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According to the article, Elsevier demands that the author signs over the copyright. So no, they don't retain complete control.
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Editing, typesetting and curating are expensive. Yes, authors can do this and they contribute quite a bit, but it's not enough to support the high quality documents produced by Elsevier. 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…
Do you know how expensive open access publications are? I guarantee that editing, typesetting and curating could easily be performed for fraction of that price (and it's easy to prove it - just check how much Elsevier makes each year!). Also keep in mind that most of editors - which are responsible for curating - are not paid at all... And if you mean "curating" as in providing access to pdfs, then there is arxiv whi…
They have the power to send their work wherever they want. Really. They do.
The fact that they continue to choose the publishers after all of these years suggests to me that the publishers are doing something that the authors want.
And btw, who do you think would do this work for a fraction of the cost? Are you going to pay them? What if they unionize and demand a fair share of the grant money?
I feel like the Wizard of Oz telling Dorothy she had the power all along.
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.
However there is also the loss of prestige for Elsevier. MIT is one the the preeminent universities in the world, perhaps the preeminent one.* The loss of MIT gives permission to other institutions who may be more concerned about reputation to do the same (they don’t want to generate whispers of “did they do this because they are having money troubles?”). It may also cause authors to submit other prestigious journals…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion>
TIL: Named for Robert Brown.
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.
Aren't the articles just going to get more expensive to make up for this?
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would that be unconstitutional violation of ex post facto? I'm not lawyer, so that question is one i don't know how to even approach.
It’s different from ex post facto, but The state can not pass laws that alter existing contracts or refuse to enforce them. That’s very explicitly prohibited under the contracts clause. Very much unconstitutional
"Right to work" laws would seem to be a counterexample here - states are permitted to jump in and put their thumbs on the scale in a contract between a debtor (the employer) and the union.
Question: What is Elsevier’s value proposition? Could that be replicated by on open source offering?
Network effect. "Everyone" subscribed to Elsevier, so if you wanted your papers to get visibility and citations, you tried to get it published in their journals. They are a relic of a bygone era. They made sense when journals were physical publications in the library. Elsevier was the one-stop-shop for all of the major academic journals. But with the internet, they make less sense and kept their position through iner…
https://gowers.wordpress.com/category/Elsevier/>
https://bjoern.brembs.net/tag/open-access/>
More so for some fields than others: physics, chemistry, and biology are making significant use of pre-publication and open-publication options (e.g.., arXiv, PLOS, PUBMED, BioMED). Medicine apparently less so (closed-access publishers include the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and Nature). For social sciences open-access/prepub options include SSRN, RePEc, and EconStore, but much research remains in closed-access journals.
Law is almost exclusively closed-access, which is problematic in all manner of ways.
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However there is also the loss of prestige for Elsevier. MIT is one the the preeminent universities in the world, perhaps the preeminent one.* The loss of MIT gives permission to other institutions who may be more concerned about reputation to do the same (they don’t want to generate whispers of “did they do this because they are having money troubles?”). It may also cause authors to submit other prestigious journals…
s/browning/Brownian/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion > TIL: Named for Robert Brown.
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> "our terms, take it or leave it". So many monopolies do this and they should all be disrupted. This is our world, and anyone telling us they get to gatekeep information exchange is not an ally. Google with Chrome, Apple with iPhone. > Societal change can be so very slow, nonmonotonic, and profoundly discouraging. And yet here we are, making progress. Encouraging, but we lost Aaron.
> This is our world, and anyone telling us they get to gatekeep information exchange is not an ally Sorry, but this is a worldview that universally leads to nastiness. It's everyone's world, and just as I don't have the right to sleep in your bed (even though it's "our" world and who are you to stop "us"?) we have to have a non-low resolution and non-tribal view of situations. There is a way to think about this that…
When someone wants to read a book in a bed you manufactured, you charge the author 30%. When someone wants to watch a TV show in a bed you manufactured, you take a cut of the subscription revenue and force them to use your accounts and billing system.
When someone wants to have sex in a bed you manufactured, you have to vet them first and you only let them deploy on Tuesdays. And if they don't know the latest moves, they're out. Also they have to wear your condoms, meet people through your dating app, and pretty much obey your rules or they're banned from your beds.
And the other bed manufacturer? You get kickbacks from them. It's just the two of you, controlling all the beds in the world.
The problem is the bed shouldn't really be yours anymore. And you've extended your reach way beyond the original moment of sale into literally every activity the purchaser performs.
Why does Apple get to control what dating apps I use? Why do they get a cut of Kickstarter revenue? Why can't I write software the way I want and give it away to others? It's just silicon, after all. Whatever happened to open computing and monopoly busting? Apple's vice grip just keeps getting tighter as they ensnare more and more of the world.
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Nah. Most people barely change channels from whatever they’re watching. Even if you made it super easy and public access, I doubt 50% or more of the population would know or care.
> Nah. Most people barely change channels from whatever they’re watching. They very much do if it's sportsball or political news. > I doubt 50% or more of the population would know or care. Don't need 50% of the population. 5% would be more than enough to get the snowball rolling. All that's needed is to normalize that perusing scientific papers is how you learn about things, much like reading books or using Google i…