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Scientists Organize Elsevier Boycott

Posted by Soulskill on from the information-wants-to-be-free dept.

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."

8 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Will referee? by jginspace · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They've been asked to say that they: "1) won’t publish with them, 2) won’t referee for them, and/or 3) won’t do editorial work for them ... At least do number 2)" ... most of those signed up have gone for all three however it seems like roughly one in ten have prevaricated on the "won't referee" pledge - what is the magnetic allure of refereeing for Elsevier journals?

    1. Re:Will referee? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's a vague sense of duty. For any given potential paper, there is a limited number of suitible peer reviewers. I'm trying something so odd right now I can think of less than 8 people who are are knowledgable about the materials and spectrosopic method off the top of my head. The people still willing to be a referee possibly feel that their field as a whole shouldn't suffer with suboptimal peer reviewers simple because another scientist is trying to get published in an Elsevier journal.

    2. Re:Will referee? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you have the support of the community, it's apparently not that hard to replace an established journal. In 2001, the Journal of Object-Oriented Programming was shut down by its new publisher. The Journal of Object Technology stepped into the gap, with the same set of reviewers, but no print publication just open access online-only publication. I'm a bit surprised that more fields haven't followed suit. If you've got a dozen respected researchers who are willing to do reviews, it's easy to start a new journal.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:Will referee? by bgeezus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      what is the magnetic allure of refereeing for Elsevier journals?

      Refereeing is a complicated thing. As much as you might hope that all scientists and scientific papers are honest and accurate, this is not always the case. I've refereed for several low-quality journals, not because I took any pride in the act, but because people were submitting low quality papers directly based on my work. If I don't serve as a reviewer for these kinds of papers, then I don't have an opportunity to make sure they did things correctly. And whether or not it's correct, a pile of misinformed papers can still gain traction in the larger community. This is becoming more and more the case, particularly since graduate students (in general) are becoming less and less inclined to do very deep and detailed literature reviews. Reviewing is not about supporting a journal. It's an important duty to prevent the spread of misinformation, and also to make sure that the existing work is described in a proper context. Promising to abstain from reviewing certain journals would be a great disservice to your own work and to your scientific field.

  2. What's the point of journals? by Karmashock · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They seem unnecessary in the internet age. Set up some sort of social networking system for scientists.

    Also keep getting disturbing reports of journals censoring works for political reasons or because they're afraid that certain factions within the science community will boycott them.

    The whole thing is anti science. Create a forum where all scientists can share information freely without fear of being censored or favoritism. If other scientists don't find your work compelling then they don't have to listen to it.

    It will also make disclosing all the information about a given study easier since hopefully more of the work will be within the system.

    --
    I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
  3. It is about time by tp1024 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Go to google scholar, research anything and you'll inevitable bumb into those extortionists. What is the point of having all that knowledge theoretically at your fingertips, if people cannot have access to it? No matter what it is - an icelandic volcano erupting and you want to know what this means for your plans to fly somewhere? Well, there are plenty of papers that will tell you about ash emissions, the impact of ash on airplanes, the concentrations of ash in the air and so on and so forth.

    A nuclear reactor has a problem and you want to know what engineers found out about the likely consequences or progression of the accident, or what people in this country and other countries did about mitigation? It's right there. BUT:

    $30.00 for reading a paper (which more likely than not will not contain what you are looking for) just makes it impossible to research anything at all - unless you are at least a millionaire. Just having access to one research paper per day will cost you $11000 a year. That has nothing to do with copyrights or protecting intellectual property or anything else.

    It is all about extortion - thank you for trying to stop it.

  4. IEEE do some of the same by Terje+Mathisen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Last year I sent an email to IEEE saying that I would leave the organization if they continued holding research papers hostage behind pay walls.

    I.e. authors were told that in order to get published they would have to assign their copyrights to IEEE and would have to remove any freely available copies on their own personal web page.

    See also http://politics.slashdot.org/story/10/06/30/2027226/ieee-supports-software-patents-in-wake-of-bilski and http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/15/177217/ieee-working-group-considers-kinder-gentler-drm about locking research behind DRM gates.

    With very little visible change to their attitudes, I decided to leave.

    Terje

    --
    "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
  5. Easy enough to sign... by captainpanic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's easy enough to sign up, and to say you hate Elsevier (so do I). But if you're in a research group at a university, and you're the PhD student, you're probably not doing yourself a favor by signing this. Your name will show up in search results, so people may know you signed (if you used your own name and institute).
    In order to get your PhD, you will need to publish somewhere, and your prof will want you to get the highest "impact factor", because that's good for the whole group. You're in a way just an employee, so you better listen to the boss.

    By effectively saying "screw you" to the whole system of publications, and going online to a really open system, you gamble. Better make sure the prof agrees.

    But I applaud you, if you do.