Abolishing an “Industry”?
A week or so ago I mentioned that the European Council had adopted a text that calls for the EU Commission and Member States to support policies towards a scholarly publishing model that is not-for-profit, open access and multi-format, with no costs for authors or readers.
The journal Nature has responded to the news with a piece entitled EU council’s ‘no pay’ publishing model draws mixed response and the lede:
Some academics have welcomed the proposed open access plans. But publishing industry representatives warn they are unrealistic and lack detail.
It’s not really accurate to describe the response as mixed as it is completely separated: the vested interests in the academic publishing industry are against it and everyone else is for it! It’s hardly surprising to see Nature (owned by academic publishing company Springer Nature). I found this in the text of the Nature piece:
The conclusions are concerning because they support a move that would abolish an industry
Caroline Sutton, the chief executive of the STM (a membership organization of academic publishers)
Indeed, though I would argue that what the proposals would abolish is not so much an industry as a racket. I’ve been blogging here about the Academic Journal Racket since 2009. It’s nice at last to see some real movement towards its abolition. Further on, I find:
The STM is also concerned that the move would eliminate independent European publishing companies and usher in a state-defined system that could stymie academic freedom. It warns that the amount of public funds used to build repositories of academic research papers by member states or institutions is hard to quantify.
How would free open access publishing stymie academic freedom? If anything does that it’s the extortionate publishing fees levied by publishers. And it’s a very bad argument to say that the costs of repositories is hard to quantify when everyone can see your enormous profit margins!
I was thinking about the financial strife currently afflicting many UK universities. If the UK university sector has to choose over the next few years between sacking hundreds of academic staff and ditching its voluntary subsidy to the publishing industry, I know what I would pick. In this respect I’m definitely an abolitionist.
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In the Dark 
June 2, 2023 at 12:49 pm
There used to be an industry to make VHS and Betamax VHS tapes but that stopped when we moved on to better things. The academic publishing industry was suited to papers being typeset, published in hardcopy journals which were then sent to libraries. Now that everything is basically done on-line its hard to see a reason for it – or rather its hard to see why it costs so much, indeed far more than when it was hardcopy.
Also many institutes already have created and maintain repositories (not just for papers, also for data), so the ‘public funding’ has already been invested. They seem concerned by the use of public funding for repositories but not for their products….
June 2, 2023 at 12:59 pm
Exactly.
June 2, 2023 at 4:28 pm
It does seem a bit ironic that the companies object to others taking public money but are happy to take it themselves. Setting up our own publishing systems solves only part of the problem. At the moment, in the UK the money going to the publishers is taken directly from the research funding before it even gets to us. In effect, we would still be forced to pay for something we don’t want or need.
July 12, 2023 at 4:50 pm
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