4 ms·

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 f

by 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.

by Gatsky 7y ago

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.