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Comment by chris_wot | Hacker News Reader

I think forbidding professors and staff to participate in reviews and volunteer work for commercial publishers whilst on University time, or say that it is a conflict of interest which compromises their ethical duties to the University, would make Spring and Elsevier suddenly realise that there entire model is in jeopardy.

It would be hilarious (at least to me!) if all Universities suddenly did this due to the outrageous pricing. Or, and this would be an interesting turn of events, they demand that they be paid for supplying free labour. They could use that payment to purchase access to the journals.

It's time for commercial publishers to realise that they are getting a free ride, and that the free ride is ending. They might complain, but the only ones who they will be able to blame are themselves for their predicament.

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For professors, there is no "University time". They don't clock in and out. The only times they are required to be on campus is for classes, office hours and meetings. Otherwise they are free to do what they want, so forbidding them from reviewing wouldn't work.

Not counting reviewing for commercial publishers in the tenure process might have an effect on those seeking tenure.

This is not necessarily true. (I am a professor.)

In general I would like to be able to refuse review requests for journals that rip off their (institutional) customers. Under the circumstances, I dare not do so, because these requests usually come from senior scientists in my field.

However, if my university had such a policy (and it was conveniently explained on a web page I could link to) it would be very easy for me to back out of reviewing for these journals without taking the blame.

Sure, some of my colleagues would continue to review for these journals, and the university would never know. But such a policy would give an out for individidual researchers who would like to support this cause.

Many journals offer an open-access option for publishing. However, this is chosen after the article has been reviewed and accepted. So, currently there isn't always a way (for a reviewer) to know if an article will be published open access or not.

Edit: added "for a reviewer"

So... less than useful when choosing whether to publish in a particular journal then, if this is important to you.

You can view the journal's open access options before you submit your paper for review.

I just did this for a paper at an Elsevier journal. If the paper is accepted, the authors can choose to publish it open access, which requires paying the "open access charge" to the publisher. Once paid, though, the journal is available for free from their website.

So... you basically do a whole bunch of work, then a publisher takes your work, makes a lot of money out of it, and you can pay to have it openly published. I see.

Not for Springer though, right ? From Springer FAQ ( http://www.springer.com/gp/open-access/authors-rights/faq-ab... )

"I don’t want to transfer my copyright. What should I do?

You can choose to publish your article open access in Springer’s Open Choice program or one of our SpringerOpen journals. Publishing an article with open access leaves the copyright with the author. The article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY), which allows users to read, copy, distribute and make derivative works from the material, as long as the author of the original work is cited"

But the reviewers have no knowledge of this choice (nor should they really).

The parent was suggesting that Universities bar their faculty from reviewing papers unless it was an open-access publisher. I haven't published in a Springer journal, but others have the authors make the open-access determination only after the paper was accepted. In which case, the reviewers would have no idea about if they were reviewing an open-access paper or not.

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