4 ms·

Just to be clear, not only do authors not get paid for journal articles, but it is not unusual that they have to pay to submit their articles (so-called "page c

by frossie 14y ago

Just to be clear, not only do authors not get paid for journal articles, but it is not unusual that they have to pay to submit their articles (so-called "page charges"). Given that sometimes these researchers belong to organizations funded by the taxpayer, what you have is a situation where you, the taxpayer, are paying companies like Elsevier to profit from blocking access to publicly funded research.

rayiner 14y ago
No, you're paying Elsevier to digitize, index, catalogue, and host publicly funded research. None of that is free. People are free to pony up the money to create an alternate system, and researchers are free to use it. Nothing is stopping them from doing so. People continue to pay Elsevier, JSTOR, etc, because they value the convenience of using a system that's already established and widely used.
- betterunix 14y ago
  "you're paying Elsevier to digitize, index, catalogue, and host publicly funded research" Really, is that what we are paying them for? Well that's interesting, because the next paper I submit, which I am preparing now, is written in LaTeX and is submitted electronically. In the LaTeX source, I have to write keywords and codes that classify the article. The article is hosted on my website, which is hosted on the university's computer. So remind me, what is the publisher being paid for?
  - rayiner 14y ago
    > So remind me, what is the publisher being paid for? Nothing is stopping you from, you know, just not submitting your paper to Elsevier. You could just put up a link on your blog or something. Whatever thing it is that makes you submit to them instead of just doing that is what Elsevier is being paid for.
    - betterunix 14y ago
      In other words, they are paid because of the names of the journals they publish. Researchers rarely read bound copies of journals in this day and age; it is faster to download the articles they want to read. My work is published on my web page. I receive emails all the time about it, from people trying to make use of it. At the last meeting for the grant I paid on, my advisor and I were thanked by another research group for some of our work, and for helping that group get our code to run. All of that, however, amounts to nothing if the work is not published in a prestigious journal (or in my field, presented at a prestigious conference, but the conferences are run by the same companies that publish journals and the proceedings are published in the same fashion as journals). Yes, that is how this works. A researcher with a good reputation in their field, whose website provides quick and easy access to their work, has not advanced their career at all unless their work is published in some set of venues. This is not like interviewing for a tech company and giving them a link to your github account or showing them examples of your code; your CV has to contain a list of publications in major journals/conferences if you want to get anywhere in academia. It all boils down to the names of the journals. So the next time you want to remind someone that Elsevier is paid for something, you can tell them the truth: Elsevier is paid for the names of its journals.
      - rayiner 14y ago
        Okay, so you're paying Elsevier for lending you the weight of their brands, because it's beneficial to you to do so. What's wrong with that? I paid a lot of money to my undergrad and law school so I could put their brands on my resume. Nobody forced me to do it--I did it because it was beneficial to me. I don't see the problem with it. Everyone pays for brands--it's why Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, etc, still exist in an industry where marginal costs are approaching nothing. Hell, even tech companies pay for brands. They don't recruit at Berkeley and Stanford just to get a look at peoples' github repositories. Signaling, filtering, vetting, vouching are intrinsic to human society. There is nothing coercive about what Elsevier is doing. They've built up brands people trust and are making money providing the signaling services people want.
        14y ago
- marrs 14y ago
  > No, you're paying Elsevier to digitize, index, catalogue, and host publicly funded research. None of that is free. The Web/Google?
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Nothing is stopping Google from setting up such a service, though I would personally rather just pay an upfront fee than sell Google more of my privacy.
- kvb 14y ago
  Elsevier definitely provides a service, and should be remunerated for it. However, arguably most of their income is due to a "coordination game" rather than any value added - see The Parable of the Anarchists Annual Meeting[1]. [1]http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/anarchists.pdf http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/anarchists.pdf
  - rayiner 14y ago
    How is this different from the usual network effect?
    - kvb 14y ago
      It's not particularly different (though the low switching costs are somewhat unusual). Regardless, there's a network externality that allows Elsevier to capture excess rents. It's not that Elsevier doesn't provide any value, but at the same time, its profits outpace that value by a large margin. Nonetheless, coordination problems can easily prevent a competitor who pledges not to take those rents from disrupting Elsevier's position, so it's not as easy as saying "there's nothing stopping you from starting a new competitor".
- olefoo 14y ago
  > No, you're paying Elsevier to digitize, index, catalogue, and host publicly funded research. None of that is free. So why aren't those services let out for competitive bid? The agreements that were made in the past have severe negative externalities in the present environment. They must be renegotiated. We should not live in a feudal society where mere tradition grants a divine right of monopoly to publicly funded goods.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    As far as I can tell, it's not tradition that gives Elsevier its monopoly, it's simple network effect. It's the same reason you use Facebook or Google Chat instead of something else--by publishing on an Elsevier-affiliated journal, your academic work reaches the most eyeballs.
    - betterunix 14y ago
      "by publishing on an Elsevier-affiliated journal, your academic work reaches the most eyeballs." No, by publishing freely on the Internet, without any paywall between readers and your article, your academic work reaches the most eyeballs. Publishing in a journal that is locked behind paywalls is one of the least efficient ways to communicate one's work to others. The only issue is that doing so does not help anyone's career, and failing to publish in major journals is fatal to such careers.

