8 ms·

UC secures landmark open access deal with world’s largest scientific publisher

104 points by SubiculumCode 6y ago

SubiculumCode 6y ago
TLDR: Elsevier caved, big time. This is a big win for open science, imo.
- xbar 6y ago
  Good job, University of California.
- ta988 6y ago
  Not my read. The university caved and decided to use the researchers money to pay half of the contract with Elsevier.
  - pfortuny 6y ago
    Exactly: now each paper will have to be paid with the researcher’s funds...
lacker 6y ago
It is unclear to me what the real impact of this deal is. The article spends about one sentence describing the deal directly: "All research with a UC lead author published in Elsevier’s extensive portfolio of hybrid and open access journals will be open access by default." There are a lot of caveats here. It sounds like this only applies to some journals and some articles. There are a whole lot of vague quotes about how great this is though. I'd be interested to see a more detailed analysis of the impact this will have.
- unsrsly 6y ago
  https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/uc-publisher-relationships/elsevier-oa-agreement/ https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/uc-publisher-relation... "All Cell Press and Lancet journals are part of the UC agreement. For these top journals, UC’s shared funding model — where the libraries share the cost of open access publishing with authors — will be phased in, with all Cell Press and Lancet journals integrated no later than 2023, midway through the four-year agreement." "a limited number of societies that partner with Elsevier for their publishing have chosen to exclude their journals from transformative agreements, so their journals are not eligible for either reading, publishing, or both under the agreement. A list of these exclusions will be available soon and linked from this page."
lalaithion 6y ago
The United States (or any government) should require that scientific papers funded in part or in whole by Government funds should be available to all citizens and residents at zero cost.
- SubiculumCode 6y ago
  I am for open science in general, but I cannot help but worry about how this disincentivizes research funding. Why? If the U.S. did adopt such a policy, then all funded research does not just benefit the United States, but every nation. Nothing wrong with that, but then those other countries may feel that there is less need to fund their own science programs because they can leech off the United State's investment. Other countries might even close access to their science, and they'd receive benefit from our investment, but we would not benefit from theirs. Alternatively, we can take the view that it is not zero sum, that interactions in open science always makes it the rational decision to keep science open and to fund it.
  - SeanLuke 6y ago
    This is a bizarre argument. Are you seriously saying that by not forcing universities to pay a for-profit European publishing conglomerate, the US is disincentivizing research? Countries don't fund research because of what shows up (or not) in scientific journals from other countries that they can somehow glean. They fund researchers to do research in their countries because the trickle-down effect of PhD students, graduate students, prestige, and ultimately spin-off companies and economic benefit that comes from doing so.
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    This has nothing to do with research funding. Money paid for access to papers goes to publishers. It's not like in music where the publishers get the lions' share and the artists get a fraction of that - in academic pubishing, it's 100% to publishers and not a single cent ever of the proceeds goes to authors or reviewers or to funding science programs. And "closed access science" produced by USA is still available to researchers in every country despite the paywalls, all the serious universities have arranged subscriptions, it's just that currently they are paying a large fee to unnecessary middlemen (e.g. Netherlands' Elsevier) for that privilege.
pfortuny 6y ago
A mutually beneficial agreement with Elsevier contains a huge lot of amount of very big money. For sure.
osamagirl69 6y ago
I am genuinely surprised that the UC was able to get Elsevier to agree to this much, even if it does come up well short of their original list of demands [1]. I do wonder what this means for researchers, in particular there was no mention of publishing fees. Generally in hybrid journals there is a hefty price tag for open access (basically -- you are paying for the expected revenue generated by your paper...) so I could see that this means the publishing fees for a top Elsevier journal upwards of 5 figures--a price that research groups will now need to cover. I was at a talk by Nature about their Nature Photonics journal, and when asked if they would ever consider doing open access for Nature Photonics they said they have thought about it, but that it would cost them about $40,000 per paper for it to be commercially viable. Even though the peer review is free, they have a team of editors that need to get paid and they only publish 10-20 papers a month. Also -- see the previous discussion with more focus on Elsevier's side of the story at [2] [1] https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/reports/rm-jn-transform-scholarly-communication-declaration-2019.pdf https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/reports/rm-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26379954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26379954
- eganp 6y ago
  Clearly open access has costs, but how does Nature Photonics get to $40k/paper?? Is that how much revenue they expect to derive from the lifetime of the paper?
  - Google234 6y ago
    Only a few percent of papers submitted actually get published. There is some amount of work involved. Also, these top journals hire full time editors (former scientists in ther field).
    - jahewson 6y ago
      Let’s say it’s 15 papers per month, so $40k * 15 * 12 = $7.2m for four editors. I’m not at all convinced. 40k per issue would be plausible.
pasttense01 6y ago
"bringing together UC, which generates nearly 10 percent of all U.S. research output" Frankly this figure seems much to high. Can anyone verify the numbers?
- SubiculumCode 6y ago
  The UC System is not small at all. Research Universities include: UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Los Angeles, UC Merced, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz Medical Schools/Research: UC Davis Health, UC Irvine Health, UCLA Health, UC San Diego Health, UC San Francisco Health. UC helps manage national labs: Lawrence Berkeley Lawrence Livermore Los Alamos I wouldn't be surprised at all.
- colincooke 6y ago
  Considering that the UC system is pretty dominate in California, and California on it's own is >10% of the US population it isn't surprising. Especially when you acknowledge that the universities within the UC system are some of the best in the country, and therefor attract out of state students.
- ta988 6y ago
  UC is also really collaborative so they share a ton of papers with others
Q_is_4_Quantum 6y ago
Great - yet another misaligned incentive to throw into the often stressful mix of how lead authorship should be determined!
ta988 6y ago
So... UC researchers got scammed again. Now authors will have to pay both from their direct and indirect costs. The university just managed to save a large chunk of money (that is now the burden of researchers own funding) and Elsevier will make a shit ton of money with the deal.

