When academic societies keep their journals in the big publishing houses, what do they get in return?
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@koen_hufkens @brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
I agree that's an entry point for exploitation, but I'm less clear it should only be an implicit goal. If we believe fundamentally that participation (both as readers and authors) is too restricted to the global North, then we also need to do something about that. Societies seem natural agents in this, and support for journal access (in multiple ways) part of the solution?
If so there's still a potentially meaningful component there?
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Mikkel Roald-Arbølreplied to Ulrike Hahn last edited by
@UlrikeHahn @koen_hufkens @brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay My interpretation of what Björn’s writing is that non-members are all of us, not just readers. Heck, anyone who pays tax anywhere, because at the end of the day they are the ones who pay the bill. If many more societies opted out of the big publishing houses to open alternatives, we could slowly get rid of subscriptions, publication fees would fall drastically, and as such expenses would fall across academia - and eventually there would be more money available for doing actual science (perhaps even for grants for academic societies!?). So by “taking the money”, whether it is intended or not, anyone who’s not a member is worse off (and given the attention these issues are getting, I’d think that board members are not oblivious of this fact).
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Ulrike Hahnreplied to Mikkel Roald-Arbøl last edited by
@roaldarboel @koen_hufkens @brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay
that's how I read his comment too, but the key problem is the value extraction by commercial publishers, not funding via non members. The latter was always there, and, as you say, will always be there, which is why it seems like a red herring to me.
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Mikkel Roald-Arbølreplied to Ulrike Hahn last edited by
@UlrikeHahn @koen_hufkens @brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay I guess it’s a matter of scale, when using commercial publishers non-members pay *more* (if we go by profit margin alone, then 30-40% more).
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Mikkel Roald-Arbølreplied to jonny (good kind) last edited by
@jonny @brembs @j_feral @lschiff @[email protected] Yeah, makes sense.
Does this in effect also leave us in a place where big societies=bad and small societies=good?
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Ulrike Hahnreplied to Mikkel Roald-Arbøl last edited by
@roaldarboel @koen_hufkens @brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay
yes! but I still think the "member"/non-member distinction isn't a meaningful part of it. A good chunk of those member subscriptions will likely themselves have been paid out of institutional funds.
Th distinction makes sense if the journal itself offers something different to members than non-members (e.g., easier to get published), but I don't recall that being the case for PB&R (it might be now, but it wasn't then).
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@UlrikeHahn @roaldarboel @koen_hufkens @jonny @dstephenlindsay
Let me try and phrase it in a way nobody in real life would ever articulate it, maybe then it becomes clearer.
"Hey, everybody just loves our journal. This is a commodity, let's market the hell out of it and charge the max the market will bear. With these profits, we then pay for all the things that are of such luxurious irrelevance that none of our members in their right minds would ever want to see their dues used for it."
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@brembs @roaldarboel @koen_hufkens @jonny @dstephenlindsay
I understood your point the first time round. What I haven't seen is evidence that this is an adequate description of this case. How are we going straight from "Springer is making a unjustified profit" (which we all agree on) to "The Psychonomic Society is"?
I feel like an actual basis for that inference needs to be spelled out
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@UlrikeHahn @roaldarboel @koen_hufkens @jonny @dstephenlindsay
Most institutional subscribers pay for the Big Deals and only use a fraction of the journals they have access to. It's essentially extortion money that, e.g., SfN uses to host an annual lavish "Presidential Reception" to the tune of a few tens of thousands US$ for free to invited participants. The people/institutions paying for that largess have essentially no leverage against the prices charged.
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@brembs @roaldarboel @koen_hufkens @jonny @dstephenlindsay
I'm totally with you on the ethical problems of tax payer funds for academic glamour. But that issue is not specific to journals, and focussing on it, to me, is derailing discussion of the actual question: what would it require for societies to be able take back control and run their journals themselves.
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Ulrike Hahnreplied to Mikkel Roald-Arbøl last edited by
@roaldarboel @[email protected] @brembs @j_feral @lschiff @[email protected] that’s just one dimension of variation, no? academic discipline matters too: medicine and technology adjacent fields seem a completely different proposition to the humanities.
I don’t think a model of science or academia where each discipline is viewed as an island that needs to be self sustaining is a viable model, and that’s a dimension I’m missing in this discussion.
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Koen Hufkens, PhDreplied to Ulrike Hahn last edited by
@UlrikeHahn @brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel I think there is, but I'm not sure this should be "worked on" by commercial entities. I think that societies should be that, societies carried by members (for as small or large as it will get, not by a set agenda).
If the "reach" isn't good in the global south than this is call for introspection (of a journal or field), not a commercial opportunity.
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Koen Hufkens, PhDreplied to Koen Hufkens last edited by
@UlrikeHahn @brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel For reference, this is a major gripe of mine.
I think that over time academia has become very sensitive to corporate capture (and hype cycles). Where commercial services are no longer the means, but the end.
Most in academia are (blissfully) unaware of many of the dynamics at play (touching on business accounting, economics, philosophy of science, and IP law).
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@koen_hufkens @brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel Yes, whether the Psychonomic Society’s motive of finding a broader, more diverse readership was ultimately well served by PB&R’s move to Springer is a separate question (and it would be interesting to get figures on that if available!).
But the motive itself seems valid to me if I understand it correctly, and it suggest another way in which “running a journal” might be more than just putting something up on a web page.
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Timothy Elfenbeinreplied to Mikkel Roald-Arbøl last edited by
@roaldarboel Lots of great discussion in this thread that you've started. I can add a little from my experiences in the American Anthropological Association's publishing program. I was the managing editor of one of its journals, Cultural Anthropology, when it was allowed to leave the Association's partnership w/ Wiley to become an association-subsection-published OA journal. @culanth just celebrated the 10th anniversary of that transformation.
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Timothy Elfenbeinreplied to Timothy Elfenbein last edited by
@roaldarboel We published a special issue on OA right after the transformation: here's Ali Kenner (previous managing editor) reflecting on the long infrastructure development process: https://doi.org/10.14506/ca29.2.05. And me on the nitty-gritty details of the work of setting up a publishing operation: https://doi.org/10.14506/ca29.2.06. Each journal is embedded in a particular publishing culture, has specific constraints & goals, etc. etc., so this is just the story of how one journal negotiated its way.