Gerard takes on JSTOR, purt'near calls them liars Options

[thekohser]

David Gerard assesses JSTOR as a "problem that needs dealing with", and he goes on to ponder ways by which the entire "proprietary journal system" could be brought to its knees.

[lilburne]

David Gerard assesses JSTOR as a "problem that needs dealing with", and he goes on to ponder ways by which the entire "proprietary journal system" could be brought to its knees.

He could try getting academics to provide articles for WP. But didn't he tell them all to fuck off, or something?

[Sololol]

Too long has the world suffered under the tyranny of these "professors" and "professional academics"! The intellectual prolateriat will rise up and overthrow their masters!


...maybe I huffed too much roofing tar at breakfast but I have no idea what Gerard is talking about or why JSTOR will be the first up against the wall.

[Ottava]

David Gerard assesses JSTOR as a "problem that needs dealing with", and he goes on to ponder ways by which the entire "proprietary journal system" could be brought to its knees.

Why is Gerard even still allowed on that list? All he does is troll with the most inane anarchist rambles. They need to give him the boot and not allow his type anywhere near the internet.




Lilburne

He could try getting academics to provide articles for WP. But didn't he tell them all to fuck off, or something?

To be glib, that was ArbCom's job, and they loved that job.

This post has been edited by Ottava:

[Text]

More gleeful dancing on the skulls? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[dtobias]

It's not actually the academics being opposed or attempted to be undermined here... academics don't actually get paid (in general) for writing, publishing, or peer-reviewing articles. Rather, it's the parasitical business of commercial corporate academic publishers, who charge extortionate prices for commoners to see the papers the academic authors submitted for free, that is being opposed. This business model was arguably useful in the days when publication required shifting huge mounds of paper, but is rather useless in the Internet age.

[thekohser]

...academics don't actually get paid (in general) for writing, publishing, or peer-reviewing articles.

Though, you have to admit, those functions are almost always a part of their job description, and lacking those activities, they are likely not to obtain tenure and will remain in the lower-paid tiers of the academic system.

That some Wikipediots are made nauseous by the fact that the "commercial corporate academic publishers" have elected to maintain standards -- standards that actually (gasp!) cost money to construct and enforce -- is not really the publishers' worry.

One day, when we are drowning in arts, scholarship, and entertainment that is wholly the output of crappy "open access" or "free culture" or "whatever you want to call it" movements, we'll look back in awe at how much more sensible that phrase "you get what you pay for" seemed.

[Milton Roe]

David Gerard assesses JSTOR as a "problem that needs dealing with", and he goes on to ponder ways by which the entire "proprietary journal system" could be brought to its knees.

He could try getting academics to provide articles for WP. But didn't he tell them all to fuck off, or something?

Yes, Gerard does indeed appear to be a "Compleat Idiot," inasmuch as there's no difference between a proprietary journal system and a proprietary any-sort-of-business. Proprietary=owner (that's what the Latin word means). All these "property=theft" advocates quickly understand the concept of "property" when it's THEIR stuff you're trying to take away from them. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hrmph.gif) One more example of hypocrisy.

So. What can we do to help take out the proprietary journal system?

Well, Gerard, you can start an academic journal yourself. Of course, you'd have to pay some money in capital costs, even if it was an e-journal, and then actually do some work to get it up and going. And then, would not appreciate not getting paid by the people who read the papers you publish.

I wonder (not for the first time) what the hell it is that Gerard actually does for a living?

The problem with JSTOR is not that it charges money, but that it has too little competition and is overpriced. Somebody needs to pay for article quality-control and their upkeep on database/servers, and that should be the people who read and use the articles (if they are students, then somebody needs to pay these expenses for them as a deliberate society education-fee, not socialize them wholesale into the entire society, or (even worse) decide that the providers should be screwed by ripping them off).

