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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

#101

Post by vacri »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #98
vacri wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being the 'middle-man' is not something that 'just happens'. Bringing manuscripts into blinded connection with appropriate reviewers in an orderly way is definitely a value add. It's not the risks they take (which was your question), but it's an example of some value that they add to the process which usually gets overlooked.

Does this value-added justify their scummy practices? Other middle-men seem to get on fine without doing the bad things outlined in the article. And academia is already about networking; collaborations, at least in CS and Mathematics, are a big part of research, so finding the right set of reviewers shouldn't be too difficult for editors of a journal, given that these editors are probably well-placed people in the fi…

I grew up as the son of a bookseller/publisher, who bootstrapped her own small business in the field. I just get tired of clueless people saying that publishers add nothing of value, when publishers add plenty. I'm not justifying Elsevier's scummy practices, but too many people just flatly state that they bring nothing to the table.

It's both an insult to what publishers do bring, and something of an own-goal: if you want to replace a scummy operator, you have to understand what they bring to the table so that you can replace it with something better. It's identical to the people who scream about Apple and Google taking a 30% cut of app store sale - these people are clearly clueless about business and are shouting to the world their ignorance about what that 30% gets you.

> And academia is already about networking; collaborations, at least in CS and Mathematics, are a big part of research

Academia also has a lot of political backstabbing and competition for dwindling grant money. But Elsevier's role isn't finding collaborators - it's finding reviewers, which is a distinctly different thing. You also can't find blinded reviewers yourself or via known associates, because that takes away the blind.

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

#102

Post by grigjd3 »

sndean wrote: post #97
rspeer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Scientific Reports ( http://www.nature.com/srep/ ) is pretty broad and is open-access. Some really good articles have been published there over the past few years.

Broad is part of the problem. It's very difficult to get qualified reviewers when you haven't narrowed the scope. One of the primary problems with PLOS ONE is that it exasperates problems already seen in other journals that cover too much. Why would you expect a specialist in awake single neuron experiments to be able to review and MRI study? Sure, there are some really good people out there, but for the most part, such reviews are going to be arbitrary.

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

#103

Post by euyyn »

impendia wrote: post #82
matheusmoreira wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Does the research not stand on its own? Academic mathematician here. It does, sort of, but ..... Say a mathematics postdoc is applying for a job, and she works in underwater basketweaving. The two underwater basketweavers in her dream department read her application and can see that she's brilliant. She's developed a new methodology for weaving rattan under 100 feet of ocean without even getting it wet. She has let…

> we need mechanisms to compare researchers working in different subdisciplines, for researchers to "prove" to the community at large that they're doing good work.

But the acceptance into those journals is decided by editors, with the same thought process of the hiring committee. What makes their decision any more valuable?

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

#104

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

There's a real gem tucked in here, not specific to Elsevier, but about corporate social misbehavior and its apologists in general:

> For what it’s worth, I think the “fiduciary responsibility” argument–which seemingly gets trotted out almost any time anyone calls out a publicly traded corporation for acting badly–is utterly laughable. As far as I can tell, the claim it relies on is both unverifiable and unenforceable. In practice, there is rarely any way for anyone to tell whether a particular policy will hurt or help a company’s bottom line, and virtually any action one takes can be justified post-hoc by saying that it was the decision-makers’ informed judgment that it was in the company’s best interest.

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

#105

Post by visarga »

Balgair wrote: post #54
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…

Its because most PIs could care less about the actual research, but rather only care about their 'rank' in the pissing contest that is academia. The internet should have, and in some more lucrative and distributed areas of the ivory tower it actually has like Archiv, made journals redundant and pointless. Only peer review should have remained. One would naively think this based on the idea that the academy is about k…

> most PIs could care less

So, they do care.

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

#106

Post by visarga »

vacri wrote: post #52
j-pb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on the risks you think they take? To me taking publications that academia produces, getting them reviewed for free by academia, only to host a couple kilobyte file behind a 25$ paywall seems like a pretty risk free strategy. The only risk they take is being so outrageously greedy that people will get fed up at some point and stop working with them anymore.

