bjoern.brembs.blog » In support of subscripton cancellations

abernard102@gmail.com 2014-02-03

Summary:

"The recent call for a GlamMag boycott by Nobel laureate Randy Shekman made a lot of headlines, but will likely have no effect whatsoever. For one, the call for boycott isn’t even close in scale to 'the cost of knowledge' boycott against Elsevier and even that drew less than 15,000 measly signatures, a drop in the bucket with 970,000 board members, reviewers and authors working for Elsevier largely for free. Any boycott movement that fails to reach 500,000 signatures is an abject failure. Moreover, even if he had half a million signatures on the GlamMag boycott, it would also be a drop in the bucket, as probably more than ten times as many scientists would simply see their chances of getting a GlamMag publication increase and try even harder to publish there. Furthermore, Shekman only pleaded to ethical sentiments, when it’s quite apparent that such pleas will fall on deaf ears if livelihoods are at stake – which they are as GlamMag publications are perceived to put careers on entire different levels. Shekman failed to base any of his arguments in data and evidence, of which there is plenty, and so his pleas will likely fade unheeded. And as if all this wasn’t enough to lose confidence in the effectiveness of this boycott, there is the obvious conflict of interest with Shekman, as the editor-in-chief of another 'luxury journal' pleading for his colleagues to leave the legacy 'luxury journals' to publish their work where – in Shekman’s self-professed 'luxury journal' eLife? Devoid of evidence and replete with conflict of interest and at least perceived hypocrisy, as much as I’d want it to be successful, I fear this was the first and last time we heard of this boycott. Nevertheless, this is just the last in a row of different calls to collective action to show the Evilseviers of science publishing who’s boss over the last decade or so. Moreover, new publishing venues are springing up all over the place and scientists are flocking to them with their publications. The media are picking up on the momentum that publishing reform is currently garnering and increasing. It really does seem as if there is now, after more than a decade, something actually shifting in academic publishing. In the string of public action, campaigns and stunts, one thing was notably missing: a call to boycott where it would really hurt publishers: cutting subscriptions ..."

Link:

http://bjoern.brembs.net/2014/02/in-support-of-subscripton-cancellations/

From feeds:

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

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.advocacy oa.petitions oa.pledges oa.signatures oa.boycotts oa.elsevier oa.publishers oa.business_models oa.cost_of_knowledge oa.prestige oa.libraries oa.librarians oa.cancellations

Date tagged:

02/03/2014, 17:52

Date published:

02/03/2014, 12:52