Archive for Rapacious Bastards

The Cost of Elsevier

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on March 8, 2023 by telescoper

I’ve just seen the annual report of RELX, the parent company of academic publishing house Elsevier. This annual report for RELX contains the accounts for Elsevier for 2022 in which I found the following headline figures:

  • Revenue: €3.26 billion
  • Profit: €1.2 billion
  • Margin: 37.8%

A couple of points of reference are worth mentioning.

One is that the entire annual budget for the European Research Council is €2.4 billion, so Elsevier’s profits on their own represent about half this budget. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather it were spent on actual research. People talk about a windfall tax on profiteering energy companies. Why not apply the same logic in this case?

The other is that Elsevier’s profit margin (37.8%) can be compared with that of, Google (21.2%) or Apple (24.56%). It’s easy money being an academic publisher.

I cannot understand why the academic community allows this parasitic industry to flourish by continuing to throw taxpayers’ money at it. I draw your attention to the Cost of Knowledge campaign and, when it comes to publishing in Elsevier journals, acting as Editor, or doing refereeing for them, just say no.

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Yes, academic publishers are greedy (and dishonest)

Posted in Open Access, Uncategorized with tags , , , on May 22, 2016 by telescoper

I saw a blatant piece of propaganda in the Guardian the other day, written by the Chief Executive of the Publishers Association.The piece argues that the academic publishing industry benefits the academic community through “innovation and development” and by doing so “adds value” to the raw material supplied by researchers. This is nonsense. The academic publishing industry does not add any value to anything. It just adds cost. And by so doing generates huge profits for itself.

I was annoyed by several other things relating to this item:

  1. It’s written by a vested interest but is presented without a balancing opinion, which makes one wonder why the Guardian is allowing itself to be used as a mouthpiece by these profiteers;
  2. It has been tweeted and retweeed by the Publishers Association several times, as if it were a piece of reporting instead of what it actually is, essentially a commercial;
  3. Some of the claims made in the piece are so risible that they’re insulting.

However, the most annoying thing for me is that I’ve been too busy marking examinations to let off steam by writing a riposte.

I should have worried however, because scrolling down to the comments on the article you can easily find out what academics really think. Moreover, there’s an excellent rebuttal by Mike Taylor here, which I shall reblog.

 

 

 

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Elsevier journals — some facts

Posted in Open Access with tags , , on April 24, 2014 by telescoper

Read this, and weep as you learn that Elsevier’s ruthless profiteering continues unabated…

gowers's avatarGowers's Weblog

A little over two years ago, the Cost of Knowledge boycott of Elsevier journals began. Initially, it seemed to be highly successful, with the number of signatories rapidly reaching 10,000 and including some very high-profile researchers, and Elsevier making a number of concessions, such as dropping support for the Research Works Act and making papers over four years old from several mathematics journals freely available online. It has also contributed to an increased awareness of the issues related to high journal prices and the locking up of articles behind paywalls.

However, it is possible to take a more pessimistic view. There were rumblings from the editorial boards of some Elsevier journals, but in the end, while a few individual members of those boards resigned, no board took the more radical step of resigning en masse and setting up with a different publisher under a new name (as some journals have…

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