University of California Boycotts Publishing Giant Elsevier Over Journal Costs and Open Access (sciencemag.org)

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University of California Boycotts Publishing Giant Elsevier Over Journal Costs and Open Access (sciencemag.org)

Posted by msmash on Friday March 1, 2019 @02:40AM from the how-about-that dept.

The mammoth University of California (UC) system announced this week that it will stop paying to subscribe to journals published by Elsevier, the world's largest scientific publisher. From a report: Talks to renew a collective contract broke down, the university said, because Elsevier refused to strike a package deal that would provide a break on subscription fees and make all articles published by UC authors immediately free for readers worldwide. The stand by UC, which followed eight months of negotiations, could have significant impacts on scientific communication and the direction of the so-called open access movement, in the United States and beyond. The 10-campus system accounts for nearly 10 percent of all U.S. publishing output and is among the first American institutions, and by far the largest, to boycott Elsevier over costs. Many administrators and librarians at American universities and elsewhere have complained about what they view as excessively high journal subscription fees charged by commercial publishers.

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Good. by cmdr_klarg · 2019-03-01 02:47 · Score: 4, Insightful

One less food source for a parasite.

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THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
1. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 03:16 · Score: 0
  
  But but we "helps institutions and professionals advance healthcare, open science and improve performance for the benefit of humanity" :(
  Also we "build solutions that work seamlessly for researchers and help solve the problems they face" :(
  Who will do this now??? We are not full of shit, we are experts...
  in being full of shit.
  references: https://www.elsevier.com/
2. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 03:49 · Score: 0
  
  GNAA leverages core skillsets and world-class team synergy through
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  turnkey implementations of flexible, personalized, cutting-edge
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  architectures that accelerate response to customer and real-world
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  seamlessly and efficiently integrating and synchronizing with their
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  of their e-commerce production environments across the enterprise while
  giving them a critical competitive advantage and taking them to the next
  level.
3. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 06:43 · Score: 0
  
  German Universities also stopped paying beginning of this year. This Dutch monopoly was asking for over 6-7% increases every year causing libraries to have to cancel other subscriptions to balance budgets. Unsustainable, and for what? To typeset word documents into obscure formats? Any free service provider could do that in a few hours. And peer review is a non-paid activity - a so called service to the community. Time for things to fundamentally change!
Story makes california sound wrong by goombah99 · 2019-03-01 02:59 · Score: 4, Insightful

I totally get the idea of open access. And it's laudable. It's also a choice. You have approximately three choices when you publish: 1.
publish in an open access journal, and pay it's editorial and compositional page charges,
2. Publish in a pay-for access journal, which may have lower compositional page charges
3. publish in some open and free journal (are there any good ones?)
If you go to a pay-for-access journal and ask them to make all of your author's papers free to access you are basically insane. Sure you can ask but you are asking the journal to go bankrupt or at a minimum work at cost. If you add onto that a request to reduce page charges too, well .... At this point you should just ask for a pony as well.
One could imagine that journals should pay authors for their articles. THat makes some logical sense but it just shifts the cost to the access.
I like the pay-to-publish model myself because if there is barrier it can, if used correctly and not as a vanity press, result in a journal I'm more likely to want to read and more proud to publish in too.
The right argument is if in the age of digital publishing we could not find some less expensive process. But that's not what UC is asking.
But the key thing to keep sight of is that the editorial process should try to stamp out crap. That's the whole reason I'm willing to pay. I can't read everything and if every search term has a load of crap then it's useless.
However that's not hopeless. Google ate alta vista's lunch because it provided more relevant searches. So it is possible to beat down the cost and still beat down crap. However, when it comes to science articles I still prefer peer review to key term search as a way to beat down the crap.
Finally, UC should consider just requiring it's authors to put their articles in a non-copyrighted form on Xarciv before sending them to elsevier. They won't save money but if they genuinely want free access to all UC author pubs it's already available to them. I think it's all about money and not about free access

--
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
1. Re:Story makes california sound wrong by Sique · 2019-03-01 03:09 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It's a commercial negotiation. Elsevier wanted something. UC wanted something else. They couldn't agree, so no contract. Apparently UC has somewhere else to go, and Elsevier does too. Everyone is carrying their business elsewhere. That's how it goes.
  There is no point in arguing who was "right" in the negotiations. It's a free market, not marriage counseling.
  
