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> They bought the rights No elsevier does not pay authors, in fact: > author gets free publication If author wants his paper to be open access (something tha

by return0 11y ago

> They bought the rights No elsevier does not pay authors, in fact: > author gets free publication If author wants his paper to be open access (something that is often required by their funding grants), they have to pay a high publication fee. Other journals charge paper submission (for consideration) fees as well. But the error in your argument is at the start. You assume that the market is free and scientists have an alternative to publishing in elsevier. If scientists want their work public, there are tons of free options, preprint archives etc. The problem is that funding sources require high impact (i.e. elsevier) publications to give you grants. There is a self-perpetuating cycle between funding sources <-> (elsevier, NPG etc.; talking about biology). This is a racket. PS. How it is different from buying servers? It would be comparable if , say, the US army had a requirement that all soldiers must do a yearly internship in amazon (paid by the army), thus amazon didnt need to pay any salaries, yet could charge as much as the competitors. It would all be legal, but grossly immoral.

ikeboy 11y ago
We're not talking about open access here. I don't see why you brought it in. From what I understand, most journals that charge for access offer free publication. Even if fees are charged, they don't cover costs. >This is a racket. Maybe if they were bribing grant committees to require Elsevier publication. If those committees decide that of their own free will, then they think the benefits of Elsevier are worth the costs. If they really were just extracting rent, I'd expect to see far higher margins, at least above 50%.
- return0 11y ago
  > If those committees decide that of their own free will, then they think the benefits of Elsevier are worth the costs. We don't know what's happening here, but when elsevier holds the keys to funding scientists, they are not going to turn against them. Elsevier can "bribe" without money in this case. Counter example: the mathematicians' boycott of elsevier. They could pull it off because their career does not depend on it. A biologists' boycott? never happened. Elsevier can ask for all the money in the world and i don't care, the problem is that it's an abuse of copyright law to give them exclusive access without an alternative method for the public to see the results of publicly funded work. Why this kind of provision does not exist is not clear to me, but i suspect lobbying from publishers has played a role. While you can dismiss it as a 'greedy business', elsevier plays an institutional role here, and it holds that role purely by inertia. p.s. Yes , 30% is exorbitant profit, academia has different standards, and most scientists would prefer a non-profit.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    >A biologists' boycott? never happened. There's PLOS biology. >Elsevier can ask for all the money in the world and i don't care, the problem is that it's an abuse of copyright law to give them exclusive access without an alternative method for the public to see the results of publicly funded work. As I've mentioned before, complaining about publically funded work misses the point. The funding only covered research, not publication. If you want it to be published, you need to pay the costs of that. CLaiming that you have rights to someone else's work (publication costs) because you paid for something else (research costs) is nonsense. You can require the government to pay for publication costs as well (i.e. publish in open access), and then the natural consequence is that the cost of each study goes up, and therefore less get funded. > most scientists would prefer a non-profit. Then set one up. If they can outcompete Elsevier, more power to them. But that doesn't justify illegally stealing from them.
    - return0 11y ago
      > The funding only covered research, not publication Not true, many grants require publication. Any grant giving money to do research that doesnt require any results is fraud. > Then set one up. PLoS, frontiers, eLife, there are plenty and they are good, but until we can drag the critical mass of high-impact scientists into these open publishers, they will keep being underdogs. You need a systemic change here that will at once pull the good reviewers and good scientists to them, in other respects they are much better than elsevier in some technical respects. The problem is that academia is not the free market. The currency is 'prestige' and its proven very very hard to change attitudes without a) a generation dying or b) regulatory action or c) doing something illegal. It's regulations (specifically requiring high impact publications) that brought elsevier to become the arbiter of scientific importance after all. We either have to regulate paywalls out of academia completely, or find a way to replace the institutional role of publishing with something else. In any case, your 'this is free market' approach is wrong here i think. Academia is not a free market.
      - ikeboy 11y ago
        I didn't say they don't require publication, only that they aren't paying for it. Plenty of Elsevier titles offer open access for a fee now. And PLOS and co are putting pressure to reduce margins. I don't think it's bad enough that something illegal needs to be done to force it to fix itself. And I've asked before: if Elsevier slashed all their prices by 30%, would people be happy with it? If the answer is no, then they aren't only complaining about profit.

by return0 11y ago

ikeboy 11y ago

We're not talking about open access here. I don't see why you brought it in. From what I understand, most journals that charge for access offer free publication. Even if fees are charged, they don't cover costs. >This is a racket. Maybe if they were bribing grant committees to require Elsevier publication. If those committees decide that of their own free will, then they think the benefits of Elsevier are worth the costs. If they really were just extracting rent, I'd expect to see far higher margins, at least above 50%.

return0 11y ago
> If those committees decide that of their own free will, then they think the benefits of Elsevier are worth the costs. We don't know what's happening here, but when elsevier holds the keys to funding scientists, they are not going to turn against them. Elsevier can "bribe" without money in this case. Counter example: the mathematicians' boycott of elsevier. They could pull it off because their career does not depend on it. A biologists' boycott? never happened. Elsevier can ask for all the money in the world and i don't care, the problem is that it's an abuse of copyright law to give them exclusive access without an alternative method for the public to see the results of publicly funded work. Why this kind of provision does not exist is not clear to me, but i suspect lobbying from publishers has played a role. While you can dismiss it as a 'greedy business', elsevier plays an institutional role here, and it holds that role purely by inertia. p.s. Yes , 30% is exorbitant profit, academia has different standards, and most scientists would prefer a non-profit.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  >A biologists' boycott? never happened. There's PLOS biology. >Elsevier can ask for all the money in the world and i don't care, the problem is that it's an abuse of copyright law to give them exclusive access without an alternative method for the public to see the results of publicly funded work. As I've mentioned before, complaining about publically funded work misses the point. The funding only covered research, not publication. If you want it to be published, you need to pay the costs of that. CLaiming that you have rights to someone else's work (publication costs) because you paid for something else (research costs) is nonsense. You can require the government to pay for publication costs as well (i.e. publish in open access), and then the natural consequence is that the cost of each study goes up, and therefore less get funded. > most scientists would prefer a non-profit. Then set one up. If they can outcompete Elsevier, more power to them. But that doesn't justify illegally stealing from them.
  - return0 11y ago
    > The funding only covered research, not publication Not true, many grants require publication. Any grant giving money to do research that doesnt require any results is fraud. > Then set one up. PLoS, frontiers, eLife, there are plenty and they are good, but until we can drag the critical mass of high-impact scientists into these open publishers, they will keep being underdogs. You need a systemic change here that will at once pull the good reviewers and good scientists to them, in other respects they are much better than elsevier in some technical respects. The problem is that academia is not the free market. The currency is 'prestige' and its proven very very hard to change attitudes without a) a generation dying or b) regulatory action or c) doing something illegal. It's regulations (specifically requiring high impact publications) that brought elsevier to become the arbiter of scientific importance after all. We either have to regulate paywalls out of academia completely, or find a way to replace the institutional role of publishing with something else. In any case, your 'this is free market' approach is wrong here i think. Academia is not a free market.
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      I didn't say they don't require publication, only that they aren't paying for it. Plenty of Elsevier titles offer open access for a fee now. And PLOS and co are putting pressure to reduce margins. I don't think it's bad enough that something illegal needs to be done to force it to fix itself. And I've asked before: if Elsevier slashed all their prices by 30%, would people be happy with it? If the answer is no, then they aren't only complaining about profit.