Bishop Hill Monbiot on academic publishers
Aug 30, 2011 Journals George Monbiot is excoriating on the subject of academic publishers, and in particular their profits.
What we see here is pure rentier capitalism: monopolising a public resource then charging exorbitant fees to use it. Another term for it is economic parasitism. To obtain the knowledge for which we have already paid, we must surrender our feu to the lairds of learning.
With there being three big publishers, there is of course no monopoly as such, although of course one can argue that there is a cartel operating. With returns of 40%, one can make a good case that this is the case.
However, from where I am standing it looks more like yet another case of the state hosing down a private sector business with taxpayers' money. Lacking any incentive to reduce their costs it's hard to see the universities making any efforts to break the stranglehold of the big publishers - what's in it for them?
Reader Comments (51)
Andrew, in fact the universities are doing something about this. There is an organised campaign to threaten not to renew journal subscriptions unless prices are significantly reduced. I will try and find the details. What's in it for the universities? Well they have to pay very large subscriptions to get the journals in their libraries, in paper and electronic form.
Many individual academics are also taking a stand, for example by not submitting papers to certain journals.
OK here are a few links about this:
http://www.imperialcollegeunion.org/data/files/journal-pricing-policy-3715.pdf
http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/committees/senate/2010-11docs/S1078ScholarlyCommunications.pdf
http://felixonline.co.uk/?article=808
"I refer readers to peer-reviewed papers, on the principle that claims should be followed to their sources. The readers tell me that they can't afford to judge for themselves whether or not I have represented the research fairly. "
Did they only just start looking? That would explain a lot!
Yes well not all academic publishers are part of the Wiley-Elsevier-Springer robbery squad. Second, they get away with charging collosal prices because librarians are wet enough to let them. As discussion about the scholarly communications crisis has chuntered on (for at least 30 years) I've not seen anyone from the library side pointing out that they (university libraries) are about the only market for much of academic publishers output, so why aren't they the libraries dictating prices? Basically its another reprise on clever private sector ripping off nice but dim public sector, just as the computer boys charge billions for 'solutions' that don't as such work, and the defence contractors for planes that don't fly, even if they get delivered. In this case, the clever private sector have spent heavily to create the illusion that many of their publications are 'must-have' and since "you must have oh boy we can charge whatever we like!!" And they do. And when challenged, they claim the price is a function of costs which a) is balls and b) anyway big publishing treats itself so nicely its costs will be stratospheric.
I used to work for a company that was taken over by Reed.
They closed down highly profitable (35%) bits of the business that didn't match the 60% profit margins they operated the academic side on.
It's now possible to set up your own online-journal using open source software in next to no time.
In fact, if anyone were seriously interested I could get it going by 12am!
In these days of electronic publishing, the problem is not publishing, but finding people willing to create papers, to peer review those papers and then finding people who want to read the papers.
Mike, there are millions of "peer reviewers" out there. ALL papers can be published. It's not beyond the wit of man to make a rating and comment system of some kind. Actually StackOverflow, a software developer website, does this very well - managing people's reputations, answering questions and so on.
It won't happen of course, because somewhere, someone is making a nice profit.
Isn't the root of the problem that
a) so much academic research is funded by the taxpayer, and the grant-giving agencies want to see peer-reviewed papers published as evidence of their sensible choice of researchers and topics ?
b) around the world (certainly the First World) universities are increasingly following the US practice of linking job, pay and promotion to published research output ?
Hence a great deal of poor research is published, and university libraries feel bound to buy it (along with the better research, of course).
It's a massive gravy train funded by the taxpayer, who is very largely ignorant of the waste of resources. As we Bishop Hill regulars know a lot of the rubbish research is produced by climatologists.
Publishers want their share of the pie, naturally. Since universities have already had a very large slice themselves, thank you, before publication, why should they whine when their libraries have to pay a bit over the odds for the resulting blizzard of papers.
The people who should be complaining, vociferously, are the taxpayers.
Speaking as a UK academic, I think there is much in what you (all) say.
But please get used to the idea that increasingly, with the onset of "full fees", UK universities are not going to be (or regard themselves as being) "in the public sector" in the sense in which many people use that term.
Rather we are going to be again, what we should IMHO always have been, "not-for-profit private institutions".
I agree with the general tenor of the article and the postings here so far, but it isn't a bit rich for Monbiot of all people to come up with
One could add "or pester the researchers to death with FOI requests!"The argument about open-ness and accessibility cuts both ways.
