16 ms·

What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

287 points by montalbano 7y ago

stock_toaster 7y ago
I would be hard pressed to believe anything Elsevier says/claims at this point, without extensive and detailed evidence supporting it. Even then I would be fairly dubious, truth be told.
oli5679 7y ago
Fields Medal winner, Tim Gowers, has written several articles on the level of dysfunction in the academic publishing market. This article is good https://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-some-facts/ https://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-so...
dash2 7y ago
Man, I hate Elsevier with a passion. As well as being shady, dishonest, shifty, moneygrubbing toerags, they also provide the world's crappiest service. I have to use their web interface every time I submit a paper to an Elsevier journal. It's like sticking needles into my eyes. It's this bad: in 2019, they still use an image map for their main menu. A particular pleasure is when they force me to compile my TeX into a PDF. Via a web interface. Then when I submit they'll "proofread" and "format" my paper, failing to spot existing errors, introducing their own, and outputting an ugly mess, maybe with two columns to make it really unreadable. And then there's the stuff the article talks about: the huge fees universities pay so that our own work can be "open-access". I hate them. I hope they go bust. I hope their CEO becomes homeless.
- wpietri 7y ago
  This is poetry. Thank you! And exactly what I'd expect of an oligopoly player.
- dessant 7y ago
  The papers they hold hostage have not been fully backed up [1] and made accessible for everyone. Elsevier does deserve to go bankrupt, but we must ensure that the information they have amassed gets salvaged. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5832410/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5832410/
  - jraph 7y ago
    I had a laugh reading this. > Readers should note that, in many jurisdictions, use of Sci-Hub may constitute copyright infringement. Users of Sci-Hub do so at their own risk. This study is not an endorsement of using Sci-Hub, and its authors and publishers accept no responsibility on behalf of readers. There is a possibility that Sci-Hub users — especially those not using privacy-enhancing services such as Tor — could have their usage history unmasked and face legal or reputational consequences. > Sci-Hub is currently served at domains including https://sci-hub.hk https://sci-hub.hk, https://sci-hub.la https://sci-hub.la, https://sci-hub.mn https://sci-hub.mn, https://sci-hub.name https://sci-hub.name, https://sci-hub.tv https://sci-hub.tv, and https://sci-hub.tw https://sci-hub.tw, as well as at scihub22266oqcxt.onion "We are not telling you to use Sci-Hub, but you can use Tor and here are some addresses where you can find it." > Here we report that, as of March 2017, Sci-Hub’s database contains 68.9% of the 81.6 million scholarly articles registered with Crossref and 85.1% of articles published in toll access journals. For toll access articles, we find that Sci-Hub provides greater coverage than the University of Pennsylvania, a major research university in the United States. "See, Sci-Hub works that well" :-) Managing to have this hosted on a .gov website seems noteworthy.
    - jacobolus 7y ago
      Note that the former and current Editors-in-Chief of that journal are both UC Berkeley biologists (also huge critics of paywalled science).
    - duckerude 7y ago
      > Since the ledger of Bitcoin transactions is public, we can evaluate the donation activity to known Sci-Hub addresses (1K4t2vSBSS2xFjZ6PofYnbgZewjeqbG1TM, 14ghuGKDAPdEcUQN4zuzGwBUrhQgACwAyA, 1EVkHpdQ8VJQRpQ15hSRoohCztTvDMEepm). Subtle
- Iv 7y ago
  I was waiting for the "but". Reaching the final period of your sentence was deeply satisfying.
- mxcrossb 7y ago
  While we’re doing “as well as”s about Elsevier... I hate how soulless the journals feel. Recently, I wanted to read a quite old paper as it connected to my recent research. It was published in the 60s, in a journal that has housed some extremely ground breaking work in my field. But you wouldn’t get that impression from their elsevier site. Where is the history? Where is the pride? Instead it looks just like any old rubbish journal, and any reader who stumbled upon it would think the same unless they read its history in Wikipedia.
  - impendia 7y ago
    > I hate how soulless the journals feel. I certainly sympathize with you! That said, personally I'm happy about this development. Journals don't really fill a practical need anymore, and (as you point out) they increasingly don't fill an emotional, intangible one either. Perhaps then we will muster the effort to kick the entire industry to the curb.
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    Which journal?
    - dmitriz 7y ago
      All of them use the same process.
      - dr_dshiv 7y ago
        I was asking about: > Recently, I wanted to read a quite old paper as it connected to my recent research. It was published in the 60s, in a journal that has housed some extremely ground breaking work in my field. But you wouldn’t get that impression from their elsevier site The OP is describing how all journals are treated the same, despite the the fact that they are essentially mini societies, some with more important histories than others
  - dmitriz 7y ago
    Of course they won't do it as that would show the world the other 99% of their journals are in fact old rubbish. And they don't buy us drinks as we know... https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/104 https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/104
- raister 7y ago
  It is hard to say this, but Russia is helping the world fight against Elsevier and all those money funneling institutions... (with scihub, for anyone not knowing that it is a russian 'service')
  - vihren 7y ago
    The creator of Sci-Hub is Alexandra Elbakyan and she is from Kazakhstan. According to Wikipedia [0] she spend 1 year working for a Moscow company, but that's it. I wouldn't classify it as a Russian service. There is a nice russian service for paywalled ebooks and articles called LibGen [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis
    - buboard 7y ago
      i would still use it if it was a russian service
    - steve19 7y ago
      At one point in time she banned the whole of Russia from accessing sci-hub after she felt that some Russian scientists had been insulting when they named a parasitic insect after her. Late last year Russia banned isps from accessing sci-hub. It may or may not be hosted in Russia, but I agree it is not "Russian". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/sci-hub-blocked-in-russia-following-ruling-by-moscow-court/3009838.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/sci-hub-blocked-in-russi...
- bb101 7y ago
  The rot starts at the top: https://www.elsevier.com/about/management https://www.elsevier.com/about/management
  - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
    Am I supposed to magically understand something from that link? If so, I utterly failed. Mind elucidating?
  - dmitriz 7y ago
    In fact, this was referring to one of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20641056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20641056
- mcv 7y ago
  If Elsevier is so terrible, and everybody hates them, how is it possible that it's so hard to move away from them? Their entire business depends on the people who hate them: the scientists who submit their articles to them and the universities who subscribe to the journals. If everybody agrees Elsevier is terrible, you'd think it should be easy to set up a competitor that does it better, but someone everybody still wants to get published in Elsevier's journals, and everybody still wants to read what's in them. If everybody were to just stop, Elsevier would be out of business within a month.
  - reallydontask 7y ago
    If scientific careers didn't depend on publishing papers in high impact journals, this could happen within a month. As it is, until Open Access journals become high impact journals, we're kind of between a rock and hard place
    - mcv 7y ago
      If everybody starts reading Open Access journals and stops reading Elsevier, the Open Access journals will have more impact. But yeah, many scientists are paid by slow-moving bureaucratic machines that probably don't care about the issues involved and just want to see them published in old, well-established big-name journals, and not a new upstart that everybody else suddenly wants to consider more important.
      - rumanator 7y ago
        > If everybody starts reading Open Access journals and stops reading Elsevier, the Open Access journals will have more impact. That's irrelevant. Researchers are forced to publish in high-impact journals to preserve their career, and any newly created journal has zero impact. Furthermore, some countries/universities enforce a journal whitelist, and evaluate the eir researchers based on the number of papers published in the pre approved list if publications.
        anticensor 7y ago
- n1000 7y ago
  Another fun fact about Elsevier: In their contract with university libraries they exclude the right of fair use as described in the US copyright law. That means one can download papers, but technically mustn't use the data found in them without consent. This is just ridiculous.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Isn't that illegal? Or at least, doesn't that cancel the copyright as it explicitly breaches the copyright contract with the demos.
    - n1000 7y ago
      I was wondering too. The librarian that told me about it, is a copyright expert and was outraged. However, it seems like there was not much they could do. I am guessing the fact that this is happening at an Ivy league university means that lawyers are not useful in this matter. They also said that only Elsevier does that.
