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All Editors Quit Top Linguistics Journal To Protest Elsevier's Pricing (insidehighered.com)
An anonymous reader writes: All six editors and all 31 editorial board members of Lingua, one of the top journals in linguistics, have resigned. They quit to protest Elsevier's policies on pricing and its refusal to convert the journal to an open-access publication that would be free online. As soon as January, they plan to start a new open-access journal to be called Glossa. "Prices quoted on the Elsevier website suggest that an academic library in the United States with a total student and faculty full-time equivalent number of around 10,000 would pay $2,211 for shared online access, and $1,966 for a print copy. ... [Executive editor Johan Rooryck] said Lingua and most journals publish work by professors whose salaries are paid directly or indirectly with public funds. So why, he asked, should access to such research be blocked?"
The editors quitting, together, as an act of defiance and moral outrage, lifted my heart in a way few stories ever do.
If others followed suit, Elsevier's business model of extortion would be crushed. Academic research shouldn't be hidden behind paywalls. Especially in those cases where it has been paid for by public funding.
A whole 22 cents per person per year for a subscription. Very expensive.
It is when you consider that you're paying that for every member of faculty and every student. Not just those in the linguistic department. Those other departments need their own subscriptions. Before you know, you're spending tens - even hundreds - of thousands of dollars on subscriptions.
Given that the publisher doesn't pay for the articles, the peer review or the editing (for the most part), it does raise the question, what exactly is being paid for via those subscriptions.
"let them start their own"
Well, yes. That's precisely what they've said they're going to do, and given that they are all remarkably intelligent people, I think they've already done the sums on the hosting costs. They certainly know how much time is involved in it, seeing as how they've been doing that exact job for years.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Real world right now is that elsevier uses free labor of editors and scientists while asking tons of money for the result of their work. It works, because real world institutions require their scientists to publish in journals with biggest impact - which means that individual scientists can not choose different journal without harming his career. Which means that there is no real market competition and the only way out of the situation is coordinate action of scientists.
Academic publishing has largest margins within printing industry. Don't tell me they need both free labor and the prices they charge - if it would be result of necessity, Elevier margins would be much lower.
What are you, sir? Some kind of evil Socialist Commie Terrorist??
In the USA, we're proud to take other people's works, copyright them for ourselves for horrendous lengths of time and prosecute mercilessly anyone who might attempt to use our presentations or derivatives thereof.
Just ask Disney.