Your Eminence,
I am surprised by your concluding comment.
"Lacking any incentive to reduce their costs it's hard to see the universities making any efforts to break the stranglehold of the big publishers - what's in it for them?"
As a former academic librarian I completely agree with the comments by PaulM. For most British university libraries budgets have been inadequate for decades. In the past space was a major limiting factor but as far as current journals are concerned that is no longer the case since they are nearly all available electronically. However cost is still a limiting factor. That applies even more to libraries in developing countries.
Academics supply journal publishers with their material, usually free of charge, and then the institutions those academics work for have to pay the publishers so that their staff and students can get access to the material.
One of the main reasons why universities have not done much about that situation is that there is a pecking order for academic journals. Academics naturally want their papers to appear in prestigious publications and it would take a while for any new journals founded by universities (or consortia of universities) to acquire the desired status - or so it is argued.
The issue is one of reputation, as Roy says. Academics, particularly junior ones, are only going to submit their good papers to well recognised journals. This is an immensely difficult thing to challenge. That means libraries have no option but to pay for these journals as they have the leading research. What is particularly galling is that we (academics) do all the work from writing the papers to reviewing (the latter usually being unpaid and unrewarded in any way, but often immensely time-consuming), and the publishers take all the profit. A number of attempts have been made in my field to launch competitor journals on an open-access basis or controlled at least by a professional organisation, but with limited success. It would require some combined effort from all libraries in the rich economies to stand-up to these publishers, a degree of coordination that seems to be impossible. As things stand, an individual library cannot do anything alone.
I quite agree with article, it is probably worst than that.
Academics are evaluated not only by their number of publications but also by the "impact factor" of those publications, therefore they will continue to publish in journals that have a high "impact factor".
Now this so called "impact factor" is decided by Thomson Reuters' Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), according to secretive algorithms. Needless to say that Thomson Reuters have very close links with the big academic publishers. Their assigned "impact factors" can decide the fate of any journal, and should be calculated independently.
Academic life is plagued with little wars, feuds, harsh competition, etc, and there is no way you will ever get an agreement among academics to change their publication habits. The only solution is for a compulsory request from the taxpayer that the results of research funded by public money should be available to the public free of charge. I believe that some institutions, like the Max Plank society and some US government research institutions are already doing this. It should be for every research funded by public money.
There is a directory of open access journals here: http://www.doaj.org/
All European Geophysical Union journals are open access: http://www.egu.eu/publications/list-of-publications.html (not so the AGU)
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) gives free access to journals over 2 years old.
Something is being done to make scientific fundings available, but still not enough.
I became a life member of the local university library when I retired, only to find that now I have no access to online journals. I have been told that the agreement for access made with the publishers only covers students and current staff, not past members of staff, and most paper versions of journals are no longer supplied. Complaints from me brought an agreement to review the situation, but nothing has happened yet. The reason why life members of the library were excluded at all escapes me. Trying to continue with any meaningful research is virtually impossible.
should say "findings" not "fundings"
It would also help if funding agencies would find a different way of evaluating scientists, without considering Thomson Reuters' marks
It's nothing to do with misconduct of any kind. It's the economics of niche markets. 40% is a perfectly normal profit margin to make in niche businesses.
Supporting niche markets is risky and hard work. Niches can vanish quickly. The error is to see "Academic publishing" as a large business. It isn't really - it is a collection of small businesses all buying services from a centralised printing and admin business.
Once one publisher has established "antenna design monthly" or "Extruded Paste Physics" or "Tanker Safety" there is simply no incentive for anyone else to muscle in. There is plenty of ad revenue to support one publisher but not enough to support two, as long as the incumbent is doing a reasonable job and isn't too greedy.
For clarity the post above I am criticising the idea that 40% margins are conclusive evidence of "rentier capitalism".
Customers think that the product is worth the price or they would all switch to http://arXiv.org.
Also, +1 Clovis.
Robinson:
Good example. More of my software development questions have been answered at SO in the last year than any other place on the Net. And one would never expect to pay for this - the future has to be advertiser-funded.
Can't agree. It's bound to happen. Such profits can't be protected for ever. But when will open content/opensource approach win out? That's harder to say. Steve McIntyre was doing his bit with Richard Lindzen in the last week:
As I say, I think it's inevitable that this will be the norm across the board in the end. But the Bishop's quite right to see crony capitalism at play in the current situation. And PaulM is surely right to report that there is already a fightback from universities. It's simply a matter of time.
