21–30 of 38 posts
The Max Planck Digital Library has already set in place mechanisms to address the content needs of its researchers when Elsevier shuts off access at the beginning of January. What is it? Sci-Hub?
Just a note that we have asked the European Commission to investigate Elsevier for abuse of a dominant market position: https://zenodo.org/record/1472045 , and also now Education International (32 million members, 400 member organisations) are taking the fight to them through academic unions. https://bit.ly/2PPjwRK
Efforts like the above just lead to the open access movement getting co-opted by anti-capitalists, which hurts progress.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the sentiment but I do think the service journals provide was once worthwhile, before the web, as disseminaters of academic knowledge. Universities paid a subscription fee for physical copies of journals, allowing their employees to keep up to date with what was happening in the world of science. Once the web took off the proposition was no longer good value, as scientists could bypass publishers. It jus…
Added value: "The Lancet finds itself connected to... global arms trade: a trade that inflicts physical and social harm in the poorest and least stable regions. Since 2003, The Lancet's owner and publisher, Reed Elsevier, has organised some of the world's largest arms" https://t.co/rIbch7S6dy
There are perfectly good reasons to criticize Elsevier - you may feel like they should have a way for patients and caregivers to access research about their condition, for example - so there's really no need to be disingenuous.
Every nail in Elsevier coffin is a great news, paywaled scientific publications is an archaic, dystopian and shameful legacy that should never exist in a first place.
I agree with the sentiment but I do think the service journals provide was once worthwhile, before the web, as disseminaters of academic knowledge. Universities paid a subscription fee for physical copies of journals, allowing their employees to keep up to date with what was happening in the world of science. Once the web took off the proposition was no longer good value, as scientists could bypass publishers. It jus…
All that just to make the point that the value proposition is still very much there, though I'll agree publishers could do more to make this apparent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am a bit on the fence about the violent nature but if publishers play hard ball, I'm not sure who to blame. In the meantime, if access through libraries is revoked and if that could go on for a whi... oh right, sci-hub, but that works because of running subscriptions. What's the end-game, it goes on slowly and gradually, untill the currently invaluable material became obsolete while a substantial pre-print based re…
If publishers play hardball, no researcher will ever work for them as authors, referees or editors. Or they come down to more reasonable prices and perhaps reduce their 40% profits to ones in line with other industries?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the sentiment but I do think the service journals provide was once worthwhile, before the web, as disseminaters of academic knowledge. Universities paid a subscription fee for physical copies of journals, allowing their employees to keep up to date with what was happening in the world of science. Once the web took off the proposition was no longer good value, as scientists could bypass publishers. It jus…
This is something I hear all the time about publishers, and it used to resonate with me, too, until I started to work for a publisher and realized how much goes into the system we have beyond just putting manuscripts online. The real eye-opening thing for me was talking to editors and seeing all the behind-the-scenes stuff that they do. They have to know enough about their field to know what's worth sending out for r…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the sentiment but I do think the service journals provide was once worthwhile, before the web, as disseminaters of academic knowledge. Universities paid a subscription fee for physical copies of journals, allowing their employees to keep up to date with what was happening in the world of science. Once the web took off the proposition was no longer good value, as scientists could bypass publishers. It jus…
This is something I hear all the time about publishers, and it used to resonate with me, too, until I started to work for a publisher and realized how much goes into the system we have beyond just putting manuscripts online. The real eye-opening thing for me was talking to editors and seeing all the behind-the-scenes stuff that they do. They have to know enough about their field to know what's worth sending out for r…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the sentiment but I do think the service journals provide was once worthwhile, before the web, as disseminaters of academic knowledge. Universities paid a subscription fee for physical copies of journals, allowing their employees to keep up to date with what was happening in the world of science. Once the web took off the proposition was no longer good value, as scientists could bypass publishers. It jus…
This is something I hear all the time about publishers, and it used to resonate with me, too, until I started to work for a publisher and realized how much goes into the system we have beyond just putting manuscripts online. The real eye-opening thing for me was talking to editors and seeing all the behind-the-scenes stuff that they do. They have to know enough about their field to know what's worth sending out for r…
You could argue that publishers only ever needed reviewers - and all the administration baggage that you mention that comes with it - because they had to choose what to compile into each paper issue that would be mailed to subscribers. If we remove the concept of "issues" and just have everyone self-publish on arXiv, a lot of the value you mention regarding journals is no longer needed.
Of course, everyone publishing on arXiv has downsides. It's no longer easy to just read Nature/Science/Physical Review Letters/etc. to find the best research in the field - some other mechanism will be needed to show scientists the best papers without them spending huge portions of their time reading - but I am sure we will find solutions to these problems in time. In fact, with some of my astronomer colleagues it is also pretty normal for them to spend an hour each morning skimming through 10 or so new papers posted to the arXiv.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Added value: "The Lancet finds itself connected to... global arms trade: a trade that inflicts physical and social harm in the poorest and least stable regions. Since 2003, The Lancet's owner and publisher, Reed Elsevier, has organised some of the world's largest arms" https://t.co/rIbch7S6dy
Dmitri, I feel like you're being deceptive here. RELX, the parent company of Elsevier, hasn't been involved in this for over a decade, and in fact Lancet led the movement to divest! https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/may/30/armstrade.w... There are perfectly good reasons to criticize Elsevier - you may feel like they should have a way for patients and caregivers to access research about their condition, for ex…
Giving precise quote with full source link for everyone interested is deceptive? How so?
> RELX, the parent company of Elsevier, hasn't been involved in this for over a decade
Yes, the article is dated 2005. It was clearly a major issue for the journal's reputation at the time, that went through the trouble to write it. The guardian article is from 2008, so 3 years after. Does 2008 being 10 years ago erase that part of the history?
This very subject was brought in this tweet: https://twitter.com/paul_abrahams/status/1062402097172414464
> If anyone doubts the value provided by academic publishers, they should read this story of the inner workings of @TheLancet, one of @ElsevierConnect 's leading journals http://bit.ly/relx-lancet, the link celebrating 200 years of history of the journal!
Either Elsevier takes credit for 200 years of The Lancet, including the last 20 years, or we need to erase all the history up until 10 years ago? :) Wasn't that tweet perhaps deceptive?
> There are perfectly good reasons to criticize Elsevier - you may feel like they should have a way for patients and caregivers to access research about their condition, for example - so there's really no need to be disingenuous.
It was a quote, no added critics on my part. If you note "suggestions for publishers" under the following link, that can hardly be intepreted as criticising :) https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/100#s...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If publishers play hardball, no researcher will ever work for them as authors, referees or editors. Or they come down to more reasonable prices and perhaps reduce their 40% profits to ones in line with other industries?
Again, Dmitri, there's plenty of reasons to criticize Elsevier without making things up. RELX doesn't break out profit by division, but the operating margin for Elsevier is around 22%, which anyone can read for themselves in their annual report.