Right now, JSTOR's market share for the journal-access-market, is rather like the early days of Microsoft and its PC OS market share, but without NEARLY as much reason to hold on to the market share of journal-access that it still has. So far as I can tell, it merely survives through a sort of founder effect complete with early cartelization, which prevents coalition of effective alternatives. Sort of like...... Wikipedia. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif) And there are many other parallels also, such as the salaries of the non-profit JSTOR officers, and that of WMF CEO Sue Gardner. Although JSTOR people apparently make more! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/happy.gif) Neener, Sue. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif) .

[Ottava]

It's not actually the academics being opposed or attempted to be undermined here... academics don't actually get paid (in general) for writing, publishing, or peer-reviewing articles. Rather, it's the parasitical business of commercial corporate academic publishers, who charge extortionate prices for commoners to see the papers the academic authors submitted for free, that is being opposed. This business model was arguably useful in the days when publication required shifting huge mounds of paper, but is rather useless in the Internet age.

Actually, the academics do benefit from the journals, as they are exclusive and allow you to gain more prominent positions. To remove the costs, then you would no longer have the journals. Academics can publish freely on the internet now. However, you don't have the prominent editors, the great peer review, and the backing of major academic institutions supporting that because you can't pay the great expense for such things. Without these, your article is the same as one written by a 5 year old.

Look at the journal Nature vs some kid's blog. At least one you go to with some confidence that the work is legitimate, where the internet is whatever. Just look at all the nuts who cram into a place like Wikipedia and chase out the real academics. That is the internet as a whole. These journals are the only bastion of academia and wont exist if they are "free".

[thekohser]

I wonder (not for the first time) what the hell it is that Gerard actually does for a living?

He works as a system administrator, mostly doing Solaris and some Linux, and devotes considerable time to volunteer work with Wikipedia and Wikimedia. He is from Australia and lives in London with his wife, girlfriend, assorted children and cats.

[dtobias]

I still think of the academic publishing industry as worse than the music industry in terms of the money going to people other than those who actually create the works being consumed, and the music industry is pretty bad in this regard: only a small percentage of the cost of a record/CD/MP3 purchased legally goes to actual musicians or songwriters, with most going to management and marketing types. These industries all have in common archaic business models built up in the days when bulky physical objects had to be manufactured and distributed, necessitating all sorts of expensive infrastructure that isn't needed nowadays for electronic distribution. It's notably primarily people connected with this management/marketing/corporate end who are shouting the loudest for draconian protection of intellectual property, supposedly for the sake of the poor starving artists, though they sometimes take such positions over the objection of artists themselves.

The still-useful role of gatekeepers to filter information and distinguish a crank's blog and a garage band's noise from the "good stuff" (however this may be defined) needs to somehow be recreated in the modern world; exactly what form this will take is yet to be determined, but hopefully it won't sap up nearly as much of the resources that go into the industry compared to the writers/artists/performers/researchers themselves.

[Milton Roe]

I wonder (not for the first time) what the hell it is that Gerard actually does for a living?

He works as a system administrator, mostly doing Solaris and some Linux, and devotes considerable time to volunteer work with Wikipedia and Wikimedia. He is from Australia and lives in London with his wife, girlfriend, assorted children and cats.

I knew that, but wanted to know the specifics. Why hasn't his job been outsourced to India yet? One presumes he knows some stuff about the particular systems he administrates, that he hasn't written down and made subject to publication so that anybody else can do his job. Information that wants to be freeeeeeee. I am disappointed. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wink.gif)

[Milton Roe]

Look at the journal Nature vs some kid's blog. At least one you go to with some confidence that the work is legitimate, where the internet is whatever. Just look at all the nuts who cram into a place like Wikipedia and chase out the real academics. That is the internet as a whole. These journals are the only bastion of academia and wont exist if they are "free".

Yes, but on the other hand, the cost of these journals does NOT mostly go to pay for the intellectual labor of those who separate the wheat from the chaff. Much of THAT work is done by "peers" who do work for free. Editorial and layup work is legitimate, but what fraction of the budget goes for that? It's very hard to find out.

