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Because publishing journals requires a great deal of non-academic work that is not particularly glamorous and which becomes increasingly difficult as you scale

Because publishing journals requires a great deal of non-academic work that is not particularly glamorous and which becomes increasingly difficult as you scale operations: scheduling, organizing, communicating, file management, vendor management, budgeting, large scale data conversion (e.g., Microsoft Word --> XML, image conversions), editing, proofing, and correcting articles, not to mention running a fairly content heavy website with appropriate search/browse options, etc. Basically, throwing 1 monthly journal (~1000 pages/year) up on a WordPress site is pretty easy (except for the part about dealing with the authors) and could probably be done by a couple people putting in a few hours a week. Creating a useful web platform for 100s of journals is an entirely different proposition and almost certainly a poor use of universities resources. Now, they could pay someone to do all that work, but that is pretty much what they are negotiating with Elsevier.

WhitneyLand 9y ago
Are you kidding me? Just because something requires work to be done doesn’t make the value of that work worth billions of dollars.
- josephorjoe 9y ago
  I don't see where I said it was worth any particular amount. I was just answering the question about why universities don't just self publish everything. If Elsevier is overcharging for their services (hint: they are), some startup should go disrupt them or something (hint: the problem will be convincing prestigious authors to publish in your journal rather than Elsevier's).
  - FabHK 9y ago
    So we all agree: Elsevier is a vampire squid wrapped around academia (to borrow Matt Taibbi's memorable phrase), extracting tremendous profits (from tax payers via university library funds) for little value provided. Yeah, they are overcharging, and the problem with individual authors moving to the competition is the prestige/impact factor associated with a journal (ie a prisoners dilemma/coordination problem), and possible solutions are - concerted action of editorial boards to resign and found a competing journal that "inherits" the prestige (as has happened several times, notably Journal of Algorithms prodded by none other than Don Knuth) - concerted action of universities/libraries (as in the article) - government/funding agency intervention to mandate open access publication - etc. I hope Elsevier have overextended themselves by refusing to accept half price, and, having their bluff called, receive even less.
  - WhitneyLand 9y ago
    Yes that’s the point, the prestige is part of the lock-in, but the non-academic work is not relevant, because it’s not part of the reason for the lock-in. My objection therefore is that merely mentioning such work could suggest to some unfamiliar with the issue that it’s a mitigating factor in Elsevier’s existence. Who does the grunt work is just a logistical implementation detail. When you say non-academic I’m not sure how you were envisioning the review process. That part of course is more challenging because you can’t just hire anyone to do it, there could only be a couple qualified people in some cases, they would have to be incented, or at least motivated or effectively compelled in some way to participate. Not trying to overstate the problem, just that it’s a bit bigger challenge than getting the other work done.
    - josephorjoe 9y ago
      Honestly, as I know the industry, I wasn't really thinking of the review process as something Elsevier provides that is worth much. Aside from sending a few emails, the review process is largely managed by academia, although I suppose academia may be happier thinking they are being managed by Elsevier than their peers (who tell Elsevier who to enlist for the work anyway...). But the non-academic work is what you have to do yourself if you break the lock in. It is not trivial and as it scales it gets increasingly complex. There are two moats that protect Elsevier's business. The first moat is that academics don't trust each other and perpetuate the "Publish or Perish" mindset. In some disciplines (e.g., Liberal Arts, Math), there isn't enough money flowing through academic circles for this to be a real problem. But for the Life Sciences and some Physical Sciences in particular, there is a lot of government and industry money sloshing around, and academics seem perfectly willing to undercut each other and themselves as a group to get a bigger slice of it. Elsevier takes advantage of that. Maybe academics will get mad enough at them over it to unite long enough to break their ability to take advantage of them. Seems like it would be in their best interest to do so. The second moat is that building a web platform to efficiently distribute hundreds of thousands of pages of content a year while still maintaining access to all the previously published pages is a seriously non-trivial task. Now just providing that web platform can be done for much less money than is currently paid to publishers. But, as I'm sure all the web developers and sys admins on hacker news would be happy to point out, hosting terabytes of data and generating consistently formatted HTML/CSS from thousands of individually created Word docs and graphics with nifty social media integrations and customized search/browse options is not a thing that can be done for free at the scale Elsevier is operating at.
tarboreus 9y ago
Most of this work is done by academics who are either not paid or paid a nominal sum. Yes, running a journal is a lot of work, but most of the people who do the actual work do not reap the rewards.
- josephorjoe 9y ago
  Depends on the journal. Academics usually do the peer reviewing and sometimes the editing (which is almost certainly a waste of their talents as a good editor is cheaper and more efficient at editing than some Biology PhD guy). Most of the more prestigious journals (e.g., the ones people are paying for) are supported by publishing house staff doing the sort of stuff I mentioned -- or, more likely, managing the vendors in India who are doing the stuff I mentioned. Source: I worked in scientific publishing for many years. Happy to be out of it...
  - Vinnl 9y ago
    > Most of the more prestigious journals (e.g., the ones people are paying for) Since most subscriptions are sold in "big deal" packages, where few of the most prestigious journals get bundled with a lot of the less prestigious ones to get libraries to purchase more of the same publisher, it's not just those ones that people are paying for...

