Publishing Revenue and the Learned Societies | In the Dark

"A couple of days ago I posted a reaction to a shockingly dishonest article I saw in Physics World which has led me to resign my Fellowship of the Institute of Physics (IoP). I thought I would spend a bit of time now to raising some wider points (which I’ve raised before) about the extent that such organizations (including, in my field,  the Royal Astronomical Society and the Institute of Physics) rely for their financial security upon the revenues generated by publishing traditional journals and why this is not in the best interests of their disciplines.

Take IOP Publishing. This is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Institute of Physics that has an annual turnover of around £60M generated from books and journals. This revenue is the largest contribution to the income that the IoP needs to run its numerous activities relating to the promotion of physics.  A similar situation pertains to the Royal Astronomical Society, although on a smaller scale, as it relies for much of its income from Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in which I have published quite a few papers in the past.

Not surprisingly, these and other learned societies are keen to protect their main source of cash and have lobbied very hard for the “Gold” Open Access some authorities are attempting to foist on the research community, rather than the far more sensible and sustainable approaches to Open Access employed, for example, by the Open Journal of Astrophysics.

There are two major reasons why I object to this approach, one practical and one ethical...."