  --
  .sig: Sique *sigh*
2. Re:Story makes california sound wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 04:17 · Score: 1
  
  Not everyone agrees with your free-market fundamentalist position. There are a number of reasons to argue university research should be freely available: it is often funded by tax-payer money of different countries, science works best when publications are freely available, and since most scientific journals rely on volunteer reviewers and even editors, the fees that are asked by the publishers seem excessive, far beyond reasonable costs to operate the journal.
3. Re:Story makes california sound wrong by alvinrod · 2019-03-01 04:27 · Score: 2
  
  But the key thing to keep sight of is that the editorial process should try to stamp out crap. That's the whole reason I'm willing to pay. I can't read everything and if every search term has a load of crap then it's useless.
  The people reviewing the publications are often other researchers in the field who aren't paid for their services. These journals aren't employing anyone who understands whether or not the articles are good. They simply manage the entire process of submitting publications, finding people to peer review the work, and communicating responses back to the author. If they're good, they try to keep the whole process reasonably fair and free of potential bias the would come from outside of the research itself.
  
  Obviously none of that's free. The researchers could always collectively do it themselves since outside of the organizational aspects, they're the ones producing and reviewing the research, but most of them would be crap at managing journals or have no interest in doing so. So here we are back to square one again.
  
  The real problem is that because copyright in general has gotten so out of control, we have this interesting side effect that tax-payer funded research can be locked away from tax payers. That's a good enough reason to take issue with this in and of itself. If the government wants to step in and set much more strict copyright limitations on tax-payer funded research that means anything publicly funded becomes publicly available after only a few years, I think that would be a good compromise.
  
  Payment is not guarantee of quality either. There are a lot of predatory journals that prey on the need for researchers to publish or perish and will gladly publish whatever shit anyone cares to crank out as long as you'll pay their fee. That's the problem with fucked up incentive structures. They always beget unscrupulous little cottage industries that spring up around them.
4. Re:Story makes california sound wrong by novakyu · 2019-03-01 05:00 · Score: 1
  
  Finally, UC should consider just requiring it's authors to put their articles in a non-copyrighted form on Xarciv before sending them to elsevier. They won't save money but if they genuinely want free access to all UC author pubs it's already available to them. I think it's all about money and not about free access
  Um, most authors (at least the ones I know at UC Berkeley) already do this (assuming you meant arXiv). But the most valuable part of a journal article are citations. It's a pain looking for the preprint version on arXiv when you are doing a literature search to see what's been published already. Requiring arXiv publication will accomplish nothing while annoying the few who don't already do it.
5. Re:Story makes california sound wrong by david.emery · 2019-03-01 05:42 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  ...
  The people reviewing the publications are often other researchers in the field who aren't paid for their services. These journals aren't employing anyone who understands whether or not the articles are good. ...
  Actually, in my experience, the editors-in-chief (EiC) (who usually do get paid) are chosen from researchers in the field and do understand the basic technology/science/topci, even if they aren't an expert on the specific article in question. Several times I was asked to review an article by an EiC, because he knew if the article wasn't good, I'd do a thorough job skewering it (and he suspected the article was not good.) I finally got mad and said, "You know these are junk. Can't you send me something good to review?" He laughed and said, "OK. It's just you're so good at the negative review. I have problems finding people who will take the time to fully critique a bad article."
  My friend who's EiC for a journal in another field (chemistry) and I debated this. He points out, as do other posts here, there are legitimate costs that have to be covered, and being EiC takes A Lot of time. So we need a means for covering that, either by user/reader fees or by writer/contributor fees. My response is "OK, but (1) PROFIT is not a legitimate cost to be covered. (2) Administrative costs need to be minimized, and a for-profit organization has no particular incentive to do that." At that point, we pretty much agreed-to-disagree, but we did agree that the current model was not working well.
6. Re:Story makes california sound wrong by Sique · 2019-03-01 06:02 · Score: 1
  
  In this case, it's not market fundamentalism, but normal civil law. There is no guilt if contract negotiations fail just because the positions are incommensurable. Maybe, another university will agree to Elsevier's conditions. Maybe another editor will agree to UC's demands.
  That's completely independent from moral considerations. I agree that publicly founded research should also be publicly available. And maybe it's better to pay an editor for the editorial work with a previously agreed upon, fixed sum than giving him 95 years of copyrights.
  
