>Academics around the world have applauded what many hope is the start of a rebellion against the huge profit margins in academic publishing, which outstrip those made by Apple, Google and Amazon.
>Elsevier, a Dutch company that claims to publish 25% of the world’s scientific papers, reported a 10% increase in its revenue to £2.9bn last year. But it’s the profit margins, nearing 40%, according to its 2019 accounts, which anger academics most. The big scientific publishers keep costs low because academics write up their research – typically funded by charities and the public purse – for free.
>According to a spreadsheet of costs quoted to university librarians, Manchester University gave a recent example of being quoted £75 for a popular plant biology textbook in print, but £975 for a three-user ebook licence.
That’s actually crazy! Good on the science community for standing up to the obscenity!
>“This is creating a digital hierarchy of haves and have-nots. There are institutions that just can’t afford these prices for texts.”
Isn’t it a natural consequence of out of control capitalism? It’s a feature, not a bug.
Let me be skeptical. It’s been a decade and a half of bitching at facts that haven’t changed. And every year Elsevier is paying off someone new mansion as a result.
And this is with academics paying the brunt of both getting published AND getting access. Elsevier literally has to start breaking knees for anything real to change.
Good on them!
Reminds when MIT went after reddit cofounder for copying research articles from their servers. Disproportionate response. And they didn’t even apologize. Disgusting.
Lost a lot of respect for MIT and higher Ed due this among other serious issues.
Science gets funded by the tax payer, but somehow the results are sold for profit.
Seriously you have no idea how much of a rip off this is.
Reviewers aren’t even payed most of the time and you have to pay enormous fees to have access to anything. If you ever find a paper you would like to read but can’t, try scihub (regularly changes address, just type scihub in a search engine), arxiv.org or just ask one of the authors for the paper. They are allowed to send it to you and I’ve never met one that wouldn’t if asked or who would be saddened if you ever “found” it. You don’t get money for publishing (you actually often have to pay in fact) and scientists aren’t exactly very well payed either (least of all PhD students, some of which are proper exploited for little in return).
Most people I talk to would actually like nothing more than having journals with proper referencing, impact factor to be more ethically managed with either low costs or completely free with some form of public funding.
If you borrow a book from Springer or Elsevier without the consent or knowledge of the publisher for an undetermined period of time, don’t ever feel bad. Everyone could do that 100 times over and barely make a dent in the profits these companies make and you’d still have damaged them less than they’ve already stolen from you as a regular taxpayer.
Can we create our own jounals? How would someone go about doing that?
8 comments
>Academics around the world have applauded what many hope is the start of a rebellion against the huge profit margins in academic publishing, which outstrip those made by Apple, Google and Amazon.
>Elsevier, a Dutch company that claims to publish 25% of the world’s scientific papers, reported a 10% increase in its revenue to £2.9bn last year. But it’s the profit margins, nearing 40%, according to its 2019 accounts, which anger academics most. The big scientific publishers keep costs low because academics write up their research – typically funded by charities and the public purse – for free.
>According to a spreadsheet of costs quoted to university librarians, Manchester University gave a recent example of being quoted £75 for a popular plant biology textbook in print, but £975 for a three-user ebook licence.
That’s actually crazy! Good on the science community for standing up to the obscenity!
>“This is creating a digital hierarchy of haves and have-nots. There are institutions that just can’t afford these prices for texts.”
Isn’t it a natural consequence of out of control capitalism? It’s a feature, not a bug.
Let me be skeptical. It’s been a decade and a half of bitching at facts that haven’t changed. And every year Elsevier is paying off someone new mansion as a result.
And this is with academics paying the brunt of both getting published AND getting access. Elsevier literally has to start breaking knees for anything real to change.
Good on them!
Reminds when MIT went after reddit cofounder for copying research articles from their servers. Disproportionate response. And they didn’t even apologize. Disgusting.
Lost a lot of respect for MIT and higher Ed due this among other serious issues.
Science gets funded by the tax payer, but somehow the results are sold for profit.
Seriously you have no idea how much of a rip off this is.
Reviewers aren’t even payed most of the time and you have to pay enormous fees to have access to anything. If you ever find a paper you would like to read but can’t, try scihub (regularly changes address, just type scihub in a search engine), arxiv.org or just ask one of the authors for the paper. They are allowed to send it to you and I’ve never met one that wouldn’t if asked or who would be saddened if you ever “found” it. You don’t get money for publishing (you actually often have to pay in fact) and scientists aren’t exactly very well payed either (least of all PhD students, some of which are proper exploited for little in return).
Most people I talk to would actually like nothing more than having journals with proper referencing, impact factor to be more ethically managed with either low costs or completely free with some form of public funding.
If you borrow a book from Springer or Elsevier without the consent or knowledge of the publisher for an undetermined period of time, don’t ever feel bad. Everyone could do that 100 times over and barely make a dent in the profits these companies make and you’d still have damaged them less than they’ve already stolen from you as a regular taxpayer.
Can we create our own jounals? How would someone go about doing that?