These journals come out on paper, most of them, so generally you're paying too much for one, if you buy it that way (and you don't get a break if you want it only in e-form). The Nature Publishing Group (which publishes Nature) also publishes thirty other science journals or so besides Nature, and they, in turn, are owned by Macmillan Publishers, which does a wide range of other types of publishing. But which (you may be sure) doesn't screw its other authors they way they screw their science authors. Essentially, the deal in academia is that authors agree to work for free, in turn for academic credit. Macmillan/Nature keeps all the profit in turn for its reputation. Which has been earned on the back of its unpaid reviewers, mostly, not its amazing staff that churns out slick paper journals with pretty graphs and no spelling or grammatical errors.

[Ottava]

I still think of the academic publishing industry as worse than the music industry in terms of the money going to people other than those who actually create the works being consumed

....

How much money do you think is left over after all the printing costs? You forgot that the market is really low. A musician sells to millions of people. An academic might have an audience of 1,000 if they are lucky.

There isn't some corporate fatcat who is running everything in these presses. Most of the editors and the ones publishing -are- the same academics who contributed before. There is very little money in academic publishing at any end. They are barely making ends meet now, and removing things like JSTOR would bankrupt them completely.


Milton: "Editorial and layup work is legitimate, but what fraction of the budget goes for that? It's very hard to find out."

Actually, it isn't. Many Academic Universities have publishing houses. Many are public universities. Their expenses are public record. You can find out just how much the people are being paid. I know that the CUA press makes very little, and every one of the staff has a secondary job at the school. You have to remember, for every Oxford University Press there are 10,000 much smaller groups that had to downsize a lot. Even Oxford has taken a big hit.

This post has been edited by Ottava:

[Somey]

...These industries all have in common archaic business models built up in the days when bulky physical objects had to be manufactured and distributed, necessitating all sorts of expensive infrastructure that isn't needed nowadays for electronic distribution. It's notably primarily people connected with this management/marketing/corporate end who are shouting the loudest for draconian protection of intellectual property...

There's a difference with academic publishing, though. On the surface, it sounds like it would be a good thing to make scholarly journal articles available for free to the public, soon after (or even immediately after) publication. But a significant percentage of people in academia, particularly in the sciences, would still suffer quite a lot if their articles were made widely available that quickly - and financial and intellectual-property considerations aren't the only reasons. In some cases those things actually have very little to do with it.

Rather than try to explain it in the abstract though, here's an obvious case-in-point. Suppose you're a biologist on a decent college/university faculty, doing stem-cell research. If you're reasonably diligent and talented, you might publish one or two papers a year. Of course, nobody reads them except for other biologists, unless maybe one of them happens to be a "blockbuster" or "game-changer." A high-profile paper like that might garner you a prize or award, even a better job, but other than those possibilities it's likely to make little difference to your place in the funding food chain. In most cases it's still going to be publish, add-to-CV, apply-for-grant, deal with review process, continue your research if you win, maybe try again if you lose, lather, rinse, repeat. (And somewhere in there, hopefully get tenure, and maybe even a decent dental plan.)

The thing is, all of this is usually done in relative quiet and obscurity, but now imagine if all those papers about your otherwise highly controversial stem-cell research were to be readily available to the public, quickly found in Google searches, etc... Now what do you have? Right-wing religious nuts camping out in front of the science building, holding up placards accusing you of killing babies, writing letters to families of prospective students, etc., etc. Admittedly, you might have that anyway if you're unlucky, or if you have a tendency towards braggadocio or self-promotion. But most of the academics I know aren't like that.

There's a reason why college professors, etc., want to preserve the so-called "ivory tower" - it's because they'd rather actually be working than constantly trying to explain and justify their work to people who often have little hope of understanding it, much less supporting it. And if you take that ivory tower away, and make research more subject to popular whim, then less research - and in particular, less science - gets done. (Science tends to be more expensive, y'see, and therefore harder to justify in the first place.)

What's more, there are LOTS of rather unpleasant people out there who'd be just as happy as can be if that were to happen.

[radek]

I still think of the academic publishing industry as worse than the music industry in terms of the money going to people other than those who actually create the works being consumed

....

How much money do you think is left over after all the printing costs? You forgot that the market is really low. A musician sells to millions of people. An academic might have an audience of 1,000 if they are lucky.