Being the 'middle-man' is not something that 'just happens'. Bringing manuscripts into blinded connection with appropriate reviewers in an orderly way is definitely a value add. It's not the risks they take (which was your question), but it's an example of some value that they add to the process which usually gets overlooked.

Can be automated 99%. Predict from paper the names of reputable researchers in the same sub-field and request reviews from them. The reviewer selection process should be random / fair.

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

#107

Post by Retra »

bcook wrote: post #59
dkarapetyan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities do exist to add value to society through education and dissemination of information. Seems like a pretty clear charter if you ask me.

Don't some universities exist to make money?

It doesn't matter 'why' something exists, what matters is what those things that do exist are actually useful for.

Screw drivers exist to turn screws, but you are perfectly justified to use them for whatever you need should you find one in your hand.

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

#108

Post by rflrob »

impendia wrote: post #92
brians wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do those sorts of differences in early publishing predict later success—say, in attracting grants or top grad students, when you adjust for the benefits of being at a top school? If not, maybe it doesn't matter which is hired, as with the undergraduates so often told that a whole admitted class could be set aside, the next N taken, and the world would go on.

> Do those sorts of differences in early publishing predict later success? Absolutely yes. They are perhaps the most reliable yardstick for past success that we have available, and past success is the best predictor of future success.

Citation? Also, it's worth pointing out that the question was not "do they predict success", but "do they predict success controlling for pedigree". Ive been thinking for a while on how you might actually measure the effect of pedigree, beyond the identity of university. I believe that the specific research group matters, but that's a lot harder to prove (smaller N, harder to get reliable data about counterfacuals).

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

#109

Post by Ar-Curunir »

vacri wrote: post #101
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this value-added justify their scummy practices? Other middle-men seem to get on fine without doing the bad things outlined in the article. And academia is already about networking; collaborations, at least in CS and Mathematics, are a big part of research, so finding the right set of reviewers shouldn't be too difficult for editors of a journal, given that these editors are probably well-placed people in the fi…

I grew up as the son of a bookseller/publisher, who bootstrapped her own small business in the field. I just get tired of clueless people saying that publishers add nothing of value, when publishers add plenty. I'm not justifying Elsevier's scummy practices, but too many people just flatly state that they bring nothing to the table. It's both an insult to what publishers do bring, and something of an own-goal: if you…

I'm not sure you understand what academic publishing involves. Academic journal editors are paid a pittance (few thousand pounds a year), and they are the ones who pick the reviewers. So the journal publisher is doing nothing to select the reviewers, and is not acting as a great middleman. The board of editors could do this job just fine without the journal publisher.

Reviewers themselves get paid nothing at all.

In CS, the journal publisher/ conference proceedings publisher does nothing to organize the editorial board or pick reviewers.

For conferences, there are a couple of Program Committee chairs, and they pick the PC that then review papers and solicit external reviewers for help. Once again the publishers have no role to play.

Electronic journals such as Discrete Analysis in mathematics are already doing a decent job of offering cheap open access to articles, and have a solid board of reviewers.

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

#110

Post by mti »

vacri wrote: post #101
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this value-added justify their scummy practices? Other middle-men seem to get on fine without doing the bad things outlined in the article. And academia is already about networking; collaborations, at least in CS and Mathematics, are a big part of research, so finding the right set of reviewers shouldn't be too difficult for editors of a journal, given that these editors are probably well-placed people in the fi…

I grew up as the son of a bookseller/publisher, who bootstrapped her own small business in the field. I just get tired of clueless people saying that publishers add nothing of value, when publishers add plenty. I'm not justifying Elsevier's scummy practices, but too many people just flatly state that they bring nothing to the table. It's both an insult to what publishers do bring, and something of an own-goal: if you…

> Elsevier's role isn't finding collaborators - it's finding reviewers

This is also not true. It's usually journal editors who find reviewers. This is mostly unpaid work as well (publishers tend to chip in a bit for editorial board meetings, but that's about it).

Scientific publishers provide very, very little value to the scientific community. The reason why researchers want to publish in Journal X is that it has a good reputation, which is mostly a function of the editorial board's quality standards, and even more so, of Journal X's past publications (often dating back to way before Elsevier or whoever else actually acquired it).

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