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German research institutions boycott Elsevier

sub.uni-goettingen.de

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Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#21

Post by dv_dt »

mattkrause wrote: post #17
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…

It is interesting to separate the review from the storage/access portions of scientific publishing. Bind the prestige to the review board, not the publisher. Once you have open access, there's nothing stopping academics from forming an independent review board organization which then provide some form of stamps of approval; paper A from It seems like it would be a good organizational excuse to stay in touch with peers and exchange information on the field anyway...

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#22

Post by thomasDE »

German researcher here.

There are multiple problems with the offer from VG Wort (which is the German association "representing" authors and publishers). One is that they raised the license fee. Another one is that they want to replace the current "flatrate" (where a university pays a fixed sum for the right to copy books or parts of books for education) with a individual billing concept. That means, lecturers have to report to administration for EACH part of a book or paper that they distribute. This model is not feasible as the administrative costs exceed the royalties which have to be payed for the copyright.

For this reasons, multiple virtual learning environments (which are used to distribute books and papers) in Germany might go offline in 2017 because the copyright situation is currently unclear.

More information (in German): https://netzpolitik.org/2016/deutsche-universitaeten-2017-im...

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#23

Post by jmcdiesel »

Forgive my absolute ignorance on the topic - I genuinely don't understand this environment even though I'm interested, so please don't take this as a stupid or inflammatory questions...

Why are these publishers needed? What service do they provide these days? It seems their role is similar to publishers in other media (TV, movie, music, etc) that can and have been replaced due to the distribution ease of the internet. Aside from a distribution platform, what do these publishers provide?

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#25

Post by BeetleB »

mattkrause wrote: post #17
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…

>However, I'd also like a job and none of the "top tier" biomedical journals are open access.

Isn't it a requirement that all NIH funded work must be published as open access?

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#26

Post by Fomite »

jmcdiesel wrote: post #23

Forgive my absolute ignorance on the topic - I genuinely don't understand this environment even though I'm interested, so please don't take this as a stupid or inflammatory questions... Why are these publishers needed? What service do they provide these days? It seems their role is similar to publishers in other media (TV, movie, music, etc) that can and have been replaced due to the distribution ease of the internet…

Publishers provide three major things:

1. They coordinate the submission of papers, and their dispatch for peer review.

2. They handle layout, typesetting, copyediting, etc.

3. For journals with print editions (of which there are many), they handle distribution.

All of those things could be replaced by the internet, but they take time, and they cost either time or money. And I much prefer reading journals with professional typesetting over those that rely on LaTeX.

There's also just the weight of history - many "good" journals aren't open access, and an academic's career trajectory is largely determined by publishing in those good journals. Going exclusively open access (in many fields) is either:

1. Expensive (paying for open access publication in a commercial journal)

2. An affectation by senior people who already have established careers

3. A huge risk by junior researchers making a principled stand at the cost of potential damage to themselves.

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#27

Post by dekhn »

BeetleB wrote: post #25
mattkrause wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>However, I'd also like a job and none of the "top tier" biomedical journals are open access. Isn't it a requirement that all NIH funded work must be published as open access?

yes but it's only weakly enforced,and I believe there's an embargo peroid

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#28

Post by Fomite »

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…

Yeah, I'm not going to back messing up using evidence in scientific papers to strike back at a journal publisher.

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#29

Post by udp »

jmcdiesel wrote: post #23

Forgive my absolute ignorance on the topic - I genuinely don't understand this environment even though I'm interested, so please don't take this as a stupid or inflammatory questions... Why are these publishers needed? What service do they provide these days? It seems their role is similar to publishers in other media (TV, movie, music, etc) that can and have been replaced due to the distribution ease of the internet…

The journals have an "impact factor", an arbitrary metric that determines how noteworthy they are. My impression is that very few journals are actually read directly - most papers are found via Google Scholar and the journal they're in doesn't matter.

However, in academia, the "prestige" of the journals you have published to is hugely important. Good journals, in theory, are more selective about what they publish, so the assumption is that if you have publications in a good one you must have done more groundbreaking research. To an academic, this is the kind of thing that affects whether you get grants, whether you get paid more, whether you can get a job elsewhere.

Some journals are pretty much talked about in hushed whispers, like "that PhD student got an ___ paper in their first year, they must be some kind of genius". In reality, research tends to be more about who you know, what kind of work you're doing, and whether you're in the right place at the right time.

Re: German research institutions boycott Elsevier

#30

Post by JorgeGT »

BeetleB wrote: post #25
mattkrause wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>However, I'd also like a job and none of the "top tier" biomedical journals are open access. Isn't it a requirement that all NIH funded work must be published as open access?

Open, but not immediately, I believe. Journals have an embargo period of 1-3 years, and after that you can put the accepted paper on a free repository. Your manuscript can usually be posted for free as soon as you want.
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