There isn't some corporate fatcat who is running everything in these presses. Most of the editors and the ones publishing -are- the same academics who contributed before. There is very little money in academic publishing at any end. They are barely making ends meet now, and removing things like JSTOR would bankrupt them completely.


Milton: "Editorial and layup work is legitimate, but what fraction of the budget goes for that? It's very hard to find out."

Actually, it isn't. Many Academic Universities have publishing houses. Many are public universities. Their expenses are public record. You can find out just how much the people are being paid. I know that the CUA press makes very little, and every one of the staff has a secondary job at the school. You have to remember, for every Oxford University Press there are 10,000 much smaller groups that had to downsize a lot. Even Oxford has taken a big hit.

He's not saying the editors make money - usually they don't make any. He's saying the publisher makes money. And it's not true that "there is very little money in academic publishing at any end" (though I guess it depends on your definition of "very little"). While there aren't millions of fans who snatch up the individual issues, institutional sales (libraries etc). can bring in some nice dough.

And there have been cases of academic organizations "rebelling" against money-grubbing publishers. Can't remember off the top of my head but IIRC Elsevier had some problems with uppity academics once or twice.

As far as JSTOR goes, I don't think they're part of the problem. If you're an academic you get access to it for free anyway - and you're the intended audience. It's really the interested amateur that gets screwed but there's honestly not that many of those, and they can always take a trip to the library.

But Milton's also right about lack of competition in the journal publishing industry - though it's more of a oligopoly than a monopoly. And dtobias is right that to some extent these companies are following an outdated business model based on shipping thick paper books. But in the end the way it shows up is just in the utterly stupefying inefficiency of the acceptance-publication process (better in some areas than others). In some disciplines it's considered "amateurish" to even inquire about what's going on with your submission before nine months - nine fucking months - have passed. This has further implications - tenure becomes a lot more uncertain; even if you've submitted quite a bit, the roulette wheel is not going to be spun until two years later or something, so who the hell knows how you'll come out when that clock gets close to midnight.

(Edit: not to mention that getting a revise/resubmit two years after you wrote something is something of a joke - who can remember what they were thinking exactly two years ago?)

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[Ottava]

He's not saying the editors make money - usually they don't make any. He's saying the publisher makes money. And it's not true that "there is very little money in academic publishing at any end" (though I guess it depends on your definition of "very little"). While there aren't millions of fans who snatch up the individual issues, institutional sales (libraries etc). can bring in some nice dough.

Sorry, but that is just not true. Most publishers don't make money from academic work, and many journals are published on demand (hence the high prices) according to the wishes of the editors, as the editors are the ones who started and run most journals and a small print shop is all that exists of a "publisher".

Your confusion is like thinking Hollywood is the majority of movie making while ignoring that the vast majority are two guys with a cheap camera running around. We don't even have a Hollywood in academia publishing.

[Milton Roe]

He's not saying the editors make money - usually they don't make any. He's saying the publisher makes money. And it's not true that "there is very little money in academic publishing at any end" (though I guess it depends on your definition of "very little"). While there aren't millions of fans who snatch up the individual issues, institutional sales (libraries etc). can bring in some nice dough.

Sorry, but that is just not true. Most publishers don't make money from academic work, and many journals are published on demand (hence the high prices) according to the wishes of the editors, as the editors are the ones who started and run most journals and a small print shop is all that exists of a "publisher".

Your confusion is like thinking Hollywood is the majority of movie making while ignoring that the vast majority are two guys with a cheap camera running around. We don't even have a Hollywood in academia publishing.

The closest to scientific publishing Hollywood would be Elsevier, which publishes 2000 journals out of 70 offices in 24 countries. Also about 1900 books a year. They have 7000 employees and annual revenues of 1.5 billion pounds (US $2.43 billion). That's not in the Hollywood league of course, but neither is it chump change, and it completely gives the lie to the idea that there's no money in academic publishing. I don't really care what "most" scientific publishers make. How do you even define a scientific publisher? You can say it's two guys in a garage and claim that "most" don't make money. However, the journals that have a high impact factor are published by people like Elsevier and NPG (Nature Publishing Group). The last is a Macmillan division that publishes ~30 journals, so I cannot find out its finances, but if Elsevier makes a profit, I think it's safe to say that NPG does also. University libraries are starting to boycott Elsevier's prices, in fact.