- michaelmior 7y ago
  > I hope their CEO becomes homeless. Not having experienced homelessness myself, this still isn't something I would wish in anyone.
  - BorRagnarok 7y ago
    Oh I would, and that he may go completely broke too, and die miserable, alone, and in pain. These people's greed has caused enormous harm and cost uncountable lives. That's what keeping this knowledge to yourself does, otherwise our doctors would still be doing bloodletting and sacrificing small animals. And in a certain way, we still are. Which doctor has the money to access all those journals? Lost of clues to a cure for lots of diseases are probably buried somewhere in expensive journals. But noo, please for the love of money withhold the doctor that information, let him pay thousands of dollars for it, so that he will not read any of it, and let his patients suffer and die. Like they did when we were still doing bloodletting.
    - michaelmior 7y ago
      I'm not arguing that what Elsevier is doing is good, but I do think desiring terrible things for others however "bad" we may perceive them to be is ultimately not productive.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    I have experienced homelessness. I hope the CEO becomes homeless and then gets kicked out of any squats when they find out that he used to run Elsevier, and has to live in a cardboard box full of dogs under a bridge, before finally finding enlightenment in his tranformation into a modern Diogenes. He will then wander the world, providing modest educational services for free and be finally happy.
- kevinventullo 7y ago
  Honest question: if you hate Elsevier, why are you submitting to their journals?
  - CrazyStat 7y ago
    It would be optimal for all researchers to coordinate to move away from Elsevier, but as long as everyone else (or the majority) is publishing in Elsevier the local optimum for each researcher is to continue publishing in Elsevier. I know a few researchers who have publicly committed to not publish in Elsevier journals, but there's a career cost to doing this, particularly for early career researchers. Outside of a small number of colleagues who will actually read your work, most people (including funding organizations and tenure review boards) will judge your research by how much you publish and where you publish, and Elsevier owns many of the most prestigious journals. It varies by field, depending on how many journals Elsevier has managed to capture. I consider myself lucky that Elsevier doesn't own any of the major journals in my specialty, so I've so far been able to avoid them without feeling like I was making career sacrifices to do so.
    - bonoboTP 7y ago
      Why do the well established and well known, successful researchers not boycott it? It could start a chain reaction.
      - lonelappde 7y ago
        In math they did. In other fields, they depend on funding from government agencies who support Elsevier.
      - Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago
        I'm a tenured professor, so my own position is not in danger if I boycott the likes of Elsevier (salary bonuses and grant money still would be, but at least I could still get a reasonable paycheck every month and keep a good standard of living). But the overwhelming majority of my publications are coauthored with PhD students or young postdocs who are fighting for stable positions, and their career depends on high-impact publications. If I decided to boycott for-profit journals, I would be throwing them under the bus. In mathematics, most publications are single-author, and I suspect this (plus less reliance on funding to buy equipment) is an important factor why they are more successful than other disciplines fighting parasitic publishers, as established tenured professors might as well fight the fight. But for most disciplines, the lock-in is really difficult to escape...
- mikorym 7y ago
  Mathematicians have for a couple of years now started to rely on preprints on ArXiv and this is a successful change in culture. However, the related problem of research not being read (and the more subjective "not being worth read") is still unsolved to a large extent. My single paper on ArXiv has probably not been read and despite that my MSc reviewer commented that the work is suitable to be published (apart from the MSc) I now have a full time job outside of academia and little incentive to get the paper into a reputable journal by extensive formatting and layout changes or self-lobbying, if you will.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Are you sure people would read the article just if it were published? Fields of math are small and narrow. Emailing people and posting to forums might be easier and more effective than publishing in a journal.
  - dmitriz 7y ago
    How can you tell it is not been read?
    - mikorym 7y ago
      I guess I can't.
- dmitriz 7y ago
  > Then when I submit they'll "proofread" and "format" my paper, failing to spot existing errors, introducing their own, and outputting an ugly mess, maybe with two columns to make it really unreadable. We have been recording their (dis)services here, with everyone warmly welcome to add more: https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/4 https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/4
wpietri 7y ago
Clearly Elsevier is not playing nice here. But this bit is great: "UC retains perpetual access rights to most Elsevier articles published before 2019." Whoever negotiated that bit for the UC side must be feeling very pleased with themselves.
- jcampbell1 7y ago
  Probably standard terms carried over from the print model.
  - Nemo_bis 7y ago
    No, it's the opposite: when subscriptions were for printed copies, it's not like Elsevier would send an agent to set fire on your archives as soon as you discontinued a journal. In the 1990s, electronic access was seen as a cost reduction technique: some publishers would even provide it for free to their subscribers, others for a small fee; libraries would buy less copies of the same journal. Later, publishers offered to terminate the paper copies and replace them with electronic-only access, but libraries sensed a trap: what happens if we terminate access in the future? By the early 2000s, most universities had learnt to include such a perpetual access clause whenever they switched to electronic-only access. (See EBLIDA advice in 2001: <http://www.eblida.org/Activities/Publication/Licensing_digital_resources.pdf>. http://www.eblida.org/Activities/Publication/Licensing_digit...) All this work was not completed quickly: around 2010 I remember we (the board of directors) still had to approve some such conversions in my university. (Germany status in 2010: <https://www.mpg.de/230683/access__hosting_studie_e.pdf>. https://www.mpg.de/230683/access__hosting_studie_e.pdf>.) However, most of these clauses have never been used so far, and for some universities it's a lot of work to invoke such perpetual rights, track the back copies etc. https://oadoi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2017.1383964 https://oadoi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2017.1383964 Not all universities have a self-hosted archival copy, either. https://www.lockss.org/use-lockss/post-cancellation-and-perpetual-access https://www.lockss.org/use-lockss/post-cancellation-and-perp...
- jillesvangurp 7y ago
  It's not just Elsevier but also other publishers. They are doing everybody a favor here by forcing the issue. They could just chicken out and make UC pay for open access at a bit lower rate and we'd not be having this debate. But instead they are acting in a rather tone deaf way and are probably accelerating the demise of their business. I actually published a few things with them when I did my Ph. D. back in the day. Given the current debate, I'd probably avoid them and favor other channels these days. Researchers being aware of this is not going to help their marketing. IMHO all public research funding should be conditional on full open access. If you use public funding, the research results need to be open access for anyone. I'm pretty sure that is becoming standard practice already but in so far it isn't, that should pretty much be non negotiable when getting funding or for any tax money earmarked for research.
jcampbell1 7y ago
"The UC Libraries do not endorse the use of Sci-Hub for article access.”30 As the UC Berkeley university librarian said in a published interview, “we are unequivocal: it is our understanding (though we are not attorneys!) that Sci-Hub is in violation of U.S. copyright law. We will not advise nor help anyone to use it" That is probably the best endorsing non-endorcement I have read. It never says they discourage SciHub and suggests only SciHub is breaking copyright law.
- Iv 7y ago
  At one point, that's a coward's stance. Alexandra Elbakyan's contribution to scientific research at this stage is probably higher than any university's library. Recognize that everyone uses it because none of the legal options are acceptable. Say it and urge a long overdue change in copyright laws. It is abnormal that Elbakyan is the outlaw and Elsevier the respectable institution here.
  - dtech 7y ago
    Endorsing a US-law breaking site like SciHub could place them on the hook for legal repercussions. This non-endorsement endorsement achieves the same goals without the above liability.
    - Iv 7y ago
      Meanwhile, a courageous girl broke some laws with no gain for her, because she thought research was important. If the 10 biggest university libraries endorsed sci-hub, yeah, there could be legal repercussions but that could also move the lines much more than this timid non-endorsement endorsement.
      - malms 7y ago
        She's a superstar now, could make money from ad or bribes with no personal risk. I would have done the same
