Academic Spring - freeing the journals!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

now this is good news!

[MrGongGong]

That should make it much easier for Simon to quote from the academic research he always used to refer to

[Serial_Apologist]

It sounds nice, openness, doesn't it; but isn't it more likely to mean funding going abroad for where the disclosed is taken up for practical and commercial purposes, rather than kept in this country, where it is already threatened with cuts? Won't the longstanding UK brain drain problem will be further exacerbated?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

no nationalism in real science; the collusive rip-off on science and academic journals is long due overthrowing ...

[umslopogaas]

#4 Calum da Jazbo, “… the collusive rip-off on science and academic journals is long overdue overthrowing.”

This is a complicated issue, and one that bothered me a lot in my academic days (they were modest, but I had my moments). I went through a fairly typical science career path. When I was young, I had a research job, up there at the cutting edge, but I needed to get research papers published, so I wrote them, sent them off to journals, ground my teeth at the comments of referees, but complied with their demands, and duly got my papers in print. Later, I was co-opted to referee myself, and dutifully did my bit. Then, after years of wearily dealing with A4 envelopes of manuscripts and trying to make helpful comments, I was elevated to become an editor in the journal of my particular learned society.

A word aside here. There are two types of scientific journal, from a commercial viewpoint. There are the journals of the scientific societies, one of which was mine and for which I agreed to edit. For free, there were no fees, it was accepted by my employers that editing was something that came with the job. And then there were purely commercial items, which were not published by the society, but were simply there to make money for commercial publishers, like Elsevier.

Difficult at this length of time to recall what we did, but I do recall unease at being asked to referee, or even edit, papers for a commercial organisation. But I do not recall ever receiving a fee.

The problem of commercial gain never bothered me, I had a strong professional society behind me and I wrote papers for their in-house journal. Occasionally I thought a different organisation was more appropriate, but it was still in-house, we publish a few of yours and you do the same for us. There was no sordid muttering about money.

I suppose my point here is that we need some clarification about “collusive rip-off”. You might suppose that Elsevier charged extortionate prices and last time I looked at their catalogue, I might agree. But look at it this way. I might be a scientist with years of experience behind me. My salary is small, but I might write a book, so I go to Elsevier. They say fine, we’ll publish it, but it’ll probably sell ten copies and we are commercial, or we disappear, so the price is … HOW MUCH!? But if you have to have it, you have to have it.

Yes, they colluded, but of necessity. I expect they still do.

[Simon]

no nationalism in real science; the collusive rip-off on science and academic journals is long due overthrowing ...

A rather typical generalisation, cdj! Umslop's measured and rational comment is a more valuable contributiuon, IIMSS.

In the real world, things need to be paid for and people have to be paid. I know very little about pure science journals, but something about journals in a couple of other fields, and whilst there are things that perhaps one would prefer to do without, such serious publications seem overall to generate much more that is positive than that is negative, IMO.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

which is the real world? ... i have no problem with a system that pays authors and publishing now has to wake up to the extinct nature of much of what it does ... it seems to me that the Wellcome Foundation can do what they want, there are other models eg the open source community in software development and self publishing ... i do not accept that umslopogaas is correct in his view of haow books may be published in future...

and Elsevier and others have been ripping off with their pricing for decades, as one could tell from the publishers of other journals that were much more affordable .. i have published refereed articles and purchased and read academic journals for decades and know whereof i generalise

[umslopogaas]

CDJ (#7), I'm no expert on publishing, but I thnk there are several factors that affect the cost of a journal. Elsevier are a commercial operation, they will not publish anything at a loss.They take on the publication of specialist journals with very limited markets because they know those markets are captive: a certain number of libraries will have to buy them whatever the cost. So they know how many they will sell, and price accordingly. The prices can be very high, but if you are only going to sell a few hundred and you've got to make a profit, so it goes. Librarians no doubt grind their teeth, but they have to pay up.

If other journals are cheaper, one reason is because they will be published by specialist professional societies, as part of the package offered to their members. I cant recall if the ones I received in return for my annual membership fees were free, or whether we members got them at a reduced cost, but I know they were much cheaper to us than they were on the open market. However, the primary aim of such a society is to serve the interests of members and the advancement of their subject; it isnt to make money.

This is not to say that Elsevier, Academic Press and the like do not overcharge: they probably do, but no doubt they would argue that that's business, you dont charge what someone else says is a fair price, you charge what you can get a way with.

By the way, I really dont know how books may be published in the future, but I think books will be with us for some time to come. For a start, people like books, they are somehow more of a pleasure to own than a hard drive full of electronic storage. Books are also durable: unless the library catches fire, they will be around for a very long time. Electronic data storage systems always seem to me to be very vulnerable by comparison, one false move and you've wiped the disc.

There's an analogy here with recorded music. The introduction of the LP did not kill off the 78, it just largely replaced it. And the introduction of the CD did not kill off vinyl, despite its obvious superiority, in fact vinyl is having something of a revival. And while music may very soon disappear into the ether, all those shelves of discs arent going to be consigned to the dustbin any time soon.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

yep but you can already buy a print on demand book eg ..

and a digital world is a very much lower carbon world than a paper world eh