4 ms·

Elsevier's recent update to its letter to the mathematical community

64 points by vgnet 14y ago

Havoc 14y ago
>Urs countered that “according to Florian Breuer’s computations the University of Stellenbosch, South-Africa pays roughly the same than the University of Muenster, Germany. wow. Given that Stellenbosch is substantially smaller and in a 3rd world country one would expect that they'd pay less.
- reitzensteinm 14y ago
  According to computations sounds to me like it's a cost of living adjusted comparison.
- lshepstone 14y ago
  The choice of Stellenbosch in South Africa as an example is perhaps not ideal. While SA may be a third world country in parts, it is very "first-world" in others and has a GDP greater than Denmark, Finland, Singapore and Ireland. Stellenbosch is also one of the countries premier Universities. I am not sure we'd be as surprised if Universities from those countries were chosen as an example. I'm sure it's more of a case of Elsevier charging whatever it could to each university.
  - Havoc 14y ago
    > has a GDP greater than Denmark, Finland, Singapore and Ireland. That says absolutely nothing. You'd need to look at it on a GDP per person basis. There all those countries you listed are far ahead of South Africa, in some cases by a factor of 10x.
noelwelsh 14y ago
I agree with the authors complaints (I'm not in the same field, but the general complaint holds across disciplines). However the solution really is trivial. The machine learning community solved this problem a decade ago when the editorial board (40 of them) resigned en-mass from the Machine Learning Journal: http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/statement.html http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/statement.html JMLR (http://jmlr.org http://jmlr.org) is now the premier venue for machine learning publications, and you can visit their home page to see the (non-)restrictions they place on access. They are also very cheap to subscribe to if you prefer dead trees. Any other discipline that really cared about open access could do the same in a heart-beat. The research produced by a discipline is largely consumed by that discipline. If they want to know who is keeping the academic publishing racket alive they just need to look at themselves.
- reitzensteinm 14y ago
  I agree with you, but wouldn't it be much harder to pull off with, say, mathematics? Machine learning is a much smaller field.
  - noelwelsh 14y ago
    I imagine a sub-field of mathematics could coordinate the required effort. Mathematicians are familiar enough with the technical aspects (namely, use Latex). Once one sub-field is successful I imagine others would follow.
    - ChristianMarks 14y ago
      Done there, been that: Electronic Journal of Combinatorics: http://www.combinatorics.org/ http://www.combinatorics.org/ Theory and Application of Categories: http://www.tac.mta.ca/tac/ http://www.tac.mta.ca/tac/ As has been noted elsewhere, establishing open access journals presents no technical difficulty, especially with systems such as the Public Knowledge Project's Open Journal Systems journal management and publishing system, which has been around for at least 7 years. http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs The high price of 60 years of scientific content is at issue. Of course, the establishment of open access journal should be encouraged.
- rflrob 14y ago
  Of course we know that ourselves and our colleagues are a large part of the problem. The hard part is convincing enough people that there is a problem, and that we can solve it by working together. I think JMLR is something of a special case in academic publishing. While there are a few subject fields that would be already have almost exactly the right skill set to set up their own electronic publishing infrastructure, I think that expecting the same level of technical expertise from, say, biochemists is a bit unrealistic. That said, it is getting easier, and once enough people are on board, I suspect we'll see lots more like this in the next decade or so.
- ChristianMarks 14y ago
  The machine learning community (along with the combinatorics, category theory and many other communities) created an open access journal. While this is laudable it did not solve the non-trivial problem that commercial publishers have a lock on 60 years of scientific publications.
thespin 14y ago
That story about the MFN clause (if there is even a clause) is amusing. The academic publishing industry seems a bit like the film and recording industries. They do not want to face the fact that distribution and production are becoming less expensive. And they are going to fight to the end. But their high fee structures will eventually be unsustainable. UCal tried to take at least one of these publishers on some years ago, forcing them to renegotiate licensing terms. What ever became of that?

