University of California boycotts a major journal publisher over its costs and open access

[lpetrich]

University of California boycotts publishing giant Elsevier over journal costs and open access | Science | AAAS
UC terminates subscriptions with world’s largest scientific publisher in push for open access to publicly funded research | University of California

From the university system:

As a leader in the global movement toward open access to publicly funded research, the University of California is taking a firm stand by deciding not to renew its subscriptions with Elsevier. Despite months of contract negotiations, Elsevier was unwilling to meet UC’s key goal: securing universal open access to UC research while containing the rapidly escalating costs associated with for-profit journals.

In negotiating with Elsevier, UC aimed to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery by ensuring that research produced by UC’s 10 campuses — which accounts for nearly 10 percent of all U.S. publishing output — would be immediately available to the world, without cost to the reader. Under Elsevier’s proposed terms, the publisher would have charged UC authors large publishing fees on top of the university’s multi-million dollar subscription, resulting in much greater cost to the university and much higher profits for Elsevier.

From Science magazine:

Indeed, UC’s move could ratchet up pressure on additional negotiations facing Elsevier and other commercial publishers; consortia of universities and labs in Germany and Sweden had already reached an impasse last year with Elsevier in their efforts to lower subscription fees.

UC and Elsevier blamed each other for the breakdown. ...

Elsevier is hoping to keep negotiating. ...

UC published about 50,000 articles last year, and a substantial share, about 10,000, appeared in Elsevier journals. For subscriptions and article fees, UC paid about $11 million, the Los Angeles Times reported recently. (UC says the information is confidential under a nondisclosure agreement.)

Seems like more and more scientific publishing will move to an open-access model. That started in 1991 with the founding of the LANL Preprints Archive Internet site, now arXiv.org ("archive"). It now has imitators like biorxiv.org and psyrchiv.com, and also some open-access journals like PLOS ONE in addition to traditional, now paywalled, journals. Some traditional journals now offer open-access publishing as an option.

An interesting question is what will happen to the back catalogs of traditional journals. Will they eventually be opened up?

 

[Peez]

Given how little of the cost of producing these journals is born by Elsevier, it is hard to justify their demands. Traditionally, peer-reviews journals needed money to actually print the journals, and this was the best way to disseminate information. The reality is different now.

Peez

 

[untermensche]

Elsevier is a parasite of the university system.

They see the university system charging more and more for it's product.

That is where the demands come from.

 

[lpetrich]

The oldest surviving scientific journal is  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, founded in 1665. "Philosophical"? Science was originally called natural philosophy and did not receive its present name until the 19th cy.  Scholarly peer review goes back to the 18th cy., and it became very common in the mid 20th cy. It is a form of quality control, and it has been fairly successful.

For mainstream scientists, it is a sign of credibility that one's work has been published in some mainstream scientific jounral, peer review and all.

That may be why many scientists have been unwilling to move away from existing journals -- they have credibility, and new ones will have to prove themselves as selectors of quality work.

 

[fromderinside]

Publications are respected because the community appreciates good editing and review policies. That means sustaining selection of significant advances in fields of publication well supplied with editors and review committees attuned to the state of art in those fields. It is not the publisher that makes the publication.

Editors and reviewers are in privileged positions having access and influence on the quality of study conducted. They should consider their selection as meaningful without need for additional large remunerations.

Those who want to withdraw their journals from control of Elsevier need only move particular journals to other publishers more willing to go with the notion of open access. It should cost more to publish when articles are more or less lending library material since publishing does cost money and page costs aren't nearly high enough right now to keep publishers afloat.

My main recommendation is that government provide most of the publication costs for maintaining the reputations of their scientists and scholars.

I actually felt MDC was more enlightened about the worth of publishing than are many universities. Although it was difficult to publish what was supported for publication provided returns for both MDC and the authors. The same can be said for those who were selected to be journal editors and members of review boards. Universities tend to require professors to grovel their way onto such positions without very much support beyond the few journals for which the control publication. Too much of a me first thinking.

I don't buy in to the notion that if you aren't supported by some prestigious university or journal legacy you are doomed for to be considered small potatoes. In may areas of research the journal Psychonomic Science was pretty much considered a shit journal back in the seventies. Now it has a fairly high ranking among Journals in my field. That came about mainly by aggressive recruiting of talented editors and review panels and very consistent policy about how and what was considered good science.

 

[untermensche]

All scientific work should be free to the public.

These scummy middle men who hoard knowledge for a buck should be eliminated.

 

[Gun Nut]

All scientific work should be free to the public.

Socialism doesn't work.

You are a pharmaceutical research company trying to cure cancer. It costs 11 million dollars per year to cover costs. Your product cannot be sold to the public, but instead must be provided for free (but the cancer cure that uses your research is sold for billions of dollars per year). How long are you staying in business? Still trying to cure cancer?

You basically are saying that you don't believe in patents.

 

[untermensche]

All scientific work should be free to the public.

Socialism doesn't work.