by frossie 14y ago

rayiner 14y ago

No, you're paying Elsevier to digitize, index, catalogue, and host publicly funded research. None of that is free. People are free to pony up the money to create an alternate system, and researchers are free to use it. Nothing is stopping them from doing so. People continue to pay Elsevier, JSTOR, etc, because they value the convenience of using a system that's already established and widely used.

betterunix 14y ago
"you're paying Elsevier to digitize, index, catalogue, and host publicly funded research" Really, is that what we are paying them for? Well that's interesting, because the next paper I submit, which I am preparing now, is written in LaTeX and is submitted electronically. In the LaTeX source, I have to write keywords and codes that classify the article. The article is hosted on my website, which is hosted on the university's computer. So remind me, what is the publisher being paid for?
- rayiner 14y ago
  > So remind me, what is the publisher being paid for? Nothing is stopping you from, you know, just not submitting your paper to Elsevier. You could just put up a link on your blog or something. Whatever thing it is that makes you submit to them instead of just doing that is what Elsevier is being paid for.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    In other words, they are paid because of the names of the journals they publish. Researchers rarely read bound copies of journals in this day and age; it is faster to download the articles they want to read. My work is published on my web page. I receive emails all the time about it, from people trying to make use of it. At the last meeting for the grant I paid on, my advisor and I were thanked by another research group for some of our work, and for helping that group get our code to run. All of that, however, amounts to nothing if the work is not published in a prestigious journal (or in my field, presented at a prestigious conference, but the conferences are run by the same companies that publish journals and the proceedings are published in the same fashion as journals). Yes, that is how this works. A researcher with a good reputation in their field, whose website provides quick and easy access to their work, has not advanced their career at all unless their work is published in some set of venues. This is not like interviewing for a tech company and giving them a link to your github account or showing them examples of your code; your CV has to contain a list of publications in major journals/conferences if you want to get anywhere in academia. It all boils down to the names of the journals. So the next time you want to remind someone that Elsevier is paid for something, you can tell them the truth: Elsevier is paid for the names of its journals.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      Okay, so you're paying Elsevier for lending you the weight of their brands, because it's beneficial to you to do so. What's wrong with that? I paid a lot of money to my undergrad and law school so I could put their brands on my resume. Nobody forced me to do it--I did it because it was beneficial to me. I don't see the problem with it. Everyone pays for brands--it's why Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, etc, still exist in an industry where marginal costs are approaching nothing. Hell, even tech companies pay for brands. They don't recruit at Berkeley and Stanford just to get a look at peoples' github repositories. Signaling, filtering, vetting, vouching are intrinsic to human society. There is nothing coercive about what Elsevier is doing. They've built up brands people trust and are making money providing the signaling services people want.
      - 14y ago
marrs 14y ago
> No, you're paying Elsevier to digitize, index, catalogue, and host publicly funded research. None of that is free. The Web/Google?
- rayiner 14y ago
  Nothing is stopping Google from setting up such a service, though I would personally rather just pay an upfront fee than sell Google more of my privacy.
kvb 14y ago
Elsevier definitely provides a service, and should be remunerated for it. However, arguably most of their income is due to a "coordination game" rather than any value added - see The Parable of the Anarchists Annual Meeting[1]. [1]http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/anarchists.pdf http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/anarchists.pdf
- rayiner 14y ago
  How is this different from the usual network effect?
  - kvb 14y ago
    It's not particularly different (though the low switching costs are somewhat unusual). Regardless, there's a network externality that allows Elsevier to capture excess rents. It's not that Elsevier doesn't provide any value, but at the same time, its profits outpace that value by a large margin. Nonetheless, coordination problems can easily prevent a competitor who pledges not to take those rents from disrupting Elsevier's position, so it's not as easy as saying "there's nothing stopping you from starting a new competitor".
olefoo 14y ago
> No, you're paying Elsevier to digitize, index, catalogue, and host publicly funded research. None of that is free. So why aren't those services let out for competitive bid? The agreements that were made in the past have severe negative externalities in the present environment. They must be renegotiated. We should not live in a feudal society where mere tradition grants a divine right of monopoly to publicly funded goods.
- rayiner 14y ago
  As far as I can tell, it's not tradition that gives Elsevier its monopoly, it's simple network effect. It's the same reason you use Facebook or Google Chat instead of something else--by publishing on an Elsevier-affiliated journal, your academic work reaches the most eyeballs.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    "by publishing on an Elsevier-affiliated journal, your academic work reaches the most eyeballs." No, by publishing freely on the Internet, without any paywall between readers and your article, your academic work reaches the most eyeballs. Publishing in a journal that is locked behind paywalls is one of the least efficient ways to communicate one's work to others. The only issue is that doing so does not help anyone's career, and failing to publish in major journals is fatal to such careers.