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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 l
by 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 agoWhy do the well established and well known, successful researchers not boycott it? It could start a chain reaction.
- lonelappde 7y agoIn math they did. In other fields, they depend on funding from government agencies who support Elsevier.
- Al-Khwarizmi 7y agoI'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...
- bonoboTP 7y agoI'm in computer science so fortunately almost everything is open access. Do you know how CS ended up like this and whether it could be replicated in other fields? I suspect the close relations to the math community may be part of the origin of it. Perhaps also the the values of hacker culture.
- dmitriz 7y agoBecause "services" by the likes of E are of no value to CS professors designing some of the much more advanced software. But they are sadly focusing on their own journals and not trying to help the other subjects.
- Al-Khwarizmi 7y agoIt depends on the subarea of CS where you publish, and especially on the country where you are... I'm also in CS and in my country we still need to publish in (predominantly non-OA) journals if we want tenure, grants, etc.
- dmitriz 7y agoBecause ironically, and despite of all the good words, this is not what is typically rewarded by their universities.