7 ms·

The Cost of Knowledge: Researchers taking a stand against Elsevier.

125 points by adeelk 15y ago

ColinWright 15y ago
The HN discussion on the Gowers blog post that started it all: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494340 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494340
- lazyjeff 15y ago
  Maybe I missed something -- was there something about Elsevier that was particular bad? Worse than Wiley, and Springer? Would it make sense to boycott all the major publishers, or does Elsevier charge particularly more...
  - tylerneylon 15y ago
    I think Elsevier is a good position to act as a kingpin in the math world when it comes to the academic publishing racket. I'm not sure which publisher is worse than others, but I do think it's more likely that success will come against a particular target (more researchers will take the pledge), and that things would change with all publishers as a result. Elsevier has a long list of well-respected math journals, so a victory with them could be most meaningful in the eyes of the mathematicians who choose where to submit their papers.
  - starwed 15y ago
    I've always heard that yes, Elsevier is especially bad. They charge more, and make more profit -- but the higher price comes entirely from the market share lock-in, and not from any additional quality/service.
tylerneylon 15y ago
I created this page this weekend as one small thing I could do to help the math world and academia in general with this problem. Would anyone be willing to help me add improvements to the page? It's become popular more quickly than I expected, and I would appreciate the help. I've temporarily added my email address to my hacker news profile, so anyone can contact me. Thank you!
- mcburton 15y ago
  You should include a link or more description about Elsevier's awful publishing practices for those who aren't already in the know.
  - tylerneylon 15y ago
    Agreed, it's in the works. I'm balancing this with my startup.
    - scott_s 15y ago
      You can link to Knuth's letter to the editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms from 2003: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf Linking to the recent NY Times and blog posts from well-known researchers would help as well.
- masklinn 15y ago
  > Would anyone be willing to help me add improvements to the page? Reversing the list (last-on-top) and putting the "More names belong here" text above the fold might be a good idea. And if you know somebody who can draw icons, getting an icon for each "refrainment" might look nice (might also look worse, but good icons in the CC style could spread in the community and be used e.g. on researcher's blogs). Otherwise, I like it. It's clear, simple and to the point. Also, I think you should default the subject to empty and mandate it, you seem to have a lot of mathematicians (though it could be because it spread there first). And you should check your form's encoding, there's mojibake at the end of the list, "UniversitÃ©" instead of "Université".
  - vijayr 15y ago
    Also consider grouping by university, subject etc, and adding a search box (search by university, person's name)
- impendia 15y ago
  You got two Fields medalists there. And counting. :)
DanBC 15y ago
See also Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog post from 2009 about Merck paying Elsevier to have a "fake" journal produced. (http://www.badscience.net/2009/05/elsevier-get-into-fanzines/ http://www.badscience.net/2009/05/elsevier-get-into-fanzines...)
damontal 15y ago
Are you verifying their identities? Can people just make up names and put them there?
stfu 15y ago
Let me play a bit devil's advocate here: I am still undecided if boycotting Elsevir is makes that much sense. In my opinion the essential interest in the whole peer-review process is mainly based on a Journal's Ranking. Academia will not move any time soon away from rating and ranking journals (and neither should they). Therefore the only option I see is either pushing up the rankings of open-publishing journals or convincing a reputed journal to move into open publishing. Most researchers will care very little about by whom a journal is published - as long as it is ranked well. And the money factors won't appeal that much either since these factors are usually all handled by the library/service department.
- spoor 15y ago
  Several Journals (such as PNAS) now provide the option for authors to make their papers "open access". Usually by paying an extra fee (around $1,500 for PNAS). Some authors do this since it can increase their visibility. In other cases, it is a condition of funding that that the paper eventually be freely available (sometimes with an embargo of about a year). In all, I think the open access model will become more widely accepted, with the exception, maybe, of papers published in the top journals, such as Nature or Science.
DevX101 15y ago
What happens if I were to write in Stephen Hawkings's name? You should have an email verification using the public email addresses for these academics.
- UK-Al05 15y ago
  Gpg public private keys?
- tylerneylon 15y ago
  Agreed. I just added email verification. I plan to check that the emails match the names and school while it's practical to do so (while the list is not crazy long).
YetAnotherAlias 15y ago
You have a great domain name that can be used to highlight this issue in general. Elsevier is only one part of the problem and it might be better to expand the list to beyond Elsevier. To have a wider impact, consider publicizing this issue on other forums as well. Here are some random suggestions: Add some identity verification; Maybe facebook/twitter signup etc. I suspect many in the HN community are associated with the IEEE and ACM. You might want to consider adding these two orgs to the list. (Disclosure: I am an IEEE member and a past ACM member). Both these orgs have great digital libraries and I have no idea why they are so expensive to access. Can someone with some experience serving on IEEE/ACM committees share some info on the financials? Consider posting and starting a discussion on Chronicle.com. You might get support from a lot of people in the Arts & Humanities as well. Why should the general public care about this issue? They pay for this indirectly through college tuition fees. Try to share this information with some parent bodies and ask them to pressure universities. Get some alumni bodies to sign up. They have a lot of clout in Universities.
- kd0amg 15y ago
  I suspect many in the HN community are associated with the IEEE and ACM. You might want to consider adding these two orgs to the list. (Disclosure: I am an IEEE member and a past ACM member). Both these orgs have great digital libraries and I have no idea why they are so expensive to access. Can someone with some experience serving on IEEE/ACM committees share some info on the financials? What do you consider expensive? ACM offers unlimited online access for $200/year. I haven't had trouble pulling that much money together on a grad student income (though I only pay about half that for my membership as a student). Given the salary numbers I see people talking about here, I'm not convinced ACM is prohibitively expensive.
  - YetAnotherAlias 15y ago
    My perspective is that we should be sharing this knowledge with people who cannot afford even that kind of money. $200/year is a lot for many people in many parts of the world. I do understand that there is some cost involved in maintaing such vast libraries and I am not saying that it should be ignored. As I mentioned above, I would like to know more about how they arrive at these values. The people who write these papers don't do it for the money. The people who review them don't do it for the money. So why can't we come up with something that makes these works more affordable and accessible to everyone on the planet? This debate is an opportunity to start exploring other such possibilities.
jackfoxy 15y ago
If you are interested in this topic, you should also be interested in efforts in Congress to allow publicly funded research to go behind pay walls. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494910
jvdh 15y ago
Thank you HackerNews for bringing the original news about the RWA to my attention. I'm from the Netherlands and was able to throw this up into my network, and managed to get this issue on the agenda of the Dutch Surf Foundation and the Knowledge Exchange effort[1]. [1]: http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/ http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/
jvdh 15y ago
What exactly is the "radically change" that you're after? You want them to charge more for what they do? Your site does not specify what you're actually trying to achieve...
jasonwatkinspdx 15y ago
I really wish our industry could be exerting the same sort of pressure on the ACM over their digital library.
yfyf 15y ago
Someone needs to make a poster for this, I'd put it up in our department.