  --
  .sig: Sique *sigh*
7. Re:Story makes california sound wrong by reg · 2019-03-01 06:06 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  The UC system already requires that all works be deposited in their own OA system (https://escholarship.org/).
  The reporting in this is a little vague - not sure if that's just the standard of journalism or intentional. The negotiations broke down because the UC system wanted Elsevier to waive their OA publishing fee since they were already paying an access fee (basically Elsevier want full access fees for journals with both closed and open articles), and Elsevier refused - they insist on being paid to on both ends by the UC system for OA articles (both for publishing costs and access costs).
  Elsevier are fighting a losing battle for their livelihood here - the world is going OA, and once it does Elsevier (and their ScienceDirect platform which gate-keeps academic publishing metrics) is going to collapse. They're trying to squeeze every last cent out now, and if they give in to the UC system here, then every university on the planet will demand the same deal.
  What is not clear right now is if the UC system is going to limit faculty involvement in Elsevier journals. At one point in the negotiations they had threatened to prevent UC faculty from being editors or reviewers for Elsevier journals. It is not clear if they can force that on Senate members (tenured faculty), but the Senate can force that on their own members (like they did the OA policy which precipitated this renegotiation). In addition to OA and access fees, Elsevier gets an in-kind contribution of millions of dollars in free labor from UC faculty.
8. Re:Story makes california sound wrong by Shaitan · 2019-03-01 07:12 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly, a non-profit that still needs to keep the lights and isn't funded by some grant or angel has pretty much all the strengths of a free market for profit in terms of running lean and pressure to perform without the extra overhead of greedy profiteers. Many of things people suggest making public could in fact be run through a few competing non-profits instead and with some government backing on credit to get them over startup cost hurdles.
9. Re:Story makes california sound wrong by epine · 2019-03-01 07:41 · Score: 1
  
  It's a free market, not marriage counseling.
  Where network effects are particularly strong, the dynamics in play resemble marriage counselling far more than you suspect.
10. Re:Story makes california sound wrong by Solandri · 2019-03-01 07:59 · Score: 2
  
  Elsevier are fighting a losing battle for their livelihood here - the world is going OA, and once it does Elsevier (and their ScienceDirect platform which gate-keeps academic publishing metrics) is going to collapse.
  
  Open access has nothing to do with it. Elsevier began and established its business model in an age when publishing, distribution, cataloging, and searching research papers were relatively expensive. It provided that service and charged a reasonable fee for it. I'm reminded of when the Cold Fusion paper first made the rounds when I was in college - researchers were sending each other faxes of faxes of fax copies of the paper, to the point where it was nearly illegible, because they were too anxious to wait for the paper to make it through the regular journal publishing and distribution process.
  
  The Internet and modern computer databases have driven the cost (both in dollars and time) of those things to nearly zero (and the copies are as pristine as the original, unlike faxes). That's what's squeezing Elsevier out. It could've been OA or another service offering the same service at a lower price. Both would've squeezed it the same. The fundamental driving force behind the change is the Internet, not OA.
11. Re:Story makes california sound wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 08:46 · Score: 0
  
  OK.
  1) There are decent free-to-publish open access journals. See for example https://www.emis.de/journals/INTEGERS/
  Honestly, today what expenses does the publisher actually have? Sure you should probably pay a subscription fee if you want to have a physical copy of the journal, and there are small costs for web hosting. But the reviewing and editing? Usually almost entirely done by volunteers even for the pay journal.
  2) UC *does* require its professors to put their articles on a UC open access site. The issue is that unless negotiated, the publication agreements with journal often do not allow this. Not in practice people often do just put articles on the arxiv before publishing, and although they are probably technically breaking the law by signing over exclusive rights to the journal after signing rights over the arxiv, this usually goes un-enforced, but it's probably a lot harder for a big institution to get away with this.
  But honestly, the reviewing process (the thing that "stamps out crap" for you), is done by volunteers and thus costs nothing. So why are institutions paying giant fees to access their own research?
12. Re:Story makes california sound wrong by Aighearach · 2019-03-01 08:53 · Score: 1
  