ziotom78 7y ago
I despise Elsevier and am trying not to publish anything with them. However, what impressed me the most here is the tone of the letter: direct, straight to the point, and clear to read and understand, with no trace of legalese. Every time I read something coming out of some academic office, I always expect a long sequence of bureaucratic sentences.
zwaps 7y ago
Elsevier essentially does nothing but funnel money from researchers to rent seekers. They add just about zero to science, indeed everything they done - which includes absolutely ruining good programs like Mendeley - has directly worked against scientific progress. They are an evil company, through and through.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  I haven't used Mendeley in a while. What did they change in it?
  - Nemo_bis 7y ago
    See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18977461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18977461
raister 7y ago
I'll leave this here: https://sci-hub.tw/ https://sci-hub.tw/ FTW
lordnacho 7y ago
I read a lot of bad things about Elsevier, so who is supporting them? Why aren't editors moving their publications en masse to some free and open platform? You'd think a reputation transplant would be possible if you just took the key people.
- Iv 7y ago
  Their model is to leech out public funding through catering at decision maker interests. There are strong incentive to keep the system as it is and no one is paid to organize to fix that problem. In theory that's when you would like to see politicians put an end to these practices but corruption is legal in US, so...
- dtech 7y ago
  Publishing in high impact journals is vital for a scientific career. Only the very top has enough individual reputation that they can ignore Elsevier & co. And they still like their articles published in Science, Nature, or whatever the most prestigious journal is in their field. Some top dogs are already boycotting Elsevier and the situation is very slowly changing, but the publishers hold a lot of leverage because of self-imposed academic incentives.
- taejo 7y ago
  This has happened: the example I know is that the editorial board of the linguistics journal Lingua resigned en masse to create the open-access Glossa. My impression from the outside (just a friend of linguists) is that Glossa is generally considered "the real Lingua" and "Zombie Lingua" has become significantly less selective. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=34106 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=34106
  - dboreham 7y ago
    A hard fork.
- FabHK 7y ago
  FWIW, it has happened [1]. I think it's a coordination problem - if everyone moves, you can take the reputation along, but if you alone move, you bear the cost. In the example of the Journal of Algorithms, the whole editorial board resigned to start ACM Transactions on Algorithms with a not-for-profit publisher, but that only happened because the founder of the journal, nestor Don Knuth himself, got so fed up with Elsevier that he managed to prod everyone along. So, yes, it is possible, and it happens far too rarely, and I wish top people in their field would instigate it more often. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Resignation_of_editorial_boards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Resignation_of_editor...
Iv 7y ago
I don't even want to read the article. I am on UC's side whatever happened. Hearing someone is having a dispute against Elsevier is like hearing someone is fighting polymetis. I just know which side I want to see win. The fact that no politician ever moved to destroy Elsevier destructive behavior that impairs research shows how little interest they have in scientific research.
- phoe-krk 7y ago
  > I don't even want to read the article. I am on UC's side whatever happened. Nothing in particular happened. You should read that article. It's good stuff coming straight from UC.
fastball 7y ago
Irony is that the CEO of Elsevier is a UC Berkeley alum.
- anticensor 7y ago
  Tail of the snake tries to eat its own head
Jerry2 7y ago
This paragraph made me smile: >Elsevier alleges that “one senior library official has repeatedly pointed to illegal sources of articles, including a Russia-based piracy site.” >We are unaware of any library employee who has been directing users to illegal sources of articles. On the contrary, UC explicitly published a statement on its website, in response to questions asked by users, that states: “The UC Libraries do not endorse the use of Sci-Hub for article access.”30 As the UC Berkeley university librarian said in a published interview, “we are unequivocal: it is our understanding (though we are not attorneys!) that Sci-Hub is in violation of U.S. copyright law. We will not advise nor help anyone to use it.” By naming Sci-hub.tw, they're basically educating people that there's a way to get articles they want but it might be less than legal than some other methods.
- buboard 7y ago
  There was a thread on twitter about how important it is not to talk about sci-hub. Please tell your friends not to use sci-hub to instantly download any science article. Sci-hub and its various domains which can be found by searching "where is sci hub now" must be stopped from their criminal violation of intellectual rights law. I repeat, do not talk about sci hub https://twitter.com/NeuroPolarbear/status/1157470106101985280 https://twitter.com/NeuroPolarbear/status/115747010610198528...
  - dmitriz 7y ago
    And under no circumstances you should tell anyone to edit the URL by inserting their illegal domain name after the article's, as that would directly, and importantly - illegally, download the article.
    - buboard 7y ago
      people beware: do not create a browser toolbar bookmark with this link. it will instantly download any article from sci-hub, which is illegal and wrong. You should never use sci-hub, in fact you should avoid mentioning sci hub to anyone who might be interested in sci hub. javascript:window.location='http:/'+'/sci-hub.tw/'+window.location
chmod775 7y ago
Is Elsevier really trying to weazel around and lie to literal rooms full of academic types. Are they actually mad and retarded.
- oblio 7y ago
  A classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfv32dmVFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfv32dmVFw
Gatsky 7y ago
It is easy to hate Elsevier, but the real problem is academia. Elsevier is just capitalising on an almost perfect business opportunity - take scientists’ work for free, get other scientists to review it for free then sell it back to all of them. You can’t blame them for doing this, or for being so defensive. We are the fools for participating in this racket. We need a hard fork. Large prestigious academic institutions should band together and decide not to publish in Elsevier journals, that’s the only way forward. Funding agencies should also be on board.
- Protohedgehog 7y ago
  Note that the more you know about them, the worse it gets. I wrote a report for Education International last year as part of a global campaign against Elsevier. https://www.ei-ie.org/en/detail/16061/elsevier-the-price-of-success https://www.ei-ie.org/en/detail/16061/elsevier-the-price-of-... You make it sound so easy, but if it was, don't you think people will have done it already? Monopolies, vendor lock-in, lobbying, divide-and-conquer approaches, all make moving away to a better system quite difficult. Public funding agencies should be prohibited from giving away funds and copyrights to private entities with 30%+ profit margins. I cannot understand why this is legal.
  - Gatsky 7y ago
    I hear you. But they aren’t going to turn around and become the publisher we want, that is a fantasy. They have no incentive to change. It isn’t easy for academia to help itself (for once), but it is the only viable solution imho.
- buboard 7y ago
  Elsevier is the bouncer to a trendy club. People flock outside, just because they know that the bouncer rejects 92% of the submitted articles (that's the rate for Nature i think). I think an open access publisher must create this artificial scarcity in order to build reputation. In fact i think they have to advertise it. They 'll also need a massive promotion campaign to attract attentin from authors.
iamnotacrook 7y ago
Is there a page which explains how this situation arose, why they get money from universities to access information produced at tax-payers expense, their role as gate-keepers, any work they actually produce which is useful, proposed alternatives etc. As someone outside of academia this is confusing. Why is someone getting stuff produced at tax-payers expense, peer-reviewed for free, and charging for it, and what's stopping this from being overturned?
- perpetualpatzer 7y ago
  >Why is someone getting stuff produced at tax-payers expense, peer-reviewed for free, and charging for it, and what's stopping this from being overturned? They're not. Elsevier doesn't produce the research. They filter it to give you the good bits. Historically, the value they've provided is 1) to ensure quality (i.e. guarantee readers not just any crank can publish a paper and waste your time, guarantee authors that you'll be published alongside good stuff, so people are less likely to skip over your work), 2) to coordinate operations (recruit authors, recruit appropriate reviewers, negotiate with printers, general SG&A), 3) manage physical printing and distribution. Arguably, 3 is now somewhat commoditized because distribution is mostly online. Costs have been driven down on 2 because of a glut of PhD's and the general demand for prestige signalling in academia. I'm genuinely not sure how relevant 1 is. I could imagine either that it's entirely replicable because 2 is now cheap, or that it's the kind of thing you don't know you care about til it's gone the way no one ever said "I love that my local store only sells genuine and high quality goods," but now people complain about how it's tough to know what you're getting from Amazon.
