Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Organize Elsevier Boycott
An anonymous reader writes "The academic publisher Elsevier has attracted controversy for its high prices, the practice of bundling journals for sale to libraries and its support for legislation such as SOPA and the Research Works Act. Fields medal-winning mathematician Tim Gowers decided to go public with a blog post describing how he'll no longer have anything to do with Elsevier journals, and suggesting that a public website where mathematicians and scientists could register their support for an Elsevier boycott would further the cause. Such a website now exists, with hundreds of academics signing-up so far. John Baez has a nice write-up of the problem and possible solutions."
Refereeing a journal article is a rather thankless job. There is no pay. There is very little kudos from your colleagues. It is a service to the community. To say you will not referee is something that impacts others who need to get published. Refereeing is something that can hurt you personally because of the time commitment. Not refereeing is something that hurts others.
It isn't as much as refereeing for Elsevier journals, but to referee for well established and respected journals. Being invited to be a referee of one of those journals is seen as a sign of respect by the scientific community and a public acknowledgement of one's technical and scientific mastery. After all, if a community has to choose who will edit the scientific work done by their own community, they will choose the best in their field, not a snotty-nosed clueless newbie.
Then, the real problem is that Elsevier managed to control the publication and access to journals which are seen as humanity's forum for specific scientific areas. So, Elsevier manages to get that "magentic allure" by proxy, not for the company's own merit. As soon as journals are published elsewhere, Elsevier will lose any prestige they might have, and although scientific papers will continue to be published, the world will be a better place for not being forced to shelve 40 euros for individual papers or thousands of euros for a subscription. Let's hope this boycott represents the tipping point.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
There is another part to the open access. Trade associations that publish specs. They want anywhere from $100-$1000 for a specification that MUST be used to manufacture equipment. Those specs are written by employees of many businesses (users). These associations do not pay taxes.These specs should be published as e-books for a reasonable price. $35 for example. They are still living in the 50s.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
The point of journals is the value of their reputation. A well respected scientific journal is useful because they've repeatedly put their name on the line publishing scientific papers, and when the vast majority of those papers are valid and well reviewed, you can have some hope of trusting an as yet unread paper. "Censorship" in the form of verification and peer review, is one of the driving mechanisms of science, because not all ideas are made equal.
It's not the dead trees that make journals valued, but the credibility they help maintain. Having well-respected scientists be widely opposed to your journal is a deadly circumstance, as trust is all you have.
Being a referee is part of being a scientist.
Being a human being with integrity is ALSO part of being a scientist.
If one wants to think one being worthy to be known as a SCIENTIST one must at least have the integrity to know that keep on feeding leeches such as Elsevier does the scientific community a dis-service
Restricting the access to information is an antithesis to scientific principle.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Sounds kinda like digg for scientific research.
Which quite honestly scares me...
My solution for this would be a public network of papers, where everybody can publish, read and 'sign' those papers. If you agree with a paper, you put your signature under it and the worth of this paper goes up. As your 'worth' goes up your signature also gains in weight, when signing other papers. Every paper gets a comment section, where reviews can be written and errors pointed out.
The problem with that is that you have to persuade other people — tenured professors, associate professors, funding agencies, etc. — that it's worth buying into your system. Once they buy in, it will work fine (modulo teething problems, of course). But if people don't believe that it counts towards your academic career, it most certainly doesn't count. Maybe that doesn't matter so much for someone with a Fields Medal or Nobel Prize as they've already shown that they merit tenure (or equivalent) anywhere in the world, but for someone earlier in their career it matters hugely.
People want to publish in top rank journals because that's how they show they are doing top ranked work. Competition is ferocious (if usually polite).
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Not likely. Being a reviewer is a PITA, and generally doesn't advance you in any way. I once applied for a grant that asked how many papers I'd reviewed in the past year, but they just wanted a number, completely unsubstantiated, so I doubt they put much weight on it.
Scientists do peer review because it's a duty. Not publishing with a journal you don't like is an easy choice. Refusing to participate in peer review with them just means they'll get someone else to do it, and poor papers may slip through.
...Refusing to participate in peer review with them just means they'll get someone else to do it, and poor papers may slip through.
Thus degrading the quality of the journal and after about 10 years people will learn to treat it as one of the trashier neighborhoods. The problem is the impact (factor and public) that the article will have in the transition period. Also, the editor will have to keep hitting up the scientists who don't refuse until they burn out. This can actually be a feedback loop where the reviewing scientist decides that they must get asked to review because they publish so often in that journal, so picking a journal with a lower review load may be worth looking into. Forgoing review is a nasty and dirty type of boycott which definitely flirts the line between dereliction of duty and the need to advance science by publishing in a public forum (which country-club nit-picky-HOA Elsevier is not). Most of those journals are good, and often the sale to Elsevier was to free up their editorial board and professional staff for the real work on the journal. This problem has been building for years and there's not much that will solve it outside of legislation and possibly international treaty. Even the US legislation which says papers written on research performed with public money should be free to access (perhaps with a 6 month delay) has too many loopholes for it to work well.