Ben
While frustrated at times by pay-walled articles (at what I agree are extraordinarily high rates), I note that I have been able to read a considerable amount of research on the Internet. Authors put their papers up on their webapages, there is arxiv.org, etc.
I agree with Monbiot that government-sponsored research should require publicly-available results. Ultimately, it is the public which funds the research. If that means avoiding the traditional publishing mechanisms, then so be it, but as he gives the example of the US's NIH, I suspect that there is an accommodation to be reached.
As for his suggestion that there be a single global archive of literature, this seems to me to be another example of the road to perdition being paved with good intention. I distrust any such monopoly. Quis custodiet, etc. [Although it's excellent that Monbiot includes data with the literature!]
If the magazine subscriptions are excessive, what is the usual remedy? Don't buy them. Share subscriptions between libraries. Encourage faculty to provide their papers online. Encourage faculty to publish at arxiv. I'm sure there are many more possibilites, none of which require government intervention into the market.
The answer is to recite to oneself, "human knowledge", over and over until you get it. Peer-review is a corrupt, ESSENTIALLY FEUDAL system, that today does little more than thoroughly suppress the vaunted self-correction of science, I have been saying for many years (I am an unfunded independent scientist, and therefore to be recognized, in the system's view, only as a "crank" or worse). Scientific publishing is currently operating under the "accepted" rules in society, of "survival of the fittest", a.k.a., the fight for survival. It (human knowledge, remember) comes down to self-interested survival, simply but childishly, in too many minds -- and just when "resources" are surging like never before... in other words, the internet, hint, hint.
@Patagon, you have completely missed the point.
None of what I am saying is controversial. Exactly the same economics apply to, say, a restaurant in a small town. Someone could open another one, but they won't, unless the incumbent is so badly managed they think they can drive them out of business. There just isn't enough custom for two.
Point is: There is no generic "academic publishing" which you can substitute one for the other, like groceries (tesco, sainsbury's, asda). If you need "extruded paste physics" getting "antenna design" will not do. Each one is a tiny market all of it's own, which is generally too small to support two magazines.
The generic part is just a low-margin printing business. The high profits are due to the individual niches.
Each such journal is basically a small business employing 3-10 people directly (editor, sub-ed, typesetter, ad sales etc) and buying the printing, publishing and marketing from Reed (or whoever). The fact that they make high margins as a business unit is because they have a niche product.
Someone could set up "Paste Extrusion Quarterly" very easily. There is nothing stopping them. But then they would be in a cut-throat competition, so neither the incumbent nor the newcomer would make any profit, so why do it? Instead they spend their effort seeking new niches, and establishing new journals to serve new customers.
Once again, this is not some controversial, crazy thing I am saying here.
Agree with HaroldW here. When I'm looking for papers and my initial search finds one behind a paywall, I'm often able to find it elsewhere free of charge with a little "creative" searching. Of course this is harder the newer the paper is, which is unfortunate!
@Ben, I disagree. The whole enterprise could be easily handled by low cost or open access journals. University staff do all the work in creating content, and the universities then hand over billions to buy this content. It really is barmy, but it is what we can call an equilibrium.
Roger D is right, the system is barmy. Academics A and B write their paper. They then give it freely to an editor at Journal Publishing Company E who send it to academic reviewers C and D who give their time freely to read and check it and make suggestions for improvements. The journal then accepts the paper and A and B prepare it in the style of the journal and give the journal virtually camera-ready copy. Company E then publishes the journal. The university libraries of academics A B C and D then pay journal company E a vast sum to buy back the work of their own people!
Fortunately, more and more academic organisations are now publishing journals themselves, either at very low cost or as open access. Academics are increasingly aware of the issue and sending papers to these journals and/or following the suggestions made by HaroldW of putting papers on their own web pages or on Arxiv.
Nature is the worst culprit - they milk the taxpayer for subscriptions to tax payer funded research and charge ~10k per page for black and white adverts for tax payer funded jobs at tax payer funded institutions.
Unsurprisingly, Nature sees no reason to upset the tax payer funded establishment and its main interest - increasing taxes.
Actually, the situation with peer review journals is trivial compared to the situation with textbooks which cost students and schools vast sums of money. Virtually nothing changes undergraduate math, physics, or chemistry over decades and only a little changes in undergraduate biology. Same goes for most other disciplines. But the publishers change editions every year and the profs support them by using these new texts - due to laziness or corruption - when public domain materials are widely available.
