12 ms·

Elsevier’s profits swell to more than £900M

118 points by pulisse 9y ago

amelius 9y ago
By the way, anyone still able to access scihub?
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  http://sci-hub.hk http://sci-hub.hk still works fine for me.
- 45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
  Dont forget Library Genesis too! http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ http://gen.lib.rus.ec/
- lewis500 9y ago
  I use the chrome plugin. This plugin looks bad but is actually pretty sick. One certain pages it will replace the DOI with the sci-hub link.
- spython 9y ago
  https://sci-hub.tw/ https://sci-hub.tw/ works for me.
- jonnybgood 9y ago
  You can always find the working links on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
IntronExon 9y ago
Next to Equifax, and Wells Fargo, this is the company I’d most like to see metaphorically burned to the ground. Wells Fargo at least provides a service, albeit corruptly, but Equifax and Elsevier are just holes in the ground that eat money. Edit: What does it mean that my comment is automatically collapsed?
- paulie_a 9y ago
  In the case of wells Fargo it wasn't just corruption but outright fraud. Hundreds of people should have been brought up on criminal charges for the last of their many scandals
  - IntronExon 9y ago
    That’s a good point, of course in the last decade the DoJ is all about not prosecuting, and just collecting fines. Sad state of affairs which must change.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
AtomicOrbital 9y ago
All publicly funded research should be freely available to the public ... its sad academics have allowed themselves to become enslaved by parasitic publishers ... academics must launch a full court massive grassroots revolt away from publishing their research at such journals ... a short term period of chaos during the transition period over to open journals is a small price to pay for such freedom
- lewis500 9y ago
  Scholars can often make their work free via pre-print. The issue is that the published version isn't free, and the pre-print is hard to find and often not as nice looking. I made a github repo of my last paper published in an Elsevier journal. This was cool because I could put the latex and simulation code for others to copy. https://github.com/lewis500/distribution-of-trip-lengths https://github.com/lewis500/distribution-of-trip-lengths The final version differs a little bit because they had a copy-editor go through and make some good improvements, even after the referees made their comments. Interestingly, the journal was fine with my linking to the repo within the text of the paper, as a way to share the code. There is nothing like real open access though. This journal has wonderful typesetting and such and is totally free: https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/835/860 https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/835/860 It's funny what tricks they use to justify their existence. Always emailing me about bizarre author features no one will use. Makes me sad to think of the engineers sitting in a big room year-on-year polishing features no one will use.
  - horsecaptin 9y ago
    It is free if they get publish by PLOS.
    - sghi 9y ago
      Are you sure? I'm nearly certain that PLOS is a publisher that charges manuscript charges for OA papers - most do.
      - 9y ago
candiodari 9y ago
News like this, despite more than a decade of regulatory and protests against their locking up of scientific knowledge, really gives one faith in our collective ability to influence policy. Apparently that doesn't even work on the very local level. Really gives one faith in what will happen with things like global warming policy, or economic cooperation.
- tischler 9y ago
  It is basically the prisoner's dilemma. The free publication platforms do not yet have prestige because few prestigious researchers publish there; but only few prestigious researchers publish on free publication platforms because they are not prestigious enough. The only way to overcome a prisoner's dilemma is education and trust.
  - make3 9y ago
    I'm computer science, everyone is publishing on arxiv.org . why can't other fields?
    - flor1s 9y ago
      arxiv is great, but for getting your PhD and a future career in academia, publishing there doesn't count nearly as much as publishing in peer reviewed journals does.
      - make3 9y ago
        I mean, in combination with conferences, not just there, obv
    - lewis500 9y ago
      The difference is in the MO for publishing in a given field...not the conscious venue selection so much. From what I know, computer scientists have a high publication rate, rank conference publications as pretty important and sometimes write papers that are about something they built. Compare this to economists. For economists, it's all about hitting a home run a couple times...publishing a few career-making papers in the best possible journals. Economists will publish only a couple times per year, and their papers are sometimes very long. The review process is crazy: the time between first draft of the paper and final publication can be like five years. I think what determines this is the difficulty of ascertaining the quality of a piece of work. In CS or math or math physics, I think anyone in a certain subfield is capable of ascertaining how good a paper is. It doesn't need to be extremely long or flashy, and chances are it will make an incremental improvement. By contrast, let's say an economist publishes a paper called "do red light cameras encourage speeding?" The intended audience (economists) doesn't really know anything about red light cameras or driver behavior. They don't have the time to do all the data analyses themselves, and until recently would never even have access to the data. So they look for a bunch of other markers of quality: writing style, citations, length, venue, etc.
choco_leonidas 9y ago
Sometimes it can be intimidating to see the resources and lobbying power that these behemoths have. They have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. At the same time I'm inspired by projects like Discrete Analysis (http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/ http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/) and Fermat's Library (https://fermatslibrary.com/ https://fermatslibrary.com/) - there are actually a lot of smart, well intentioned folks pushing for a move towards more openness and collaboration in science and research.
ocschwar 9y ago
As part of my work, I've had t o read (and implement in code) papers from Elsevier journals. The authors included Chinese, Turkish and Slavic people. And I didn't even have to look at their 35 dollars for a paper when they don;t even have the decency to help authors with some English copy editing.
- ocschwar 9y ago
  Dammit, the browser mangled my comment. Fixing: The authors included Chinese, Turkish and Slavic people. Not all of them could write well in English. And I didn't even have to look at their names to guess nationality, because they would have English grammar mistakes that would make it clear what their native language was. I really resent paying 35 dollars for a PDF from a company that can't even do some copy editing to help such authors. Elsevier has no respect for the researchers or their readers.
truculation 9y ago
It's pretty weird that 25 years into the internet age we have students paying through the nose to attend university and universities paying through the nose to subscribe to publications.

