6 ms·

I know it's hard to believe, but #1 is false for a lot of subscription academic journals. Traditional academic publishers might have to print less paper now tha

I know it's hard to believe, but #1 is false for a lot of subscription academic journals. Traditional academic publishers might have to print less paper now than they used to (although even that is questionable) but they aren't able to stop printing paper copies of journals. We cannot switch straight over to electronic only for all our journals. Our customers (mostly university libraries) still demand print, as much as we'd like that to not be the case. So today traditional publishers are stuck in a tough spot, we either have to take on the full cost of both digital distribution (and no, this is not free or even super cheap) while also continuing with the cost of paper distribution. Or we could say across the board that we're done with paper and try to deal with the hoards of angry customers we'd get. It's similar to a large old software system with lots of customers. Ripping out a feature you've offered forever comes with massive customer disapproval, even if it's the logical thing to do for the product. So in that regard it's easier for the small new entrant to be nimble and not have to deal with maintaining the legacy stuff.

omginternets 11y ago
>I know it's hard to believe, but #1 is false for a lot of subscription academic journals. I must insist that this is missing the point. On some level, you seem to (inadvertently, perhaps?) acknowledge this since you qualified your argument with "subscription academic journals". I would argue that this is an outdated business model, due to the fact that publication costs per se have dramatically dropped. Of course, it costs more to run an outdated business! Join the PLoS team, or die, I say! (Respectfully, of course!) To be less dramatic, my argument is essentially this: stop offering subscription-based services. It doesn't work for you for the same reason it doesn't work for the New York Times, and you're suffering the same consequences.
- dougmccune 11y ago
  That's certainly a valid viewpoint, that there simply shouldn't be anything other than electronic only journals. Or to take it further (which I acknowledge isn't exactly what you said) that there shouldn't even be journals that attempt to bestow prestige at all (ie that should be a process of post publication of some sort). But it's also about the realistic challenges of running a sustainable business in academia. PLoS figured out a formula that works for a portion of the market with PLoS One. Note that that doesn't really work for the humanities and social sciences because the funding situation is so different. So then you have Open Library of Humanities, which is surviving currently on grant money with the hopes that they can get universities to fund their journals (not all that different than subscriptions to be honest, just that they are a nonprofit). But it's entirely unclear if that's going to be sustainable. So even a brand new state of the art low cost journal needs to find funding somewhere. How that works in STEM might make sense (APCs coming from research funding) but how it works outside of that is entirely undefined.
  - omginternets 11y ago
    Regarding the implications of my viewpoint, I'd say that's an accurate summary. My opinion indeed implies a radical departure from the current state of the business, but it seems to me that my colleagues are by and large in agreement. Regarding the humanities/sciences division, I agree that the market is different. I think, however, that this difference is very accurately modeled by a single factor: technical literacy. On the whole, I find that the humanities are not interested in the inner workings of computers. They do not care, and it annoys them greatly to think of such things. Now consider the fact that open access online journals are started by tech people, which is to say people from the sciences. Every open-access journal is just too damn complicated for people who don't care about social media, or even social logins. They want (query in) -> (paper out). I think a simple experiment would be very convincing. Start a journal whose only job is to manage the peer-review process in the most transparent manner possible. University computing centers can donate storage space to the project. The now-slim editorial costs can be covered by modest submission fees -- say $100 for any non-3rd world university. I posit that if such a system were to be developed, the humanities would latch on immediately. In other words, I suspect the humanities want more open-access and unrestrictive licensing, not less, as it's actually more convenient for them. In short, I argue that the editorial business is resisting an inevitable market change. Edit: to end on a more positive note, I'm sure a business opportunity exists for editors who can make present us with a convenient set of tools to work with this data.
    - diqu 11y ago
      > University computing centers can donate storage space to the project If we leave the publishing-as-a-business area, I wonder how much university libraries currently pay annually for their subscriptions. And I do wonder, if it would make sense for universities to let their libraries take care of archiving and publishing the respective uni's publications. Open-access everything, host it at home.
      - omginternets 11y ago
        This is a good point. An implicit assumption of mine is that it's cheaper to donate computing resources than to pay the journal subscription fees. To reiterate, however, I think it'll still be necessary to have some sort of submission fee to cover the costs of peer-review.

omginternets 11y ago

>I know it's hard to believe, but #1 is false for a lot of subscription academic journals. I must insist that this is missing the point. On some level, you seem to (inadvertently, perhaps?) acknowledge this since you qualified your argument with "subscription academic journals". I would argue that this is an outdated business model, due to the fact that publication costs per se have dramatically dropped. Of course, it costs more to run an outdated business! Join the PLoS team, or die, I say! (Respectfully, of course!) To be less dramatic, my argument is essentially this: stop offering subscription-based services. It doesn't work for you for the same reason it doesn't work for the New York Times, and you're suffering the same consequences.

dougmccune 11y ago
That's certainly a valid viewpoint, that there simply shouldn't be anything other than electronic only journals. Or to take it further (which I acknowledge isn't exactly what you said) that there shouldn't even be journals that attempt to bestow prestige at all (ie that should be a process of post publication of some sort). But it's also about the realistic challenges of running a sustainable business in academia. PLoS figured out a formula that works for a portion of the market with PLoS One. Note that that doesn't really work for the humanities and social sciences because the funding situation is so different. So then you have Open Library of Humanities, which is surviving currently on grant money with the hopes that they can get universities to fund their journals (not all that different than subscriptions to be honest, just that they are a nonprofit). But it's entirely unclear if that's going to be sustainable. So even a brand new state of the art low cost journal needs to find funding somewhere. How that works in STEM might make sense (APCs coming from research funding) but how it works outside of that is entirely undefined.
- omginternets 11y ago
  Regarding the implications of my viewpoint, I'd say that's an accurate summary. My opinion indeed implies a radical departure from the current state of the business, but it seems to me that my colleagues are by and large in agreement. Regarding the humanities/sciences division, I agree that the market is different. I think, however, that this difference is very accurately modeled by a single factor: technical literacy. On the whole, I find that the humanities are not interested in the inner workings of computers. They do not care, and it annoys them greatly to think of such things. Now consider the fact that open access online journals are started by tech people, which is to say people from the sciences. Every open-access journal is just too damn complicated for people who don't care about social media, or even social logins. They want (query in) -> (paper out). I think a simple experiment would be very convincing. Start a journal whose only job is to manage the peer-review process in the most transparent manner possible. University computing centers can donate storage space to the project. The now-slim editorial costs can be covered by modest submission fees -- say $100 for any non-3rd world university. I posit that if such a system were to be developed, the humanities would latch on immediately. In other words, I suspect the humanities want more open-access and unrestrictive licensing, not less, as it's actually more convenient for them. In short, I argue that the editorial business is resisting an inevitable market change. Edit: to end on a more positive note, I'm sure a business opportunity exists for editors who can make present us with a convenient set of tools to work with this data.
  - diqu 11y ago
    > University computing centers can donate storage space to the project If we leave the publishing-as-a-business area, I wonder how much university libraries currently pay annually for their subscriptions. And I do wonder, if it would make sense for universities to let their libraries take care of archiving and publishing the respective uni's publications. Open-access everything, host it at home.
    - omginternets 11y ago
      This is a good point. An implicit assumption of mine is that it's cheaper to donate computing resources than to pay the journal subscription fees. To reiterate, however, I think it'll still be necessary to have some sort of submission fee to cover the costs of peer-review.