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What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

osc.universityofcalifornia.edu

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Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#191

Post by dmitriz »

bonoboTP wrote: post #80
CrazyStat wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be optimal for all researchers to coordinate to move away from Elsevier, but as long as everyone else (or the majority) is publishing in Elsevier the local optimum for each researcher is to continue publishing in Elsevier. I know a few researchers who have publicly committed to not publish in Elsevier journals, but there's a career cost to doing this, particularly for early career researchers. Outside of a s…

Why do the well established and well known, successful researchers not boycott it? It could start a chain reaction.

Because ironically, and despite of all the good words, this is not what is typically rewarded by their universities.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#192

Post by dmitriz »

bonoboTP wrote: post #177
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a tenured professor, so my own position is not in danger if I boycott the likes of Elsevier (salary bonuses and grant money still would be, but at least I could still get a reasonable paycheck every month and keep a good standard of living). But the overwhelming majority of my publications are coauthored with PhD students or young postdocs who are fighting for stable positions, and their career depends on high-im…

I'm in computer science so fortunately almost everything is open access. Do you know how CS ended up like this and whether it could be replicated in other fields? I suspect the close relations to the math community may be part of the origin of it. Perhaps also the the values of hacker culture.

Because "services" by the likes of E are of no value to CS professors designing some of the much more advanced software. But they are sadly focusing on their own journals and not trying to help the other subjects.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#193

Post by dmitriz »

bb101 wrote: post #22
dash2 wrote: post #4

Man, I hate Elsevier with a passion. As well as being shady, dishonest, shifty, moneygrubbing toerags, they also provide the world's crappiest service. I have to use their web interface every time I submit a paper to an Elsevier journal. It's like sticking needles into my eyes. It's this bad: in 2019, they still use an image map for their main menu. A particular pleasure is when they force me to compile my TeX into a…

The rot starts at the top: https://www.elsevier.com/about/management

In fact, this was referring to one of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20641056

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#194

Post by dmitriz »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #77

I know we all hate Elsevier, and I do, too. But the assumption in this threat that one could get rid of publishers without any thought and with absolutely no downside is simplifying it slightly too far. Elsevier currently has a margin of about 35%. That's a lot, and probably too much. But it also means they are spending 65% of revenue on something . Even assuming a decent chunk is marketing and sales, there are a few…

> ... the current alternative, Open Access journals: they charge authors fees in the high 3-digit range to cover their costs.

Not the current alternative, just one of many and not the best one: https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/96

Calling the APC "the OA model" and conveniently forgetting to mention other options has been precisely the common publishers' rhetoric feeding deliberate public confusion in trying to identify OA with APC, which needless to say, helps their business objectives.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#195

Post by dmitriz »

buboard wrote: post #128
foobarbecue wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they have a margin of 35%, they are wasting 50%. They do not copyedit. If you drop a nonsense sentance into an Elsevier journal after the volunteer editing stage, it'll be there in the published version. I've noticed plenty of typos in my own papers after publication. > they [open journals] charge authors fees in the high 3-digit range to cover their costs. Most Elsevier journals charge an ADDITIONAL ~$1500 if you…

> It is $2750 per article!!! Elsevier and nature charge $5000 for full open access, and not even in their top journals. Cell reports and scientific reports have high impact factor but are considered second-tier compared to Cell and Nature (The editors of the latter will redirect you to pay to submit to those open access journals if rejected) https://www.cell.com/rights-sharing-embargoes And this is all paid with taxp…

It is public information, how can they not know it?

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#196

Post by dmitriz »

leemailll wrote: post #111
sigwinch28 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Going from a final draft to a published, peer-reviewed paper involves quite a few menial tasks, and scientists will either need to fill those roles themselves, or someone needs to pay someone else. Which stages are you referring to? In my experiences in CS, publishing a _conference_ paper required: - Writing the paper using a publisher-provided LaTeX documentclass (potentially a significant portion of publisher cos…

Cs is different from many science fields. Many if not most fields rely on published papers on journals not a conference. Many of the post-accepted production work still need to be done by human. think about a magazine, they sort of like that for production work

Then mathematics must also be different. And physics. And many other areas. How come the journal costs are still as high there?