  The reporting in this is a little vague - not sure if that's just the standard of journalism or intentional.
  This answer is always yes. The standard of journalism is intentional.
13. Re:Story makes california sound wrong by sjames · 2019-03-01 17:58 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly this. In a day and age where electronic copies are made for free and transmitted for next to no cost, they for some reason expect to be paid like the days where they had to actually print and mail thousands of copies.
Elsevier's Response is Available... by dark.nebulae · 2019-03-01 03:00 · Score: 5, Funny

But you have to pay thru the nose to view it...
1. Re: Elsevier's Response is Available... by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 06:56 · Score: 0
  
  Best post of the day :-)
anon by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 03:02 · Score: 0

Byte off the hand that feeds you and find a better food source.
Greed-Elsevier by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 03:06 · Score: 0

In the early days of the web, I was on a team that built one of their first websites. We made a beautiful logo that filled the screen on sign-on and only when you were standing some distance away could you see that it really said "Greed-Elsvier".
The Dutch woman PM they sent to supervise us was always upset when we didn't have orange juice and muffins on hand each morning for her.
1. Re: Greed-Elsevier by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 03:20 · Score: 1
  
  No evidence for your claims.
2. Re: Greed-Elsevier by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 05:08 · Score: 0
  
  It's an anecdote, not a claim. Don't be an idiot.
3. Re: Greed-Elsevier by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 06:10 · Score: 0
  
  No evidence for your claims.
  The lack of orange juice and muffins is self evident.
science publications by e**(i+pi)-1 · 2019-03-01 03:08 · Score: 1

Of course, science journals need some revenue and one can understand if they don't just want to open things up for free. But the prizes are just ridiculous. See https://www.elsevier.com/about... Every issue a few hundred dollars. This is similarly insane with textbook prizes. It is hard to understand for journal prizes because almost all content is written by authors who are not payed (in some cases even have to pay to be published) and where also the referees are not payed. Having reliable journals with a rigorous review process is however extremely important. The predatory open access models are not a solution. The best solution would probably be if reputable organizations like AMS, APS, ACS or ASCB would get some funds to publish more open access content and have these available through major libraries. scientific publication is too important to be left to profit driven forces only.
1. Re:science publications by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2019-03-01 03:12 · Score: 1
  
  Prizes? I think you mean prices.
  What I don't get is why the university, journals, and old fashioned peer review haven't been replaced with blogs yet.
  
  --
  SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
2. Re:science publications by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 05:33 · Score: 0
  
  What I don't get is why the university, journals, and old fashioned peer review haven't been replaced with blogs yet.
  Religion.
  One one side, religious nutjobs have their own blogs, about anything from young earth creationism to why gays ought to be thrown off rooftops. They make it difficult for blogs to be taken seriously as a platform to deliver truthful objective information.
  On the other side, religious authoritarians have an interest in keeping universities and education institutions around to encourage a monopoly/oligarchy on knowledge creation. Do remember some of the earliest education institutions were started/run by the church, but they didn't do this out of pure charity. No, it's easier to manipulate and indoctrinate the masses if you can centralize where they can receive knowledge.
  This is why instead of advocating for dismantling the old institutions outright, many religious folks instead want to control what the schools teach ("teach the contraversy" "bring prayer back in th schools", etc), no better than those godless commies who want to force schools to teach 42 different gender pronouns
Dinosaur industries in the information age by Reiyuki · 2019-03-01 03:48 · Score: 0

It's interesting to see the creative ways mature industries will find to siphon enough money to keep their business model afloat.
The problem is that the information age has drastically improved ease-of-access which lowers the value of said information to near zero. Same as media organizations adding paywalls to their own online content.
How could a company like NYT possibly compete with random bloggers that do the same job for free? How could Blockbuster possibly compete with stores when people can stream the same movie on their TV with a single button?
All they can do is try to stem the bleeding with paywalls, fees, and other creative means. Eventually, the industries will have to scale back and compete with cheaper alternatives.
1. Re:Dinosaur industries in the information age by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 03:58 · Score: 0
  
