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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

#71

Post by taneq »

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.

I forget the exact wording of the quote I want, but it was something along the lines of "It is almost impossible to get someone to notice something if their continued employment depends on them not noticing it."

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

#72

Post by matheusmoreira »

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…

I keep wondering why submitting papers to these journals is necessary. Does the research not stand on its own?

> I feel in those disciplines researchers are a big happy family

I feel the same way. ArXiv accepts submissions from any registered researcher¹ and it seems so much easier.

¹ https://arxiv.org/help/submit

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

#73

Post by VodkaHaze »

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…

Holy crap this is depressing. I'm happy that the state of the art in economics, currently, is to post working papers and preprints online.

This has the side effects of papers being cited before being published, and turning out to be bad, but is certainly a huge net positive overall.

It's rare to not be able to find a free pdf preprint of an economics paper written in the last 6-7 years, which is great.

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

#74

Post by winter_blue »

taneq wrote: post #71
devoply wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I forget the exact wording of the quote I want, but it was something along the lines of "It is almost impossible to get someone to notice something if their continued employment depends on them not noticing it."

> if their continued employment depends on them not noticing it

A lot of these reviewers review for these journals for free, maybe because being known as a reviewer for a prestigious journal is beneficial.

But their livelihood certainly doesn't depend on it. A lot of these major journals pocket all the profits from paywalls, and don't pay the scientists who do the hard work reviewing a dime.

If there were a collective revolt, and all these scientists switched en masse to an open publishing system/platform, this scam would end then and there.

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

#75

Post by Retra »

socmag wrote: post #50
socmag wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Instead of charging for access, they could be charging for promotion. You could be paying them to review & analyze your work and essentially supplement it with materials that aid in understanding and sharing (and thus expand your work's ability to help and influence people.) They should be help, not adversaries. They could offer publication tools by subscription and knowledgeable advisers.

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

#76

Post by socmag »

pmyteh wrote: post #69
KingMob wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they have the cachet of "reasonable competence", but what has cachet are the journals themselves. Books are way less relevant than papers, and their publishers are even less relevant. E.g., nobody cares who publishes Science or Nature.

That depends a lot on the field. At the more philosophical end of my discipline (politics) a good book published by a first-or-second-tier publisher (one of the major university presses, plus the best of the commercial publishers) is a major career progression requirement. In my part (quantitative, mainly methodology) it's all done in journals and monographs are rare. It really does depend.

I get that in academia there is a standard publication path for thought and insight in the form of scientific papers.

It's a cool thing.

Scientific papers are not everyone's cup of tea though, and somewhat inaccessible (to publish for) for older people or those outside of academia.

Surely there is a middle ground between "JavaScript for Dummies", "Studies in Global Illumination" and "Computation on the modular hypersphere"

Actually, I'll be frank. Academic papers are designed to be inaccessible. Not all, but the majority. I've read plenty in Comp.Sci, and all I can say is that going out of their way to be obtuse seems like more than a fascination. I think it is called "Job Security"

Heck for the longest time, academic papers were behind paywalls that were WAY more inaccessible than Elsevier.

So there is that.

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

#77

Post by 08-15 »

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…

Don't review for free.

Seriously. Every time you review for a journal and don't ask for a reasonable (say, $150/h) fee, you are enabling their predatory practices. Stop doing it.

Come to think about it, why not copy their pricing scheme? Sure, I'll review for this particular journal for $3000/h---or I agree to review for any of your journals, for a flat rate of $3000/week, even if there is nothing interesting to review...

But really, at the very least, stop doing it for free.

> otherwise I risk plagirizing my own writing.

No, you don't, because that's impossible. You might risk infringing the journal's copyright---but the journal only has a copyright on the final article, not on the words you submitted. Maybe that's what differentiates Biology from Physics: you guys thinks self-plagiarization (sp?) is a thing.

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

#78

Post by blisterpeanuts »

tetrep wrote: post #5
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read the article :) It's very well written and I found it quite informative. I knew nothing about Elsevier other than that I have used some of their textbooks when I was in school. They were very expensive. The only thing in the whole article that I feel qualified to comment on was his assertion that Trader Joe's mistreats their employees. It must be a regional thing, because the TJ's around here are excel…

> ...his assertion that Trader Joe's mistreats their employees. He's not asserting that, he's using it as a hypothetical example: "If I were to boycott, say, Trader Joe’s, on the grounds that it mistreats its employees (for the record, I don’t think it does)..."

Ah, you're correct. I misread it. Tired eyes....

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

#79

Post by impendia »

08-15 wrote: post #77
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…

Don't review for free. Seriously. Every time you review for a journal and don't ask for a reasonable (say, $150/h) fee, you are enabling their predatory practices. Stop doing it. Come to think about it, why not copy their pricing scheme? Sure, I'll review for this particular journal for $3000/h---or I agree to review for any of your journals, for a flat rate of $3000/week, even if there is nothing interesting to revi…

>Don't review for free.

As an academic (who hates Elsevier as much as OP, and who has also signed the boycott), I can't agree. If we accept payment from publishers then we tie ourselves into their ecosystem even more.

I personally think of academic mathematics like a giant, collaborative, open source project. Research wants to be free, and there is no reason it shouldn't be. Fortunately (for now at least; researchers are being replaced by adjuncts in too many places) the open source model is sustainable. Universities hire us (at somewhat modest salaries) to teach classes and to write TPS reports from time to time, and to actively maintain a presence in the research community. And grant-making agencies such as the NSF are delighted to have the results of their funding disseminated as widely and as openly as possible.

It's not perfect, but to a large extent (at least outside the laboratory sciences) we have the luxury of simply contributing to knowledge without worrying too much about where our next paycheck will come from. That is one of the reasons why we're willing to work for half the salary that we might get in industry.

For a good model I recommend Discrete Analysis [1], a mathematics journal started by Tim Gowers. It is an arXiv overlay journal, meaning they do not publish articles (even electronically). They have a top-notch editorial board that handles peer review and lends their imprimatur to papers which are hosted elsewhere (on the arXiv, a free preprint server). It's everything that academics could want from a journal, with none of the cruft. If I ever do any research in the area of the journal then I am definitely submitting here. And I will dream of it getting accepted.

[1] http://discreteanalysisjournal.com

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

#80

Post by socmag »

Retra wrote: post #75
socmag wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Instead of charging for access, they could be charging for promotion. You could be paying them to review & analyze your work and essentially supplement it with materials that aid in understanding and sharing (and thus expand your work's ability to help and influence people.) They should be help, not adversaries. They could offer publication tools by subscription and knowledgeable advisers.

Alright, Elsevier...

As I see it, the reason this article is on Hacker News in the first place is that the community as a whole appreciates your publications.

If the paywall is causing some kind of riot it's actually just a projection that people care.

So frankly an opportunity to fix and redeem.

Nobody wants Elsevier under the bus. That is for damn sure.

Really hope you are reading Elsevier.

You are loved.

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