Can anyone steelman the Elsevier side? I don't want to be caught in the headlights of I have to debate this.
It's not hard for me to imagine that a professional high-quality academic hosting service costs something like what PLoS charges. Their budget is probably publicly auditable. I work in enterprise software, though, so I've become kind of inured to seemingly absurd costs for technical solutions.
I used to work in academia, where I became inured to PIs spending crazy amounts (millions per year) on equipment and lab services, which makes me think $1600 for a publication really isn't that big a deal for most developed-world STEM labs. Although I'd rather they spend it on making post-doc salaries livable.
First, PLoS fees are lower and as a nonprofit only have to support operation (no profit). Also as a nonprofit there is some transparency as to where those fees go, so I assume that publishing there really does cost something like $1600.
Second PLoS's fee rules include the sentence "Authors' ability to pay publication fees will never be a consideration in the decision whether to publish."
Elsevier's "unfair advantage" (something we're supposed to look for on HN) or IP is their ownership of journals that acquired renown over decades. Publication in those journals as opposed to others has, depending on your field, tremendous effect on tenure and grant opportunities. It takes a long time to transfer that repetitional benefit to other institutions like PLoS.
That's why physics (with a more fluid tradition of journal bona fides and a wider use of preprints and passing papers around) was the pioneer field for open access and the like while, say, medicinal chemistry has been a laggard in this area. Doesn't mean the researchers want it that way, but those cultural traditions take a while to change.
If UCB and some other high profile institutions (I'm looking at you, MIT!) can declare a policy away from these journals it will provide cover to allow others to do the same.
Also I guess some (theoretical) physics/math papers kind of stand on their own. If you proved the Poincaré conjecture, it doesn't matter if you post it in Science or on your WordPress blog: anyone in the field can verify the correctness of your work. Contrast with life science where reproducing work is hard and bona fides count for much more.
There's no inherent reason a non-profit can't provide those bona fides just as well, though. I also hope institutions do the right thing here.
You mean the Web? For the Internet, no they didn't. It was created by a US military organization.
You couldn't choose a worse example than that. MIT famously screwed Aaron Swartz legally over public domain (pre-1923) papers, by baselessly claiming that his access had been "unauthorized" when in fact it was entirely consistent with their own pre-existing policies! They are a bad actor in this whole issue and aren't going to do a thing.
infamously is what you mean, particularly considering "screwed (over)" is very much an understatement in regards to the sombre culmination of that legal case. [0]
If Elsevier was really providing no value, why don’t scientists simply submit their work elsewhere? Clearly scientists and universities don’t really care about open access. If it was that important to them, they would just stop submitting content to non-open-access journals. The truth is that scientists care more about prestige than about open access. Elsevier puts a lot of work into making their journals prestigious, and scientists want that.
In actual fact, Elsevier is a gatekeeper to obtaining funding and making a living in research. Elsevier is rent-collecting, not selling an intangible feeling.
Got it in one! And until that changes, the status quo remains - regardless of sites like schihub
Assuming Elsevier is killed off, someone else will have to put in the work of sifting good from bad. And that's not an easy problem, especially when many try to pervert the process for ideological gain.
(Disclaimer: I'm part of a project that tries to sift the good from bad without those things.)
All of this work is performed by unpaid reviewers, not by Elsevier themselves.
(N.b. I am no fan of Elsevier, just trying to figure out how their power can be unwound)
Elsevier didn't create the high-prestige journals. They were originally published by universities and not-for-profit academic societies. And became prestigious over time, in one way or another.
Elsevier just bought them, and has been raising prices and bleeding them out.
The problem is coordination: everyone would like to stop, there would be a huge collective benefit if everyone stopped, but the first ones who stop will be penalized, so no one wants to be among the first.
> Elsevier puts a lot of work into making their journals prestigious
This gives the impression that the journals are prestigious thanks to Elsevier. In fact, what makes the journals prestigious is the hard work of paper authors and reviewers over the last decades, none of which were paid by Elsevier.
If a customer is unable or unwilling to pay the prevailing rate, then no access will be granted.
The argument that Elsevier uses unpaid academic labor and therefore should fall under some other system is a red herring. Authors signed over their copyright to Elsevier, and like any other copyright holder Elsevier can license its property toward any legal purpose that advances its business interests.
Sure, but access can still be obtained. For free. So they can sod off.
Edit: Elsevier and the like are predatory scum. They bought top academic journals, and have increased prices dramatically in recent decades. They're bleeding out the industry, as they ride it down to irrelevance. Just as some have done with the newspaper industry.
This isn't about copyright, because original authors are forced to pay-to-play.
In a genuine copyright market, creators are paid in exchange for exploitation of copyright.
If they have to pay up to sign over their rights, that's not a copyright issue - that's extortion.
I have two counter arguments here:
1. Funding agencies should not permit this. If I were to fund public research, the results should be public under an appropriate license.
2. Something is very wrong with the system if authors are willing to do this without being paid. If Elsevier paid the author $3k, that would be another story. (And possibly unethical.)
And more and more are they doing that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_S
Unfortunately, the US is still not on board - that would make a major difference.
I don’t really think it works, and the publication fees model might already be a good enough counter-argument, but it’s my best try.
On the other hand, there are open access journals that essentially act as a layer above arXiv, so that the main added value is review.
Once you’ve read enough papers, you don’t even have to invoke the replication crisis to see that most papers should be taken with a grain of salt.