  I don't read the NYT, but if the information it provides has the same quality as that of a "random blogger", then, well, good riddance.
2. Re:Dinosaur industries in the information age by Reiyuki · 2019-03-01 04:12 · Score: 0
  
  Bloggers are usually better since they will often find stories that are unique and interesting that are not well-covered in national news.
  These days, most national news outlets just copy-paste the same AP stories of the day amongst each-other. Very little novelty to them.
Elsevier publised fake journals anyway. by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 04:19 · Score: 4, Interesting

Remember when they were caught selling fake journals with fake studies/articles to actual doctors, to get them to prescribe Merck pharmaceuticals to patients, even when that is a worse or dangerous choice?
Yeah, that is literal bodily harm and potentially murder ... for profit.
And a corporate culture like that does not just change. You can bet that that was just the tip of the iceberg.
So fuck Elsevier. In reality's eyes they are in one category with mass-murderers.
I agree with California by GLMDesigns · 2019-03-01 04:26 · Score: 3, Informative

These journals should be available to all.

A generation ago when the journals had to be printed and distributed then of course there had to be a hefty fee. But now, it should be placed on the web. The submitters do the research and the work writing the article (and they're not paid); reviewers aren't paid; submitters do the formatting (so there is no cost there).

The cost is almost entirely website access and data storage .

--
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
1. Re:I agree with California by davebarnes · 2019-03-01 04:33 · Score: 1
  
  So, the "correct" charge per article would be 10 to $1 ?
  
  --
  Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
2. Re:I agree with California by GLMDesigns · 2019-03-01 04:50 · Score: 2
  
  I would say that a small fee should allow you to access all articles, in all journals, that are in electronic format.
  
  I miss not being able to read the journals (yes, I'm a geek).
  
  --
  If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
  Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
My Shame by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 05:21 · Score: 0

I published in an Elsevier journal decades ago. Would not do that now.
Re:Commiefornia by CaptainDork · 2019-03-01 05:32 · Score: 1

Perhaps msmash could publish a tutorial on how to use Internet search engines to satisfy your craving for more information regarding Twitter/YouTube censoring Alex Jones and Joe Rogan.

--
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
sci-hub.tw to the rescue by bill_mcgonigle · 2019-03-01 05:42 · Score: 1

Betcha the UC traffic spikes.

--
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OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Paywalls Hamper Research by Only+Time+Will+Tell · 2019-03-01 06:25 · Score: 2

Good! Nothing is more frustrating than when you're searching for research articles only to hit a paywalled article your library or company hasn't paid for. Worse, you often don't know if the article is even relevant and don't want to spend $30-50 or so to see if it is. I was last trying to find some writings on sulfide bridge formation, and found only papers that were completely offtopic, or were out of date, and the only way you could determine this was to read the first several pages in (abstracts are the worst). These journal conglomerates need to adjust their business models so that end user scientists can get what they need without paying through the nose for mostly irrelevant info. Even allowing say 50 free articles a month would help.
1. Re:Paywalls Hamper Research by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 07:18 · Score: 0
  
  ^^^MOD UP^^^^ Abstracts the promise the world on papers that deliver nothing of value is one of the biggest problems to the pay-access system. Not to mention tons of completely fake science, dogs on the peer review team, you name it. The service they claim to provide for that money - they don't deliver. And then raise prices on stuff older than even the amateur scientists (who are old enough to be retired) can't afford it - especially when one in 10 has content similar to the abstract.
  Lucky for me - there are college students willing to help who download tons of crap at their library - free to them, then bring me USB sticks full - they're not real smart so they have names like download1.pdf...but maybe that's good. If I later put one online, I have to make up a title that seems to fit, which so far, the anti piracy algos don't match....heh.
2. Re:Paywalls Hamper Research by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 07:23 · Score: 0
  
