6 ms·

Sure, you'd be peeved, but if the businesses in question is parasitic it's extremely difficult to raise even a modicum of sympathy

refurb 11y ago
Why is it parasitic again? These journals are providing a service. You may not agree with the cost of that service and are free (both authors and reader) to get that service somewhere else.
- masklinn 11y ago
  > These journals are providing a service. The journals provide a service, but Elsevier is a rent-seeking entity, it buys up/takes over publications and hikes up prices. http://imechanica.org/node/1531#comment-3251 http://imechanica.org/node/1531#comment-3251 estimates that the International Journal of Solids and Structures cost about $0.5m/year to run and had revenues of about $3.5m, or a net profit of $3m going to Elsevier for owning the journal and little else.
  - CWuestefeld 11y ago
    Earning profits is good for society. It demonstrates that the seller is providing a needed product. And it triggers others to innovate, to find ways to provide that product too, and get in on the racket. This innovation then drives down costs. And that's exactly what you see happening here. The linguists are saying that they'll be able to provide the product for a lesser price, but being nice and offering to let Elsevier continue to compete. If Elsevier refuses, and the linguists go ahead and start their own journal, then the free market has triumphed.
    - kragen 11y ago
      Profits are neither good nor bad. Providing a needed product is good for society. Reducing the cost of the product is also good, because it allows us to produce more of it. Therefore, for the benefit of society, profits must be kept to the minimum necessary to incentivize production. And that's what happens in a free market: competition drives down profits. Any profits are a signal that the market is not very free, and large profits are a signal that the market is very nonfree. What's happening with #icanhazpdf is that researchers are innovating to find ways to provide the product (access to research papers) at a much lower cost than Elsevier provides it — free, in fact. However, Elsevier, rather than compete with them, seeks to enforce government-granted monopolies on providing this service, known as copyrights, in order to protect their profits, at the cost of providing benefits to society.
  - refurb 11y ago
    If they weren't making a lot of profit, would you be OK with the situation? I'm just trying to understand why people think the situation is unfair. High prestige journals offer value to both authors and readers. Apparently both authors and readers feel it's worth the money. And again, there is nothing stopping anyone else from starting their own journal. If they fail, then authors and readers must find some value in the current situation.
    - mcguire 11y ago
      "High prestige journals offer value to both authors and readers." This is a very odd situation that I suspect isn't really amenable to normal economic analysis, at least outside of very simplistic models. The value that journals offer is, over the medium term, due to the editorial staff and the authors that submit articles. Remove those two, and the journal will cease to be "high prestige" and will likely fold. In the short term, however, the value is in the journal's name: you could replace the editors of Lancet with a crop of corn husks and it would still be "high prestige" for quite a while---at least until the third or fourth major screw-up. (Losing the authors is harder, but hold that thought for another paragraph.) On the other hand, over the long term, the value lies entirely in the readers. No major academic is going to waste their professional capital on a journal that isn't read by their colleagues, and ultimately, an academic's articles need to be read, not just published, for them to advance more than locally. In the same way, new journals have issues: In the short term, it's hard to get over the name recognition hump; in the medium term, they have to have consistently good editors and authors to attract more than momentary attention. But once they have attracted a readership, they have an inertia that makes other factors less important. A couple of examples: * Anyone heard from Software: Practice and Experience lately? It was one of my favorite journals, and was being edited by Douglas Comer the last time I interacted with it. But I haven't seen an issue in more than a decade, mostly because it is (was?) hideously expensive, and haven't seen any references to it, either. * How about PLOS? Seems to be high prestige now, judging by the number of references I hear on the Science and Nature podcasts. My personal suspicion is that a better analogy for Elsevier and company is the mining business: extracting as much wealth as possible from academic journals, as cheaply as possible, before the ore runs out and the town dries up and blows away.
    - 11y ago
- Rangi42 11y ago
  It's parasitic because they're charging authors and readers. If publishing is a service to the author, then the author is paying to have their work seen, so it should be open access. If publishing is a service to the readers (as with book publishing), the author should get a share of each copy sold to a reader. Charging both parties is only a viable business model because there's no alternative—which is exactly what these linguists hope to fix.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

refurb 11y ago

Why is it parasitic again? These journals are providing a service. You may not agree with the cost of that service and are free (both authors and reader) to get that service somewhere else.

