, even the ACM
and IEEE have a pretty tight noose on the flow of information.

Maybe it is as easy as a federal law that states, if federal money ever comes
within 3 meters of your research, the researcher cannot assign copyright to
another entity.

------
return0
Its amazing that our phones say it's 2016, we have a database about literally
every episode of every popular TV series, yet we _can not_ have a database of
scientific findings, measurements and methods that everyone can search,
download, analyze, use it to train models, even though taxpayers paid for it.
We have in part sacrificed the disemmination of knowledge to the egos of
scientists. I think it's shameful.

~~~
johncolanduoni
> the structure of the job market for academic scientists

Fixed that for you. Few scientists are anti-open access, especially for
reasons of ego. In physics and mathematics, for example, virtually all papers
are published on arxiv unless a particular journal forces them not to. It
instead has to do with publishing in high impact journals as well being
required for (a) people to read your paper, as their peer review processes are
a first filter to separate the wheat from the chaff and (b) because they
generally keep their jobs by virtue of such publications.

Unless you're a rockstar in your field, nobody is going to read your paper if
all you did was put it on arxiv, and as a result it won't be taken as evidence
you should keep your job. This isn't the scientists fault, it's just a relic
of a time when the publishers of journals _did_ provide a worthwhile service.

There are some fields where people tend to be greedy about hiding their
research before its done lest anybody steal it, but this seems to me to be an
acceptable level of "ego". Would you object to an open source developer
wanting his authorship to remain clear in any derivative works of his code?

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jpatokal
This is from 2012, and his then idea of a website listing academics who
publicly boycott Elsevier was long ago implemented here:
[http://thecostofknowledge.com/](http://thecostofknowledge.com/)

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murphysbooks
The US Government is trying to address access to publicly funded research by
requiring that most government agencies have open access plans.

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=public+access+plan&ia=web](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=public+access+plan&ia=web)

This was started government-wide from a memo by John Holdren.

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/os...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf)

Each agency comes up with their own plan, but they have to make access to the
research possible without charge.

Many agencies provide access to submitted manuscripts.

Another good avenue to address access would be to get states to adopt similar
policies based on research by state employees.

It is often easier to get states to pass laws than it is to deal at the
federal level.

Is anyone interested in writing up some legislation?

~~~
paulsutter
From Holdren's memo:

> Specifically, each agency: i) shall use a twelve-month post-publication
> embargo period as a guideline for making research papers publicly available

Twelve month? Seems Europe is heading in a better direction:

[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/dramatic-statement-
eu...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/dramatic-statement-european-
leaders-call-immediate-open-access-all-scientific-papers)

------
mavhc
From 2012

~~~
gonvaled
And Elsevier is still going strong, and annoying people. It seems that
piracy[1] is the only way to bring them down.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11177957](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11177957)

~~~
Dolores12
piracy is an act of breaking copyright by copying one's work. who is copyright
holder of scientific papers? definitely, not Elsevier.

~~~
dalke
Yes, Elsevier definitely _is_ the copyright holder to most of the non-open-
access papers it controls.

Elsevier, like most other no-OA journals, requires a copyright transfer.
Quoting [https://www.elsevier.com/about/company-
information/policies/...](https://www.elsevier.com/about/company-
information/policies/copyright) :

> In order for Elsevier to publish and disseminate research articles, we need
> publishing rights. This is determined by a publishing agreement between the
> author and Elsevier. ...

> For subscription articles: _Authors transfer copyright to the publisher_ as
> part of a journal publishing agreement, but have the right to: ...

(There are some exceptions. Obviously Elsevier does not control the copyright
to materials which are not covered under copyright, like papers produced by
employees of the US government as part of their job.)

------
1_listerine_pls
I won't eat at McDonald's.

------
T0T0R0
It's funny, the whole complaint about the tactic of bundling.

This is something that punk and hard core music has done, pretty much since
the beginning. Most punk rock discographies are filled with repetitive
overlaps of the same songs, and re-recorded versions, or versions of songs
performed at live shows.

For a while, I had just assumed it was part of the whole small budget, DIY,
low fidelity aspect of the genre. Bands might have tracks on EP's and 7
inches, that go out of print and become rarites, or the band might just be
disorganized, or have extra space on a disc, and pile in a few more tracks,
because what the hell?

But after a while, collections become bloated with all kinds of pointless
cruft, and you look through some catalogs, and it's pretty obvious that some
bands would just get desperate to make sure they have something in the new
releases section every six months, to stay visible, and they'd obviously
record one new track, bundle it with four or five other tracks, and dump it
into their catalog to indicate signs of life.

It's not unlike like baseball cards, where doubles are a known factor, and
concentrations of rare desirable items are controlled and designed, to fuel
collector's habits.

I guess the difference with scientific journals is that the fanbase doesn't
have the same sort of emotional investment in their collectables.

~~~
abdullahkhalids
A particular band's music [1] is not a public good paid for largely out of
taxpayer money. Private enterprise can do whatever it wants to do, as long as
it is not actively hurting anyone else.

[1] Music as a whole is a public good, but any one band forced out of business
does little to diminish this public good.

~~~
Nullabillity
> A particular band's music [1] is not a public good paid for largely out of
> taxpayer money.

Actually, many countries _do_ actually partially compensate bands through
taxes, which makes the whole thing even more messed up. See the various blank
media taxes, or even government-run record labels (such as BD Pop).

