Three huge scientific Publishers make million after million with content that belongs to the public who paid for it with their taxes. Why that is, where all those millions go and how we at PaperC might help set a new approach is going to be my topic of the week.
Some years ago, when I studied publishing and book trade in Leipzig, there was another tiny faculty on my campus, a faculty called “Library and Information Science” (it did not even have an english name back then), and from several boards in students representatives I knew some of these folks, actually for their somehow weird humor. The librarians. Some wore bags, stickers and t-shirts like this..
.. and all the fancy economy students, the brainiacs from computer studies and scientists all over university shook their heads at them – if they noticed the pale bookworms at all. And those very same pale bookworms now delight me unprecedentedly. This is why:
„60 percent of our budget“, says Wolfgang Zick, Head of Libraries at Technical University here in Berlin, “is spent on magazines and papers – the costs explode.” And adds: “In the last 10 years our budget increased by only 4% – while (more interesting) at the same time the publishers charged us 30 to 50% extra”. So far no deal, money has always been short for education and publishers these days face huge challenges, of course, everything gets more and more expensive.. but … but:
Wait! A short research reveals, that e.g. Elsevier, target of boycotts for many years now, has done it again! While, better say: because of the fact that!, authors and editors are not participating in the revenues, Elsevier announced another growth in their operating margin: 31% in 2005, 40% in 2011 and a total profit of 1,1 billion USD with only 3,27 billion business volume. Proudly presented by their spokesperson earlier this year.
How is that again? Very easy again:
University X has certain departments and therefor needs titles a,b and f in their library. Now guess what, of course they are happily welcomed by the publishers of scientific media but hey – if they really want a, b and f, they are likely to take c,d, and e with it, right? Sure they are and that’s why they will not get a contract for the titles they need but for the bundle. And considering the fact, that for example the magazine Tetrahedron is 20.000 USD per year you can easily sum up to the fact, that each of those unnecessary subscriptions eats up money that could be used way better! And who paid the people examining, writing, reviewing that content?
To cut it really really short: our taxes pay science and scientists.
The state, which is basically all of us, already paid for those research and knowledge - to cut it really really short: our taxes pay science and scientists, access to campus libraries, librarians and universities with their research centers itself. This is awesome and I love to pay taxes for that - but now how come, publishers make libraries pay for the access to the very results of that science again? And why do dozens of libraries nation- and worldwide fight for fair contracts without any chance of being heard? Because the publishing lobby was not challenged so far and why is that? Because a) libraries did not have the connections and the technique to track down their costumers needs and therefor could never prove what gets read and what is crap and b) there was no such thing as the internet before, bringing people all over the planet together, connecting them for the means of transparency and education!
Taking a stand for the freedom of knowledge and education – Open Access for the taxes!
Authors, other contributors and editors have started a long time ago to connect and publicly protest, 12.636 so far!!, now libraries follow. After several time-limited boycotts in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, finally the Technical University of Munich has resigned from all contracts with Elsevier for 2013 and encourages others to follow. But the underestimated librarians want more and there goes the debate: Why is aid money and funding for scientific work and research not bound to Open Access Publications only? Why do Springer, Wiley and others not offer bundles that equal the needs of their costumers? Why do those multimillion Dollar revenues have no impact on the situation in libraries and research centers? Why is there still no payment for thousands of contributors in the so calles Peer Review? Why does Elsevier not tell me publicly, how much a license would be if we at PaperC would, let’s say start some brain research? (USD35 per article) and so on and on and on.
Can a bookseller work with Elsevier?
We’re in a hassle here, because of course we need to sell Elsevier and other ebooks to our users if you need them – you’d go get them at Amazons otherwise or grab them for free anywhere else. Yet I go berserk when talking to a professor about putting his scripts to the platform and he tells me “no way, I have a contract” or, worse: “no way, I boycott companies you work for.” So while at the same time I am happy people finally stand strong for their rights and TheCostOfKnowledge takes a stand for them, it makes me sleepless and a little helpless. Here is what we do: we’re negotiating with all our publishers day in and day out so they finally might give us their (our, to be exact!) content, allow us to stream it into the flat rate and allow users to pay for what they need and that only. That’s one form of access everyone could live with and it is the first step we’re taking to provide fully Open Access to scientific research one day. Legally, crisp and useful, books first, scripts, papers and magazines second, third and fourth.
