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There's far less staff needed to curate the journals.
And the millions saved in time with researchers getting them on line.
Libraries are much better off. They just could be even more so.
I think as time goes on we'll find that journals are able to do more and more of the work themselves in such a way that disrupts the monopoly as we know it today. Journals and the academic community already perform the review process themselves (with little reward) and are finding that the "typesetting" and "dissemination" value-adds from publishers are things that they can do on their own as well. On a large scale,…
> droque
Not in the dictionary, Urban Dictionary, Google just tries to translate it from French. What is a droque?
> Traditionally, most journals were published by non-profit scientific societies. But when journals shifted from print to online digital formats, those societies couldn't afford the cost of the equipment needed to make the switch. Instead, they sold their journals to large, for-profit publishers wait, what I can't figure out how it would be possible that shifting from physical paper to online hosting could be more ex…
Developing and hosting something like JSTOR in the early to mid 90's was no where near as cheap and easy as it might be today (and let's face it even today it isn't completely trivial). Doubly so if you had no staff with the relevant skills and had to do everything via consultants.
I think as time goes on we'll find that journals are able to do more and more of the work themselves in such a way that disrupts the monopoly as we know it today. Journals and the academic community already perform the review process themselves (with little reward) and are finding that the "typesetting" and "dissemination" value-adds from publishers are things that they can do on their own as well. On a large scale,…
OT, but: > droque Not in the dictionary, Urban Dictionary, Google just tries to translate it from French. What is a droque?
Regardless of how difficult it would be get academics to change how they do things[1], it's also a problem that we can't agree on an acceptable and sustainable Open Access model.
The 'green' option sets an embargo (usually 6 months), during which time universities (etc.) must pay to view the article. After that, however, the journal article becomes freely available.
The 'gold' option asks academics to pay a small fee (£couple of hundred) to have their article published--what's known as Article Processing Charges.
The problem with the 'green' option is that in disciplines like science, medicine and technology, the first six months after publication probably encapsulate 90% of the article's value--after which point it has been replaced by something else--which means people would probably continue to pay for these things anyway.
The problem with 'gold' is that (a) you start publishing stuff based on who has the ability to pay, rather than academic merit, and (b) it would make academic publishing the only industry in the world where the supplier is paying the purchaser/buyer.
[1] A joke about Oxford Uni goes like this: Q. How many Oxford academics does it take to change a lightbulb? A. Change!?
The researchers themselves should take more action, plainly refuse to cooperate with publishing companies and establish an independent publication system on universities' or grant agencies' websites. Sadly, most researchers, with exceptions, seem to not care that they contribute perpetuating this absurd money redirection scheme that hurts the society and its benefit from public-funded research. This is probably also…
The market is rapidly changing even though the household names in the publishing business have changed their profit-making strategies too. They now ask authors to pay an author's fee in order to make their articles available to the public - Open Access. I am seeing a research platform like the researchgate.net also impacting their profit-making mechanisms as time goes by.