  - xamuel 7y ago
    Your (1) is not even the jurisdiction of the publisher. It's done by the editors, who are generally volunteers or, at best, receive a paltry stipend.
tomxor 7y ago
Random thought, with fight club math :) - The only remaining value journals like Elsevier have are their giant stash of papers, it's the sole thing perpetuating the whole absurd organization... so: A. How much money do Elsevier take from universities each year? B. How many years will it take for Elsevier to go bankrupt without income from said universities? C. How much money will it take to buy *all papers* from the auction at the bankruptcy of Elsevier? If A * B >= C then all universities could save the money they spend on Elsevier to put all of their papers in public domain (Assuming B is not impractically long and assuming Elsevier don't do something evil and down size enough to sustain themselves indefinitely while sitting on a hoard of papers). Once the content is freed universities can invest their publishing money in something more worth while like open access distribution networks.
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  But having public domain papers (eg arxiv) does not advance a carrier in the same way. You need papers in high impact factor journals in many fields to look good in evaluations (at all stages in the academic carrier ladder).
  - tomxor 7y ago
    That is true in the past, and present out of sheer momentum, but it's clear opinion is changing on the value of these journals, especially in light of various absurd failures of their peer review process. I think they are only "high impact" merely out of critical mass, not any intrinsic quality of the journal itself. You are correct in pointing out it's a significant factor in the perpetuity of these organisations, and hopefully it's an opinion that enough boycotting will topple.
    - bonoboTP 7y ago
      Sure but academia is pretty traditional and you also need to be good in the eye of others, not just researchers in your field who understand these things. But also administrators and regulators who may not really know or care about "how the sausage is made", they want to tick boxes, and see impressive numbers for impact factors etc. They could be reeducated but convincing and educating governments must also happen.
bschne 7y ago
The basic problem with the alternative of open access journals seems to be the incentives to get as many articles out as possible to reap the per-article publication fees, which ends up affecting review/editing quality. Have there been experiments in yet other, more decentralized models of academic publishing? Think something like Arxiv but with more features for discussion/review/endorsments by other researchers in the field, maybe?
- xamuel 7y ago
  Not all open-access journals have publication fees.
- Nemo_bis 7y ago
  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_peer_review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_peer_review
cambalache 7y ago
It is amazing how a leech company like Elsevier can extract so much rent from the academic system. It is ironic how they trick the academic world offering just "prestige" and getting back not only the exorbitant journal prices, but what I suppose are thousands if not millions of PhD+ level man hours for practically free.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Elsevier didn't do this to academia, academia did this do themselves.
IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
I know we all hate Elsevier, and I do, too. But the assumption in this threat that one could get rid of publishers without any thought and with absolutely no downside is simplifying it slightly too far. Elsevier currently has a margin of about 35%. That's a lot, and probably too much. But it also means they are spending 65% of revenue on something. Even assuming a decent chunk is marketing and sales, there are a few billion in that industry being spent on editing and coordination tasks. Going from a final draft to a published, peer-reviewed paper involves quite a few menial tasks, and scientists will either need to fill those roles themselves, or someone needs to pay someone else. This is well proven by the current alternative, Open Access journals: they charge authors fees in the high 3-digit range to cover their costs. So, for authors, Open Access means going from providing your work for free to actually paying to publish your work. Of course the institutions will usually cover those fees, and they have exceptions for people who can't afford it (payed by those who can). The research will then be freely available, which is great. But the changeover isn't done with setting up some CMS on some virtual server somewhere.
- plg 7y ago
  Tell that to math and physics. They seem to be doing just fine.
  - notyourday 7y ago
    A few of society journals are doing fine. They are funded by the societies and societies either outsource actual production to the publishers for pay but retain copyright ( and strong arm readers into paying for society membership as the condition of accessing the journal or make authors pay to publish in them ) or produce and publish journals themselves. Publishers make the most of their money by publishing second/third and fourth tier journals not the first tier because in the view of academia someone having access to "Journal of the Society of Librarians" ( circulation : 320 ), and "Cell" has the same value.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Given a choice it's better for the author to pay for typesetting because once they have, it can be distributed to readers for free.
notyourday 7y ago
This fight really reminds me of conversation I had with my CEO. Me: If we stop bitching and start the project to do X, in a couple of years we would be able to do X and the reason for bitching would become irrelevant Him: You think it would take two years for them to fix it? Me: I don't know, but I know that it would take us a year to do it ourselves without impacting the rest so in two years we should definitely solve this problem. Him: Two years is a lot. We have other things that we would be doing <two years later> Him: It is so annoying this is still happening Me: Remember how I said we should do it two years ago? Let's start it now. In two years we... Him: You really think it will take two years to do it? <repeat> The reality is that Elsevier/T&F/Springer etc are providing service that no one bitching about them wants to do. Journals are just a collection of papers, elected by EIC, produced and owned ( in case the copyright is transferred to the owners of the journal produced for free ) or just produced ( for a fee, in case copyright is not transferred ) and formatted and printed and hosted. EIC gets an honorarium, gets invited to the conferences, events, gets his or her name on a cred sheet, gets to be on panels, etc. for doing pretty much nothing. If the journal is not owned by Elsevier/T&F/Springer/etc the EIC has to a lot more -- especially for journals that have nearly no circulation that still publish 4-6 times a year. UC and other organizations have more than enough resources to do it themselves. Sometimes they do. Those are called society journals. After a few years of running them societies typically sell them off ( sometimes for $1.00 ) to the likes of Elsevier/T&F/Springer etc. They do it because production is not sexy.
- xamuel 7y ago
  >EIC ... doing pretty much nothing. I'm friends with one EIC and a few associate editors and I can assure you they do a LOT of work. The EIC in particular, it's like a full-time job, and that's for a fairly obscure journal. It takes a lot of effort to do the initial evaluation of any given submission, just to initially figure out which associate editor to assign it to. Springer pays her a tiny stipend to cover things like personal printing costs. Think something like $100/month (don't know the exact number but it's around there).
peterwwillis 7y ago
Elsevier's FAQ on California Digital Library and Elsevier: https://www.elsevier.com/about/california-digital-library-and-elsevier https://www.elsevier.com/about/california-digital-library-an...
jasonmorton 7y ago
Copyright assignments made by authors can be cancelled [1]. For papers and books from before 1994 or so (25 years from present), you can write a letter to the publisher cancelling your grant or assignment of copyright to them. The rules are complex so I might be missing some details. But there are probably a lot of researchers who could take advantage of this to put on some pressure and reclaim their work. [1] https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
rapht 7y ago
Everyone here who holds a grudge against Elsevier (and even those who don't yet) should have a look at the group which owns Elsevier (where it only represent a third of the profits). [1] Truly, a fascinating business combination including science's rent seeker in chief Elsevier, a number of privacy-dubious services under the banner "Risk Analytics" - including for instance your insurer-imposed GPS car tracker, and a service dubbed "Active Insights" that "keeps track of changes in [client's] households" - and another nice looking rent seeker business, LexisNexis, which is if I understand correctly an Elsevier-like gatekeeper to law information and references. [1] https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/reports/annual-reports/2018-annual-report.pdf https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/re...
dmitriz 7y ago
This might help to understand E's "logic" :) "Would you buy the world a drink?" - is there merit to Elsevier logic? https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/104 https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/104