My inquiry at the management kept unanswered so far (well, I was told that my message was handed forward to the next management level) but we’ll meet some Elseviers at the bookfair in Frankfurt so there will be room for questions.. Give us a crossed finger, folks, there is room for change. And need.
Tagged: boycott, business volume, elsevier, libraries, library and information science, money, research, revenue, science, subscription, university
Before reading a scientific journal, the a) information must be generated (=science), b) the peer review has to be organized, c) the peer review has to be done, d) the content has to be verified and corrected, e) the stuff must be printed, bound an shipped in paper or bytes and f) it must be bought by the reader or the library.
What is tax payed? Of course a), if we neglect the 20-30% of private research, published together with public research in these journals. Part b) is payed by the publisher, increasing part of the costs because of the increasing pressure to publish (or perish). Than c) is payed by the employer, mostly the state if not private university, scientists in industry, scientists retired and so on. Again d) is part of the publisher, sometimes (shame on them) left to the author. Part e) is publishers job and part f) is payed by the tax.
Now, the formula with the reader paying all is (left side costs, right side price):
a+b+c+d+e=f
If the tax-payer pays a and c, the formula goes
b+d+e=f-a-c
That means: if the tax payer pays a and c directly, the costs of publishing the journal for the publisher decrease and so will the price for the library. Or – in other words – tax payers do not pay f+a+c, but they pay what is at the right side of the equation.
I always wonder why especially scientists and university librarians always get wrong with this small and easy equation.
No question, I would love to get the benefits of elsevier. But to cut these obscene benefits, it would be enough to sharpen the anti-trust law and to use it passionately.
(By the way, an increase of journal prices of 40% in 10 years is nothing. An increase of the budget of 4% in the same time is less than nothing. Tax payers fault.)
As you may have expected posting this (thank you for taking the time) I disagree in many points to say the least. You approach is basically a great way to get people to understand things (from a publishers POV) but
b) “organization of peer review” is one of the major criticized tasks in the process because e.g. Elsevier offers the platform and infrastructure to do so but has failed in granting benefits from participating: 12.600 former participants have that high up their lists of blood sucking from contributors.
d) makes me laugh. If you wanna be printed it’s your turn or your peers turn to correct and verify your content – you may even upload your lay-outed master version and nothing else. Period.
finally: e) printing, shipping, factoring. Well – do you see something? This is stuff, any service provider may do without cashing it into a 40% operating margin and (digital) this is stuff that perfectly well matches any high end technical platform provider.
So basically, the publisher does .. well, a title b) and e) and he or they, in this case, do e) for 1,1 billion USD a year and that pisses authors of even more so since e) is going to be organized by third parties for a fraction of what it is now.
Again: those 1.1 billion are the result of leaving authors work plus review and lay-outing unpaid while charging libraries 300k annual for content they don’t need and use. This is robbery.
I would never argue about the question, if the prices of elsevier et al. are to high or not. This is business and they have a bonanza. Time to think about regulation with antitrust law (i am repeating).
I just pointed my finger at your argument “But now how come, publishers make libraries pay for the access to the very results of that science again?” to show, by separating the different parts of the process, nothing is payed twice, but doubtlessly some points are payed to much.
Why is this important? Because we are NOT talking about a problem of the system of scientific publishing, but we are talking about an addiction of scientists to a small number of publications and an shameful abuse of this addiction.
For 90% of the scientific journals it is different and they generate normal to subnormal benefits. That’s why I prefer talking about a special problem of some publishers but not a problem of publishing.
