34 votes

Academic publishers face class action over ‘peer review’ pay, other restrictions

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10 comments

  1. [10]
    lackofaname
    Link
    Good. I have no background in law and can't speak to the merit of this, but I sure as heck hope publishers get taken to the cleaners on this classaction, and this can pave the way for reform....

    Good.

    I have no background in law and can't speak to the merit of this, but I sure as heck hope publishers get taken to the cleaners on this classaction, and this can pave the way for reform.

    There are a lot of ways the academic publishing system can be critiqued, but from a purely monetary perspective, where does all the money go?

    Want to publish? Pay the publishing fee. Want to read? Pay the access fee. And still, peer reviewers are asked to sacrifice their time for free?

    21 votes
    1. [2]
      first-must-burn
      Link Parent
      It was getting worse as I was finishing my PhD in the early 2010s. We were starting to see IEEE pushing for authors to actually assign the copyright to the IEEE. I believe this would allow them to...

      It was getting worse as I was finishing my PhD in the early 2010s. We were starting to see IEEE pushing for authors to actually assign the copyright to the IEEE. I believe this would allow them to pursue take down notices of "free" copies.

      Don't forget that much of the research funding is public funding. To then turn around and paywall the results should not be allowed. I would like to see the NSF / NIH / DOD put that clause into their funding grants: that any publication and all data must be freely available.

      13 votes
      1. WeAreWaves
        Link Parent
        Better include 3,000-5,000 in publishing fees per manuscript in the grant applications! A lot of this does happen at the institutional level - the university system where I work has some sort of...

        I would like to see the NSF / NIH / DOD put that clause into their funding grants: that any publication and all data must be freely available.

        Better include 3,000-5,000 in publishing fees per manuscript in the grant applications!

        A lot of this does happen at the institutional level - the university system where I work has some sort of deal with Elsevier where our open access publishing fees are waived, so all papers we publish at one of their journals is freely accessible. I don’t want to know how much money we’re paying them for this.

        9 votes
    2. [7]
      Weldawadyathink
      Link Parent
      I am not very experienced with academia, so what do publishers even do? The few times I have needed to use academic works, it’s just been a pdf or epub file hosted on a website, and sometimes a...

      I am not very experienced with academia, so what do publishers even do? The few times I have needed to use academic works, it’s just been a pdf or epub file hosted on a website, and sometimes a shitty JavaScript viewer. I could replicate most of that with a single S3 bucket for almost no cost. Add some super basic static site generation, and you can do everything a publisher does.

      Am I missing something? Is there something else publishers actually do?

      8 votes
      1. [3]
        Tannhauser
        Link Parent
        The good publishers will also (in theory) vet papers for scientific quality (and often novelty) through editorial review and peer review. There is a clear difference in general quality from a...

        The good publishers will also (in theory) vet papers for scientific quality (and often novelty) through editorial review and peer review. There is a clear difference in general quality from a paper published in a Cell Press journal compared to an MDPI journal, for instance.

        This is not me endorsing the publishers' general practices, however.

        15 votes
        1. [2]
          WeAreWaves
          Link Parent
          Yes, but this vetting is done for free by other academics. Being a peer reviewer is an unpaid part of the job.

          Yes, but this vetting is done for free by other academics. Being a peer reviewer is an unpaid part of the job.

          9 votes
          1. gpl
            Link Parent
            The 'benefit' of a journal is that it somewhat standardizes that vetting process. If a researcher comes across results published in a journal they are familiar with, they can at a bare minimum be...

            The 'benefit' of a journal is that it somewhat standardizes that vetting process. If a researcher comes across results published in a journal they are familiar with, they can at a bare minimum be familiar with the basic vetting that those results must have gone through. With preprints, for example, you are more relying on the reputation of the researchers who posted the article, which can be a problem for lesser known or junior researchers.

            Of course, there is no reason this vetting needs to be for-profit. In fact, open-access journals are becoming more prevalent in certain fields. In my field, for example, there is the Open Journal of Astrophysics, wherein files are hosted on arxiv, but they go through a normal peer review process and are vetted that way. This allows the journal to keep costs down but still provide the basic essential service they are meant to.

            5 votes
      2. [2]
        lackofaname
        Link Parent
        Shoot, I deleted my explanation of the publishing process before posting. Ill try to summarize; I got kinda long winded so maybe for the best. Publishing academic research is kind of the...

        Shoot, I deleted my explanation of the publishing process before posting. Ill try to summarize; I got kinda long winded so maybe for the best.

        Publishing academic research is kind of the cornerstone of the sciences. In theory it's more than just pay-us-and-get-published, it's the very system, particularly the unpaid peer review portion, that (ideally) vets the quality of research and upholds academic rigour, while disseminating knowledge. I say ideally because it's a system that can and has been manipulated by bad-faith actors (whether it's shitty researchers faking results, or shitty predatory publishers who will publish any old piece of sh#t for a fee), but it was designed with a good purpose, I suppose.