WhitneyLand 9y ago

Are you kidding me? Just because something requires work to be done doesn’t make the value of that work worth billions of dollars.

josephorjoe 9y ago
I don't see where I said it was worth any particular amount. I was just answering the question about why universities don't just self publish everything. If Elsevier is overcharging for their services (hint: they are), some startup should go disrupt them or something (hint: the problem will be convincing prestigious authors to publish in your journal rather than Elsevier's).
- FabHK 9y ago
  So we all agree: Elsevier is a vampire squid wrapped around academia (to borrow Matt Taibbi's memorable phrase), extracting tremendous profits (from tax payers via university library funds) for little value provided. Yeah, they are overcharging, and the problem with individual authors moving to the competition is the prestige/impact factor associated with a journal (ie a prisoners dilemma/coordination problem), and possible solutions are - concerted action of editorial boards to resign and found a competing journal that "inherits" the prestige (as has happened several times, notably Journal of Algorithms prodded by none other than Don Knuth) - concerted action of universities/libraries (as in the article) - government/funding agency intervention to mandate open access publication - etc. I hope Elsevier have overextended themselves by refusing to accept half price, and, having their bluff called, receive even less.
- WhitneyLand 9y ago
  Yes that’s the point, the prestige is part of the lock-in, but the non-academic work is not relevant, because it’s not part of the reason for the lock-in. My objection therefore is that merely mentioning such work could suggest to some unfamiliar with the issue that it’s a mitigating factor in Elsevier’s existence. Who does the grunt work is just a logistical implementation detail. When you say non-academic I’m not sure how you were envisioning the review process. That part of course is more challenging because you can’t just hire anyone to do it, there could only be a couple qualified people in some cases, they would have to be incented, or at least motivated or effectively compelled in some way to participate. Not trying to overstate the problem, just that it’s a bit bigger challenge than getting the other work done.
  - josephorjoe 9y ago
    Honestly, as I know the industry, I wasn't really thinking of the review process as something Elsevier provides that is worth much. Aside from sending a few emails, the review process is largely managed by academia, although I suppose academia may be happier thinking they are being managed by Elsevier than their peers (who tell Elsevier who to enlist for the work anyway...). But the non-academic work is what you have to do yourself if you break the lock in. It is not trivial and as it scales it gets increasingly complex. There are two moats that protect Elsevier's business. The first moat is that academics don't trust each other and perpetuate the "Publish or Perish" mindset. In some disciplines (e.g., Liberal Arts, Math), there isn't enough money flowing through academic circles for this to be a real problem. But for the Life Sciences and some Physical Sciences in particular, there is a lot of government and industry money sloshing around, and academics seem perfectly willing to undercut each other and themselves as a group to get a bigger slice of it. Elsevier takes advantage of that. Maybe academics will get mad enough at them over it to unite long enough to break their ability to take advantage of them. Seems like it would be in their best interest to do so. The second moat is that building a web platform to efficiently distribute hundreds of thousands of pages of content a year while still maintaining access to all the previously published pages is a seriously non-trivial task. Now just providing that web platform can be done for much less money than is currently paid to publishers. But, as I'm sure all the web developers and sys admins on hacker news would be happy to point out, hosting terabytes of data and generating consistently formatted HTML/CSS from thousands of individually created Word docs and graphics with nifty social media integrations and customized search/browse options is not a thing that can be done for free at the scale Elsevier is operating at.

tarboreus 9y ago

Most of this work is done by academics who are either not paid or paid a nominal sum. Yes, running a journal is a lot of work, but most of the people who do the actual work do not reap the rewards.

josephorjoe 9y ago
Depends on the journal. Academics usually do the peer reviewing and sometimes the editing (which is almost certainly a waste of their talents as a good editor is cheaper and more efficient at editing than some Biology PhD guy). Most of the more prestigious journals (e.g., the ones people are paying for) are supported by publishing house staff doing the sort of stuff I mentioned -- or, more likely, managing the vendors in India who are doing the stuff I mentioned. Source: I worked in scientific publishing for many years. Happy to be out of it...
- Vinnl 9y ago
  > Most of the more prestigious journals (e.g., the ones people are paying for) Since most subscriptions are sold in "big deal" packages, where few of the most prestigious journals get bundled with a lot of the less prestigious ones to get libraries to purchase more of the same publisher, it's not just those ones that people are paying for...