6 ms·

Do I understand this correctly? Since universities pay through their nose for journal and publisher subscriptions, they don't have money to actually publish boo

Do I understand this correctly? Since universities pay through their nose for journal and publisher subscriptions, they don't have money to actually publish books themselves. Is that right?

operatingthetan 3y ago
Seems like universities have enough power that they could jailbreak themselves from this situation, right?
- ahi 3y ago
  It's a massive coordination problem. Few universities have the resources, even if central admin had a clue. Even UC Berkeley's fight with Elsevier was a huge undertaking: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/03/16/ucs-deal-with-elsevier-what-it-took-what-it-means-why-it-matters https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/03/16/ucs-deal-with-elsevier-... For most, that means collaborating with others. UC system and B1G academic alliance are making moves, but it's herding cats. Even within universities, it's a nightmare of competing interests. How do you convince your faculty to publish through your own press or consortium instead of the higher impact factor journal owned by Elsevier?
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    This sounds like an incredibly easy problem to solve if some people felt like solving it. I imagine that it's some administrators near the top that would block anyone from saying "let's have no-one publish to Elsevier any more" because John from Elsevier takes them on such lovely days out in bespoke locations, staying in boutique hotels.
    - andrewxdiamond 3y ago
      > This sounds like an incredibly easy problem to solve if some people felt like solving it If you ignore the hardest part of the problem; getting everyone to agree and coordinate, then yes it’s a simple problem to solve! You can simplify any problem like this, just ignore the hard part! :D
    - deepsun 3y ago
      What if a paper was a collaboration between 3 universities across the world?
    - harimau777 3y ago
      Publishing in high impact factor journals is a big deal. At the very least, I think that the powers that be would have to implement guarantees that publishing in a lower impact factor campus publication wouldn't hurt a researcher's chances of receiving tenure.
      - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
        > At the very least, I think that the powers that be would have to implement guarantees that publishing in a lower impact factor campus publication wouldn't hurt a researcher's chances of receiving tenure. This honestly sounds like something that should be doable by the university.
        jasonfarnon 3y ago
        Remember that many of the decision-makers are academics with great publishing records. They succeeded at the game and don't want to rules to be changed. Also, just practically, the journals help a lot in assessing candidates. Even in fields just adjacent to mine, I might trust an endorsement by a good journal over my own judgments. Often I know the work of the editors there and value their judgment. Chasing after highest impact factor journal publications has its problems, but I haven't seen better proposals.
    - _jal 3y ago
      Some people seem to believe that all the world's problems are easily solvable if only someone would yell at a lot of other people. To bring this back to HN topics, anyone have tips on trying to suss out that trait in hiring managers during interviews?
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        I don't know why you mentioned yelling. No one is yelling. Undesirable hiring managers are easy to spot: they have poor reading comprehension.
        DiggyJohnson 3y ago
        That’s…actually hilarious advise that I think probably has quite a bit of merit to it.
    - UncleMeat 3y ago
      "If you don't let our faculty publish in these journals, their publication stats will suffer (fewer citations, lower impact factor) and that will translate into lower rankings for our university." Bigwigs at universities care about rankings, even if they are basically garbage.
    - robotresearcher 3y ago
