Making Journals Free
Hm... I mostly read the introduction and have little interest in the rest of the work, as the introduction was a massive letdown. Especially the section on parasites of academic research. (Not only but partially because of the aggressive wording, making it read as an opinion piece masquerading as semi-scientific work.)<p>The analysis mentions the prestige of the journals as a (figurative) side note, but personally I believe that is the main part they sell to authors. It is also the reason why breaking the stranglehold is so hard and why the &quot;just put it online&quot; proposals&#x2F;solutions I heard so often over the years didn&#x27;t just magically dissolve publishers<p>The other part is the failure of an analysis in spoilage of public money. Comparing the margins to &quot;giants like Google, Apple or Amazon&quot; is meaningless, unless there is a reason to assume those giants have large margins for some reasons. First google result on high profit margin companies [1] goes from 42.9% up to 55% for the top 10, so even in a larger context the up to &quot;close to 40%&quot; is quite high. Although I am not sure how many of those top 10 are monopolies, which is implied by the conclusion from the 40%.<p>They also imply publishers don&#x27;t really do anything anymore, while discussing those high margins. So what <i>are</i> they spending those 60% on?<p>Don&#x27;t get me wrong, I am not a fan of expensive publishing and subscribing for scientific journals and I think every author should use their rights to publish their works on arxiv and their personal and university website. I think the current system is a waste of time for many scientists in many ways (god did I hate rewriting the same paper for multiple conference tempaltes&#x2F;lengths because of minor issue-rejections) and to some degree also money! I was in the &quot;favorable&quot; situation of not having to care about my scientific career in the final years of my phd, so I could publish in places without much regards to their prestige. But I believe the discourse does need a different direction. The later sections might address these issues and some have already been put into action.<p>Journals have a &#x27;monopoly&#x27; on Prestige: Scientist hurt themselves by not going for reputable journals. Big funding agencies must require open publications or arxiv use or whatever to force journals to make exceptions on copyright transfer and scientists from being too lazy to use their rights to make their papers available. (Something I heard from many researchers.)<p>Some copyright transfers already have exceptions because US public funding requires something similar to this (at least that is what I got from reading the copyright form, I never worked with US public funding). So there is leverage that works.<p>If you want me to hate publishers for wasting public money, don&#x27;t just tell me their profit margin is oh-so-high and they don&#x27;t do anything because they no longer perform lectoring and type checking. Tell me what they <i>do</i> do with the remaining money and then, if you can, convince me that it is not worth anything or why it should not be handled by a private institution.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ibisworld.com&#x2F;united-states&#x2F;industry-trends&#x2F;industries-highest-profit-margin&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ibisworld.com&#x2F;united-states&#x2F;industry-trends&#x2F;indu...</a><p>edit: after reading some more, especially the recommendations, I still feel mostly let down. The recommendations seem to me, to consist mostly of wishful thinking and pushing on the wrong end or simplified so much that they become worthless.<p>If you bury the important parts in the middle of a sea of unhelpful ones, they will get lost. The state of things did not just happen to be that way because people hate open knowledge. Project based positions and time limited contracts are a huge problem created through the whole structure of academia and its financing and will not be changed by &quot;try to create more long term positions&quot;.<p>Even the good recommendations suffer from these problems. E.g. &quot;For universities, research institutions, research funders, demand the results of
research to be published in diamond open-access journals.&quot; I believe only one of those groups has the actual power to demand this in a meaningful way.<p>Finally the one recommendation I hate the most: &quot;For internet service providers who are forced to block Sci-Hub, block in return the publishers who have sued Sci-Hub&quot; no please don&#x27;t. I believe ISPs should only restrict access when required to by law or courts and not insert their personal feelings about what those laws should be. But especially not as retalliation for lawsuits.