Would it help if there were far fewer publicly funded academics wasting zillions of our money on research that nobody other than other publicly funded academics in the same field could give a t**s about? Whose grants are decided by yet another bunch of publicly funded academics? There may be a niche market monopoly in publishing that exploits the public purse, but I doubt that they are the only culprits....
Dunno why the 'climate change' establishment and the phrase 'jobs for the boys' spring so readily to mind.......
It's disappointing to see Bishop Hill arguing against open access archives for all publicly funded academic publication. Yes, such archiving might cut slightly into the publishers' profits. But if we're paying for research to be carried out, why should we have to pay again to read the results? It's a no-brainer.
@coldish
'It's disappointing to see Bishop Hill arguing against open access archives for all publicly funded academic publication'
?? Where does he do this?? I've read his short piece several times and can see no such argument. And I'd guess that,given his interest in FoI efforts, he'd be strongly in favour of it. But he can, of course, speak for himself.
@Patagon
What makes you think the formula for Impact Factor is "secretive"? Just google it... Here's an example from wikipedia:
A = the number of times articles published in 2006 and 2007 were cited by indexed journals during 2008.
B = the total number of "citable items" published by that journal in 2006 and 2007. ("Citable items" are usually articles, reviews, proceedings, or notes; not editorials or Letters-to-the-Editor.)
2008 impact factor = A/B.
I wonder how many tress could be saved if governments decreed that only online e-publishing and craigslists job adverts were permissible?
Publishing is not the same as science.
Go ahead, then, Georgie - start up a publishing company and compete with those dirty so-and-so's.
I guess having the government do your dirty work is easier, huh?
@zt
'I wonder how many tress could be saved if governments decreed that only online e-publishing and craigslists job adverts were permissible'
But all the gauradian journalists would be out of a job as that organ folded immediately. Not even the vast reosurces of its parent - AutoTrader - could keep it afloat. The journos devotion to greenism wouldn't extend to auto-redundancy if the choice became between saving a tree or keeping their job.
Surely the answer is in the acdemics own hands. All they have to do is come to a consensus that they will onloy take notice of work published on free sites and the paper publishing industry would wither and die very quickly.
But perhaps consensi are there to talk about, rather than to actually do anything about?
Excellent artcle by Monbiot, based on the kind of thorough research we have come to expect from one of our best investigative journalists.
I think he’s wrong on one count though. We non-scientists don’t need to refer to academic articles in order to inform ourselves on scientific matters. In a normal world, we can rely on specialist journalists to clear up our misunderstandings. Of course, if those same journalists call us scumbags and bullshitters (as Monbiot does) when we fail to follow their reasoning, we will have to go elsewhere for our information.
There’s an article in today’s Graun celebrating the fact that belief in global warming is holding steady. It fails to point out that belief is highest in countries with a high level of illiteracy (Mexico, Thailand, etc) and lowest where people know how to read (Britain, Estonia, Norway).
George Monbiot, of course, quite naturally sees all problems through his Socialist spectacles and calls for controls and restrictions as an automatic response.
The basic underlying problem is that education in all its manifestations is now no longer seen by politicians as a 'public good', but has been sold by a generation of those politicians as part of the government's 'business portfolio'. The insane point has been reached where similar institutions such as ordinary high schools have to compete with each other for 'market share' and what used to be quite satisfactory and useful Polytechs have become 'universities' and they and the older universities must do as the schools do and compete for 'market share'. The idea that every young person should begin their working life equipped with a degree (often said degree is utterly unrelated to anything outside the academic world and quite irrelevant to someone embarking on a life as a house-builder) is a nonsense and should be dispensed with forthwith and the sensible teaching of the 'Industrial Arts' by masters of those Industrial Arts to those young people wishing to become tradespeople should be resumed by way the old apprenticeship system administered by the Guilds and not by rent-seeking pseudo-academics and civil servants.
It is not just Acedemic Papers, but also Health and Safety Regulation Publications also.
I was thinking of putting some lighting into my loft, which I have recently boarded out, and although I
am pretty good on electrics ( I am a licenced Radio Amateur ) I thought to check the current regulations
for domestic wiring. On the Institution of Engineering and Technology site I found the book
"The Wiring Regulations" Mandatory for Electrical firms to be priced at £80, also an E-Book of the same
at an incredable £210. I wonder if all those Polish plumbers and electricians have a copy ?
Alexander K says:
“George Monbiot, of course, quite naturally sees all problems through his Socialist spectacles”
and then goes on to provide an excellent critique of the hypercapitalist business model imposed on the country by Thatcher and her acolyte Blair.
