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Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

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Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#41

Post by devoply »

nacc wrote: post #39

I always wonder why some disciplines are more open than others [0]. As someone in biology: the state of publication is very sad. We have to pay thousands to _submit_ a manuscript, and then: - get rejected right away, or - the manuscript gets distributed to fellow scientists (who reviews for free). The reviews get collected and manuscript rejected, or - we get a chance to address the reviewer's concern, resubmit and g…

The whole publication industry seems like a conspiracy that's hiding in plain sight for anyone to see. Yet it seems to be difficult to get rid of... and yet no one quite knows why.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#42

Post by sedachv »

socmag wrote: post #33
socmag wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being published by Elsevier has some "cachet". Maybe they capitalize on that, I'm not sure. Although I had the possibility of publishing with them I turned it down, only because at the time I was way too busy and already had a deal running with Charles River. But mostly because... way too busy. I guess it depends what you want from a book deal. Any book deals I have been approached for have never been for financial g…

Just to go on, the distribution of Elsevier and Taschen is pretty damn esoteric. I have never had a problem spending money on educational material that was way beyond what you can find in public libraries (Internet these days). Not really been following print for a while. I'd like to think they still maintain that standard despite current trends. Sad if that is not the case.

> I have never had a problem spending money on educational material that was way beyond what you can find in public libraries (Internet these days).

Cool story, rich bro. Taschen and Elsevier are actually very good publishers to compare, not because they are "esoteric," but because both many scientists and many artists benefit from public grants. Taschen does not actively work to keep work it publishes from public libraries. If Taschen acted like Elsevier, for example they would be suing photographers for having exhibitions featuring reprinted photographs in public museums.

This is all of course besides the fact that limiting access to scientific knowledge for the purposes of rent-seeking is morally wrong and IMO should be criminal.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#44

Post by alkonaut »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #24

The scientific publishing industry makes no sense to me. It wouldn't take much for a few universities to get together to set up the required infrastructure for sustaining the entire enterprise online with on-demand printing as a last resort. Why they don't do this is the part that makes no sense to me. What is the value that Elsevier is adding to have the de-facto monopoly on the entire enterprise of scientific publi…

That seems so obvious that I have always assumed that the feedback loop is from the likes of Elsevier and back into the pockets of the top brass of the universities. How could Elsevier otherwise keep everyone hostage?

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#45

Post by alkonaut »

advisedwang wrote: post #19
lordnacho wrote: post #11

What exactly is preventing someone from doing a big switch? Pure coordination problem? Are there a lot of academics who would be against moving over?

This essentially happend in the linguistics field. The Elsevier journal "Lingua" has been abandoned in favour of Glossa. However it took the Lingua editorial board resigning en masse to really make this happen. Even after this, Lingua is still going fairly strong. Completely dropping a journal requires some researchers to go against their own interest (publishing in a worse journal or not at all). https://www.wired.c…

Universities should just collaborate by banning their researchers from publishing to unserious journals and conferences. Problem solved and researchers no longer face a difficult dilemma.

If universities (and on a higher level, governments funding universities) demanded that all research be publicly accessible, that would surely also hurt Elsevier et.al.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#46

Post by rspeer »

devoply wrote: post #41
nacc wrote: post #39

I always wonder why some disciplines are more open than others [0]. As someone in biology: the state of publication is very sad. We have to pay thousands to _submit_ a manuscript, and then: - get rejected right away, or - the manuscript gets distributed to fellow scientists (who reviews for free). The reviews get collected and manuscript rejected, or - we get a chance to address the reviewer's concern, resubmit and g…

The whole publication industry seems like a conspiracy that's hiding in plain sight for anyone to see. Yet it seems to be difficult to get rid of... and yet no one quite knows why.

It's hard to get rid of the conspiracy because you have to become them to fight them.

The journals promote a self-fulfilling number called an "impact factor". The people who boycott the gatekeeping publishers end up with publications with a lower impact factor, so they don't get as far in academia, so they will never end up on tenure review boards, and never get to suggest better criteria for evaluating scientists than their "impact factor".

However, in some fields, people are quietly resisting the publishers by disobeying them, posting their own paywalled papers on arXiV or their personal web sites. I have never heard of a publisher suing a scientist over this. Strength in numbers.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#47

Post by rspeer »

bumblebeard wrote: post #35
grigjd3 wrote: post #20

While I very much abhor the practices of Elsevier, one has to be really careful how one acts to push back. Even without getting into the result that not interacting with Elsevier has on careers in the biomedical sciences, it's easy to fall into traps with other publishing firms. For instance, PlosOne is a pay-to-publish "alternative". However, the motivations here are backwards. PlosOne makes money for each accepted…

> Even without getting into the result that not interacting with Elsevier has on careers in the biomedical sciences... The author of the article addresses this concern in the "What you can do" section. He says he's noticed no ill effects from avoiding Elsevier journals and that most people are likely to have the same experience. As for PLOS ONE's business model, it's possible that it sets up some perverse incentives,…

What are the other choices? PLOS ONE is the only open-access journal I know of that has a good reputation, isn't limited to a narrow field, and isn't just a trash-heap of unpublishable nonsense.

This reputation, at least, is an incentive for them to do good peer review.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#49

Post by vacri »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #24

The scientific publishing industry makes no sense to me. It wouldn't take much for a few universities to get together to set up the required infrastructure for sustaining the entire enterprise online with on-demand printing as a last resort. Why they don't do this is the part that makes no sense to me. What is the value that Elsevier is adding to have the de-facto monopoly on the entire enterprise of scientific publi…

> It wouldn't take much for a few universities to get together to set up the required infrastructure for sustaining the entire enterprise online

O_o

It's a bit more complex than "let's just share everyone's articles out of Bob's google docs account" - from technical details to user workflows to reputation/trust to administrative politics to scientific politics to sourcing verification/reviews to a hundred more things I can't think of off the top of my head, doing such a thing is a massive undertaking and requires buy-in from a lot of people.

Re: Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier

#50

Post by socmag »

socmag wrote: post #10
IshKebab wrote: post #2

Without reading the article, I presume his reason is that they are as close to pure evil as a scientific publishing company can get.

That said, Elsevier really do take some risks to publish rather good publications. I've met with them in the past and they are very keen on technical authors. That was eight years ago, maybe things have changed but they still represent a certain quality in my mind. Them with Addison Wesley in the early 90's. Sorry to hear there are some issues though. Hopefully they will read the thread and make any necessary adjustm…

Seriously why all the down votes.

I'm saying this is a prestigious publication company with very low distribution.

What would you do if your revenue didn't meet your principles?

Maybe a Kickstarter?

I'm pretty sure these guys are doing what they can.

Why don't you ask them?

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