104 points by SubiculumCode 6y ago

SubiculumCode 6y ago

TLDR: Elsevier caved, big time. This is a big win for open science, imo.

xbar 6y ago
Good job, University of California.
ta988 6y ago
Not my read. The university caved and decided to use the researchers money to pay half of the contract with Elsevier.
- pfortuny 6y ago
  Exactly: now each paper will have to be paid with the researcher’s funds...

lacker 6y ago

It is unclear to me what the real impact of this deal is. The article spends about one sentence describing the deal directly: "All research with a UC lead author published in Elsevier’s extensive portfolio of hybrid and open access journals will be open access by default." There are a lot of caveats here. It sounds like this only applies to some journals and some articles. There are a whole lot of vague quotes about how great this is though. I'd be interested to see a more detailed analysis of the impact this will have.

unsrsly 6y ago
https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/uc-publisher-relationships/elsevier-oa-agreement/ https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/uc-publisher-relation... "All Cell Press and Lancet journals are part of the UC agreement. For these top journals, UC’s shared funding model — where the libraries share the cost of open access publishing with authors — will be phased in, with all Cell Press and Lancet journals integrated no later than 2023, midway through the four-year agreement." "a limited number of societies that partner with Elsevier for their publishing have chosen to exclude their journals from transformative agreements, so their journals are not eligible for either reading, publishing, or both under the agreement. A list of these exclusions will be available soon and linked from this page."

lalaithion 6y ago

The United States (or any government) should require that scientific papers funded in part or in whole by Government funds should be available to all citizens and residents at zero cost.

