4 ms·

[These days I'm entirely industrial, but I used to be an academic working in this space. I am extremely biased.] This is the EU – and their allies at places li

by adw 8y ago

[These days I'm entirely industrial, but I used to be an academic working in this space. I am extremely biased.] This is the EU – and their allies at places like the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust – negotiating with tanks in public (and not before time, in my personal view). The centre of the argument is in life sciences, because that's where the most money is, because all of the physical scientists read arXiV anyway, and because the scholarly societies, led by the American Physical Society, have managed to hang on and are notably less rapacious than Holzbrinck and Elsevier. Nature/Holzbrinck/Digital Science are arguing the other side, because of course they are, who wants to get disrupted? And Nature is their bully pulpit. A lot of this comes down to the scholarly societies – many of whom are much easier to deal with, a notable exception being the American Chemical Society, who are very hard to deal with because they're led around by the nose by the Chemical Abstracts Service – being displaced by a small number of vehemently commercial big corporates. They know fine well this is a wasting asset and they've been trying to wring as much cash from it as possible, and it's hastened this endgame.

IanCal 8y ago
Not sure if I've put in this thread but just to avoid any issues, I work for Digital Science (which is part of Holtzbrinck) though as always only ever speak personally and not for the company. > This is the EU – and their allies at places like the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust – negotiating with tanks in public (and not before time, in my personal view). I don't know I'd see it quite like that, far from a negotiating point they seem to be much more simply the customer. They have decided what they want to do with their work and money, it's entirely up to them how to spend it. It's been a while coming, but publishing is a slow industry. The risk, really, that the publishing industry has been running with for some time is that it relies enormously on submitted work from a relatively small number of funders (and then the funders are often owned by the same government, and in the EU those governments work very closely together). A change in view from those few customers means larger things need to change. > Nature/Holzbrinck/Digital Science are arguing the other side, because of course they are, who wants to get disrupted? And Nature is their bully pulpit. Not sure I've seen DS arguing either side in this really. Personally it'll make my work at DS easier the more that's open access and unless I've missed something doesn't really impact any of the major products - I can't see how it'd change Dimensions for example (apart from making it easier to ingest more full text data). I certainly can't see where it would "disrupt" DS. Would be interested to know what you think would be disrupted. It's a change to the business model of some of the publishing, but while a big change in the industry hardly one that should come as a surprise - and one that there's already a widely used alternative model already in place. It's a much bigger shift given they aren't accepting hybrid journals, but doesn't rule out commercial operation. Seeing what they choose as their cap for the APCs will be interesting.
- adw 8y ago
  Not so much DS as Nature. (I know several people who used to be at DS, and they were uniformly all great; DS appeared pretty clearly to be Macmillan-at-the-time's hedge against OA blowing up the conventional journal business, though, from an outside perspective) It certainly doesn't rule out commercial publishers, but it cuts the knees out from the selling-non-negotiable-bundles-to-university-libraries model the big publishers have been leaning on.
  - IanCal 8y ago
    Yes, I think part of the change is likely to be to negotiate yearly fees for no APCs to keep more reliable revenue. It's a big change. > DS appeared pretty clearly to be Macmillan-at-the-time's hedge against OA blowing up the conventional journal business, though, from an outside perspective) Yes, I don't know if I'd put it as OA focussed though, rather it's been a hedge about something changing and altering the business model. Never been in the high level meetings that would have seen this discussion though so it's all anyone's guess.

by adw 8y ago

IanCal 8y ago

Not sure if I've put in this thread but just to avoid any issues, I work for Digital Science (which is part of Holtzbrinck) though as always only ever speak personally and not for the company. > This is the EU – and their allies at places like the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust – negotiating with tanks in public (and not before time, in my personal view). I don't know I'd see it quite like that, far from a negotiating point they seem to be much more simply the customer. They have decided what they want to do with their work and money, it's entirely up to them how to spend it. It's been a while coming, but publishing is a slow industry. The risk, really, that the publishing industry has been running with for some time is that it relies enormously on submitted work from a relatively small number of funders (and then the funders are often owned by the same government, and in the EU those governments work very closely together). A change in view from those few customers means larger things need to change. > Nature/Holzbrinck/Digital Science are arguing the other side, because of course they are, who wants to get disrupted? And Nature is their bully pulpit. Not sure I've seen DS arguing either side in this really. Personally it'll make my work at DS easier the more that's open access and unless I've missed something doesn't really impact any of the major products - I can't see how it'd change Dimensions for example (apart from making it easier to ingest more full text data). I certainly can't see where it would "disrupt" DS. Would be interested to know what you think would be disrupted. It's a change to the business model of some of the publishing, but while a big change in the industry hardly one that should come as a surprise - and one that there's already a widely used alternative model already in place. It's a much bigger shift given they aren't accepting hybrid journals, but doesn't rule out commercial operation. Seeing what they choose as their cap for the APCs will be interesting.

adw 8y ago
Not so much DS as Nature. (I know several people who used to be at DS, and they were uniformly all great; DS appeared pretty clearly to be Macmillan-at-the-time's hedge against OA blowing up the conventional journal business, though, from an outside perspective) It certainly doesn't rule out commercial publishers, but it cuts the knees out from the selling-non-negotiable-bundles-to-university-libraries model the big publishers have been leaning on.
- IanCal 8y ago
  Yes, I think part of the change is likely to be to negotiate yearly fees for no APCs to keep more reliable revenue. It's a big change. > DS appeared pretty clearly to be Macmillan-at-the-time's hedge against OA blowing up the conventional journal business, though, from an outside perspective) Yes, I don't know if I'd put it as OA focussed though, rather it's been a hedge about something changing and altering the business model. Never been in the high level meetings that would have seen this discussion though so it's all anyone's guess.