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Library Journal Board Resigns On "Crisis of Conscience" After Swartz Death
c0lo writes "The editor-in-chief and entire editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration announced their resignation last week, citing 'a crisis of conscience about publishing in a journal that was not open access' in the days after the death of Aaron Swartz. The board had worked with publisher Taylor & Francis on an open-access compromise in the months since, which would allow the journal to release articles without paywall, but Taylor & Francis' final terms asked contributors to pay $2,995 for each open-access article. As more and more contributors began to object, the board ultimately found the terms unworkable. The journal's editor-in-chief said 'After much discussion, the only alternative presented by Taylor & Francis tied a less restrictive license to a $2995 per article fee to be paid by the author. As you know, this is not a viable licensing option for authors from the LIS community who are generally not conducting research under large grants.'"
Thank you for standing up for what you believe in, guys! Commencing replacement with yes-men who will heed the siren call of their corporate profiteering overlords in 5...4...3...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Lets hope the same editorial board is sool working at a 'new' journal, the Open Journal of Library Administration, available only online/free.
Wouldnt that be a somewhat simple solution?
Publishers want to protect 'their' cash cow, but its not theirs to protect. not much of a surprise really.
The things is that there is mostly nothing to be paid. the editor-in-chief and the editorial board is not generally paid. The reviewers are not paid. Most readers access electronic versions and the paper version are almost never opened. So the actual cost is extremely low for the publisher. The only thing the publisher provide now a days is grammar check and spell check and text layouting. Anybody that worked in the field would tell you that mostly that part of the job is not properly done, especially text layouting. I often need multiple rounds with the publisher before I agree on their text layout.
So in brief they do not produce anything of value on the documentitself. They do print it but nobody cares. They do provide web access. But that could be done as the physicists do by publishing everything in arxiv first.
Why did they only make it $2995? Why didn't they make it $190,000 and a free ride in a helicopter to Disneyworld? Ask for the real money. On the other hand, they did come in under $3000, which the Ronco corporation knew was the key to selling lots of Ginsu knives. Only $19.95.
The hard part when anyone can publish anything is finding something worth reading.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Um, it doesn't take a genius to see that you're not exactly making a great offer: "Our journal will publish your article into the public domain! Now fork out $3000 for the privilege!" I don't think board needed many reasons of conscience to resign. They were probably more like: "Hey, let's stop working for these idiots!"
Thats a fair point. So where is the money going?
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...but how do you pay for the Journal?
What is there to pay for?
So what remains is the salary of the editor and some administrative overhead, which should not be too onerous for even a minor institution.
That's a good question. I'd say marketing new journals. And I guess paying folks at the publisher which are doing other things (like book publishing).
It does not seem to go to shareholders as far as I can see.
Yes. Have journals be online, for example using free software for that purpose like Open Journal Systems, and have faculty members run them as part of their job description. Some successful and long running journals already operate this way.
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Printing, even if it's rarely used, can have significant up-front costs. I'd still like to see an accounting, though.
I'm a nature photographer.
There certainly are ways to do that. But it would require the community to move away from them. As a recently hired assistant professor, my tenure will be evaluated partially based on my publication track in "good journals". So I will publish wherever my tenure commitee believe is good. Currently this happens to be where publishers are.
The only thing the publisher provide now a days is grammar check and spell check
As a researcher who has read hundreds, possibly thousands of journal articles, I say bollocks. Maybe Nature Publishing Group journals do a thorough spelling and grammar check, but all the others (in the field of chemistry, materials science and nanotechnology at least) do not.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The hard part when anyone can publish anything is finding something worth reading.
Just have a /. comment voting system where readers/writers can "vote" on the articles. Very quickly there will be a select group of readers providing valid ratings, so give them more mod points. The good articles will bubble up to the top having higher rating. The "prestige" factor will be in having a high rating on such a site. And the karma will improve!
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
So scientists give their work to a journal for publication, and have to pay to get more favorable license terms?
I knew that scientific publication is a strange world, but this seems somewhat preposterous.
When the taxpayers have already funded research, what's the justification for not having that research available to anybody and everybody?
Because money money money money mine mine mine mine.
If you have any other questions about justification for dubious acts under Capitalism, please refer to the above subtle and nuanced explanation.
I took a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathWorld to remind myself about how CRC press treated Eric W. Weisstein (creator of MathWorld). CRC press is a division of Taylor and Francis. Whenever I get a request to referee for a Taylor and Francis publication, I decline and point the editor at the MathWorld story.
Don't do business with Taylor and Francis.
You forgot "Go to conferences and trade shows and spend a lot to promote the brand."
At a recent huge research conference, I went to a bar. Didn't know it until I walked in, I was meeting some colleagues there, but it was open bar, paid for by a major journal for researchers to try to woo them into publishing there. I enjoyed the booze, which was paid for by the journal, which got paid from universities and researchers buying back research that they had done, which in turn was paid for (both parts) by grants, which was paid by the taxpayer.
I was a little sick the next day at that realization. Also the whiskey. And a cold, you'd think thousands of biologists would be better at keeping germs from spreading between themselves.
So, here's the other reason to force people to pay to submit to the journal. This weeds out the cranks and trolls...
While this seems reasonable, I would like to point out that:
1) Cranks and trolls are not a problem in academic publishing, it never was a problem, and it isn't expected to be a problem in the future.
2) Cranks and Trolls are well filtered by other aspects of the system. Few cranks and trolls have PHDs, teach at uni, or are working under a grant. Those that manage to overcome these barriers and are easily dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
3) By switching to a "pay to publish" model, your filter is targeting cash-poor researchers, not cranks. Corporations could afford to have their studies published, which would skew overall trends. Drug companies, tobacco companies, and oil companies would have a competitive edge over a uni or grant researcher.
Once we accept that getting rid of the trolls has value to the author, the question is ...
4) You are an astroturfer - a paid shill trying to sway the collective opinion by hand-waving and solipsism.
This is Slashdot. We're smarter than that.
I'd like to see some evidence that publishing a journal requires each article to be costed at 2995 dollars (a suspicious looking figure to me).
I'm an academic. I get asked to peer review articles for free. We do it as part of our workload. I have colleagues who edit journals. They do this for free. I author articles: I do this within the costs of my project, the journal gets my article for free. Authors work for free, reviewers work for free, editors work for free. It's just the production and publicity team that get paid (the publishing house). We don't even expect them to roll the presses and produce paper versions these days, we are happy with web links to PDFs.
So we need to think hard about what the costs are in putting an online journal live onto the internet.
Why do academics continue to publish in closed journals? because generally they are still the high impact ones (with a very few exceptions). So I, and many other contract researchers like me, tend to publish in closed journals because these look better on the cv. Philosophical high ground is all well and good but when you've got a child to feed and a house to pay for you have to be pragmatic and keep in a job.
I can imagine this might change over the next 20 years or so as more and more folk start open access journals and they are gradually given greater impact ratings.
Personally I think we're going to see a few universities taking the lead with open access journals and this might break into the monopoly held by a small number of publishers right now. If you're doing it not-for-profit you can do it cheaper than a commercial publishing house that has to show profit to its shareholders.