Springer is another interesting German company that does mostly science books and high end science texts and reference books (no journals). Also some econ, law and social science stuff, but it's all heavily academic, and they look at author-credentials with a very heavy hand. They make $1.25 billion a year.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/commonsbasedr...th_focus_on_BGP
http://company.monster.com/elsevi.aspx

[Ottava]

The closest to scientific publishing Hollywood would be Elsevier, which publishes 2000 journals out of 70 offices in 24 countries. Also about 1900 books a year. They have 7000 employees and annual revenues of 1.5 billion pounds (US $2.43 billion). That's not in the Hollywood league of course, but neither is it chump change, and it completely gives the lie to the idea that there's no money in academic publishing. I don't really care what "most" scientific publishers make. How do you even define a scientific publisher? You can say it's two guys in a garage and claim that "most" don't make money. However, the journals that have a high impact factor are published by people like Elsevier and NPG (Nature Publishing Group). The last is a Macmillan division that publishes ~30 journals, so I cannot find out its finances, but if Elsevier makes a profit, I think it's safe to say that NPG does also. University libraries are starting to boycott Elsevier's prices, in fact.

Springer is another interesting German company that does mostly science books and high end science texts and reference books (no journals). Also some econ, law and social science stuff, but it's all heavily academic, and they look at author-credentials with a very heavy hand. They make $1.25 billion a year.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/commonsbasedr...th_focus_on_BGP
http://company.monster.com/elsevi.aspx

....

I'm a tad confused as to why you think Academia = Scientific. Many pop science journals are sold, which make far more money but they shouldn't be even considered in this discussion.

By the way, your example makes 880 millions total. "7,000 journal editors, 70,000 editorial board members and 200,000 reviewers are working for Elsevier" work for the company. Based on that many employees, less than 1 billion pre-taxed profit (remember, it hasn't been taxed yet or the rest) is incredibly tiny.

I find it odd how you refuse to look at the majority of academic publishers, which are universities.

Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, etc, are major ones. But there are thousands of university publishers, many with journals. The ones that do make a profit publish things other than academic journals (things like dictionaries that can sell a lot of).

Then there is this: "However, the journals that have a high impact factor " Most journals don't have a "high impact factor".

A journal like http://www.rc.umd.edu/ksaa/ksj/index.html the Keats and Shelley Journal would be an example of a top level journal representing my field. Although it is top of its specialty, it is incredibly tiny and has no budget. They make no money off of it. No one does. There are hundreds of similar journals in English literary criticism. That is just one field among thousands in "academia", each with similarly situated journals.

I think this is just a difference between those with exposure to academic presses and those without. Sigh.

This post has been edited by Ottava:

[Milton Roe]

I'm a tad confused as to why you think Academia = Scientific. Many pop science journals are sold, which make far more money but they shouldn't be even considered in this discussion.

With the example of Elsevier I am merely addressing your comment above:

There is very little money in academic publishing at any end. They are barely making ends meet now, and removing things like JSTOR would bankrupt them completely.

There is money to be made at the high end, and Elsevier makes it. Thus, your comment is refuted and batted out of the ballpark. As for the low end, I don't really care if Lesbian University publishes the Journal of Marxist Feminist Critique of English Romantic Poetry, circulation 200 (okay, desktop printrun 200), so that aspiring academic ladder climbers at Lesbian U. can eventually get tenure there, with a longer CV. Big deal. I don't think it has much to do with JSTOR, and to the extent that it does, it shouldn't. "Academic publication" of this type is pretend publication. It is not written to advance knowledge or the culture of mankind, but so that somebody can advance in a completely pretend system of merit, by means which ape the way it is done in the sciences. It is tennis played with the net down. It is Potemkin Village. It is "cargo-cult academia" by analogy with cargo cult science. So what if there exists one more or less article about how Lord Byron was actually a terrible male chauvanist?

