[Wikimedia-l] (semi-OT) Open access "catastrophic" for Elsevier

[emijrp]

In the wiki-research mailing list we are talking about Open-Access journals
and new ways to publish and disseminate research results. A summary is
available http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Research_Ideas

2012/9/24 Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com>

> On 23 September 2012 22:24, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > On 23/09/12 05:24, David Gerard wrote:
> > > It's such a pity that Elsevier's attempt to legally block open access
> > > requirements [1] means that they must be destroyed utterly with not
> > > one stone left upon another and the ground salted. I'm crying real[2]
> > > tears here.
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2012/09/21/how-do-you-recognize-a-catastrophe/
> > >
> >
> http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/files/2012/09/Berstein-report-on-Elsevier.pdf
> > >
> > > The world's smallest violin is playing the world's quietest tune, at
> > > $39.50 a play for non-subscribers.
> >
> > According to the PDF, each published article costs them 1954 GBP, and
> > brings in a revenue of 3256 GBP. A very nice business to be in. They
> > already charge the authors a processing fee of 2000 GBP per article,
> > so they could break even with open access, without increasing the
> > author fee at all. That would be bad for investors, but the company
> > would survive. So maybe it's not quite time to dance on Elselvier's
> grave.
> >
> >
>
> I tend to agree with Tim Starling that Elselvier (and other for-profit
> journal publishers) still have a place.   The author's processing fee
> (which covers peer review and publication costs) that Elselvier currently
> charges would probably not even cover the cost of peer reviewing; they
> depend on sales to make up the difference. Remember that they bundle the
> less popular journals with the popular ones, to defray those costs across
> several publications.  Thus, the scientist in the little-known field whose
> professional journals are read by hundreds doesn't pay significantly more
> for "processing"  than the scientist whose professional journal is read by
> tens of thousands.
>
> Even open access journals will need to ensure that they charge enough to
> cover the costs of peer review, or their publications will be essentially
> useless:  even Wikipedia expects that sources used to back
> scientific/medical statements be from peer-reviewed journals. That cost
> will have to come from the researcher; the articles that David links to
> indicates that the "true" cost of peer review is more than double what most
> of these journals are currently charging as "processing fees".   A decrease
> in the number of peer-reviewed journals in any scientific topic area can
> have fairly disastrous effects on research: almost all research grants
> require publication in peer-reviewed journals.  If the number of journals
> available for consideration of publication is increasingly limited,
> scholars will have an increasingly difficult time publishing and may have
> to pay those "processing fees" to multiple journals before their report is
> accepted.  That's money that's being taken away from the actual science.
> It also increases the motivation to seek out research grants from
> organizations with deep pockets (including those in the private sector),
> and we all know that scientists who accept research grants from Big
> Business tend to be considered "sell-outs".
>
> There's no good answer here.  In an ideal world, there would be lots of
> Open Access journals with low processing fees that would publish good
> peer-reviewed scientific studies regardless of their "popularity".  There's
> a long way to go before this will make fiscal sense.
>
> Risker/Anne
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-- 
Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada. E-mail: emijrp AT gmail DOT com
Pre-doctoral student at the University of Cádiz (Spain)
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