Of course a – e could be done by the scientific community on its own. But the cost will be still f. And as we see in the development of the library budget of 4% in 10 years, if a-e will be done by the scientists on their own, library budget will be cut and the staff of the universities will have less time because of the new tasks they take.
Okay, so I was imprecise. Good. We have figured out two ways to put this straight:
1) “Some let’s-say-ten-percent-well-known publishers make libraries and therefor the public pay for the access to the very results of (formerly paid from tax) science.” (I like the sentence) or
2) “Publishers add a little value to the results of tax-paid research by making them available for the masses and charge ridiculous, shameful fees for it because a lot of people depend on them.”
Number one says: This is a call to arms, folks, I put it simple: get it.
Number two says: “Well, as long as there are plenty of dumbos our there applying to the publishers’ rules, it needs law to prevent this.”
Well, wait – I do NOT NEED LAWS for that kind of stuff and I expect everybody in the world (of publishing haha, because we’re so nice, culture, education, 7%, you know?) to not need commandments either. I mean – pardon – is something “wrong” because a threatening lawsuit tells you it is? OR do people, well-educated people for that matter, have brains and conscience for questions like that? This is what I am asking for and I am afraid the answer is “yes, they have brains and conscience but they’ll not use em unless they’re forced to” .. Call me naive, I sure am, but I thought, this whole boycott-thing wasn’t necessary – but now that it started I hope it works.
Hmm. For me it looks less difficult. Some journals are incredible expensive and nobody stops reading. Why? Because scientists need to be published in these journals because scientists need to read these journals. So stop reading and then the stream of articles to be published there will stop.
Why does this never happens? Because those, who love the journals, the scientists, are not those who pay for the journals.
I asked a librarian: why do not just stop buying? He: we have to buy what scientists want. But why should they stop wanting these journals.
There are some ways to stop this waste of money:
- antitrust law: abuse of market power for unjustified prices
- stop of ordering journals with a price increase over x% per year
- stop of bibliometrics as base for financing scientists or advancement
And there are some propositions which won’t help to stop this:
- open access mandatories
- boycott
- Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht
- call to arms
Disagree, again in some points: it is not true, that no one stops reading those magazines, as it is not true, the no one stops contributing. The whole lot of 12.600 authors have come to the conclusion, that they maybe need to be published in those magazines but no longer what to. This is boycott and I consider this being success. This is call to arms and I consider this being necessary. Why provoking lawsuits when mere consciousness provides solutions? Why not supporting those scientists by providing the platform and infrastructure publishers provided? Why not guarantee creative commons that include Performing Rights for deuxieme and serial publications? How is it, that you consider OA mandatories needless while in 4 easy steps we could calculate a model of well-working revenue share without any publisher given the right platform? To be honest I was just allowed to make an appointment with Prof. Guenther Ziegler, who I consider being the head of the German tribe of the movement regarding his latest interviews in brand1 and others. If you can’t win them, beat them. What you think?
No doubts, there is a boycott and a call to arms. But is something going better? There are boycotts against Elsevier since 2002, getting stronger since last year. But as you reported: 31% profit and I see no change in politics there. According to an research made by Handelsblatt, it does not looks very effective. As a publisher of scientific Journals, I hope it will, but I doubt. If it would be only a question of printing articles or putting them on a server, it would be easy. But its a question of renommee, and thats what people get publishing with Elsevier.
For Open Access: its a good thing, if articles are payed. But mostly they are not. And as PEER Study shows, it will take years to change the situation, because authors nowadays dont care, dont want, dont trust in OA.
For the moment, the Big publishers buy one jounal after the other and small publishers get lost between the pressure of the big and the poltics of librarians and scientific associations. I am afraid, the only result up today of the call to arms is that the big publishers are bigger, stronger and richer than ever.
We’re close to it: it’s just while you say: “it will take years to change the situation” I say: those years just started.
While you say: “authors nowadays dont care, dont want, dont trust in OA.” I say: _Some_ do.
It’s those years and comes I lay my hope and trust in -I don’t think in “for the moment” categories. I am not even thirty, I have plenty of time
All journals should have the right to exist, but all should also have to work for it equally hard.
