4 ms·

How does this doom subscription journals? I mean it would be nice but realistically it just means they move to exploit the university subscriptions since the pr

How does this doom subscription journals? I mean it would be nice but realistically it just means they move to exploit the university subscriptions since the professors can't admit use of illegally obtained copies. They can further exploit the authors since many journals require payment from the author for submission and some journals charge in the hundreds. One might say "just publish to a different journal" but it's not that easy. Because of the heavy reliance on Impact Factor in scientific publishing, it is the journals with those high impact factors that the authors will try to publish to. Regardless of whether or not they are being pirated. This is sad to say, but in reality I think this isn't going to massively impact things for the publishers. Academia at its core is where the problem lies. Sure paid subscriptions are a big part of things, but it's the stuff most don't realize (the authorship fees and institution sub fees) that give the publishers power.

peterburkimsher 9y ago
A similar corollary is the continued use of TI calculators in school. The hardware is ancient. It's really overpriced. https://xkcd.com/768/ https://xkcd.com/768/ But they're still selling lots! Why? They're approved by the examination boards, and have an effective monopoly. (oligopoly if you include HP and Casio, but most schools choose one brand and require all students to fall in line). The academic market is not remotely capitalist, so even though there are cheaper & better options available that people will use in everyday life, the "official" results will still use the officially-sanctioned products.
x0x0 9y ago
It dooms subscription journals because it breaks their leverage. Right now, publishers offer take it or leave it bundles of hundreds of journals at prices the publisher set. If a library doesn't want to pay, the library/university system loses access to everything. And many people at the university can't do their work without such access. SciHub existing allows negotiators for the universities and libraries to shrug and say whatever when Elsevier threatens to cut access to every Elsevier journal.
- CorvusCrypto 9y ago
  Even if this were the case, then it's still very easy to control the market because of the authorship fees coupled with the drive toward publishing in subscription-model journals (thanks again to Impact Factor). Maybe your advisor took care of some of those costs, but most journals do have a significant fee for submission alone, not to mention the re-submission after a review requires a significant change. Sci-Hub can't change that so it still doesn't doom them. Not to mention Elsevier, till exempel, WILL be cracking down on piracy especially after their grant from the US courts regarding Sci-Hub. Sci-hub hasn't doomed anything and the publishers still control academia. You should be mad about this, and you should blame academia itself. Push for open journals like PLoS One when possible and try to convince people to move off that god-awful Impact Factor metric and you might inflict damage on the big publishers.

peterburkimsher 9y ago

A similar corollary is the continued use of TI calculators in school. The hardware is ancient. It's really overpriced. https://xkcd.com/768/ https://xkcd.com/768/ But they're still selling lots! Why? They're approved by the examination boards, and have an effective monopoly. (oligopoly if you include HP and Casio, but most schools choose one brand and require all students to fall in line). The academic market is not remotely capitalist, so even though there are cheaper & better options available that people will use in everyday life, the "official" results will still use the officially-sanctioned products.

x0x0 9y ago

It dooms subscription journals because it breaks their leverage. Right now, publishers offer take it or leave it bundles of hundreds of journals at prices the publisher set. If a library doesn't want to pay, the library/university system loses access to everything. And many people at the university can't do their work without such access. SciHub existing allows negotiators for the universities and libraries to shrug and say whatever when Elsevier threatens to cut access to every Elsevier journal.

CorvusCrypto 9y ago
Even if this were the case, then it's still very easy to control the market because of the authorship fees coupled with the drive toward publishing in subscription-model journals (thanks again to Impact Factor). Maybe your advisor took care of some of those costs, but most journals do have a significant fee for submission alone, not to mention the re-submission after a review requires a significant change. Sci-Hub can't change that so it still doesn't doom them. Not to mention Elsevier, till exempel, WILL be cracking down on piracy especially after their grant from the US courts regarding Sci-Hub. Sci-hub hasn't doomed anything and the publishers still control academia. You should be mad about this, and you should blame academia itself. Push for open journals like PLoS One when possible and try to convince people to move off that god-awful Impact Factor metric and you might inflict damage on the big publishers.