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The article mentioned that MIT saved 80%, and that they are paying $300,000 to purchase on a per article basis. So their previous contract with Elsevier was $1.5M annually. Elsevier's net income is £2.02 billion (2022)(Wikipedia). So the loss to Elsevier from MIT is about 0.04% of net income. Which makes sense: MIT is one of around 2000 universities worldwide. I hope this catches on elsewhere, too.
Question: What is Elsevier’s value proposition? Could that be replicated by on open source offering?
Yes, tex-savvy authors can do a pretty good job but it's just not the same. That's one reason authors choose to pay the page charges.
Curating is also surprisingly important. Sure, you can often get some author to send you a free PDF from something written 10-20 years ago. But it's also not uncommon for the author to be very unresponsive. Maybe they left academia. Maybe they're lazy. Who knows? But I know that I can't count on getting a free PDF from any author.
These journals are like parasites onto the scientific enterprise and ultimately tax payers dollars.
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The article mentioned that MIT saved 80%, and that they are paying $300,000 to purchase on a per article basis. So their previous contract with Elsevier was $1.5M annually. Elsevier's net income is £2.02 billion (2022)(Wikipedia). So the loss to Elsevier from MIT is about 0.04% of net income. Which makes sense: MIT is one of around 2000 universities worldwide. I hope this catches on elsewhere, too.
This move saves MIT approximately $2 million each yearThese journals are like parasites onto the scientific enterprise and ultimately tax payers dollars.
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There is a limited set of journals for a specific area of science, and you need to publish in the most reputable journal possible. There is only a very limited choice here in most cases.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are using a service called Article Galaxy, which is just a proxy that pays for per-article access when individual users request it. MIT Libraries get the bill from Article Galaxy. The article states that MIT pays $300,000 annually for individual request fees, far less than the prior contract amount.
>They are using a service called Article Galaxy, which is just a proxy that pays for per-article access when individual users request it. MIT Libraries get the bill from Article Galaxy. I'm surprised services like these haven't been shut down yet. IANAL, but what they're doing (ie. acting as a proxy between end-users and the publishers) seems similar to what Aereo was doing[1], which the supreme court ruled was copyr…
These journals are like parasites onto the scientific enterprise and ultimately tax payers dollars.
[flagged]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are using a service called Article Galaxy, which is just a proxy that pays for per-article access when individual users request it. MIT Libraries get the bill from Article Galaxy. The article states that MIT pays $300,000 annually for individual request fees, far less than the prior contract amount.
>They are using a service called Article Galaxy, which is just a proxy that pays for per-article access when individual users request it. MIT Libraries get the bill from Article Galaxy. I'm surprised services like these haven't been shut down yet. IANAL, but what they're doing (ie. acting as a proxy between end-users and the publishers) seems similar to what Aereo was doing[1], which the supreme court ruled was copyr…