I admit, to be sure, that some of this stuff may have something to do with "academia" in the formal sense of the word (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/yecch.gif) , but also add that that part of academia which isn't natural science might as well be state-funded religion or (at best) state-funded fine arts or sports patronage. Again, it doesn't concern me because there is no objective way to judge it, and many many ways to game it, and if it is subsidized by JSTOR's policies for the science journals, so much the worse. The necessity to provide welfare for these little humanities journals are not an argument for why JSTOR should be expensive. And yes, JSTOR IS expensive to ordinary individuals not associated with major institutions-- i.e., people not climbing an academic ladder somewhere but still doing real science and writing real patents for real business applications-- such as myself. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hrmph.gif)

By the way, your example makes 880 millions total. "7,000 journal editors, 70,000 editorial board members and 200,000 reviewers are working for Elsevier" work for the company. Based on that many employees, less than 1 billion pre-taxed profit (remember, it hasn't been taxed yet or the rest) is incredibly tiny.

I don't know where you got the 880 million figure, except perhaps the 880 million Euro figure for operating profit of Elsevier-Reed from the Elsevier Wikipedia article. According to that article, in 2006 Elsevier itself (the science arm) made 581 million Euros pre-tax profit or US $825 million. That is from gross revenues of $ US 2.43 billion (my cite is above), and it is before taxes but AFTER operating expenses, which includes (of course) all overhead, including employee salaries. The people you name above are all volunteers except for the paid staff, and if you're able to divide the 2.43 - 0.825 = $1.6 billion operating expenses by 7000 people on-salary, you can see that there's the potential for some very good salaries there (it comes out $229,000). Of course, not all overhead is paid in salaries, as Elsevier maintains offices and does have paper publication costs. But their editors do start at about $60,000 and go up from there.

Incidently, assuming a international corporate tax averaging 25%, Elsevier's pre-tax profit of $825 million becomes (assuming they have litttle debt) $618 million net income or bottom line. That's what the stockholders take home as dividends. $600 million in annual take-home is real money.

As for your comment about how the pre-tax profit is incredibly tiny for Elsevier, as usual you have no idea what the you're talking about. Elsevier's profit margin is 825 million/2430 million = 34%, which is damned good for any business, and excellent for a publishing company. The top four general book publishers (e.g., Random house) only make profit margins of 8% or so, and 10% in the days before the economy got bad. So compare with your poor academic publisher, here.

I find it odd how you refuse to look at the majority of academic publishers, which are universities.

Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, etc, are major ones. But there are thousands of university publishers, many with journals. The ones that do make a profit publish things other than academic journals (things like dictionaries that can sell a lot of).

Then there is this: "However, the journals that have a high impact factor " Most journals don't have a "high impact factor".

A journal like http://www.rc.umd.edu/ksaa/ksj/index.html the Keats and Shelley Journal would be an example of a top level journal representing my field. Although it is top of its specialty, it is incredibly tiny and has no budget. They make no money off of it. No one does. There are hundreds of similar journals in English literary criticism. That is just one field among thousands in "academia", each with similarly situated journals.

I think this is just a difference between those with exposure to academic presses and those without. Sigh.

Oy. Had you started out talking about the poor obscure downtrodden poetry criticism journals, you would have been fine. But alas, you had to overgeneralize into academic areas you know nothing about, and then proceded from there to step on your dick. So I pointed that out. You're welcome.

I would, BTW, recommend to anybody reading along to look at the WP article on Elsevier, which contains accounts of entire boards of some of their 2000 journals resigning to found their own competing journals, due to Elsevier's outlandish charges to libraries (which have in turn resulted in libraries refusing subscriptions). These new independent journals will now be free to deal separately with not only JSTOR, but also JSTOR's competitors. Good for everyone. And if the Journal of Social Text Deconstruction and Keats Study gets clobbered in the process, that's me over there, shedding a great fat tear. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wink.gif)

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing