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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 c
by 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...
- 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.