When academic societies keep their journals in the big publishing houses, what do they get in return?
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@brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel Bjoern, that “the road is paved with good intentions” was exactly the thought that motivated me to dig into the PB&R history in the first place. That history, I feel, is better served by Steve’s piece than your reductive explanation. I’d love to have more examples, but maybe we could actually look at this one? Were there plausible alternative routes for the society at the time? What would the options be now? I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on that
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
OK, I've read it. By and large, it sounded pretty much like other stories I've heard form other societies. Didn't change anything in my assessment. From my personal perspective, this is a very standard story witrh analogous thoughts and concerns in many societies.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
There are a few aspects that strike me as common themes (no particular order):
There always seems to be more "how can we continue doing what we have been doing without changing too much?" rather than "is this an opportunity to improve the things we are doing by doing them diffeerently?"
Another is that "communication" or "dissemination" is snyonymous with selling journals.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
A third and major common theme is that everyone seems more than happy, eager I would say, to charge members relatively less and instead take more from non-members to finance member benefits. I have rarely seen anybody even raising this as an issue, instead this is seen as a feature, not a bug.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
A fourth, related common theme seems to be that the people running the society seem to see it as a company, rather than a society: the money is the prime consideration and society function comes second. They ask: how can we get money for the society and then come up with things they can finance: satellite meetings, Family Care Grants, Awards, etc.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
This strikes me as odd: I'd imagine they would be asking: what is the core mission of our society and what could members contribute to this mission? After all, one would tend to think that a scholarly society is formed by like-minded individuals with overlapping goals and interests.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
In short, it seems a lot of these societies look like they're caught up between historical baggage and corporate group think. I say that in the most general terms and with no individuals in mind, of course. I'm just an outside oberserver.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
Whenever I hear stories like these, it strikes me how diverse the scholarly landscape really is and how some societies (it seems to me a minority, but I have no data) have found completely different solutions. Perhaps, they have asked themselves some of the following questions during their comittee meetings:
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
1. What is the core mission of our society and how can all members contribute to it?
2. There are more than 50k peer-reviewed journals. Is the continuation of our journal really necessary? If we need marketing and advertising to sell our journals, maybe the world doesn't really need them?
3. Do we increase revenue to pay for journals or do we decrease the costs of the journal or both? -
@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
4. How about the sunk cost fallacy?
5. How are other societies doing it? Some run diamond OA journals at nearly no cost.
6. Who needs paper journals?
7. Why not run a tender/bidding procedure to have corporations compete and lower prices? -
Koen Hufkens, PhDreplied to Björn Brembs last edited by
@brembs @UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel Opening the can of worms which is the needs vs wants basis of society.
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@brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel It seems obvious to me from Steve’s write up that the Psychonomic Society asked itself all of those questions and more. So a more useful question to me is how would the answers be different now, 15 years later, and why.
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@koen_hufkens @brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
and relatedly, Bjoern's point "that everyone seems more than happy, eager I would say, to charge members relatively less and instead take more from non-members to finance member benefits"
PB&R was, and is, a good journal. It has always had more readers than the Psychonomic Society has members.
I don't get the implied logic here at all: a journal like PB&R isn't some kind of club lounge that's there for the use of members.
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another question worth unpacking from Bjoern's list, I think, is "do we need paper journals?". I would have said "yes" 15 years ago, "no" 5 years ago, and now find myself hurtling back toward "yes" as the web crumbles, entire journals have gone offline, and the conservation problems (and costs) have really started to hit home. Thoughts everyone?
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Koen Hufkens, PhDreplied to Ulrike Hahn last edited by
@UlrikeHahn @brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel The thing pointed out mostly, and my comment, is that what is wanted is mostly more money. Everybody wants more money, regardless of the need or thoughts on how to dispense it.
Societies, departments, and individual labs often get sucked into Goodhart's law, where money as a metric becomes the target, not what the money can do.
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@koen_hufkens @brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel sure, but that didn't strike me as salient in the PB&R case, given Steve's write up. He notes the society having 3 main goals at the time: 1) increasing readership (especially outside North America), 2) taking away the need to run a business along with related oversight concerns (payroll, insurance, mortgage etc) and 3) staying solvent (pg 11).
All are hurdles of the kind Mikkel's OP asked about that stop societies transitioning
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Koen Hufkens, PhDreplied to Ulrike Hahn last edited by
@UlrikeHahn @brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel Point 1 is where the commercial platforms will shake you down (the rest also sort of follows from it). I would make this an implicit goal, not an explicit one.
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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.