125 points by adeelk 15y ago

The HN discussion on the Gowers blog post that started it all: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494340 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494340

lazyjeff 15y ago
Maybe I missed something -- was there something about Elsevier that was particular bad? Worse than Wiley, and Springer? Would it make sense to boycott all the major publishers, or does Elsevier charge particularly more...
- tylerneylon 15y ago
  I think Elsevier is a good position to act as a kingpin in the math world when it comes to the academic publishing racket. I'm not sure which publisher is worse than others, but I do think it's more likely that success will come against a particular target (more researchers will take the pledge), and that things would change with all publishers as a result. Elsevier has a long list of well-respected math journals, so a victory with them could be most meaningful in the eyes of the mathematicians who choose where to submit their papers.
- starwed 15y ago
  I've always heard that yes, Elsevier is especially bad. They charge more, and make more profit -- but the higher price comes entirely from the market share lock-in, and not from any additional quality/service.

tylerneylon 15y ago

I created this page this weekend as one small thing I could do to help the math world and academia in general with this problem. Would anyone be willing to help me add improvements to the page? It's become popular more quickly than I expected, and I would appreciate the help. I've temporarily added my email address to my hacker news profile, so anyone can contact me. Thank you!

mcburton 15y ago
You should include a link or more description about Elsevier's awful publishing practices for those who aren't already in the know.
- tylerneylon 15y ago
  Agreed, it's in the works. I'm balancing this with my startup.
  - scott_s 15y ago
    You can link to Knuth's letter to the editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms from 2003: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf Linking to the recent NY Times and blog posts from well-known researchers would help as well.
masklinn 15y ago
> Would anyone be willing to help me add improvements to the page? Reversing the list (last-on-top) and putting the "More names belong here" text above the fold might be a good idea. And if you know somebody who can draw icons, getting an icon for each "refrainment" might look nice (might also look worse, but good icons in the CC style could spread in the community and be used e.g. on researcher's blogs). Otherwise, I like it. It's clear, simple and to the point. Also, I think you should default the subject to empty and mandate it, you seem to have a lot of mathematicians (though it could be because it spread there first). And you should check your form's encoding, there's mojibake at the end of the list, "UniversitÃ©" instead of "Université".
- vijayr 15y ago
  Also consider grouping by university, subject etc, and adding a search box (search by university, person's name)
impendia 15y ago
You got two Fields medalists there. And counting. :)