118 points by pulisse 9y ago

amelius 9y ago

By the way, anyone still able to access scihub?

Analemma_ 9y ago
http://sci-hub.hk http://sci-hub.hk still works fine for me.
45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
Dont forget Library Genesis too! http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ http://gen.lib.rus.ec/
lewis500 9y ago
I use the chrome plugin. This plugin looks bad but is actually pretty sick. One certain pages it will replace the DOI with the sci-hub link.
spython 9y ago
https://sci-hub.tw/ https://sci-hub.tw/ works for me.
jonnybgood 9y ago
You can always find the working links on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

IntronExon 9y ago

Next to Equifax, and Wells Fargo, this is the company I’d most like to see metaphorically burned to the ground. Wells Fargo at least provides a service, albeit corruptly, but Equifax and Elsevier are just holes in the ground that eat money. Edit: What does it mean that my comment is automatically collapsed?

paulie_a 9y ago
In the case of wells Fargo it wasn't just corruption but outright fraud. Hundreds of people should have been brought up on criminal charges for the last of their many scandals
- IntronExon 9y ago
  That’s a good point, of course in the last decade the DoJ is all about not prosecuting, and just collecting fines. Sad state of affairs which must change.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

AtomicOrbital 9y ago

All publicly funded research should be freely available to the public ... its sad academics have allowed themselves to become enslaved by parasitic publishers ... academics must launch a full court massive grassroots revolt away from publishing their research at such journals ... a short term period of chaos during the transition period over to open journals is a small price to pay for such freedom

lewis500 9y ago
Scholars can often make their work free via pre-print. The issue is that the published version isn't free, and the pre-print is hard to find and often not as nice looking. I made a github repo of my last paper published in an Elsevier journal. This was cool because I could put the latex and simulation code for others to copy. https://github.com/lewis500/distribution-of-trip-lengths https://github.com/lewis500/distribution-of-trip-lengths The final version differs a little bit because they had a copy-editor go through and make some good improvements, even after the referees made their comments. Interestingly, the journal was fine with my linking to the repo within the text of the paper, as a way to share the code. There is nothing like real open access though. This journal has wonderful typesetting and such and is totally free: https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/835/860 https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/835/860 It's funny what tricks they use to justify their existence. Always emailing me about bizarre author features no one will use. Makes me sad to think of the engineers sitting in a big room year-on-year polishing features no one will use.
- horsecaptin 9y ago
  It is free if they get publish by PLOS.
  - sghi 9y ago
    Are you sure? I'm nearly certain that PLOS is a publisher that charges manuscript charges for OA papers - most do.
    - 9y ago

candiodari 9y ago

News like this, despite more than a decade of regulatory and protests against their locking up of scientific knowledge, really gives one faith in our collective ability to influence policy. Apparently that doesn't even work on the very local level. Really gives one faith in what will happen with things like global warming policy, or economic cooperation.

tischler 9y ago
It is basically the prisoner's dilemma. The free publication platforms do not yet have prestige because few prestigious researchers publish there; but only few prestigious researchers publish on free publication platforms because they are not prestigious enough. The only way to overcome a prisoner's dilemma is education and trust.
- make3 9y ago
  I'm computer science, everyone is publishing on arxiv.org . why can't other fields?
  - flor1s 9y ago
    arxiv is great, but for getting your PhD and a future career in academia, publishing there doesn't count nearly as much as publishing in peer reviewed journals does.
    - make3 9y ago
      I mean, in combination with conferences, not just there, obv
  - lewis500 9y ago
    The difference is in the MO for publishing in a given field...not the conscious venue selection so much. From what I know, computer scientists have a high publication rate, rank conference publications as pretty important and sometimes write papers that are about something they built. Compare this to economists. For economists, it's all about hitting a home run a couple times...publishing a few career-making papers in the best possible journals. Economists will publish only a couple times per year, and their papers are sometimes very long. The review process is crazy: the time between first draft of the paper and final publication can be like five years. I think what determines this is the difficulty of ascertaining the quality of a piece of work. In CS or math or math physics, I think anyone in a certain subfield is capable of ascertaining how good a paper is. It doesn't need to be extremely long or flashy, and chances are it will make an incremental improvement. By contrast, let's say an economist publishes a paper called "do red light cameras encourage speeding?" The intended audience (economists) doesn't really know anything about red light cameras or driver behavior. They don't have the time to do all the data analyses themselves, and until recently would never even have access to the data. So they look for a bunch of other markers of quality: writing style, citations, length, venue, etc.

choco_leonidas 9y ago

Sometimes it can be intimidating to see the resources and lobbying power that these behemoths have. They have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. At the same time I'm inspired by projects like Discrete Analysis (http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/ http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/) and Fermat's Library (https://fermatslibrary.com/ https://fermatslibrary.com/) - there are actually a lot of smart, well intentioned folks pushing for a move towards more openness and collaboration in science and research.

ocschwar 9y ago

As part of my work, I've had t o read (and implement in code) papers from Elsevier journals. The authors included Chinese, Turkish and Slavic people. And I didn't even have to look at their 35 dollars for a paper when they don;t even have the decency to help authors with some English copy editing.

ocschwar 9y ago
Dammit, the browser mangled my comment. Fixing: The authors included Chinese, Turkish and Slavic people. Not all of them could write well in English. And I didn't even have to look at their names to guess nationality, because they would have English grammar mistakes that would make it clear what their native language was. I really resent paying 35 dollars for a PDF from a company that can't even do some copy editing to help such authors. Elsevier has no respect for the researchers or their readers.

truculation 9y ago

It's pretty weird that 25 years into the internet age we have students paying through the nose to attend university and universities paying through the nose to subscribe to publications.