287 points by montalbano 7y ago

I would be hard pressed to believe anything Elsevier says/claims at this point, without extensive and detailed evidence supporting it. Even then I would be fairly dubious, truth be told.

oli5679 7y ago

Fields Medal winner, Tim Gowers, has written several articles on the level of dysfunction in the academic publishing market. This article is good https://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-some-facts/ https://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-so...

dash2 7y ago

Man, I hate Elsevier with a passion. As well as being shady, dishonest, shifty, moneygrubbing toerags, they also provide the world's crappiest service. I have to use their web interface every time I submit a paper to an Elsevier journal. It's like sticking needles into my eyes. It's this bad: in 2019, they still use an image map for their main menu. A particular pleasure is when they force me to compile my TeX into a PDF. Via a web interface. Then when I submit they'll "proofread" and "format" my paper, failing to spot existing errors, introducing their own, and outputting an ugly mess, maybe with two columns to make it really unreadable. And then there's the stuff the article talks about: the huge fees universities pay so that our own work can be "open-access". I hate them. I hope they go bust. I hope their CEO becomes homeless.

wpietri 7y ago
This is poetry. Thank you! And exactly what I'd expect of an oligopoly player.
dessant 7y ago
The papers they hold hostage have not been fully backed up [1] and made accessible for everyone. Elsevier does deserve to go bankrupt, but we must ensure that the information they have amassed gets salvaged. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5832410/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5832410/
- jraph 7y ago
  I had a laugh reading this. > Readers should note that, in many jurisdictions, use of Sci-Hub may constitute copyright infringement. Users of Sci-Hub do so at their own risk. This study is not an endorsement of using Sci-Hub, and its authors and publishers accept no responsibility on behalf of readers. There is a possibility that Sci-Hub users — especially those not using privacy-enhancing services such as Tor — could have their usage history unmasked and face legal or reputational consequences. > Sci-Hub is currently served at domains including https://sci-hub.hk https://sci-hub.hk, https://sci-hub.la https://sci-hub.la, https://sci-hub.mn https://sci-hub.mn, https://sci-hub.name https://sci-hub.name, https://sci-hub.tv https://sci-hub.tv, and https://sci-hub.tw https://sci-hub.tw, as well as at scihub22266oqcxt.onion "We are not telling you to use Sci-Hub, but you can use Tor and here are some addresses where you can find it." > Here we report that, as of March 2017, Sci-Hub’s database contains 68.9% of the 81.6 million scholarly articles registered with Crossref and 85.1% of articles published in toll access journals. For toll access articles, we find that Sci-Hub provides greater coverage than the University of Pennsylvania, a major research university in the United States. "See, Sci-Hub works that well" :-) Managing to have this hosted on a .gov website seems noteworthy.
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    Note that the former and current Editors-in-Chief of that journal are both UC Berkeley biologists (also huge critics of paywalled science).
  - duckerude 7y ago
    > Since the ledger of Bitcoin transactions is public, we can evaluate the donation activity to known Sci-Hub addresses (1K4t2vSBSS2xFjZ6PofYnbgZewjeqbG1TM, 14ghuGKDAPdEcUQN4zuzGwBUrhQgACwAyA, 1EVkHpdQ8VJQRpQ15hSRoohCztTvDMEepm). Subtle
Iv 7y ago
I was waiting for the "but". Reaching the final period of your sentence was deeply satisfying.
mxcrossb 7y ago
While we’re doing “as well as”s about Elsevier... I hate how soulless the journals feel. Recently, I wanted to read a quite old paper as it connected to my recent research. It was published in the 60s, in a journal that has housed some extremely ground breaking work in my field. But you wouldn’t get that impression from their elsevier site. Where is the history? Where is the pride? Instead it looks just like any old rubbish journal, and any reader who stumbled upon it would think the same unless they read its history in Wikipedia.
- impendia 7y ago
  > I hate how soulless the journals feel. I certainly sympathize with you! That said, personally I'm happy about this development. Journals don't really fill a practical need anymore, and (as you point out) they increasingly don't fill an emotional, intangible one either. Perhaps then we will muster the effort to kick the entire industry to the curb.
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  Which journal?
  - dmitriz 7y ago
    All of them use the same process.
    - dr_dshiv 7y ago
      I was asking about: > Recently, I wanted to read a quite old paper as it connected to my recent research. It was published in the 60s, in a journal that has housed some extremely ground breaking work in my field. But you wouldn’t get that impression from their elsevier site The OP is describing how all journals are treated the same, despite the the fact that they are essentially mini societies, some with more important histories than others
- dmitriz 7y ago
  Of course they won't do it as that would show the world the other 99% of their journals are in fact old rubbish. And they don't buy us drinks as we know... https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/104 https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/104
raister 7y ago
It is hard to say this, but Russia is helping the world fight against Elsevier and all those money funneling institutions... (with scihub, for anyone not knowing that it is a russian 'service')
- vihren 7y ago
  The creator of Sci-Hub is Alexandra Elbakyan and she is from Kazakhstan. According to Wikipedia [0] she spend 1 year working for a Moscow company, but that's it. I wouldn't classify it as a Russian service. There is a nice russian service for paywalled ebooks and articles called LibGen [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis
  - buboard 7y ago
    i would still use it if it was a russian service
  - steve19 7y ago
    At one point in time she banned the whole of Russia from accessing sci-hub after she felt that some Russian scientists had been insulting when they named a parasitic insect after her. Late last year Russia banned isps from accessing sci-hub. It may or may not be hosted in Russia, but I agree it is not "Russian". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/sci-hub-blocked-in-russia-following-ruling-by-moscow-court/3009838.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/sci-hub-blocked-in-russi...
bb101 7y ago
The rot starts at the top: https://www.elsevier.com/about/management https://www.elsevier.com/about/management
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  Am I supposed to magically understand something from that link? If so, I utterly failed. Mind elucidating?
- dmitriz 7y ago
  In fact, this was referring to one of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20641056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20641056
mcv 7y ago
If Elsevier is so terrible, and everybody hates them, how is it possible that it's so hard to move away from them? Their entire business depends on the people who hate them: the scientists who submit their articles to them and the universities who subscribe to the journals. If everybody agrees Elsevier is terrible, you'd think it should be easy to set up a competitor that does it better, but someone everybody still wants to get published in Elsevier's journals, and everybody still wants to read what's in them. If everybody were to just stop, Elsevier would be out of business within a month.
- reallydontask 7y ago
  If scientific careers didn't depend on publishing papers in high impact journals, this could happen within a month. As it is, until Open Access journals become high impact journals, we're kind of between a rock and hard place
  - mcv 7y ago
    If everybody starts reading Open Access journals and stops reading Elsevier, the Open Access journals will have more impact. But yeah, many scientists are paid by slow-moving bureaucratic machines that probably don't care about the issues involved and just want to see them published in old, well-established big-name journals, and not a new upstart that everybody else suddenly wants to consider more important.
    - rumanator 7y ago
      > If everybody starts reading Open Access journals and stops reading Elsevier, the Open Access journals will have more impact. That's irrelevant. Researchers are forced to publish in high-impact journals to preserve their career, and any newly created journal has zero impact. Furthermore, some countries/universities enforce a journal whitelist, and evaluate the eir researchers based on the number of papers published in the pre approved list if publications.
      - anticensor 7y ago
n1000 7y ago
Another fun fact about Elsevier: In their contract with university libraries they exclude the right of fair use as described in the US copyright law. That means one can download papers, but technically mustn't use the data found in them without consent. This is just ridiculous.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Isn't that illegal? Or at least, doesn't that cancel the copyright as it explicitly breaches the copyright contract with the demos.
  - n1000 7y ago
    I was wondering too. The librarian that told me about it, is a copyright expert and was outraged. However, it seems like there was not much they could do. I am guessing the fact that this is happening at an Ivy league university means that lawyers are not useful in this matter. They also said that only Elsevier does that.
michaelmior 7y ago
> I hope their CEO becomes homeless. Not having experienced homelessness myself, this still isn't something I would wish in anyone.
- BorRagnarok 7y ago
  Oh I would, and that he may go completely broke too, and die miserable, alone, and in pain. These people's greed has caused enormous harm and cost uncountable lives. That's what keeping this knowledge to yourself does, otherwise our doctors would still be doing bloodletting and sacrificing small animals. And in a certain way, we still are. Which doctor has the money to access all those journals? Lost of clues to a cure for lots of diseases are probably buried somewhere in expensive journals. But noo, please for the love of money withhold the doctor that information, let him pay thousands of dollars for it, so that he will not read any of it, and let his patients suffer and die. Like they did when we were still doing bloodletting.
  - michaelmior 7y ago
    I'm not arguing that what Elsevier is doing is good, but I do think desiring terrible things for others however "bad" we may perceive them to be is ultimately not productive.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  I have experienced homelessness. I hope the CEO becomes homeless and then gets kicked out of any squats when they find out that he used to run Elsevier, and has to live in a cardboard box full of dogs under a bridge, before finally finding enlightenment in his tranformation into a modern Diogenes. He will then wander the world, providing modest educational services for free and be finally happy.
kevinventullo 7y ago
Honest question: if you hate Elsevier, why are you submitting to their journals?
- CrazyStat 7y ago
  It would be optimal for all researchers to coordinate to move away from Elsevier, but as long as everyone else (or the majority) is publishing in Elsevier the local optimum for each researcher is to continue publishing in Elsevier. I know a few researchers who have publicly committed to not publish in Elsevier journals, but there's a career cost to doing this, particularly for early career researchers. Outside of a small number of colleagues who will actually read your work, most people (including funding organizations and tenure review boards) will judge your research by how much you publish and where you publish, and Elsevier owns many of the most prestigious journals. It varies by field, depending on how many journals Elsevier has managed to capture. I consider myself lucky that Elsevier doesn't own any of the major journals in my specialty, so I've so far been able to avoid them without feeling like I was making career sacrifices to do so.
  - bonoboTP 7y ago
    Why do the well established and well known, successful researchers not boycott it? It could start a chain reaction.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      In math they did. In other fields, they depend on funding from government agencies who support Elsevier.
    - Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago
      I'm a tenured professor, so my own position is not in danger if I boycott the likes of Elsevier (salary bonuses and grant money still would be, but at least I could still get a reasonable paycheck every month and keep a good standard of living). But the overwhelming majority of my publications are coauthored with PhD students or young postdocs who are fighting for stable positions, and their career depends on high-impact publications. If I decided to boycott for-profit journals, I would be throwing them under the bus. In mathematics, most publications are single-author, and I suspect this (plus less reliance on funding to buy equipment) is an important factor why they are more successful than other disciplines fighting parasitic publishers, as established tenured professors might as well fight the fight. But for most disciplines, the lock-in is really difficult to escape...
mikorym 7y ago
Mathematicians have for a couple of years now started to rely on preprints on ArXiv and this is a successful change in culture. However, the related problem of research not being read (and the more subjective "not being worth read") is still unsolved to a large extent. My single paper on ArXiv has probably not been read and despite that my MSc reviewer commented that the work is suitable to be published (apart from the MSc) I now have a full time job outside of academia and little incentive to get the paper into a reputable journal by extensive formatting and layout changes or self-lobbying, if you will.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Are you sure people would read the article just if it were published? Fields of math are small and narrow. Emailing people and posting to forums might be easier and more effective than publishing in a journal.
- dmitriz 7y ago
  How can you tell it is not been read?
  - mikorym 7y ago
    I guess I can't.
dmitriz 7y ago
> Then when I submit they'll "proofread" and "format" my paper, failing to spot existing errors, introducing their own, and outputting an ugly mess, maybe with two columns to make it really unreadable. We have been recording their (dis)services here, with everyone warmly welcome to add more: https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/4 https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/4