The other day I downloaded a paper from the CERN Open Access repository for free, then googlescholared (buzzword) the title and was re-directed to Elsevier who wanted to charge $34 for exactly the same title in PDF format.
The core of the problem, me thinks, is the career promoting value of being published in a major scientific publication. This is what authors, taxpayers and readers pay for.
Thus all we’d have to do is find a new recognition model, another peer review system and a different remuneration method. Sounds simple and would be simple if there weren’t so many overlapping open access organizations, fewer competing aggregators and less jealousy between academies.
A possible solution would be for lead scientific institutions (one per discipline) to get together, form (another) group, designate single worldwide access points (one per discipline) in cooperation with major libraries (e.g. Library of Congress) and spend some money to advertise these access points in order to give them the necessary weight and renown in the international academic world.
It might take a whole generation, a new spirit of collaboration and/or industry backed monetary pressure to accomplish this. Laws won’t help since they are never internationally binding.
I love that post, John – sorry for the belated reply!
There is so much in it about the background (I had no idea there was jealousy among universities – what about? like “they are in the magazine, we’re not?”) and my fav point: the very definition of the who is who in the academic world, being published by the majors. A Professor friend of mine told me that “once you’re not showing (off) some Elsevier in your CV you may find yourself just non-existing in the academic world” congratulations.. I come to the impression, that the future OA library is run by the writers of the article (or a head-institution run by) themselves – it has a peer review and deals with a certain subject, overlapping issues link to a container-like sub library with access from both sides. Well and though we are a company that needs to make some profit with selling eBooks or other forms of significant ROI, we’d love to offer our platform – not necessarily under the domain paperC.com but as a solution: here is the reader, here is the library, here are the tools, here is the API, go for it. I am going to talk to a professor who’s in the movement soon and we’ll try and figure out how to get an independent, networked, OA, discipline based platform running – for a start mathematics. I hope the whole subject finally get’s vital to the publishers because I highly value the cleverness of their business model but I just don’t think it is right to do business like that. You mentioned that $34 issue.. well.
I’d love to stay in touch, I like your approach and openness a lot,
katja
Love your response. We seem to have a lot in common (besides not being taxpayer sponsored).
You publish for a living and you are concerned about the benefits for the end user. We share that concern (also for a living) and want to make sure that everything that is being published anywhere follows the pattern of the “well-behaved document” (google this).
We believe that catalogue data that travels with the document facilitates automatic library recording. With the right tools the user does not need to have the wherewithal to dig for metadata from repositories to easily build his own knowledge base. This may, however, require some convincing and/or education of all parties involved in the publishing chain, from author to faculty to publisher to library.
You work on mathematics, I’ll start with nuclear physics – let’s see how far we get in changing the CV value your Professor friend mentioned.
BTW if it wasn’t for the jealousy we would have just one OA source (and perhaps one aggregator) per discipline and everybody would exactly know where to find what he/she is looking for. Have I put my foot in my mouth?
John m.
Well, to be honest, I already found the well-behaved-document, googeling you! And I’ll have a read before making a decision about where who put his foot. *simling
See after I gained some knowledge, no need bothering you with too many questions about it before getting on. One more: what are the biggest players in you field and: do they take you for serious?
Our customers include such international organizations as UN, WHO, ILO, UNAIDS, CERN et al for whom we have regularly produced interactive CDs containing hundreds of documents in multiple languages, complete with PDF-based tables of contents. All documents are rendered well-behaved by us.
Yes they seem to have taken us seriously since they came back for more.
But we no longer do the PDF thing, but instead offer digi-libris Reader with which it is less expensive to produce and allows the user to update and add own (downloaded) content without having to re-index the whole collection each time. This is new and it will still be a week or two before we go live and offer the product to a wider audience.
John m.
[...] I had a pretty exciting discussion with one of our users, John who ended up asking me to google “the well-behaved document“, which I did, doing so [...]