APCs are not inherently exploitative as a funding model.
The problem is confluence of 1) APCs in hands of for-profits who hold monopolies on particular titles & their associated status; 2) authors who are more status sensitive than price sensitive; and 3) gatekeepers who count but don't read.
Yes, subtext of both is that academics enable the system that exploits us by putting too little weight on quality and too much on where article is published and/or article counts. The former helps explains why high-status FP journals can charge exorbitant fees, the latter why new titles proliferate.
I agree with a lot of this. As with so many problems in academic publishing, a lot stems from the pathology of publications as currency. So I have a hard time envisioning a system with obligatory author-paid APCs that isn't problematic, but I'm open to other sources to cover these expenses.
University libraries are seemingly allies in this, potentially able to dedicate resources (financial and human) to building a publication system that embodies principles of open science without enabling the pay-for-status scheme that has taken hold.
Yes. Libraries can't control where researchers send their papers or how academic reputations are built. Only disciplinary insiders can & change is slow.
But, uni libraries could support faculty "insiders" who are willing to put in work to create truly non-profit, OA journals. (I have, w/ 4 others.)
Speaking of proliferation, one needs only to see the list of Nature offshoots to realize that something is rotten in the state of academic publishing. How many of these journals did not exist a decade ago?
You would think, but there's been a creep of this in the last 15 years based on the noble ideal that scientific findings should be freely accessible (which I agree with!) but it's led to the proliferation of a sort of scam where authors (often via their grants) bear the financial burden.
I like your suggestion of "reemphasis on society journals". I'd encourage you to mention new peer review models, particularly @peercommunityin.bsky.social. IMO the link between PCI and society journals is currently one of the most promising ways forward.
(A new PCI Psychology is coming soon!)
Author-paid ("gold") open access fees have gotten out of hand, incentivizing low-quality science, exacerbating inequality, & allowing publishers to make money hand-over-fist on the free labor of well-meaning researchers. (2)
💯 Paying these publication fees to for-profit publishers undermines university presses that provide support and infrastructure for diamond OA journals. The two endeavors compete for the same finite funds, but the fee charges universities are paying to publish OA in for-profit journals are MASSIVE.
"Springer Nature made the most revenue from OA ($589.7 million), followed by Elsevier ($221.4 million), Wiley ($114.3 million), Taylor & Francis ($76.8 million), and Sage ($31.6 million)."
If the estimates of Butler et al. are anywhere close to accurate, then Springer's annual revenue from author publishing charges substantially exceeds NSF's annual allocated support to the social, behavioral, and economic sciences ($320 million is requested in FY25):
It looks like butlers estimate is over a 4 year period. That said, publishers are still making crazy revenue from APCs that ends up being a big chunk of funder money.
Thanks Jeremy. This is definitely something we should engage with. And I believe it -- y'all see all the budget line items and those have to be adding up something fierce.
I'd love to. I was on the original planning committee back when CES was at ASU and was sad it sort of fizzled. I am fairly gutted that I won't be at CES2024, too many conflicts here at home. Let's try to catch up remotely.
Here’s my question: what % of gold OA papers are paid for by NIH/NSF/VA etc dollars such that the full text will be (by law) freely available in pubmed anyway. I’d wager it’s pretty high. Seems like a terrible use of tax dollars (in addition to your other well articulated points).
Every paper in the uk has to be oa so all universities have green servers, but we still pay a lot because unbelievable numbers of people give up on you as immoral if they hit even one paywall. I’ve had my own phd students write snarky emails asking for oa. I have a form email explaining a) my
I agree, though I haven't experiences the same level of hostility. But yeah, we can all make a webpage and put our papers up there -- why pay thousands of [currency] for someone else to host the papers?
There are a lot of people who were VERY hostile if you don't immediately seem to be respecting their right to full free access to the research their taxes paid for. Particularly self-righteous academics, weirdly. It was very hostile about a decade ago. Now more people are seeing the problems.
If there's one thing (some) academics love being, it's self-righteous. I admit I was a bit rah-rah open access early on, particularly with orgs claiming to waive fees if authors couldn't pay. The problems have become increasingly manifest.
Comments
The problem is confluence of 1) APCs in hands of for-profits who hold monopolies on particular titles & their associated status; 2) authors who are more status sensitive than price sensitive; and 3) gatekeepers who count but don't read.
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LTT5EAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA402&dq=koster+mcelreath&ots=Yo2yTPcdDp&sig=IYqNRb6g0sKVZxhFAenQ4g_QQjo#v=onepage&q=koster%20mcelreath&f=false
But, uni libraries could support faculty "insiders" who are willing to put in work to create truly non-profit, OA journals. (I have, w/ 4 others.)
https://www.nature.com/siteindex
(A new PCI Psychology is coming soon!)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502&version=meter+at+null&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click
I can't vouch for the claim, but I once read that the big publishers make more money annually than Hollywood studios.
https://direct.mit.edu/qss/article/4/4/778/118070
https://new.nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2025
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5428494/
Meanwhile, federal agencies are well aware of the problem and are generally reticent about tacit endorsements of publishers' rent-seeking strategies.
Personally, I’d like to see overlay journals go mainstream. A curated layer on top of preprint servers.
https://astro.theoj.org/post/168-the-future-of-journal-publishing-here-today-by-syksy-rasanen