Publishers Screwing the Scientist? No More!

In the world of academic publishing nothing is like it used to be. With the arrival of the internet, free (open) access to scientific literature has more and more turned from a wondrous fantasy to a wonderful reality. Some old publishers, however, still pretend to be blind to the clear writing on the wall. They continue to cling to the good old tradition of owning all the articles they publish – everyone who wants to have a look at their papers is kindly asked to provide some cash first. But, as a matter of fact, all the work associated with a scientific article (doing the experiments, writing the manuscript, peer-reviewing, editorial tasks) is done by scientists, for free.

In a recent The Guardian article, Mike Taylor from the University of Bristol therefore writes, “The result of all this free and far-below-minimum-wage professional work is journal articles in which the publisher, who has done almost nothing, owns the copyright and is able to sell copies back to libraries at monopolistic costs, and to individuals at $30 or more per view”. This sales strategy already had some minor consequences. In 2004 for example, the Stanford University senate encouraged its libraries “to scrutinize the pricing of journals and to drop those where pricing decisions have made them disproportionately expensive compared to their educational and research value. Special attention should be paid to for-profit journals in general and to those published by Elsevier in particular.” Apparently, it didn’t hurt Elsevier too much, who publish the for most universities indispensable Cell and The Lancet. Every year they continue to make several million euros profit.

But it's not only their outrageous pricing policy that also includes selling their journals to libraries as 'bundles' instead of single subscriptions, Elsevier has a long list of further 'misdeeds', including 'fake scientific journals', corrupt ratings of their books at online retailers, prohibiting university libraries to provide their users with electronic copies of journal articles and supporting anti-open access bills like SOPA, PIPA and the Research Works Act.

For some time, researchers are sick of this behaviour and there has indeed been some rebellion against Elsevier in the past – albeit without much effect. Very recently, however, a new resistance movement is forming. Mathematician Timothy Gowers from the University of Cambridge set the ball rolling (again). In his blog Gowers's Weblog, he asks, “why do we allow ourselves to be messed about to this extraordinary extent?“ He adds, “I am not only going to refuse to have anything to do with Elsevier journals from now on, but I am saying so publicly. I am by no means the first person to do this, but the more of us there are, the more socially acceptable it becomes, and that is my main reason for writing this post. I think that some people would be encouraged to take a stand if they could see that many others were already doing so, and that it would be a good way of making that stand public“.

In his blog post, Gowers imagined a website that would collect signatures and, on the very same day, http://www.thecostofknowledge.com was created. The website allows any similarly enraged researcher to “declare publicly that (he/she) will not support (publish, referee, do editorial work) any Elsevier journal unless they radically change how they operate”. This total refusal also has more advantages. John Baez, mathematical physicist from UC Riverside, commented in his blog Azimuth, “How often can you do something good by doing less work?”

As all mathematicians can probably confirm, there is strength in numbers. With this strength, maybe it's possible to overpower one of the ancient publisher giants. Currently, nearly 3,000 people have already signed “the stand against Elsevier” at The Cost of Knowledge. And certainly, their numbers will increase as rapidly as the subscription prices of Elsevier journals in the past.

Zoë O'Neill

Picture: Fotolia/Benjamin Haas