      Telling tenured professors where to publish is not going to happen. You might entice them with good contracts, but the revenue from most books and articles is very small. The satisfaction and credibility of an Oxford or MIT Press book is worth more than a few thousand bucks to many people.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > It's a massive coordination problem. Few universities have the resources, even if central admin had a clue. We should all just mercilessly mock Harvard and its ilk, because they have the resources to do pretty much anything. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/10-universities-with-the-biggest-endowments https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-lis...
  - tiahura 3y ago
    Seems right up the AAU’s alley.
- tw4l 3y ago
  They could! They'd have to also change how faculty review and tenure work, to incentivize faculty to publish in alternative open access journals instead of the top (paywalled) journals in their field. Otherwise, faculty will continue publishing with the for-profit publishers even if there's alternatives available.
  - elashri 3y ago
    There are a for proft open access journals. In most open access journals, the payment system is just reversed. The author/s pay a huge amount of money as publication fees (usually a couple of thousands) instead of readers (or their institutions) paying for the article or the journal subscription.
    - UncleMeat 3y ago
      Heck, even the widely hated publishing companies offer open access. It just costs thousands of dollars for an article and tens of thousands of dollars for a book.
    - zx8080 3y ago
      Why would any researcher want to pay it?
      - elashri 3y ago
        Most of the time, it is not even up to the researchers to decide that. Open access is usually a requirement by the funding agencies. For example, in the US all federally funded research will be required to be published on open access journals and will be enforced at the end of 2025[1] [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp-issues-guidance-to-make-federally-funded-research-freely-available-without-delay/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp...
ahi 3y ago
Yes, and it's a death spiral since the university presses could, in theory, provide some competition. Can't/Won't invest in alternatives => lower competition for the parasites => higher subscription costs => less resources to invest in alternatives. Academic libraries and publishing are effectively being privatized and will be dominated by ever more rent-seeking. I don't see this getting turned around unless universities dictate to their faculty where they can publish, i.e. stop subsidizing their competition.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  I don't think the major universities - the ones that could have publishing houses that matter - are too broke to be able to keep the publishing house running.
  - beepbooptheory 3y ago
    So wait, if that's true, is the article at hand here mistaken, or in bad faith? Also, isn't the case that it is mostly the "major" universities that have their own presses in the first place?
    - jhbadger 3y ago
      Depends on what you call major. But it certainly isn't just Oxford, Harvard, and the like. Pretty much all US "University of X" (where X is a state) have their own presses.
      - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        Yeah, and see, I'm not claiming that the University of, say, Wyoming, has the money to keep their own press running. But the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, and the like... they definitely do.
        hiddencost 3y ago
        They usually cap the number of books they publish a year. Artificial scarcity makes their imprimatur more desirable.
Finnucane 3y ago
From a bugeting perspective that is not quite how it works. Journal subscriptions come out of the libraries' budgets. I am a production editor at a uni press, and our budget is a separate item that is not affected directly by the library's problems. But we do have our own budget that we are expected to make. There is some endowment money--we have a fund specifically earmarked to help offset production expenses. We use it to subsidize some titles that we want to be able to offer at something like 'trade' prices but would otherwise be too expensive. Otherwise we are expected to cover our expenses through sales and other income streams like subrights. Heck, the university even expects us to pay for maintenance on our building.

