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.

[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.

[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:

[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?)

This post has been edited by radek:

[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.

[radek]

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.

It's probably true that most publishers don't make money from academic work, but then again, most ice skaters don't make money from ice skating. What's your point? We're not talking about some zines here, but big publishing houses like Elsevier.

Likewise I don't know what "on demand" journals you're reading but that's also not what we're talking about here (I don't even think those kind appear on JSTOR)

EDIT: Oh, I see this has already turned into an Ottava thread. Anyway, Milton handled it pretty well, Ottava is wrong and at this point is just engaging in his usual doomed "fight to the death" instead of finishing his freakin' dissertation. Go finish your dissertation Ottava.

This post has been edited by radek:

[Ottava]

It's probably true that most publishers don't make money from academic work, but then again, most ice skaters don't make money from ice skating. What's your point? We're not talking about some zines here, but big publishing houses like Elsevier.

They make up a tiny, tiny minority. I already demonstrated examples of the true exemplars of academic journals. They are done by universities at small level without millions of dollars and mostly printed on-demand. They sell books by the 100s, not the millions, and journals are no different.

Likewise I don't know what "on demand" journals you're reading but that's also not what we're talking about here (I don't even think those kind appear on JSTOR)

The Keats-Shelley Journal and those like it do appear on online databases. Most of those databases are used because of the small academic journals.

I think it is odd how you cling to Milton being correct when he is laughably wrong and contradicts himself. Then you attack me for not finishing my dissertation while acknowledging that I have a personal connection to the matter and you have no clue.


Somey, is it right that WR is being filled with the uninformed spouting whatever ignorance they can? Isn't that Wikipedia's major failing? I find it odd how those two are spouting off stuff that Gerard is spouting off. Can we just show them the door already?

I mean, look at this. Radek is either trolling or illiterate:

Don't be dishonest Ottava. He didn't say 2 million is the profit of "these groups", he said 2 million is the SALARY of one of the CEO's.

I never said that 2 million was the profit. There is no way to claim I did. "You provided the most profitable of all of these groups, and 2 million is the greatest figure?" That is what I said. It is clear that "2 million" referred to the CEO salary and the "most profitable" pointed to the company that would pay the most.

Then you have him outright lying:

"it is more than the CEO of Bank of America, Microsoft and a number of other big names make."

Because we all know that Bill Gates made 60 billion not running Microsoft, right? Or that the Bank of America individual being a brand new CEO was receiving all of his pay package there, right? Or that he didn't have to take a salary hit because BoA was involved in the bank bailout and there was a lot of negative press over CEO pay in the US. I mean, the nonsense behind it all is almost revolting. It is clear from looking at the list that not only do the majority of the CEOs make far more than 2 million dollars but the ones that don't tend to be making little because of political reasons or already made a lot as being stockholders (Steve Jobs, for example).

Then he says nonsense like this: "Huh? That's pretty funny coming from a guy who hasn't finished his dissertation."

Really, because he has even progressed through graduate school? Not from what anyone knows. Standard free kulture trolling.

This post has been edited by Ottava: