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First, on your notion of bias: Taylor and Francis is owned by informa. A trivial search for informa's annual report would reveal that academic publishing make
by Fomite 9y ago
First, on your notion of bias:
Taylor and Francis is owned by informa.
A trivial search for informa's annual report would reveal that academic publishing makes up 45.7% of their operating profit, and 50% of that comes from subscriptions, almost all of which are digital.
Further, most of their major initiatives are in digital, especially for journals which are most of their revenue.
Second, on your "three studies" objection - they're looking at three separate outcomes, as they mention in the article. It's common to lump the results of multiple highly related studies in a single paper.
Third, as noted by another commenter, nearly all peer-reviewed journal articles are going to be published by publishers who also have a stake in other aspect of academic publishing.
- asdh432 9y agoI highly doubt Informa is keeping TnF around as a charity cause. They need to keep doing what they do, sell books, to make corporate happy. TnF claim to publish 1,500 new titles each year. Informa isn't just eating that entire cost.
- justinjlynn 9y agoIndeed. These studies need to be done by independent researchers multiple times and published in a number of independent venues in which the publishers (who clearly have reason to tamper) have no control over the content nor the peer review selection process (again, to be performed independently).
- Fomite 9y agoJournal publishers have very little control over the content or selection of peer reviewers. That's the editorial board.
- justinjlynn 9y agohttps://www.elsevier.com/editors/editorial-boards https://www.elsevier.com/editors/editorial-boards > Editorial board members are selected by the journal’s editor(s), with input from the publisher. hrmn.
- Fomite 9y agoI'm saying in a practical sense, the publication of a single paper, and the choice of peer reviewers, is effectively not under the control of the publisher. I mean yeah, technically, Al Gore had input on whether or not I worked at Apple, because he was on the Board of Directors. But practically?
- justinjlynn 9y agoThe point is that it is not independent in there is a clear, direct path for coercion in arrangements such as that. Did Al Gore have a hand in hiring you at Apple? Probably not, no, but could they have? Could they have you fired or at least influence the board against renewing your contract if you did something they didn't like? I think the answer there is yes.
- Fomite 9y agoThe idea that a publisher would threaten a major profit center (because doing something like this is a good way to kill a journal) over one paper that mostly just says what form the consumer wants to engage with their content in is absurd. Hell, odds are they didn't even know about it until it went to print. If then. In Education alone T&F publishes 250+ journals. I almost guarantee you they have well less than one staff member per journal. The metrics they care about are "Are you publishing enough papers?", "Are you making money?" and "Are your publishing metrics going up?" "Does a submitted paper suggest that our digital strategy might be less important than traditional print, and I want you to jeopardize the reputation of your journal for it" is fairly far-fetched, especially with no evidence besides "Publication was published by a publisher."
- justinjlynn 9y agoThe structure for systemic corruption is there and the best argument you can make is for "one paper". Yes, I agree with you - but that's not what we're talking about at all.
- Fomite 9y agoI'm not suggesting it's a charity cause. I'm suggesting that there's no evidence that they're print-biased, given T&F is also a journal publisher, and the subscriptions vs. physical units breakdown is literally 50/50
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- fastball 9y agoJournal subscriptions aren't a replacement for textbooks. eBooks are. And the margins on eBooks are lower than print books.