  Just one example, from a defcon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... And yes, people really do get their pets on review boards, as well as use well known names as co-authors (often with the famous guy's consent but not with his having read the crap) to get published....
  IIRC someone recently got Mein Kampf published in one of these as a social sciences exercise - caught crap for it, but they did put it in print. They are not giving the organization and review service you pay for, not even close. It's not as though a webserver costs millions a year to run to dispense old RevSciIns scans from before the digital age.
  Aaron Schwartz had the right idea....and I hope SciHub keeps working and the hero gal who runs it avoids jail. It really does do what the big boys claim - help science. Hero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Remember when Slashdot linked related stories? by drinkypoo · 2019-03-01 07:07 · Score: 1

https://science.slashdot.org/s...
https://science.slashdot.org/s...
https://politics.slashdot.org/...
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
https://science.slashdot.org/s...
https://science.slashdot.org/s...
Elsevier has been scum since always. Their primary businesses are fraud and predation. Anyone who publishes in one of their journals is funding abuse.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re: Commiefornia by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 07:22 · Score: 0

This place is a liberal shithole, the same Orange Man Bad articles everyday on a fucking tech blog.
Re: Greed-Elsevier "citation" by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 07:49 · Score: 0

GP: is this what you refer to?
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/1d/6e/f7/1d6ef7e4be8eb892f107175444b8a092.jpg
(Not the same AC)
Good! by thomst · 2019-03-01 07:56 · Score: 4, Informative

It's about time!
Elsevier has been paywalling scientific research - most, if not all of which was paid for in part or in whole by taxpayers throughout the developed world - since 1947. It's way past time that what amounts to its systematic theft of what should be completely public data came to a screeching, grinding, clattering halt.
Yes, yes, it's also been responsible for any number of unethical practices, including offering Amazon gift vouchers to researchers who agreed to give the company a 5-star rating on the platform, and publishing sham journals, but that's not the main reason it deserves to die. Nor is its campaign to persuade governments and academic institutions alike to shut down open access publication of scientific research, not just by lobbying for legislative restrictions, but by filing lawsuits against universities for allowing their academic researchers to publish open-access copies of their own research papers on their employers' servers.
No, Elsevier deserves to die because it has deliberately misused its virtual monopoly on academic publishing to prevent both researchers and the public from reading an enormous library of published studies, access to which is vital for new research to be conducted in a staggering number of disciplines. It should die because it insists on standing in the way of progress.
If the UC system doesn't allow Elsevier to bribe it into reversing its decision to divorce itself from the company's extortion-based business model, I suspect the remainder of the USA's public universities will swiftly follow its lead. I certainly hope they do - because every other college and university on the planet will undoubtedly follow suit.
The very next step after that should be that the state and national governments which provided funding for the researchers whose articles are still locked behind Elsevier's paywall demand the company surrender them to the public domain.
And fuck Elsevier's shareholders. They've been gorging at the public trough for far too long, as it stands ...

--
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1. Re:Good! by Uecker · 2019-03-02 10:25 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, excellent.
  Most of Germans research universities already cancelled their contracts and also Max-Planck and Fraunhofer societies:
  https://www.projekt-deal.de/
  It is nice to see that the UC system follows suit.
Re: Greed-Elsevier "citation" by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 08:32 · Score: 0

That's the one, but a much bigger version.
Re: Commiefornia by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 08:46 · Score: 0

Maybe once you manage to figure out the orange man really is bad, they can stop.
Re: Commiefornia by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-01 10:30 · Score: 0

It's funny because there hasn't been any liberals around here for years, it's pretty much all trolls and douchebros
Re: Commiefornia by CaptainDork · 2019-03-01 11:16 · Score: 1

And what did you just do?

--
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
No, you're wrong by TentativeFate · 2019-03-01 13:04 · Score: 1

You sound very confident, which is really bad when you're wrong.
First, let's take apart this "work at cost" thing. The cost for the publisher is virtually 0. Authors work free or pay. Reviewers work free. There's some administration, which $0.10 per download would easily cover (and then some). Instead they charge $35.95 per download (UC presumably pays less).
You're right that uploading papers to a free, popular pre-print server like arXiv is a great thing to do, except top Elsevier journals will reject your paper if you do.
So how can Elsevier afford to be expensive and get exclusive rights? That's the rent it extracts from publishing prestigious journals. Deciding which journal is prestigious is a hard coordination game. Even with a lot of effort (which researchers at UC and worldwide are exerting in various ways), it takes time to change the status quo.
UC simply feels, likely correctly, that the tables have turned far enough that Elsevier can now be taken out of the game.
1. Re:No, you're wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-02 17:01 · Score: 0
  
  If it's really free then perhaps you should set up your own publishing house then?