“The basic underlying problem is that education in all its manifestations is now no longer seen by politicians as a 'public good'”
Well said. And the same goes for health and cheap, available energy. Back to socialism as defended by Monbiot. (I love defending George. It makes me feel so morally superior)
Latimer Alder (4.37pm): You're right, I misinterpreted what Bishop Hill wrote. His difference with Monbiot was only regarding the monopoly/cartel distinction, Thanks, Latimer, and apologies to BH.
Geoff, I have to disagree. Monbiot sees all proper solutions as centrally imposed; the current management of education and science in the UK is not essentially Capitalist, but from the warped nuttiness of the the teachings of the American hyper-Capitalist business schools who make Gordon Gecko's 'Greed is Good' speech appear calm and reasonable..
As a non-Brit, I am always amazed at the ease with which Tony Blair did a 'Maggie Thatcher in drag' act and hi-jacked the Labour movement and in the process, confused the tripes out of the Brit political process.
Being sensible and practical is neither a Left or a Right thing, nor is it Socialist or Capitalist. Both tend to begin quite sensibly and as a reaction to inequalities and/or injustices, but soon become perverted by extremism.
The impossible has happened. I find myself not only agreeing with George Monbiot, but simultaneously with, take a deep breath, Richard Black on his current posting-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14704813
How about funding the latter with a windfall tax on the former?
Hyper-capialism? You guys really need to try harder to state things that actually jive with reality. There is no such thing other than maybe a moronic distortion that is designed to deceive mental midgets and coax them into agreeing with collectivist concepts that have been repeatedly demonstrated to be a path to poverty. Collectivists are smart, I must concede, because every time their policies fail they get to blame capitalism due to the simple fact that so many of you simply don't understand either.
Mark
In general terms I agree with Monbiot. The answer is in the hands of the academics / researchers.
Firstly they have to forget about this idea of "prestigious" journal. With all the various search engines available on the Internet it does not matter where the paper is published --anyone can find it quite easily. If the subject and paper is any good and relevant people will read it and if not it will go the same way it would in a journal. Impact factors --forget them , just a marketing ploy from publishers.
So the universities or a group of them can easily setup a publishing website ( just like many individual companies have) and "self" publish. They can charge a nominal amount for access to cover costs if they wish --the market will decide on the success or otherwise of that.
All that needs to happen is someone or a group of people to actually do it !!
BTW -- I agree with Mike @ 12.03. It is a bit rich of Monbiot to take this line of argument but support those who "refuse" FOI requests or requests for publishing supporting codes and data.
AlexanderK
I agree entirely with your political analysis, which doesn’t actually get us very far, since we’re simply agreeing that being sensible is better than its opposite.
Monbiot is not by nature a collectivist. Like almost every leftwing intellectual in England, he’s a natural libertarian (the Scots are different, and of course the Scots Welsh and Irish have always provided the bulk of the left’s political leadership in Britain).
The peculiar hold that CAGW has in Britain (or do I mean England?) may be due to the fact that “science” is the only authority the libertarian left is willing to bow to. It’s not a big proportion of the population, but it encompasses the Guardian-reading “chattering classes” who like to think they run Britain. Being anti- the ruling class (and, secretly, anti- the crass mindless materialism of the working class) is no small thing. This class can abolish slavery, get rid of an Empire, even stop wars when it wants to. With CAGW it’s turned on the whole human race, which is probably a Bad Thing.
Mark, I have to bow to your superior knowledge as I haven't jived for about forty-odd years due to knackered knees and other bits of anatomy during my mis-spent and extended youth. You may be surprised by how much us older chaps actually do know, including how to have a mannerly, pleasant and rational discussion, something you obviously have not grasped, as yet.
@Andy Russell | Aug 30, 2011 at 5:14 PM
Sorry for the late reply, being away.
It seems that we have conflicting sources of information:
Mike Rossner, Heather Van Epps, and Emma Hill
"Show me the data"
JCB vol. 179 no. 6 1091-1092
http://jcb.rupress.org/content/179/6/1091.full
Ok, so the formula is not a secret. The number of papers published by each journal each year isn't a secret. I suppose that the main source of error/"secrecy" is the number of citations per year, which sometimes differs between ISI and Google Scholar but not by much from papers I've looked at, but they openly show how many times they think each paper has been cited. Maybe this has changed in the 4 years since that JCB was written.
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