German research institutions boycott Elsevier

Post by ianderf » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 10:59 AM UTC

Vinnl wrote: post #101

ianderf wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I wonder why nobody created a single peer-reviewed platform for all scientists to use? Elsevier is just piggybacking on other people's work and funds.

Because there are more than a single one :) Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/927/

Post by leephillips » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 12:51 PM UTC

a3_nm wrote: post #74

leephillips wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sense, the purpose of academic journals is to not have the distribution ease of the internet. The barriers to publication are the main point.

I do not understand the point. The barriers to publication (i.e., how selective an academic journal is) have nothing to do with the barriers to access (i.e., subscriptions being required to access the content). And indeed, there are selective open-access journals, whose content is free to access once it's been accepted for publication; and there are non-selective, crappy journals which are not open-access.

Post by bluenose69 » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 1:16 PM UTC

anton_tarasenko wrote: post #32

Professors don't care about high prices. Universities pay for subscriptions. The pricing is political in Europe where education is funded by the public. US universities pass high prices over to students. Students pay with debt since good universities have oversupply of applicants anyway. Elsevier had been buying academic journals for decades. A typical scheme is like Cell's story. A professor establishes a journal un…

Post by kaybe » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 1:53 PM UTC

mattkrause wrote: post #61

anton_tarasenko wrote: post #32

Professors don't care about high prices. Universities pay for subscriptions. The pricing is political in Europe where education is funded by the public. US universities pass high prices over to students. Students pay with debt since good universities have oversupply of applicants anyway. Elsevier had been buying academic journals for decades. A typical scheme is like Cell's story. A professor establishes a journal un…

I would be surprised if students are funding the library to any substantial degree. Most research universities charge F&A ("facilities and administration")/indirect costs on sponsored projects. This is essentially a "tax" on grant money that is supposed to cover things like utilities, the library, and so on. While the details vary a bit from place to place (and funder to funder), this is often a pretty sizable amount…

Post by arthur2e5 » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 2:45 PM UTC

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…