Elsevier journals — some facts | Gowers's Weblog

abernard102@gmail.com 2014-04-26

Summary:

"A little over two years ago, the Cost of Knowledge boycott of Elsevier journals began. Initially, it seemed to be highly successful, with the number of signatories rapidly reaching 10,000 and including some very high-profile researchers, and Elsevier making a number of concessions, such as dropping support for the Research Works Act and making papers over four years old from several mathematics journals freely available online. It has also contributed to an increased awareness of the issues related to high journal prices and the locking up of articles behind paywalls. However, it is possible to take a more pessimistic view. There were rumblings from the editorial boards of some Elsevier journals, but in the end, while a few individual members of those boards resigned, no board took the more radical step of resigning en masse and setting up with a different publisher under a new name (as some journals have done in the past), which would have forced Elsevier to sit up and take more serious notice. Instead, they waited for things to settle down, and now, two years later, the main problems, bundling and exorbitant prices, continue unabated: in 2013, Elsevier’s profit margin was up to 39%. (The profit is a little over £800 million on a little over £2 billion.) As for the boycott, the number of signatories appears to have reached a plateau of about 14,500. Is there anything more that can be done? One answer that is often given is that the open access movement is now unstoppable, and that it is only a matter of time before the current system will have changed significantly. However, the pace of change is slow, and the alternative system that is most strongly promoted — open access articles paid for by article processing charges — is one that mathematicians tend to find unpalatable. (And not only mathematicians: they are extremely unpopular in the humanities.) I don’t want to rehearse the arguments for and against APCs in this post, except to say that there is no sign that they will help to bring down costs any time soon and no convincing market mechanism by which one might expect them to. I have come to the conclusion that if it is not possible to bring about a rapid change to the current system, then the next best thing to do, which has the advantage of being a lot easier, is to obtain as much information as possible about it. Part of the problem with trying to explain what is wrong with the system is that there are many highly relevant factual questions to which we do not yet have reliable answers. Amongst them are the following. 1. How willing would researchers be to do without the services provided by Elsevier? 2. How easy is it on average to find on the web copies of Elsevier articles that can be read legally and free of charge? 3. To what extent are libraries actually suffering as a result of high journal prices? 4. What effect are Elsevier’s Gold Open Access articles having on their subscription prices? 5. How much are our universities paying for Elsevier journals? The main purpose of this post is to report on efforts that I and others have made to start obtaining answers to these questions. I shall pay particular attention to the last one, since it is about that that I have most to say. I will try to keep the post as factual as possible and give my opinions about some of the facts in a separate post ..."

Link:

http://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-some-facts/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.elsevier oa.publishers oa.business_models oa.prices oa.profits oa.cost_of_knowledge oa.boycotts oa.petitions oa.signatures oa.advocacy oa.gold oa.fees oa.attitudes oa.mathematics oa.humanities oa.libraries oa.librarians oa.universities oa.colleges oa.budgets oa.hei oa.ssh oa.journals

Date tagged:

04/26/2014, 07:03

Date published:

04/26/2014, 03:03