I don't understand why companies like Elsevier are needed. Why can't every university have their own Arxiv kind of website, upload their work? These websites are anyways indexed by Google.
I would love nothing more than to see the entire publishing system revamped and parasites like Elsevier and NPG disappear, but until you solve the basic problem of academic hiring and promotion, it's an uphill battle.
(Full disclosure: I'm working on such an alternative. It just launched, but if any of you come across research you think it's good, do consider publicly endorsing it using https://plaudit.pub/extension/. It's all open data, and non-profit.)
Why oh why don't more editorial boards do this????
eScholarship has a repository for UC, and also publishes open access journals.
(disclaimer: I'm the tech lead of the group that runs this site)
yes, a website could solve the issue today, but not 30 years ago.
Elsevier predates internet by more than a century (it is 139 years old)
look up "Green OA" (https://openscience.com/green-oa-vs-gold-oa-which-one-to-cho...) or "Institutional Repositories".
the reasons these sites haven't taken over academic publishing are many and varied:
- they are woefully underfunded (library services are low-status, gendered work, that never receive the funding they deserve).
- publishing in established journals is singularly the most important thing in academic careers.
- scholarly societies (IEEE is referenced elsewhere in this thread), publishers, and other entrenched interests have significant influence on policy.
- etc...
Generally, when a researcher publishes a work in a journal, they either assign copyright to the journal or give the journal an exclusive publishing license.
Ordinarily, that prevents researchers from making their papers publicly available elsewhere, and "Green" and "Gold" open access policies are the exception.
Just look at random "not so well formed" Word file like for example:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.07133.pdf
Not commenting the bad typography of text, math, tables, etc., just try to estimate the effort for converting the references in well-formed and validated BibTeX entries.
https://ac.els-cdn.com/S1303070118300945/1-s2.0-S13030701183...
The 3B2 PDF looks much better than a Word file and especially the references are all clean, linked, and downloadable as a BibTeX file. There is also a HTML version of the work. I can see definitely a lot of added value to the scientific document there.
You fail to see that nonprofit publishers (IEEE, AIP, APS, AMS, etc.) also typeset and copyedit articles just like Elsevier, and that too at a much smaller price. The point is that you don't have to charge customers exorbitantly if the only thing they are gaining on publishing with Elsevier is neatly typeset articles. Further, Elsevier outsources the production of its papers to companies [1] in India. If it's production quality that one wants, those companies can probably do it at a fiftieth of the price Elsevier finally charges the customer.
I know that a lot of smart scientists struggle with computers and they cling on MS word because they have invested a lot of time and effort into learning how to use it. But I think, we should try to convince them that there are better, simpler and more reliable ways to author papers.
However, Arvix and co. are a centralized platform, and there are lot of scale benefits (for everyone) in using such as platform - which is why everyone publishes there.
In that sense, decentralized working paper series are not a solution. However, the system can be "decentralized" in terms of control, and run much more efficient with greater consumer benefit.