masklinn 11y ago
> These journals are providing a service. The journals provide a service, but Elsevier is a rent-seeking entity, it buys up/takes over publications and hikes up prices. http://imechanica.org/node/1531#comment-3251 http://imechanica.org/node/1531#comment-3251 estimates that the International Journal of Solids and Structures cost about $0.5m/year to run and had revenues of about $3.5m, or a net profit of $3m going to Elsevier for owning the journal and little else.
- CWuestefeld 11y ago
  Earning profits is good for society. It demonstrates that the seller is providing a needed product. And it triggers others to innovate, to find ways to provide that product too, and get in on the racket. This innovation then drives down costs. And that's exactly what you see happening here. The linguists are saying that they'll be able to provide the product for a lesser price, but being nice and offering to let Elsevier continue to compete. If Elsevier refuses, and the linguists go ahead and start their own journal, then the free market has triumphed.
  - kragen 11y ago
    Profits are neither good nor bad. Providing a needed product is good for society. Reducing the cost of the product is also good, because it allows us to produce more of it. Therefore, for the benefit of society, profits must be kept to the minimum necessary to incentivize production. And that's what happens in a free market: competition drives down profits. Any profits are a signal that the market is not very free, and large profits are a signal that the market is very nonfree. What's happening with #icanhazpdf is that researchers are innovating to find ways to provide the product (access to research papers) at a much lower cost than Elsevier provides it — free, in fact. However, Elsevier, rather than compete with them, seeks to enforce government-granted monopolies on providing this service, known as copyrights, in order to protect their profits, at the cost of providing benefits to society.
- refurb 11y ago
  If they weren't making a lot of profit, would you be OK with the situation? I'm just trying to understand why people think the situation is unfair. High prestige journals offer value to both authors and readers. Apparently both authors and readers feel it's worth the money. And again, there is nothing stopping anyone else from starting their own journal. If they fail, then authors and readers must find some value in the current situation.
  - mcguire 11y ago
    "High prestige journals offer value to both authors and readers." This is a very odd situation that I suspect isn't really amenable to normal economic analysis, at least outside of very simplistic models. The value that journals offer is, over the medium term, due to the editorial staff and the authors that submit articles. Remove those two, and the journal will cease to be "high prestige" and will likely fold. In the short term, however, the value is in the journal's name: you could replace the editors of Lancet with a crop of corn husks and it would still be "high prestige" for quite a while---at least until the third or fourth major screw-up. (Losing the authors is harder, but hold that thought for another paragraph.) On the other hand, over the long term, the value lies entirely in the readers. No major academic is going to waste their professional capital on a journal that isn't read by their colleagues, and ultimately, an academic's articles need to be read, not just published, for them to advance more than locally. In the same way, new journals have issues: In the short term, it's hard to get over the name recognition hump; in the medium term, they have to have consistently good editors and authors to attract more than momentary attention. But once they have attracted a readership, they have an inertia that makes other factors less important. A couple of examples: * Anyone heard from Software: Practice and Experience lately? It was one of my favorite journals, and was being edited by Douglas Comer the last time I interacted with it. But I haven't seen an issue in more than a decade, mostly because it is (was?) hideously expensive, and haven't seen any references to it, either. * How about PLOS? Seems to be high prestige now, judging by the number of references I hear on the Science and Nature podcasts. My personal suspicion is that a better analogy for Elsevier and company is the mining business: extracting as much wealth as possible from academic journals, as cheaply as possible, before the ore runs out and the town dries up and blows away.
  - 11y ago
Rangi42 11y ago
It's parasitic because they're charging authors and readers. If publishing is a service to the author, then the author is paying to have their work seen, so it should be open access. If publishing is a service to the readers (as with book publishing), the author should get a share of each copy sold to a reader. Charging both parties is only a viable business model because there's no alternative—which is exactly what these linguists hope to fix.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]