wpietri 7y ago

Clearly Elsevier is not playing nice here. But this bit is great: "UC retains perpetual access rights to most Elsevier articles published before 2019." Whoever negotiated that bit for the UC side must be feeling very pleased with themselves.

jcampbell1 7y ago
Probably standard terms carried over from the print model.
- Nemo_bis 7y ago
  No, it's the opposite: when subscriptions were for printed copies, it's not like Elsevier would send an agent to set fire on your archives as soon as you discontinued a journal. In the 1990s, electronic access was seen as a cost reduction technique: some publishers would even provide it for free to their subscribers, others for a small fee; libraries would buy less copies of the same journal. Later, publishers offered to terminate the paper copies and replace them with electronic-only access, but libraries sensed a trap: what happens if we terminate access in the future? By the early 2000s, most universities had learnt to include such a perpetual access clause whenever they switched to electronic-only access. (See EBLIDA advice in 2001: <http://www.eblida.org/Activities/Publication/Licensing_digital_resources.pdf>. http://www.eblida.org/Activities/Publication/Licensing_digit...) All this work was not completed quickly: around 2010 I remember we (the board of directors) still had to approve some such conversions in my university. (Germany status in 2010: <https://www.mpg.de/230683/access__hosting_studie_e.pdf>. https://www.mpg.de/230683/access__hosting_studie_e.pdf>.) However, most of these clauses have never been used so far, and for some universities it's a lot of work to invoke such perpetual rights, track the back copies etc. https://oadoi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2017.1383964 https://oadoi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2017.1383964 Not all universities have a self-hosted archival copy, either. https://www.lockss.org/use-lockss/post-cancellation-and-perpetual-access https://www.lockss.org/use-lockss/post-cancellation-and-perp...
jillesvangurp 7y ago
It's not just Elsevier but also other publishers. They are doing everybody a favor here by forcing the issue. They could just chicken out and make UC pay for open access at a bit lower rate and we'd not be having this debate. But instead they are acting in a rather tone deaf way and are probably accelerating the demise of their business. I actually published a few things with them when I did my Ph. D. back in the day. Given the current debate, I'd probably avoid them and favor other channels these days. Researchers being aware of this is not going to help their marketing. IMHO all public research funding should be conditional on full open access. If you use public funding, the research results need to be open access for anyone. I'm pretty sure that is becoming standard practice already but in so far it isn't, that should pretty much be non negotiable when getting funding or for any tax money earmarked for research.

jcampbell1 7y ago

"The UC Libraries do not endorse the use of Sci-Hub for article access.”30 As the UC Berkeley university librarian said in a published interview, “we are unequivocal: it is our understanding (though we are not attorneys!) that Sci-Hub is in violation of U.S. copyright law. We will not advise nor help anyone to use it" That is probably the best endorsing non-endorcement I have read. It never says they discourage SciHub and suggests only SciHub is breaking copyright law.