        Essentially a researcher:
        -asks a question, gets funding*, does the research
        -get results**
        -collates into manuscript
        -submits to a relevant journal in field for publication (balancing a journal's calibur vs. likelihood of getting accepted)

        After submission:
        -journal editorial board may reject outright
        -otherwise, they'll send it for peer review***
        -peer reviewers are other academics in related field, and they do this for free, basically to help maintain the system and aforementioned rigour
        -peer reviewers may recommend or not recommend for publication. They often give substantiative feedback: on the article's quality, soundness of arguments/discussion, or even as far as recommending more experiments/research
        -the researchers respond to the peer reviewers critiques and often make revisions, before hopefully being accepted for publication

        Originally it was all print publishing. Researchers these days access articles digitally, though I really have zero insight into how many journals do print in addition to digital.

        Notes and caveats:

        -My knowledge is from my time doing my masters a good number of years ago, and helping others submit their research. Im not in academia, and may be a little out of date. Also, my perspective is from biology/sciences. Other domains might operate a little differently.

        *Funding is often public, from government grants. I add this because paying to access articles is expensive, even when we've paid for the research through taxes.

        **Better get sexy (positive) results if you want a good chance at being published! Publishers often look down (reject) for negative (ie, lack of findings) results, even if that could theoretically mean something.

        ***During submission, you're often asked to name a couple people in your field with knowledge on the topic and who would not have conflicts of interest, this is often how the journal's know who to ask to volunteer for peer reviews.

        Edit, Im not sure I directly answered your question, but I hope I conveyed the idea that, at least to my understanding, it's not just a simple means of storing and sharing info, there's a fundamental need to apply an additional layer of academic rigour.

        14 votes
        1. Carrie
          Link Parent
          But in all of that, what do the publishers actually do that is worth the amounts they charge to publish/access the work ? I feel like in a nutshell they are facilitators to connect reviewers with...

          But in all of that, what do the publishers actually do that is worth the amounts they charge to publish/access the work ?

          I feel like in a nutshell they are facilitators to connect reviewers with submitters, which as you have mentioned, the submitters often identify the reviewers and non-reviewers themselves. So the selection process is not even done by the publishers. And then the reviewers do all of the heavy lifting. People even use phrases like, “my paper got rejected by the reviewers.” Not rejected by the editors of the publication.

          I say this not to suggest you approve of publishers or the state of things. It’s just a frustrating situation and I’m hoping you’ll tell me they do more than I think they do - but I doubt it.

          Lastly, why is it not considered double dipping or some sort of other financial offense that they get to exploit government funding to get the material to publish in their journals, and then charge people again (often universities) to use government money to pay to access your own work ?

          I wish these publishers would just be forced to go non-profit to at least reduce the optics of conflict of interest.

          2 votes
      3. Greg
        Link Parent
        Following on from the couple of great answers you’ve already had, the reason that these specific companies have such a stranglehold even when pretty much everyone who deals with them hates them is...

        Following on from the couple of great answers you’ve already had, the reason that these specific companies have such a stranglehold even when pretty much everyone who deals with them hates them is a question of prestige and reputation.

        The extra layers of process management they’re adding beyond just the file hosting are important, sure, and not trivial to do well, but they aren’t that much of a barrier to entry. The problem is that the big name journals have many decades of history and cachet dating back to the days when collating, communicating, typesetting, and distributing really were massive tasks rather than something we can all do to some degree from the devices in our pockets. Status is hugely important in academia - rightly or wrongly, it’s a big part of what sets you on the path to success or failure, and the status of the journals you publish in reflects very strongly on the perceived status of your work.

        You might well manage to build a startup that did every bit of the modern publishing job (including quality control and peer review) as well as or better than the incumbents at some massive discount on what they’re charging, but you’d be fighting a much bigger uphill battle on branding: when someone’s got a potentially career defining piece of work, saying “I published in Nature” is up there with “I competed in the Olympics”. Convincing researchers to forego that name recognition and all of the doors it might open for them is a tough sell.

        None of that is to say it’s impossible. The arXiv provides your pretty-much-just-an-S3-bucket style of publishing for free, and it’s a major resource in mathematics, physical sciences, and (especially) computer science; the lack of peer review is less of an issue when you can often pull the code from GitHub and verify the results yourself in an afternoon. There are also signs of meaningful change and some level of viable competition in the more formal, reviewed, vetted publishing space - this lawsuit itself is part of that - but it’s changing at the speed of cultural inertia rather than technical capability.

        8 votes