Elsevier’s profits swell to more than £900M
timeshighereducation.com
timeshighereducation.com
I made a github repo of my last paper published in an Elsevier journal. This was cool because I could put the latex and simulation code for others to copy. https://github.com/lewis500/distribution-of-trip-lengths
The final version differs a little bit because they had a copy-editor go through and make some good improvements, even after the referees made their comments. Interestingly, the journal was fine with my linking to the repo within the text of the paper, as a way to share the code.
There is nothing like real open access though. This journal has wonderful typesetting and such and is totally free: https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/835/860
It's funny what tricks they use to justify their existence. Always emailing me about bizarre author features no one will use. Makes me sad to think of the engineers sitting in a big room year-on-year polishing features no one will use.
I did some more digging. Turns out they have some leeway for submission fees under some conditions: https://www.plos.org/fee-assistance
No paywall, no delay, straight to the web. Open data, open code, interactive/animated figures. Transparent, rolling peer review, version control, CC-BY license, citable DOIs. I was worried no one would read it, but it turns out science twitter is awesome. Very positive experience, so far.
My experience with publishing is that discoverability is a stronger function of advertising and (especially) getting cited than the publication venue. I do agree that bioarxiv and arxiv are nice advertising venues, but there are lots of ways to skin that cat.
The arXiv has overlay sites, such as http://www.arxiv-sanity.com/ or https://scirate.com/ , that improve discoverability over the basic arXiv interface; for example, you can browse all the papers in a given area posted in the last two months, sorted by some proxy for "interest." Of course there is also Google Scholar, and perhaps there are better ways.
I think refusing to transfer copyright is a better option in fields that have no open access journals, like my field. While I haven't published in a journal yet, the discussions I had with a few representatives of publishers at a conference suggested that some publishers will accept only a license to print if you ask. One publisher even showed me an example of an article where they did not own the copyright.
Pre-prints are also a good option, but you won't own the changes made in review if you transfer copyright (for a journal that is not open access).
Preprints are an excellent option, and every field should make distributing preprints at the standard servers (Arxiv, Biorxiv, etc.) the norm. The broad visibility from open preprint servers seems to be evolving into a different kind of peer review, to the extent that if, in my field, I see a published article with no arXiv preprint I wonder if the authors are trying to hide something.
They own infrastructure and cell towers and such but these publishers own mindshare and they have people’s attention and that’s the whole point. You’re not going to risk your career and publish in some unknown journal (for most people). Sad but true.
If this is true it reflects poorly on academia and science (insofar as science is an organized activity). Shouldn’t research be judged by its own merits, and the results it produces against verifiable goals and not the popularity contest of competing journals? IMHO to the extent that what you are saying is true, it’s honestly understandable and a little justified that the public is skeptical of academic science. You’re saying it’s in large part a popularity contest.
No, you want some sort of structure where you have people you trust do some sorting. That's what the publishing system does. (Plus the editing process).
Elsevier is earning money because they have created a structure of evaluation that's not entirely garbage, and that is self-reinforcing. It might be good to replace them with a non-profit approach, but isn't easy.
Elsevier doesn't read or evaluate them either. They use academic peer reviewers who don't have any equity or salary from Elsevier.
> No, you want some sort of structure where you have people you trust do some sorting.
None of those people are paid by Elsevier.
> That's what the publishing system does. (Plus the editing process).
No, the publishing system provides brands. If Elsevier actually curated, hired and paid a fair salary to the peer reviewers and researchers who actually performed and evaluate the research I think you would be right. But it still seems to me they're purely a marketing middleman that takes public funding and public laborers and turns a private profit.
It's difficult to change this situation because the journal subscription fees are paid from university budgets and are invisible to academics. Authors and editors benefit from affiliation with prestigious journals' brands. The university library system and the taxpayer pays the cost. Academics also pay a cost in wasted time wrestling with journal paywalls, but that will go away only decades after a complete switch to open access. Open Access is definitely the right thing to do, but the economic incentives are aligned against it. Since there are ~ 300 applicants per open faculty position these days every bit of self-promotion is perceived to be life-or-death for one's career.
At the same time I'm inspired by projects like Discrete Analysis (http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/) and Fermat's Library (https://fermatslibrary.com/) - there are actually a lot of smart, well intentioned folks pushing for a move towards more openness and collaboration in science and research.
Really gives one faith in what will happen with things like global warming policy, or economic cooperation.
The only way to overcome a prisoner's dilemma is education and trust.
Compare this to economists. For economists, it's all about hitting a home run a couple times...publishing a few career-making papers in the best possible journals. Economists will publish only a couple times per year, and their papers are sometimes very long. The review process is crazy: the time between first draft of the paper and final publication can be like five years.
I think what determines this is the difficulty of ascertaining the quality of a piece of work. In CS or math or math physics, I think anyone in a certain subfield is capable of ascertaining how good a paper is. It doesn't need to be extremely long or flashy, and chances are it will make an incremental improvement. By contrast, let's say an economist publishes a paper called "do red light cameras encourage speeding?" The intended audience (economists) doesn't really know anything about red light cameras or driver behavior. They don't have the time to do all the data analyses themselves, and until recently would never even have access to the data. So they look for a bunch of other markers of quality: writing style, citations, length, venue, etc.
Is this so? Every other paper I search has no pdf linked on google scholar, e.g. papers from the bibliographies of arxiv preprints.
The authors included Chinese, Turkish and Slavic people. And I didn't even have to look at their 35 dollars for a paper when they don;t even have the decency to help authors with some English copy editing.
Fixing:
The authors included Chinese, Turkish and Slavic people. Not all of them could write well in English. And I didn't even have to look at their names to guess nationality, because they would have English grammar mistakes that would make it clear what their native language was.
I really resent paying 35 dollars for a PDF from a company that can't even do some copy editing to help such authors. Elsevier has no respect for the researchers or their readers.
Edit: What does it mean that my comment is automatically collapsed?