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Elsevier has revenues of $2.5 billion and profits of around $1 billion. Double that to include other for-profit journals and you're still looking at only $2 bil

Elsevier has revenues of $2.5 billion and profits of around $1 billion. Double that to include other for-profit journals and you're still looking at only $2 billion. While that's certainly a significant sum of money, it is but a small fraction of science expenditures: The US (federal) government alone spends around $150 billion p. a. The fact that the latter has shrunk by about a third over the last decades (in terms of % of GDP) leads to my point: It seems that the issue of publishing is easily grasped and evokes some sort of deep-seated notions of fairness (or lack therefore). In turn, it gets a far larger share of our collective attention and outrage than warranted by the numbers alone. The numbers regarding Elsevier's revenue vs profit also point to another often-neglected fact: being for-profit journals and having the luxury of not having to pay authors or reviewers does not mean that nothing of value is added by Elsevier. That misconception is why it often takes people by surprise to learn that Open Access journals need to collect hefty fees from authors. Even Elsevier's profits may not entirely represent saving to be easily realised. Because nothing says that they manage to capture 100% of the value they are adding. In fact, it's very unlikely that they do, considering nobody has ever managed to pull of such a remarkable feat of capitalism. And the problems of switching to open access journals we have seen ever since the idea came up 10+ years ago illustrate this point rather well: We can collective groan whenever publications in Nature and Science are used as a proxy for research accomplishment. But the insistence of smart people to use them as such, when (trust me here) they have heard arguments against that practice myriad times, points at the fact that such proxies are needed, and that none better have yet emerged. Any expectation of reducing costs by switching to open access should probably be discarded. The benefit to be gained is something different, and the movement's name hints at it. In economic terms, it's the "deadweight loss" of the general public being priced out of this market (and the less-general public that happens to work at a research institute not able to afford every single journal subscription). This is the age-old conundrum of copyright: We'd love to let you read this, and we understand that you can't afford its current price. But if we do, anybody would claim the new, lower, price. And the new price/volume equilibrium would not cover the costs of production. Moving to open access is therefore not much different than suggestions for a "cultural flat-rate" or a tax-funded creative industry. It's going to be interesting how it turns out.

Vinnl 8y ago
> points at the fact that such proxies are needed, and that none better have yet emerged. Yes, I feel that this is the core issue: we keep relying on journal brand names as some sort of proxy for a vague notion of "academic excellence". That is what is driving these prices up disproportionately, and which results in publishers like Elsevier being able to capture so much money merely (or at least primarily) for being the owners of those brand names, rather than for actual value they are adding. This fundamental unfairness is what gets people riled up, and what also feels like an "easy" way to increase funding for research, even if "just" by less than one perfect of US federal spending. (Which still is significant.) Of course, there is also the hope that by lowering the barrier to contribute to the scientific process, we can increase the pace with which we do research.
FabHK 8y ago
> But the insistence of smart people to use them as such, when (trust me here) they have heard arguments against that practice myriad times, points at the fact that such proxies are needed, and that none better have yet emerged. No. It points to a coordination/collective action problem. Everyone knows that they should switch away from Elsevier, and if everyone did, we'd be better off, but every single author, by switching, would incur only the costs, and no benefits. Your argument above neglects this. It is tempting to say that the status quo is optimal, because otherwise it would not be the status quo, but it doesn't fly here. And I find Elsevier etc. above-market returns on equity, and capturing more than 1% of public science expenditure, without adding much, quite scandalous. EDIT to add: Sometimes, the coordination problem can be solved. For example, in 2003, nestor of CS Don Knuth managed to pull everyone from Elsevier's Journal of Algorithms over to a new journal, after writing a bitter letter complaining about their pricing: > In 2003, the entire editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms resigned to start ACM Transactions on Algorithms with a different, lower-priced, not-for-profit publisher, at the suggestion of Journal of Algorithms founder Donald Knuth. The Journal of Algorithms continued under Elsevier with a new editorial board until October 2009, when it was discontinued. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Resignation_of_editorial_boards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Resignation_of_editor... https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf
jillesvangurp 8y ago

Vinnl 8y ago

> points at the fact that such proxies are needed, and that none better have yet emerged. Yes, I feel that this is the core issue: we keep relying on journal brand names as some sort of proxy for a vague notion of "academic excellence". That is what is driving these prices up disproportionately, and which results in publishers like Elsevier being able to capture so much money merely (or at least primarily) for being the owners of those brand names, rather than for actual value they are adding. This fundamental unfairness is what gets people riled up, and what also feels like an "easy" way to increase funding for research, even if "just" by less than one perfect of US federal spending. (Which still is significant.) Of course, there is also the hope that by lowering the barrier to contribute to the scientific process, we can increase the pace with which we do research.

FabHK 8y ago

> But the insistence of smart people to use them as such, when (trust me here) they have heard arguments against that practice myriad times, points at the fact that such proxies are needed, and that none better have yet emerged. No. It points to a coordination/collective action problem. Everyone knows that they should switch away from Elsevier, and if everyone did, we'd be better off, but every single author, by switching, would incur only the costs, and no benefits. Your argument above neglects this. It is tempting to say that the status quo is optimal, because otherwise it would not be the status quo, but it doesn't fly here. And I find Elsevier etc. above-market returns on equity, and capturing more than 1% of public science expenditure, without adding much, quite scandalous. EDIT to add: Sometimes, the coordination problem can be solved. For example, in 2003, nestor of CS Don Knuth managed to pull everyone from Elsevier's Journal of Algorithms over to a new journal, after writing a bitter letter complaining about their pricing: > In 2003, the entire editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms resigned to start ACM Transactions on Algorithms with a different, lower-priced, not-for-profit publisher, at the suggestion of Journal of Algorithms founder Donald Knuth. The Journal of Algorithms continued under Elsevier with a new editorial board until October 2009, when it was discontinued. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Resignation_of_editorial_boards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Resignation_of_editor... https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf

jillesvangurp 8y ago