DanBC 15y ago

See also Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog post from 2009 about Merck paying Elsevier to have a "fake" journal produced. (http://www.badscience.net/2009/05/elsevier-get-into-fanzines/ http://www.badscience.net/2009/05/elsevier-get-into-fanzines...)

damontal 15y ago

Are you verifying their identities? Can people just make up names and put them there?

stfu 15y ago

Let me play a bit devil's advocate here: I am still undecided if boycotting Elsevir is makes that much sense. In my opinion the essential interest in the whole peer-review process is mainly based on a Journal's Ranking. Academia will not move any time soon away from rating and ranking journals (and neither should they). Therefore the only option I see is either pushing up the rankings of open-publishing journals or convincing a reputed journal to move into open publishing. Most researchers will care very little about by whom a journal is published - as long as it is ranked well. And the money factors won't appeal that much either since these factors are usually all handled by the library/service department.

spoor 15y ago
Several Journals (such as PNAS) now provide the option for authors to make their papers "open access". Usually by paying an extra fee (around $1,500 for PNAS). Some authors do this since it can increase their visibility. In other cases, it is a condition of funding that that the paper eventually be freely available (sometimes with an embargo of about a year). In all, I think the open access model will become more widely accepted, with the exception, maybe, of papers published in the top journals, such as Nature or Science.

DevX101 15y ago

What happens if I were to write in Stephen Hawkings's name? You should have an email verification using the public email addresses for these academics.

UK-Al05 15y ago
Gpg public private keys?
tylerneylon 15y ago
Agreed. I just added email verification. I plan to check that the emails match the names and school while it's practical to do so (while the list is not crazy long).

YetAnotherAlias 15y ago

You have a great domain name that can be used to highlight this issue in general. Elsevier is only one part of the problem and it might be better to expand the list to beyond Elsevier. To have a wider impact, consider publicizing this issue on other forums as well. Here are some random suggestions: Add some identity verification; Maybe facebook/twitter signup etc. I suspect many in the HN community are associated with the IEEE and ACM. You might want to consider adding these two orgs to the list. (Disclosure: I am an IEEE member and a past ACM member). Both these orgs have great digital libraries and I have no idea why they are so expensive to access. Can someone with some experience serving on IEEE/ACM committees share some info on the financials? Consider posting and starting a discussion on Chronicle.com. You might get support from a lot of people in the Arts & Humanities as well. Why should the general public care about this issue? They pay for this indirectly through college tuition fees. Try to share this information with some parent bodies and ask them to pressure universities. Get some alumni bodies to sign up. They have a lot of clout in Universities.

kd0amg 15y ago
I suspect many in the HN community are associated with the IEEE and ACM. You might want to consider adding these two orgs to the list. (Disclosure: I am an IEEE member and a past ACM member). Both these orgs have great digital libraries and I have no idea why they are so expensive to access. Can someone with some experience serving on IEEE/ACM committees share some info on the financials? What do you consider expensive? ACM offers unlimited online access for $200/year. I haven't had trouble pulling that much money together on a grad student income (though I only pay about half that for my membership as a student). Given the salary numbers I see people talking about here, I'm not convinced ACM is prohibitively expensive.
- YetAnotherAlias 15y ago
  My perspective is that we should be sharing this knowledge with people who cannot afford even that kind of money. $200/year is a lot for many people in many parts of the world. I do understand that there is some cost involved in maintaing such vast libraries and I am not saying that it should be ignored. As I mentioned above, I would like to know more about how they arrive at these values. The people who write these papers don't do it for the money. The people who review them don't do it for the money. So why can't we come up with something that makes these works more affordable and accessible to everyone on the planet? This debate is an opportunity to start exploring other such possibilities.

jackfoxy 15y ago

If you are interested in this topic, you should also be interested in efforts in Congress to allow publicly funded research to go behind pay walls. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494910

jvdh 15y ago

Thank you HackerNews for bringing the original news about the RWA to my attention. I'm from the Netherlands and was able to throw this up into my network, and managed to get this issue on the agenda of the Dutch Surf Foundation and the Knowledge Exchange effort[1]. [1]: http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/ http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/

jvdh 15y ago

What exactly is the "radically change" that you're after? You want them to charge more for what they do? Your site does not specify what you're actually trying to achieve...

jasonwatkinspdx 15y ago

I really wish our industry could be exerting the same sort of pressure on the ACM over their digital library.

yfyf 15y ago

Someone needs to make a poster for this, I'd put it up in our department.