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You say "You seem to blame this squarely on the faculty, and yet faculty have the least amount of freedom when it comes to publication venue" I assume you are

You say "You seem to blame this squarely on the faculty, and yet faculty have the least amount of freedom when it comes to publication venue" I assume you are referencing this > If UCLA were serious it would simply walk from the negotiation. THAT would send a message to all parties. It might actually spur some action on the part of faculty to get off their collective backsides Then you suggest "Concerted action at the national and international level is required". Who exactly is supposed to be responsible for organizing national and international action and to do what exactly, disband Elsevier? This is not a practical suggestion. A practical approach would be for the institutions that pay Elsevier for access, i.e the faculty/admins to get better organized and get better at negotiating. asking faculty to consider the mere act of not reviewing (much less not submitting papers to) these top journals is a third rate negotiating tactic. A strong negotiator would simply walk out at this point. That would send a much stronger message.

paulddraper 8y ago
> asking faculty to consider the mere act of not reviewing But do you not think that a mandatory "DO NOT REVIEW" is authoritarian and heavy-handed? If you are negotiating GitHub licenses, you will mandate that your employees do not contribute to open-source GitHub?
- calhoun137 8y ago
  It's a tricky problem. The suggestion at hand was UCLA walk from the negotiation. Would that mean faculty at UCLA are given a mandatory "DO NOT REVIEW" order? I would have assumed their free labor would still be most welcome, especially from experts. If UCLA walks, that would possibly cause other universities to follow suit, and I bet Elsevier would come back to the table with a better offer. The way I see things, the universities are not organized at all and are being taken to the cleaners because of things like this. It looks like the people doing the negotiating on behalf of the faculty are in way over their heads and don't even realize how the game is played and are being out maneuvered at every turn by a savvy, massively powerful corporation for which this is pretty much all they do all day, every day.
hyperbovine 8y ago
Uh no actually referencing these comments: "It might actually spur some action on the part of faculty to get off their collective backsides and consider how every day they perpetuate an unsustainable system of scientific communication ... Faculty who make publication and review decisions simply don't care about the cost of subscriptions enough."

paulddraper 8y ago

> asking faculty to consider the mere act of not reviewing But do you not think that a mandatory "DO NOT REVIEW" is authoritarian and heavy-handed? If you are negotiating GitHub licenses, you will mandate that your employees do not contribute to open-source GitHub?

calhoun137 8y ago
It's a tricky problem. The suggestion at hand was UCLA walk from the negotiation. Would that mean faculty at UCLA are given a mandatory "DO NOT REVIEW" order? I would have assumed their free labor would still be most welcome, especially from experts. If UCLA walks, that would possibly cause other universities to follow suit, and I bet Elsevier would come back to the table with a better offer. The way I see things, the universities are not organized at all and are being taken to the cleaners because of things like this. It looks like the people doing the negotiating on behalf of the faculty are in way over their heads and don't even realize how the game is played and are being out maneuvered at every turn by a savvy, massively powerful corporation for which this is pretty much all they do all day, every day.

hyperbovine 8y ago

Uh no actually referencing these comments: "It might actually spur some action on the part of faculty to get off their collective backsides and consider how every day they perpetuate an unsustainable system of scientific communication ... Faculty who make publication and review decisions simply don't care about the cost of subscriptions enough."