Iv 7y ago
At one point, that's a coward's stance. Alexandra Elbakyan's contribution to scientific research at this stage is probably higher than any university's library. Recognize that everyone uses it because none of the legal options are acceptable. Say it and urge a long overdue change in copyright laws. It is abnormal that Elbakyan is the outlaw and Elsevier the respectable institution here.
- dtech 7y ago
  Endorsing a US-law breaking site like SciHub could place them on the hook for legal repercussions. This non-endorsement endorsement achieves the same goals without the above liability.
  - Iv 7y ago
    Meanwhile, a courageous girl broke some laws with no gain for her, because she thought research was important. If the 10 biggest university libraries endorsed sci-hub, yeah, there could be legal repercussions but that could also move the lines much more than this timid non-endorsement endorsement.
    - malms 7y ago
      She's a superstar now, could make money from ad or bribes with no personal risk. I would have done the same

ziotom78 7y ago

I despise Elsevier and am trying not to publish anything with them. However, what impressed me the most here is the tone of the letter: direct, straight to the point, and clear to read and understand, with no trace of legalese. Every time I read something coming out of some academic office, I always expect a long sequence of bureaucratic sentences.

zwaps 7y ago

Elsevier essentially does nothing but funnel money from researchers to rent seekers. They add just about zero to science, indeed everything they done - which includes absolutely ruining good programs like Mendeley - has directly worked against scientific progress. They are an evil company, through and through.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bonoboTP 7y ago
I haven't used Mendeley in a while. What did they change in it?
- Nemo_bis 7y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18977461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18977461

raister 7y ago

I'll leave this here: https://sci-hub.tw/ https://sci-hub.tw/ FTW

lordnacho 7y ago

I read a lot of bad things about Elsevier, so who is supporting them? Why aren't editors moving their publications en masse to some free and open platform? You'd think a reputation transplant would be possible if you just took the key people.

Iv 7y ago
Their model is to leech out public funding through catering at decision maker interests. There are strong incentive to keep the system as it is and no one is paid to organize to fix that problem. In theory that's when you would like to see politicians put an end to these practices but corruption is legal in US, so...
dtech 7y ago
Publishing in high impact journals is vital for a scientific career. Only the very top has enough individual reputation that they can ignore Elsevier & co. And they still like their articles published in Science, Nature, or whatever the most prestigious journal is in their field. Some top dogs are already boycotting Elsevier and the situation is very slowly changing, but the publishers hold a lot of leverage because of self-imposed academic incentives.
taejo 7y ago
This has happened: the example I know is that the editorial board of the linguistics journal Lingua resigned en masse to create the open-access Glossa. My impression from the outside (just a friend of linguists) is that Glossa is generally considered "the real Lingua" and "Zombie Lingua" has become significantly less selective. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=34106 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=34106
- dboreham 7y ago
  A hard fork.
FabHK 7y ago
FWIW, it has happened [1]. I think it's a coordination problem - if everyone moves, you can take the reputation along, but if you alone move, you bear the cost. In the example of the Journal of Algorithms, the whole editorial board resigned to start ACM Transactions on Algorithms with a not-for-profit publisher, but that only happened because the founder of the journal, nestor Don Knuth himself, got so fed up with Elsevier that he managed to prod everyone along. So, yes, it is possible, and it happens far too rarely, and I wish top people in their field would instigate it more often. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Resignation_of_editorial_boards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Resignation_of_editor...

Iv 7y ago

I don't even want to read the article. I am on UC's side whatever happened. Hearing someone is having a dispute against Elsevier is like hearing someone is fighting polymetis. I just know which side I want to see win. The fact that no politician ever moved to destroy Elsevier destructive behavior that impairs research shows how little interest they have in scientific research.

phoe-krk 7y ago
> I don't even want to read the article. I am on UC's side whatever happened. Nothing in particular happened. You should read that article. It's good stuff coming straight from UC.

fastball 7y ago

Irony is that the CEO of Elsevier is a UC Berkeley alum.

anticensor 7y ago
Tail of the snake tries to eat its own head

Jerry2 7y ago

This paragraph made me smile: >Elsevier alleges that “one senior library official has repeatedly pointed to illegal sources of articles, including a Russia-based piracy site.” >We are unaware of any library employee who has been directing users to illegal sources of articles. On the contrary, UC explicitly published a statement on its website, in response to questions asked by users, that states: “The UC Libraries do not endorse the use of Sci-Hub for article access.”30 As the UC Berkeley university librarian said in a published interview, “we are unequivocal: it is our understanding (though we are not attorneys!) that Sci-Hub is in violation of U.S. copyright law. We will not advise nor help anyone to use it.” By naming Sci-hub.tw, they're basically educating people that there's a way to get articles they want but it might be less than legal than some other methods.

buboard 7y ago
There was a thread on twitter about how important it is not to talk about sci-hub. Please tell your friends not to use sci-hub to instantly download any science article. Sci-hub and its various domains which can be found by searching "where is sci hub now" must be stopped from their criminal violation of intellectual rights law. I repeat, do not talk about sci hub https://twitter.com/NeuroPolarbear/status/1157470106101985280 https://twitter.com/NeuroPolarbear/status/115747010610198528...
- dmitriz 7y ago
  And under no circumstances you should tell anyone to edit the URL by inserting their illegal domain name after the article's, as that would directly, and importantly - illegally, download the article.
  - buboard 7y ago
    people beware: do not create a browser toolbar bookmark with this link. it will instantly download any article from sci-hub, which is illegal and wrong. You should never use sci-hub, in fact you should avoid mentioning sci hub to anyone who might be interested in sci hub. javascript:window.location='http:/'+'/sci-hub.tw/'+window.location

chmod775 7y ago

Is Elsevier really trying to weazel around and lie to literal rooms full of academic types. Are they actually mad and retarded.

oblio 7y ago
A classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfv32dmVFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfv32dmVFw

Gatsky 7y ago

It is easy to hate Elsevier, but the real problem is academia. Elsevier is just capitalising on an almost perfect business opportunity - take scientists’ work for free, get other scientists to review it for free then sell it back to all of them. You can’t blame them for doing this, or for being so defensive. We are the fools for participating in this racket. We need a hard fork. Large prestigious academic institutions should band together and decide not to publish in Elsevier journals, that’s the only way forward. Funding agencies should also be on board.

Protohedgehog 7y ago
Note that the more you know about them, the worse it gets. I wrote a report for Education International last year as part of a global campaign against Elsevier. https://www.ei-ie.org/en/detail/16061/elsevier-the-price-of-success https://www.ei-ie.org/en/detail/16061/elsevier-the-price-of-... You make it sound so easy, but if it was, don't you think people will have done it already? Monopolies, vendor lock-in, lobbying, divide-and-conquer approaches, all make moving away to a better system quite difficult. Public funding agencies should be prohibited from giving away funds and copyrights to private entities with 30%+ profit margins. I cannot understand why this is legal.
- Gatsky 7y ago
  I hear you. But they aren’t going to turn around and become the publisher we want, that is a fantasy. They have no incentive to change. It isn’t easy for academia to help itself (for once), but it is the only viable solution imho.
buboard 7y ago
Elsevier is the bouncer to a trendy club. People flock outside, just because they know that the bouncer rejects 92% of the submitted articles (that's the rate for Nature i think). I think an open access publisher must create this artificial scarcity in order to build reputation. In fact i think they have to advertise it. They 'll also need a massive promotion campaign to attract attentin from authors.

iamnotacrook 7y ago

Is there a page which explains how this situation arose, why they get money from universities to access information produced at tax-payers expense, their role as gate-keepers, any work they actually produce which is useful, proposed alternatives etc. As someone outside of academia this is confusing. Why is someone getting stuff produced at tax-payers expense, peer-reviewed for free, and charging for it, and what's stopping this from being overturned?

perpetualpatzer 7y ago
>Why is someone getting stuff produced at tax-payers expense, peer-reviewed for free, and charging for it, and what's stopping this from being overturned? They're not. Elsevier doesn't produce the research. They filter it to give you the good bits. Historically, the value they've provided is 1) to ensure quality (i.e. guarantee readers not just any crank can publish a paper and waste your time, guarantee authors that you'll be published alongside good stuff, so people are less likely to skip over your work), 2) to coordinate operations (recruit authors, recruit appropriate reviewers, negotiate with printers, general SG&A), 3) manage physical printing and distribution. Arguably, 3 is now somewhat commoditized because distribution is mostly online. Costs have been driven down on 2 because of a glut of PhD's and the general demand for prestige signalling in academia. I'm genuinely not sure how relevant 1 is. I could imagine either that it's entirely replicable because 2 is now cheap, or that it's the kind of thing you don't know you care about til it's gone the way no one ever said "I love that my local store only sells genuine and high quality goods," but now people complain about how it's tough to know what you're getting from Amazon.
- xamuel 7y ago
  Your (1) is not even the jurisdiction of the publisher. It's done by the editors, who are generally volunteers or, at best, receive a paltry stipend.