64 points by vgnet 14y ago

Havoc 14y ago

>Urs countered that “according to Florian Breuer’s computations the University of Stellenbosch, South-Africa pays roughly the same than the University of Muenster, Germany. wow. Given that Stellenbosch is substantially smaller and in a 3rd world country one would expect that they'd pay less.

reitzensteinm 14y ago
According to computations sounds to me like it's a cost of living adjusted comparison.
lshepstone 14y ago
The choice of Stellenbosch in South Africa as an example is perhaps not ideal. While SA may be a third world country in parts, it is very "first-world" in others and has a GDP greater than Denmark, Finland, Singapore and Ireland. Stellenbosch is also one of the countries premier Universities. I am not sure we'd be as surprised if Universities from those countries were chosen as an example. I'm sure it's more of a case of Elsevier charging whatever it could to each university.
- Havoc 14y ago
  > has a GDP greater than Denmark, Finland, Singapore and Ireland. That says absolutely nothing. You'd need to look at it on a GDP per person basis. There all those countries you listed are far ahead of South Africa, in some cases by a factor of 10x.

noelwelsh 14y ago

I agree with the authors complaints (I'm not in the same field, but the general complaint holds across disciplines). However the solution really is trivial. The machine learning community solved this problem a decade ago when the editorial board (40 of them) resigned en-mass from the Machine Learning Journal: http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/statement.html http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/statement.html JMLR (http://jmlr.org http://jmlr.org) is now the premier venue for machine learning publications, and you can visit their home page to see the (non-)restrictions they place on access. They are also very cheap to subscribe to if you prefer dead trees. Any other discipline that really cared about open access could do the same in a heart-beat. The research produced by a discipline is largely consumed by that discipline. If they want to know who is keeping the academic publishing racket alive they just need to look at themselves.

reitzensteinm 14y ago
I agree with you, but wouldn't it be much harder to pull off with, say, mathematics? Machine learning is a much smaller field.
- noelwelsh 14y ago
  I imagine a sub-field of mathematics could coordinate the required effort. Mathematicians are familiar enough with the technical aspects (namely, use Latex). Once one sub-field is successful I imagine others would follow.
  - ChristianMarks 14y ago
    Done there, been that: Electronic Journal of Combinatorics: http://www.combinatorics.org/ http://www.combinatorics.org/ Theory and Application of Categories: http://www.tac.mta.ca/tac/ http://www.tac.mta.ca/tac/ As has been noted elsewhere, establishing open access journals presents no technical difficulty, especially with systems such as the Public Knowledge Project's Open Journal Systems journal management and publishing system, which has been around for at least 7 years. http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs The high price of 60 years of scientific content is at issue. Of course, the establishment of open access journal should be encouraged.
rflrob 14y ago
Of course we know that ourselves and our colleagues are a large part of the problem. The hard part is convincing enough people that there is a problem, and that we can solve it by working together. I think JMLR is something of a special case in academic publishing. While there are a few subject fields that would be already have almost exactly the right skill set to set up their own electronic publishing infrastructure, I think that expecting the same level of technical expertise from, say, biochemists is a bit unrealistic. That said, it is getting easier, and once enough people are on board, I suspect we'll see lots more like this in the next decade or so.
ChristianMarks 14y ago
The machine learning community (along with the combinatorics, category theory and many other communities) created an open access journal. While this is laudable it did not solve the non-trivial problem that commercial publishers have a lock on 60 years of scientific publications.

thespin 14y ago

That story about the MFN clause (if there is even a clause) is amusing. The academic publishing industry seems a bit like the film and recording industries. They do not want to face the fact that distribution and production are becoming less expensive. And they are going to fight to the end. But their high fee structures will eventually be unsustainable. UCal tried to take at least one of these publishers on some years ago, forcing them to renegotiate licensing terms. What ever became of that?