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German research institutions boycott Elsevier

sub.uni-goettingen.de

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Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#11

Post by tdb7893 »

nkkollaw wrote: post #5
hannob wrote: post #4

The thing is, scientists have a much more powerful tool to stop bad publishers: Don't give them your texts. And maybe even more important: Don't demand from your applicants that they have published in high impact journals from the very same publishers that make your life hard. That might really change things. Everyone has been complaining about Elsevier for years now. They still have publications and they still seem…

You could give me an ELI5? Why are they bad..?

This recent post talks about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161538

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#12

Post by baldfat »

wofo wrote: post #3

It is refreshing to see the scientific community stand against Elsevier. Great news!

Yes these Journals without the Internet would just sit in boxes in Libraries (They still do this with print journals) WHY is it cost more to have OLD Journals then they did when they were first published. It is such an anti-Education, anti-Science corporate plan based on selfish Win for them and loss for Science and ideas.

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#15

Post by [deleted] »

nkkollaw wrote: post #5
hannob wrote: post #4

The thing is, scientists have a much more powerful tool to stop bad publishers: Don't give them your texts. And maybe even more important: Don't demand from your applicants that they have published in high impact journals from the very same publishers that make your life hard. That might really change things. Everyone has been complaining about Elsevier for years now. They still have publications and they still seem…

You could give me an ELI5? Why are they bad..?

[deleted]

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#16

Post by Someone »

No, they don't boycott; they play hardball in negotiations:

"The DEAL project, headed by HRK (German Rectors' Conference) President Prof Hippler, is negotiating a nationwide license agreement for the entire electronic Elsevier journal portfolio with Elsevier. [...] In order to improve their negotiating power, about 60 major German research institutions including Göttingen University cancelled their contracts with Elsevier as early as October 2016."

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#17

Post by mattkrause »

hannob wrote: post #4

The thing is, scientists have a much more powerful tool to stop bad publishers: Don't give them your texts. And maybe even more important: Don't demand from your applicants that they have published in high impact journals from the very same publishers that make your life hard. That might really change things. Everyone has been complaining about Elsevier for years now. They still have publications and they still seem…

I would love a world where publishing papers is cheap and reading papers, particularly taxpayer-funded ones, is free.

However, I'd also like a job and none of the "top tier" biomedical journals are open access. While I'd like to think that the quality of my work would speak for itself, the imprimatur that one gets from Nature, Science, Cell, and Neuron is worth quite a bit when applying for jobs and grants.

Unless the big names in academia--and the search committees they sit on--publicly and credibly commit to this, you're essentially asking people (many of whom are on short-term contracts making $40,000 a year) to take an enormous career risk.

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#18

Post by carbocation »

People want to publish in high-impact journals. Aside from name recognition (Nature, Science, New England Journal, etc), impact factor and similar metrics drive where people want to publish.

If you really want to strike at a particular journal or family of journals, you could work to convince academics not to cite articles in those journals. Since all these metrics are some variant of (inward citations)/(publications), usually over a 2-5 year window, this would have a tremendous effect.

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#20

Post by IanCal »

carbocation wrote: post #18

People want to publish in high-impact journals. Aside from name recognition (Nature, Science, New England Journal, etc), impact factor and similar metrics drive where people want to publish. If you really want to strike at a particular journal or family of journals, you could work to convince academics not to cite articles in those journals. Since all these metrics are some variant of (inward citations)/(publications…

I'm not a great fan of journals, but I really dislike the idea of forbidding people from building on the work of others.
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