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How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?

monbiot.com

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Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?

#51

Post by merraksh »

Interesting article. In 2011 there is no practical hurdle to web-based publishing portals. Given that papers are already peer reviewed on a volunteer basis, the middle man and its administrative staff has a high cost and a low benefit.

The system could keep volunteer-based peer review, and establish a (perhaps private) forum-like interaction for the authors to improve their article.

Google Scholar has solved many of my article search problems and often gives me directly a link to the PDF of (sometimes just a preprint of) the article. However the problem remains for the libraries, which might well be the largest contributors to publishers, and which may find it hard to cut a subscription and suggest its users to use Google scholar.

Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?

#52

Post by stevenbedrick »

dlan1000 wrote: post #45
impendia wrote: post #20

I heard an interesting argument from my advisor (a very famous mathematician). I strongly disagree with it, but it is the only argument I have heard for keeping this system in place. His argument was the following: In many fields such as laboratory science, research is expensive; one has to apply for grants and then spend the money, and these departments have large budgets, and this all looks good to deans. If a depa…

Sorry, so the argument is: other research costs are expensive in some fields, thereby high spending is prestigious, thereby access to publications ought to be expensive so that fields that lack more direct expenses can seem comparable ? This doesn't seem to make sense, because fields where direct research expenses are high also require access to publications. Maybe I'm missing your point? If so, please clarify.

You're right, it doesn't make sense, but I find it entirely plausible. Welcome to academia; nobody said it was supposed to make sense (especially when it comes to the financial aspects of the gig). Ask me sometime about how my university calculates overhead costs & indirect percentages, let alone how it allocates and charges for floor space- the words "byzantine" and "Machiavellian" come to mind.

Any scientist will tell you that the most important person in their department- by far- is their finance person. They're the ones that know your university's financial system inside and out, and so will be able to help you keep your money from going straight up the university's nose (as it were). A good finance person will also know how, on a per-agency-basis, to structure a grant's budget so that you get to keep as much money as possible as freely-usable as possible (E.g., there are things that the NSF will let you do with certain kinds of grant money that the NIH won't, and vice versa, and a good finance person knows what they are).

Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?

#53

Post by DanielBMarkham »

I'm buying into his thesis, but heck, I really expected to see some causality explained. The title began, after all, with "how did...."

It would be great if somebody could provided an insider's account of why the academic publishing industry maintained those margins from 2000 to 2010. Did nobody propose legislation to stop them? Were there no criminal investigations? Who are these people connected with politically? What sorts of causes to they contribute to? Just how is the status quo maintained? The guy made a point I was already predisposed to agree with, then kind of went on a rant about how bad it all was. Hey, I'm with you. I'm just not sure my useful knowledge of the issue has increased any.

Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?

#54

Post by starwed »

rmc wrote: post #19
impendia wrote: post #13

But surely, one might think, that some of the price goes to offset the expensive costs of peer review? The author neglected to mention that peer reviewers work for free, and that the editorial boards are also made up of scholars who work for next to nothing. (edit: see reply below, this was in the article and I missed it) It used to be that it fell to the publishers to typeset the articles, but with the advent of TeX…

Speaking as an academic, these companies do nothing for us Start the revolution at home. Put PDFs on your university website. Ask your collegues to do likewise, ask the rest of university to do likewise. Start the ball rolling.

That doesn't really fulfill the "quality signal" aspect of journals, though -- the replacement would be some sort of open journal that still had peer review.

There was an Elsevier math journal where the entire editorial staff got fed up, quit, and then simply founded a new journal on the same subject. That's the sort of thing most likely to bring the big journals down, not self publication by individuals. (Well, that or direct government intervention.)

Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?

#56

Post by tylerneylon »

The obvious negative this has on folks outside of research-level academia is a significant contribution to tuition prices, which seem to be rising at about 5% per year.

But a less obvious - and personally very painful - consequence of greedy publishers is the inability to do serious academic research outside of academia/industry. I have the ability (math PhD) and the will (have published a few papers post grad school, though it's hard to find time), but I have all but given up due to lacking access to books and articles behind these paywalls. Yes, you can find a decent chunk of articles online -- but very often there are one or two (or more!) key papers you _need_ to read to be at the front of a field, and one of those will be behind a paywall. The worst part is that I never know how truly useful an article will be before reading it, so in the few cases where I've payed I find that only a small percentage of the time was it worthwhile.

In short, this system essentially kills research outside of academia / industry.

Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?

#57

Post by dcminter »

jgrahamc wrote: post #2

Reminds me of the time I wanted to read Chadwick's 1932 paper "Possible Existence of a Neutron" in which he mentioned the discovery of the neutron. http://blog.jgc.org/2008/09/dear-nature.html

Academic publishing seems to be messed up but I'm not sure this is a good demonstration of that.

Of the three links that you cite to online copies two no longer link to the article. So while your $32 doesn't buy you anything you can't already get elsewhere the availability (at a price) from Nature does at least supply a degree of permanence to the article. That may be more important with less prominent items.

Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?

#58

Post by jseliger »

lliiffee wrote: post #47
jessriedel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the advantage over just using the arxiv? A bit better typesetting?

Credibility. Reading a mathematical paper takes a huge amount of effort, and people won't go through that unless there is a high chance to believe the paper is good/correct. Usually this is determined by 1) The author is famous 2) The journal is respected.

This is the same basic problem self-published novels face. There are probably some very good self-published novels, but without someone whose opinion I should trust verifying that they're good, I'm unlikely to a) find out about them and b) if I do find out, read them and decide for myself.

A lot of novels that I turn out to like enormously don't have first chapters that immediately speak to their greatness. But most of the novels I read, I read because an interesting review caught my attention, I've read the writer before, or the book has been recommended by someone who I trust. The first two in my preceding list roughly map to author fame and journal respect.

Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?

#59

Post by jessriedel »

lliiffee wrote: post #47
jessriedel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the advantage over just using the arxiv? A bit better typesetting?

Credibility. Reading a mathematical paper takes a huge amount of effort, and people won't go through that unless there is a high chance to believe the paper is good/correct. Usually this is determined by 1) The author is famous 2) The journal is respected.

The ArXiv includes a link to the actual (usually gated) journal article. And the text of that link is the journal name and citation.

My question isn't "why do people submit to journals?" it's "why post the actual PDF from the journal on your webpage (thereby taking a slight risk of getting in trouble) rather than just linking to the ArXiv version?".

Re: How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?

#60

Post by lliiffee »

jessriedel wrote: post #59
lliiffee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credibility. Reading a mathematical paper takes a huge amount of effort, and people won't go through that unless there is a high chance to believe the paper is good/correct. Usually this is determined by 1) The author is famous 2) The journal is respected.

The ArXiv includes a link to the actual (usually gated) journal article. And the text of that link is the journal name and citation. My question isn't "why do people submit to journals?" it's "why post the actual PDF from the journal on your webpage (thereby taking a slight risk of getting in trouble) rather than just linking to the ArXiv version?".

Ah, sorry I misunderstood your question.

To answer your actual question, I personally do it because I almost wish the journals would do something nasty to me. Then, I would tell everyone I meet at every conference about that for the next few years and would hasten the decline of the current status-quo.

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