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The article mentioned that MIT saved 80%, and that they are paying $300,000 to purchase on a per article basis. So their previous contract with Elsevier was $1.
by hyeonwho4 2y ago
The article mentioned that MIT saved 80%, and that they are paying $300,000 to purchase on a per article basis. So their previous contract with Elsevier was $1.5M annually. Elsevier's net income is £2.02 billion (2022)(Wikipedia). So the loss to Elsevier from MIT is about 0.04% of net income. Which makes sense: MIT is one of around 2000 universities worldwide. I hope this catches on elsewhere, too.
- DevX101 2y agoThey'll lose more. Many universities will follow. If it's good enough for MIT...
- rahimnathwani 2y agoThr article says: This move saves MIT approximately $2 million each year
- dataflow 2y agoAren't the articles just going to get more expensive to make up for this?
- giantg2 2y agoOr perhaps lower quality.
- salt4034 2y agoWhy lower quality? The money doesn't go to authors, editors or peer-reviewers.
- PopePompus 2y agoYou're certainly right about authors and peer-reviewers, but are you sure that editors don't get paid with some of that money?
- dsr_ 2y agoYes. The "editors" for most such publications do not edit, they make publishing decisions. Copy-editors are expensive, and paid for by the researchers, not the journals.
- PopePompus 2y agoI have published papers in scientific journals. I had to pay page charges to the journal (well, my employer did), but I never directly paid any editor or copy-editor.
- dsr_ 2y agoDid any copy-editing happen? Frequently it does not. Which is another issue... copy-editing on scientific papers requires major cooperation between the authors and the editor.
- PopePompus 2y agoYes, there was copy-editing. After peer-review and acceptance of the paper, the journal would send me marked up versions of the paper ("proofs") that made the paper conform to the journal's style, fixed typos, etc. There were often a couple of iterations concerning these changes. Finally a set of proofs would be accepted, and the paper would be published. Somebody was doing the work of making those proofs, and it wasn't the peer-reviewers. I'm pretty sure that the journals paid people to do that work, and since I was being charged hefty page fees (about $200/page) I suspect some of that money, and perhaps some subscription money, was paying for that work.
- kashunstva 2y ago> The "editors" for most such publications do not edit, they make publishing decisions. My spouse is an editor at an academic journal in her field and does some of both. In papers selected for publication, she does exert editorial input. In terms of remuneration, it is a compensated position; but how the money flows between the academic society, the journal and Elsevier, that part is lost on me.
- giantg2 2y agoLower system quality? I saw job postings from Elsevier a couple years ago and considered applying. I assume there are other paid staff who contribute to quality of the articles or their delivery as well.
- dredmorbius 2y agoThat would be an excellent way to initiate a death spiral for the commercial publishers.
- Etheryte 2y agoHow do these numbers work out though? MIT probably isn't the richest university there is, but I would expect it to be pretty far up there. Even if all 2000 unis spent as much as MIT did, it would only add up to roughly 80% of the profit — and I would expect most universities to have far less budget than MIT. So is there a set of big whale universities who are paying way more?
- Symbiote 2y agoPrivate companies doing any kind of scientific research also have subscriptions. (A drug company for example.)
- vidarh 2y agoMIT is "tiny" by international standards. According their own site they have less than 12,000 students. The largest universities are distance learning organisations and large groups of affilianted colleges or university systems. E.g. Indira Gandhi National Open University has an enrollment of 7.1 million students (distance learning) and National University of Bangladesh about 2 million (affiliate colleges). Iran's Islamic Azad university system has ~1m. The US also has a long list of much bigger universities/university systems. E.g. SUNY, Cal State, University of Phoenix, UC, UNC all have more than 200k students each. So I'd imagine MIT makes up far less than 1/2000th of the student and staff population.
- throwaway2037 2y agoAccording to Wiki, MIT has an endowment of ~25B USD -- #6 in the US. It is incredibly rich. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit... I don't know how this ranks internationally, but I guess that US universities have the largest endowments globally.
- admdly 2y agoNot specifically aimed at MIT, but wouldn’t such a large unspent endowment not (at least casually) suggest a failure to invest in research / students / etc.
- gumby 2y agoHowever there is also the loss of prestige for Elsevier. MIT is one the the preeminent universities in the world, perhaps the preeminent one.* The loss of MIT gives permission to other institutions who may be more concerned about reputation to do the same (they don’t want to generate whispers of “did they do this because they are having money troubles?”). It may also cause authors to submit other prestigious journals before elsevier ones. * really any change in the top 10 ranked schools from year to year are just a kind of browning motion. They are as a group equally prestigious.
- admdly 2y agoNothing against the overall sentiment, and even considering the audience here, but surely the quote below isn’t serious: MIT is one the the preeminent universities in the world, perhaps the preeminent one.
- vk5tu 2y agoYeah, that's an odd claim when it is more the adequate to say that MIT is closely observed by other technical institutions worldwide. The difference in approach, outcome and size of expenditure between MIT and the University of California System in their negotiations with Elsevier interests university libraries everywhere when considering their own publications strategies. It is great that both institutions have been open about their budgets, their negotiation stance, and the outcome.
- nicwilson 2y ago* Brownian motion. "browning motion" sounds like a euphamism for something else...
- dredmorbius 2y agos/browning/Brownian/ <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion> TIL: Named for Robert Brown.
- gumby 2y ago