SubiculumCode 6y ago
I am for open science in general, but I cannot help but worry about how this disincentivizes research funding. Why? If the U.S. did adopt such a policy, then all funded research does not just benefit the United States, but every nation. Nothing wrong with that, but then those other countries may feel that there is less need to fund their own science programs because they can leech off the United State's investment. Other countries might even close access to their science, and they'd receive benefit from our investment, but we would not benefit from theirs. Alternatively, we can take the view that it is not zero sum, that interactions in open science always makes it the rational decision to keep science open and to fund it.
- SeanLuke 6y ago
  This is a bizarre argument. Are you seriously saying that by not forcing universities to pay a for-profit European publishing conglomerate, the US is disincentivizing research? Countries don't fund research because of what shows up (or not) in scientific journals from other countries that they can somehow glean. They fund researchers to do research in their countries because the trickle-down effect of PhD students, graduate students, prestige, and ultimately spin-off companies and economic benefit that comes from doing so.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  This has nothing to do with research funding. Money paid for access to papers goes to publishers. It's not like in music where the publishers get the lions' share and the artists get a fraction of that - in academic pubishing, it's 100% to publishers and not a single cent ever of the proceeds goes to authors or reviewers or to funding science programs. And "closed access science" produced by USA is still available to researchers in every country despite the paywalls, all the serious universities have arranged subscriptions, it's just that currently they are paying a large fee to unnecessary middlemen (e.g. Netherlands' Elsevier) for that privilege.

pfortuny 6y ago

A mutually beneficial agreement with Elsevier contains a huge lot of amount of very big money. For sure.

osamagirl69 6y ago

I am genuinely surprised that the UC was able to get Elsevier to agree to this much, even if it does come up well short of their original list of demands [1]. I do wonder what this means for researchers, in particular there was no mention of publishing fees. Generally in hybrid journals there is a hefty price tag for open access (basically -- you are paying for the expected revenue generated by your paper...) so I could see that this means the publishing fees for a top Elsevier journal upwards of 5 figures--a price that research groups will now need to cover. I was at a talk by Nature about their Nature Photonics journal, and when asked if they would ever consider doing open access for Nature Photonics they said they have thought about it, but that it would cost them about $40,000 per paper for it to be commercially viable. Even though the peer review is free, they have a team of editors that need to get paid and they only publish 10-20 papers a month. Also -- see the previous discussion with more focus on Elsevier's side of the story at [2] [1] https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/reports/rm-jn-transform-scholarly-communication-declaration-2019.pdf https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/reports/rm-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26379954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26379954

eganp 6y ago
Clearly open access has costs, but how does Nature Photonics get to $40k/paper?? Is that how much revenue they expect to derive from the lifetime of the paper?
- Google234 6y ago
  Only a few percent of papers submitted actually get published. There is some amount of work involved. Also, these top journals hire full time editors (former scientists in ther field).
  - jahewson 6y ago
    Let’s say it’s 15 papers per month, so $40k * 15 * 12 = $7.2m for four editors. I’m not at all convinced. 40k per issue would be plausible.

pasttense01 6y ago

"bringing together UC, which generates nearly 10 percent of all U.S. research output" Frankly this figure seems much to high. Can anyone verify the numbers?

SubiculumCode 6y ago
The UC System is not small at all. Research Universities include: UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Los Angeles, UC Merced, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz Medical Schools/Research: UC Davis Health, UC Irvine Health, UCLA Health, UC San Diego Health, UC San Francisco Health. UC helps manage national labs: Lawrence Berkeley Lawrence Livermore Los Alamos I wouldn't be surprised at all.
colincooke 6y ago
Considering that the UC system is pretty dominate in California, and California on it's own is >10% of the US population it isn't surprising. Especially when you acknowledge that the universities within the UC system are some of the best in the country, and therefor attract out of state students.
ta988 6y ago
UC is also really collaborative so they share a ton of papers with others

Q_is_4_Quantum 6y ago

Great - yet another misaligned incentive to throw into the often stressful mix of how lead authorship should be determined!

ta988 6y ago

So... UC researchers got scammed again. Now authors will have to pay both from their direct and indirect costs. The university just managed to save a large chunk of money (that is now the burden of researchers own funding) and Elsevier will make a shit ton of money with the deal.