Excellent. Don Knuth instigated a similar walkout 20 years ago at the Journal of Algorithms.
Wikipedia has its own section on these walkouts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Control_of_journals
Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees
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Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees
#92Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing? First off, if the only publisher you have a problem with is Elsevier, you have already shown your hand. A half dozen other publishers are more expensive, but you can only name Elsevier. That means you're just repeating a meme that started on forums like this one. So take a moment and ask yourself why any of these publisher…
The big difference here is that prestige has nothing to do with cost, unlike your Louis Voutton comparison. Prestige is entirely based on the perception of the journals among scientists and on the prestige of the papers themselves that are published in them.
And the scientists individually don't have a choice unless they are closer to the end of their career. Intentionally publishing in less prestigious journals will sabotage your career, period.
And there are certainly aspect here that people without any more in-depth knowledge can criticize, e.g. the overall issue that publicly-funded research is put behind paywalls or that a very large part of the work gets done by reviewers that are not even paid by the publishers but mostly by the public.
Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees
#93Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing? First off, if the only publisher you have a problem with is Elsevier, you have already shown your hand. A half dozen other publishers are more expensive, but you can only name Elsevier. That means you're just repeating a meme that started on forums like this one. So take a moment and ask yourself why any of these publisher…
The big difference here is that prestige has nothing to do with cost, unlike your Louis Voutton comparison. Prestige is entirely based on the perception of the journals among scientists and on the prestige of the papers themselves that are published in them. And the scientists individually don't have a choice unless they are closer to the end of their career. Intentionally publishing in less prestigious journals will…
> The big difference here is that prestige has nothing to do with cost, unlike your Louis Voutton comparison.
Yep, usually it's the opposite. You pay more money to get published through easy to get into conferences. If you're not in academia or don't have some membership, you pay way more to get into conferences. You pay thousands more to get published in low quality open access journals because your paper is not good enough. Etc. (Also no one pays $50 to read a single article, you get it for free through the university library.)
Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees
#94Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing? First off, if the only publisher you have a problem with is Elsevier, you have already shown your hand. A half dozen other publishers are more expensive, but you can only name Elsevier. That means you're just repeating a meme that started on forums like this one. So take a moment and ask yourself why any of these publisher…
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Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees
#95Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing? First off, if the only publisher you have a problem with is Elsevier, you have already shown your hand. A half dozen other publishers are more expensive, but you can only name Elsevier. That means you're just repeating a meme that started on forums like this one. So take a moment and ask yourself why any of these publisher…
It would be pretty interesting if Louis Vuitton items were designed, manufactured, quality controlled, etc entirely by customers who then hand them over to Louis Vuitton to have a logo stamped and have put in a box and sold without any of the proceeds returning to suppliers.
Having said that Shifting the prices to authors with free access for all is generally seen as pretty fair. Open access publishing has always been expensive and NeuroImage is on the cheaper end and on par with PLOS.
https://plos.org/publish/fees/
Anticipated publication fees get incorporated into grant budgets and in the grand scheme of a grant budget it's a nothingburger.
Some journals are associated with societies (peer reviewed by members and made available to society members for a very discounted rate or free but non-members pay for access). Many of those also are ad-supported, though.
Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’ve pretty much nailed it. I anticipate you’ll be downvoted for it. Academic research (one of the big complainers about the cost) could fix this easily - stop rewarding scientists for publishing in those journals! Pick other, less expensive, prestigious enough journals, and academics will publish in those. But the system can’t be broken easily. The prestige of many journals has been developed over decades or in so…
> Academic research (one of the big complainers about the cost) could fix this easily - stop rewarding scientists for publishing in those journals! From what I know, it's the politicians that rewards scientists for publishing in those journals. At least here in Norway, universities have been competing for funding[1], and publishing in higher-impact ("more prestigious") journals counts for more compared to lower-impac…
Generally the committees that make funding decisions are staffed by scientists. It shouldn't be surprising at all that scientists who got where they were by publishing in prestigious journals, look for the same when making funding decisions.
Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees
#97You cannot really blame Elsevier here. They are just taking advantage of a dysfunctional academic system. The cost of reviewing a paper properly is high, but academia is not paying that cost by simply not doing a proper review. If the money saved by cutting Elsevier out (in this case £2700 per accepted paper) would actually be added to a pool out of which reviews are financed, I would see the point. But as it is, the…
You absolutely can blame Elsevier here. A corporation taking advantage of a dysfunctional system to extract profit at the expense of others is bad. "Oh, the system is something that can be exploited so of course corporations should exploit it" is something worth criticizing, IMO.
Peer reviews are usually two reviewers who maybe do two rounds of reviews. Even if people are getting a reasonable fee, £2700 is more than enough to cover it.
Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article states that peer review is done on a volunteer basis, right? All Elsevier does, at best, is put PDFs of the papers on their servers.
They also manage the review process (screen papers, find reviewers, communicate with authors and reviewers), make sure that papers are accessible long-term (decades to centuries), typeset manuscripts, print paper issues, and several other tasks. But yes, reviewers are not paid. A half-decent review can easily take 3-4 hours, and a typical paper gets 2-3 reviews, so something like 8-12 hours of PhD-level labor which a…
When I published with a journal, we had basically direct contact with the reviewers and little interposing. I did all of the typesetting. The journal just executed my latex files. The long term accessibility of papers via journals is largely overblown and it isn't even actual accessibility paid for by the submission - since that is covered by subscription fees.
Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
They also manage the review process (screen papers, find reviewers, communicate with authors and reviewers), make sure that papers are accessible long-term (decades to centuries), typeset manuscripts, print paper issues, and several other tasks. But yes, reviewers are not paid. A half-decent review can easily take 3-4 hours, and a typical paper gets 2-3 reviews, so something like 8-12 hours of PhD-level labor which a…
> They also manage the review process (screen papers, find reviewers, communicate with authors and reviewers), They do not. That's the editor's job, and Elsevier journal editors are unpaid volunteers -- as the Guardian article correctly pointed out. > A half-decent review can easily take 3-4 hours, and a typical paper gets 2-3 reviews, so something like 8-12 hours of PhD-level labor which are not currently compensate…
I think it would be interesting to actually evaluate review time. I've seen journal and conference paper reviews go all over the place. Some people blast them out in an hour. Other people dig deep and spend way more time. I don't think I have ever heard of a reviewer sanity checking calculations.
Re: Walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees
#100Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing? First off, if the only publisher you have a problem with is Elsevier, you have already shown your hand. A half dozen other publishers are more expensive, but you can only name Elsevier. That means you're just repeating a meme that started on forums like this one. So take a moment and ask yourself why any of these publisher…
You're saying academic prestige is a Veblen good, like a handbag? Are you sure?
A better analogy is Ivy League colleges.
If you graduate from an Ivy League college (or publish in a prestigious journal) others view that as a signal of your qualifications and that can open up careers that require that the box be checked.
As such, people are willing to pay a lot of money to go to an Ivy League college (or publish in Nature). And the "system" has a vested interest in keeping that gateway in place, because the people that passed that gateway years before you, don't want to see it go away as it would reduce their own status.