You are a pharmaceutical research company trying to cure cancer. It costs 11 million dollars per year to cover costs. Your product cannot be sold to the public, but instead must be provided for free (but the cancer cure that uses your research is sold for billions of dollars per year). How long are you staying in business? Still trying to cure cancer?

You basically are saying that you don't believe in patents.

Elsevier is not selling drug patent seeking research.

And once the patent is granted the research that led to it should be available to anyone.

 

[Gun Nut]

All scientific work should be free to the public.

Socialism doesn't work.

You are a pharmaceutical research company trying to cure cancer. It costs 11 million dollars per year to cover costs. Your product cannot be sold to the public, but instead must be provided for free (but the cancer cure that uses your research is sold for billions of dollars per year). How long are you staying in business? Still trying to cure cancer?

You basically are saying that you don't believe in patents.

Elsevier is not selling drug patent seeking research.

And once the patent is granted the research that led to it should be available to anyone.

Maybe.. I guess... Also, if the research is "public" I assume that means my tax dollars were spent on it... therefore it belongs to me too... It's not 'free'... I already paid for my share of it.

 

[lpetrich]

Socialism doesn't work.

Define "socialism".

 

[Politesse]

Burn baby burn. Elsevier are and always were leeches, even relative to other large publishers, and profoundly anti-scientific in their prerogatives.

 

[Politesse]

All scientific work should be free to the public.

Socialism doesn't work.

You are a pharmaceutical research company trying to cure cancer. It costs 11 million dollars per year to cover costs. Your product cannot be sold to the public, but instead must be provided for free (but the cancer cure that uses your research is sold for billions of dollars per year). How long are you staying in business? Still trying to cure cancer?

You basically are saying that you don't believe in patents.

You can't patent an article, so what are you even talking about? Elsevier sells shelf space, not drugs.

 

[Gun Nut]

All scientific work should be free to the public.

Socialism doesn't work.

You are a pharmaceutical research company trying to cure cancer. It costs 11 million dollars per year to cover costs. Your product cannot be sold to the public, but instead must be provided for free (but the cancer cure that uses your research is sold for billions of dollars per year). How long are you staying in business? Still trying to cure cancer?

You basically are saying that you don't believe in patents.

You can't patent an article, so what are you even talking about? Elsevier sells shelf space, not drugs.

I responded to what I quoted... and an article gets a copyright, not a patent... but the concept is the same. You know what plagiarism is, right?

 

[Gun Nut]

Socialism doesn't work.

Define "socialism".

"The government doing stuff".

but seriously... maybe communism would have been a better term to use in reference to people not owning their own work product.

 

[ronburgundy]

All scientific work should be free to the public.

Socialism doesn't work.

"Socialism" has led to most of the progress in basic science in the last century.

Basic science, by definition, is not geared toward solving specific application needs and thus has no inherent monetizable value or profit.
It "merely" creates the general knowledge base upon which all future possible applications will draw.

That is why most basic science only happens because of public funding or philanthropic donations by people unconcerned with patents, property rights, and profits (which is just a form of rich people redistributing their personal wealth to the general public).

Scientific progress happens much faster and with fewer dead ends, false positives, and frauds, when the knowledge gleaned from research is openly shared.

Pay for access journals do nothing to protect the intellectual property of researchers, b/c almost all other researchers have access via their employer and institutions. All it does is prevent the general public from accessing that knowledge, which generally means that the public is robbed of the knowledge that their tax dollars paid to produce. That is bad for public support for science and therefore bad for the basic research that depends upon it.

 

[lpetrich]

but seriously... maybe communism would have been a better term to use in reference to people not owning their own work product.

Owning the fruits of one's labor? That's a Marxist ideal. Marxist class analyses identify maker classes and taker classes, with the takers living off of the labors of the makers. In particular, capitalist leaders are takers and ordinary workers are makers. The Right also believers in maker vs. taker class analyses, but with different identifications of makers and takers. In particular, Ayn Rand believed that business leaders are the makers and everybody else the takers.

I was talking about research that is published in journals, not research that is a trade secret or that is patented. Those are different issues.

As to published research, there is the problem of financing the archiving and distribution of it. It exists for electronic distribution as well as for print distribution. Instead of receiving royalties from sales of copies of journals, article writers have to pay the journal publishers to publish their work. So the scientific community gets a double whammy from the journal publishers, having to pay for publication, then having to pay for access.

 

[fromderinside]

So the scientific community gets a double whammy from the journal publishers, having to pay for publication, then having to pay for access.

So you cut a circle in half. It's a circle. Researchers are paid following several strategies.

Some reward for good research results in industry.

Some reward for getting outcome from a grant in academia and industry

On the notion that the net result of research is positive outcomes the money required to disseminate results should also be positive, yet less than what is gained else the net positive isn't.

 

[J842P]

Elsevier is not selling drug patent seeking research.

And once the patent is granted the research that led to it should be available to anyone.

Maybe.. I guess... Also, if the research is "public" I assume that means my tax dollars were spent on it... therefore it belongs to me too... It's not 'free'... I already paid for my share of it.

I think you clearly have no idea what the fuck you are blathering about.