tomxor 7y ago

Random thought, with fight club math :) - The only remaining value journals like Elsevier have are their giant stash of papers, it's the sole thing perpetuating the whole absurd organization... so: A. How much money do Elsevier take from universities each year? B. How many years will it take for Elsevier to go bankrupt without income from said universities? C. How much money will it take to buy *all papers* from the auction at the bankruptcy of Elsevier? If A * B >= C then all universities could save the money they spend on Elsevier to put all of their papers in public domain (Assuming B is not impractically long and assuming Elsevier don't do something evil and down size enough to sustain themselves indefinitely while sitting on a hoard of papers). Once the content is freed universities can invest their publishing money in something more worth while like open access distribution networks.

bonoboTP 7y ago
But having public domain papers (eg arxiv) does not advance a carrier in the same way. You need papers in high impact factor journals in many fields to look good in evaluations (at all stages in the academic carrier ladder).
- tomxor 7y ago
  That is true in the past, and present out of sheer momentum, but it's clear opinion is changing on the value of these journals, especially in light of various absurd failures of their peer review process. I think they are only "high impact" merely out of critical mass, not any intrinsic quality of the journal itself. You are correct in pointing out it's a significant factor in the perpetuity of these organisations, and hopefully it's an opinion that enough boycotting will topple.
  - bonoboTP 7y ago
    Sure but academia is pretty traditional and you also need to be good in the eye of others, not just researchers in your field who understand these things. But also administrators and regulators who may not really know or care about "how the sausage is made", they want to tick boxes, and see impressive numbers for impact factors etc. They could be reeducated but convincing and educating governments must also happen.

bschne 7y ago

The basic problem with the alternative of open access journals seems to be the incentives to get as many articles out as possible to reap the per-article publication fees, which ends up affecting review/editing quality. Have there been experiments in yet other, more decentralized models of academic publishing? Think something like Arxiv but with more features for discussion/review/endorsments by other researchers in the field, maybe?

xamuel 7y ago
Not all open-access journals have publication fees.
Nemo_bis 7y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_peer_review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_peer_review

cambalache 7y ago

It is amazing how a leech company like Elsevier can extract so much rent from the academic system. It is ironic how they trick the academic world offering just "prestige" and getting back not only the exorbitant journal prices, but what I suppose are thousands if not millions of PhD+ level man hours for practically free.

lonelappde 7y ago
Elsevier didn't do this to academia, academia did this do themselves.

IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago

I know we all hate Elsevier, and I do, too. But the assumption in this threat that one could get rid of publishers without any thought and with absolutely no downside is simplifying it slightly too far. Elsevier currently has a margin of about 35%. That's a lot, and probably too much. But it also means they are spending 65% of revenue on something. Even assuming a decent chunk is marketing and sales, there are a few billion in that industry being spent on editing and coordination tasks. Going from a final draft to a published, peer-reviewed paper involves quite a few menial tasks, and scientists will either need to fill those roles themselves, or someone needs to pay someone else. This is well proven by the current alternative, Open Access journals: they charge authors fees in the high 3-digit range to cover their costs. So, for authors, Open Access means going from providing your work for free to actually paying to publish your work. Of course the institutions will usually cover those fees, and they have exceptions for people who can't afford it (payed by those who can). The research will then be freely available, which is great. But the changeover isn't done with setting up some CMS on some virtual server somewhere.

plg 7y ago
Tell that to math and physics. They seem to be doing just fine.
- notyourday 7y ago
  A few of society journals are doing fine. They are funded by the societies and societies either outsource actual production to the publishers for pay but retain copyright ( and strong arm readers into paying for society membership as the condition of accessing the journal or make authors pay to publish in them ) or produce and publish journals themselves. Publishers make the most of their money by publishing second/third and fourth tier journals not the first tier because in the view of academia someone having access to "Journal of the Society of Librarians" ( circulation : 320 ), and "Cell" has the same value.
whatshisface 7y ago
Given a choice it's better for the author to pay for typesetting because once they have, it can be distributed to readers for free.

notyourday 7y ago

This fight really reminds me of conversation I had with my CEO. Me: If we stop bitching and start the project to do X, in a couple of years we would be able to do X and the reason for bitching would become irrelevant Him: You think it would take two years for them to fix it? Me: I don't know, but I know that it would take us a year to do it ourselves without impacting the rest so in two years we should definitely solve this problem. Him: Two years is a lot. We have other things that we would be doing <two years later> Him: It is so annoying this is still happening Me: Remember how I said we should do it two years ago? Let's start it now. In two years we... Him: You really think it will take two years to do it? <repeat> The reality is that Elsevier/T&F/Springer etc are providing service that no one bitching about them wants to do. Journals are just a collection of papers, elected by EIC, produced and owned ( in case the copyright is transferred to the owners of the journal produced for free ) or just produced ( for a fee, in case copyright is not transferred ) and formatted and printed and hosted. EIC gets an honorarium, gets invited to the conferences, events, gets his or her name on a cred sheet, gets to be on panels, etc. for doing pretty much nothing. If the journal is not owned by Elsevier/T&F/Springer/etc the EIC has to a lot more -- especially for journals that have nearly no circulation that still publish 4-6 times a year. UC and other organizations have more than enough resources to do it themselves. Sometimes they do. Those are called society journals. After a few years of running them societies typically sell them off ( sometimes for $1.00 ) to the likes of Elsevier/T&F/Springer etc. They do it because production is not sexy.

xamuel 7y ago
>EIC ... doing pretty much nothing. I'm friends with one EIC and a few associate editors and I can assure you they do a LOT of work. The EIC in particular, it's like a full-time job, and that's for a fairly obscure journal. It takes a lot of effort to do the initial evaluation of any given submission, just to initially figure out which associate editor to assign it to. Springer pays her a tiny stipend to cover things like personal printing costs. Think something like $100/month (don't know the exact number but it's around there).

peterwwillis 7y ago

Elsevier's FAQ on California Digital Library and Elsevier: https://www.elsevier.com/about/california-digital-library-and-elsevier https://www.elsevier.com/about/california-digital-library-an...

jasonmorton 7y ago

Copyright assignments made by authors can be cancelled [1]. For papers and books from before 1994 or so (25 years from present), you can write a letter to the publisher cancelling your grant or assignment of copyright to them. The rules are complex so I might be missing some details. But there are probably a lot of researchers who could take advantage of this to put on some pressure and reclaim their work. [1] https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html

deleted 7y ago
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rapht 7y ago

Everyone here who holds a grudge against Elsevier (and even those who don't yet) should have a look at the group which owns Elsevier (where it only represent a third of the profits). [1] Truly, a fascinating business combination including science's rent seeker in chief Elsevier, a number of privacy-dubious services under the banner "Risk Analytics" - including for instance your insurer-imposed GPS car tracker, and a service dubbed "Active Insights" that "keeps track of changes in [client's] households" - and another nice looking rent seeker business, LexisNexis, which is if I understand correctly an Elsevier-like gatekeeper to law information and references. [1] https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/reports/annual-reports/2018-annual-report.pdf https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/re...

dmitriz 7y ago

This might help to understand E's "logic" :) "Would you buy the world a drink?" - is there merit to Elsevier logic? https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/104 https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/104