Do I understand this correctly? Since universities pay through their nose for journal and publisher subscriptions, they don't have money to actually publish books themselves. Is that right?

operatingthetan 3y ago

Seems like universities have enough power that they could jailbreak themselves from this situation, right?

ahi 3y ago
It's a massive coordination problem. Few universities have the resources, even if central admin had a clue. Even UC Berkeley's fight with Elsevier was a huge undertaking: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/03/16/ucs-deal-with-elsevier-what-it-took-what-it-means-why-it-matters https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/03/16/ucs-deal-with-elsevier-... For most, that means collaborating with others. UC system and B1G academic alliance are making moves, but it's herding cats. Even within universities, it's a nightmare of competing interests. How do you convince your faculty to publish through your own press or consortium instead of the higher impact factor journal owned by Elsevier?
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  This sounds like an incredibly easy problem to solve if some people felt like solving it. I imagine that it's some administrators near the top that would block anyone from saying "let's have no-one publish to Elsevier any more" because John from Elsevier takes them on such lovely days out in bespoke locations, staying in boutique hotels.
  - andrewxdiamond 3y ago
    > This sounds like an incredibly easy problem to solve if some people felt like solving it If you ignore the hardest part of the problem; getting everyone to agree and coordinate, then yes it’s a simple problem to solve! You can simplify any problem like this, just ignore the hard part! :D
  - deepsun 3y ago
    What if a paper was a collaboration between 3 universities across the world?
  - harimau777 3y ago
    Publishing in high impact factor journals is a big deal. At the very least, I think that the powers that be would have to implement guarantees that publishing in a lower impact factor campus publication wouldn't hurt a researcher's chances of receiving tenure.
    - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
      > At the very least, I think that the powers that be would have to implement guarantees that publishing in a lower impact factor campus publication wouldn't hurt a researcher's chances of receiving tenure. This honestly sounds like something that should be doable by the university.
      - jasonfarnon 3y ago
        Remember that many of the decision-makers are academics with great publishing records. They succeeded at the game and don't want to rules to be changed. Also, just practically, the journals help a lot in assessing candidates. Even in fields just adjacent to mine, I might trust an endorsement by a good journal over my own judgments. Often I know the work of the editors there and value their judgment. Chasing after highest impact factor journal publications has its problems, but I haven't seen better proposals.
  - _jal 3y ago
    Some people seem to believe that all the world's problems are easily solvable if only someone would yell at a lot of other people. To bring this back to HN topics, anyone have tips on trying to suss out that trait in hiring managers during interviews?
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      I don't know why you mentioned yelling. No one is yelling. Undesirable hiring managers are easy to spot: they have poor reading comprehension.
      - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
        That’s…actually hilarious advise that I think probably has quite a bit of merit to it.
  - UncleMeat 3y ago
    "If you don't let our faculty publish in these journals, their publication stats will suffer (fewer citations, lower impact factor) and that will translate into lower rankings for our university." Bigwigs at universities care about rankings, even if they are basically garbage.
  - robotresearcher 3y ago
    Telling tenured professors where to publish is not going to happen. You might entice them with good contracts, but the revenue from most books and articles is very small. The satisfaction and credibility of an Oxford or MIT Press book is worth more than a few thousand bucks to many people.
- tivert 3y ago
  > It's a massive coordination problem. Few universities have the resources, even if central admin had a clue. We should all just mercilessly mock Harvard and its ilk, because they have the resources to do pretty much anything. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/10-universities-with-the-biggest-endowments https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-lis...
- tiahura 3y ago
  Seems right up the AAU’s alley.
tw4l 3y ago
They could! They'd have to also change how faculty review and tenure work, to incentivize faculty to publish in alternative open access journals instead of the top (paywalled) journals in their field. Otherwise, faculty will continue publishing with the for-profit publishers even if there's alternatives available.
- elashri 3y ago
  There are a for proft open access journals. In most open access journals, the payment system is just reversed. The author/s pay a huge amount of money as publication fees (usually a couple of thousands) instead of readers (or their institutions) paying for the article or the journal subscription.
  - UncleMeat 3y ago
    Heck, even the widely hated publishing companies offer open access. It just costs thousands of dollars for an article and tens of thousands of dollars for a book.
  - zx8080 3y ago
    Why would any researcher want to pay it?
    - elashri 3y ago
      Most of the time, it is not even up to the researchers to decide that. Open access is usually a requirement by the funding agencies. For example, in the US all federally funded research will be required to be published on open access journals and will be enforced at the end of 2025[1] [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp-issues-guidance-to-make-federally-funded-research-freely-available-without-delay/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp...

ahi 3y ago

Yes, and it's a death spiral since the university presses could, in theory, provide some competition. Can't/Won't invest in alternatives => lower competition for the parasites => higher subscription costs => less resources to invest in alternatives. Academic libraries and publishing are effectively being privatized and will be dominated by ever more rent-seeking. I don't see this getting turned around unless universities dictate to their faculty where they can publish, i.e. stop subsidizing their competition.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
I don't think the major universities - the ones that could have publishing houses that matter - are too broke to be able to keep the publishing house running.
- beepbooptheory 3y ago
  So wait, if that's true, is the article at hand here mistaken, or in bad faith? Also, isn't the case that it is mostly the "major" universities that have their own presses in the first place?
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    Depends on what you call major. But it certainly isn't just Oxford, Harvard, and the like. Pretty much all US "University of X" (where X is a state) have their own presses.
    - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      Yeah, and see, I'm not claiming that the University of, say, Wyoming, has the money to keep their own press running. But the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, and the like... they definitely do.
      - hiddencost 3y ago
        They usually cap the number of books they publish a year. Artificial scarcity makes their imprimatur more desirable.

Finnucane 3y ago

From a bugeting perspective that is not quite how it works. Journal subscriptions come out of the libraries' budgets. I am a production editor at a uni press, and our budget is a separate item that is not affected directly by the library's problems. But we do have our own budget that we are expected to make. There is some endowment money--we have a fund specifically earmarked to help offset production expenses. We use it to subsidize some titles that we want to be able to offer at something like 'trade' prices but would otherwise be too expensive. Otherwise we are expected to cover our expenses through sales and other income streams like subrights. Heck, the university even expects us to pay for maintenance on our building.