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#197

Post by dmitriz »

whatshisface wrote: post #79
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #77

I know we all hate Elsevier, and I do, too. But the assumption in this threat that one could get rid of publishers without any thought and with absolutely no downside is simplifying it slightly too far. Elsevier currently has a margin of about 35%. That's a lot, and probably too much. But it also means they are spending 65% of revenue on something . Even assuming a decent chunk is marketing and sales, there are a few…

Given a choice it's better for the author to pay for typesetting because once they have, it can be distributed to readers for free.

Having published over 50 research papers, I've never experienced any value from the journal's so-called typesetting. In fact, that "value" was typically strictly less than zero with all their newly introduced typos and misleading corrections by someone who has no idea about the subject. So why are forced to accept this kind of service and how does world science benefit from it?

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#198

Post by dmitriz »

notyourday wrote: post #108
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Actual question:) How is a standard journal-style typesetting a big upfront cost? Surely the authors do all the hard parts, make the graphs, section, maths markup, footnotes. What's left that can't be automated in almost every situation?

You are seriously giving authors too much credit. The vast majority of the journal papers require enormous amount of production editing -- that's exactly why the EICs and societies sold those journals to publishers. Things that I have seen : ( wife was a production editor, I briefly helped an EIC of a society journal that was sold to a publisher ) 1. Graphs do not fit the page or space allotment - journal is uses two…

> You are seriously giving authors too much credit.

Sure, how can we credit someone who did the research and prepared the paper in its publish-ready form :)

> The vast majority of the journal papers require enormous amount of production editing

Absolutely! Such as introducing new errors by people with no subject understanding. :)

> that's exactly why the EICs and societies sold those journals to publishers.

They are sold to them for the very simple reason: $$$ they get from it :)

> Graphs do not fit the page ...

If any of these are not acceptable, the journal is perfectly correct to request changes from the author. Which I as author would prefer over introducing damages by people with no idea what my papers are about.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#199

Post by dmitriz »

notyourday wrote: post #171
gamedori wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 is mostly things that the publication team is asking authors to fix by email for modern journals. Most journals will have a template for these emails, or stick them at the back of the reviewer requests. 2 Is something that I have seen caught in peer review twice, and missed once. Again, it would usually go in a batch email to the authors of issues that need to be fixed before publication. 3 is definitely something…

If this was the case then the journals would not be sold to publishers. They are sold to publishers because EICs and societies that start journals do not want to deal with actually making the manuscript publishable after a year or two. P.S. Average STEM paper takes about 30 hours to "produce".

This was the case 30 years ago when publishing was expensive. Today this should be a button click in a fully automated system.

Which is not to say, societies don't benefit from the system -- they actually get a lot of $$ from it. The sad part is, they only get a small part from the much bigger $$$ going to publishers.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#200

Post by Gatsky »

Protohedgehog wrote: post #141
Gatsky wrote: post #46

It is easy to hate Elsevier, but the real problem is academia. Elsevier is just capitalising on an almost perfect business opportunity - take scientists’ work for free, get other scientists to review it for free then sell it back to all of them. You can’t blame them for doing this, or for being so defensive. We are the fools for participating in this racket. We need a hard fork. Large prestigious academic institution…

Note that the more you know about them, the worse it gets. I wrote a report for Education International last year as part of a global campaign against Elsevier. https://www.ei-ie.org/en/detail/16061/elsevier-the-price-of-... You make it sound so easy, but if it was, don't you think people will have done it already? Monopolies, vendor lock-in, lobbying, divide-and-conquer approaches, all make moving away to a better s…

I hear you. But they aren’t going to turn around and become the publisher we want, that is a fantasy. They have no incentive to change.

It isn’t easy for academia to help itself (for once), but it is the only viable solution imho.

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