An environmental boycott of Elsevier

Since 2012, thousands of academics have been boycotting the academic publisher Elsevier, whom they blame for overpricing its journals, and more generally for resisting open access to the scientific literature. Of course, most major academic publishers are guilty of the same, but Elsevier stands out as the worst offender. For instance, Elsevier was the last major publisher to join the Initiative for Open citations, years after all the others. Elsevier did not join the Initiative for open abstracts, and they play a leading role in the legal persecution of Sci-Hub.

In February 2022, Elsevier was denounced for helping the fossil fuel industry via its publishing and consulting activities. Again, other publishers are doing that too, and Elsevier is only the worst (or more prominent) offender. This has led to a (no longer active) petition by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Elsevier was not impressed, and now there is a campaign called Stop Elsevier.

This campaign includes a boycott. Participants may commit to

• Refuse to Review

• Refuse to Submit

• Write to Editors

• Refuse to Edit

• Take Direct Action

• Share Boycott on Social Media

There are also various options for allowing these commitments to be publicly shared, as in the original Cost of Knowledge boycott. For the moment, they are still kept private, though.

The new boycott won’t sink Elsevier by itself, but it could strengthen its well-deserved reputation for unprincipled greed. This would help discourage academic institutions from doing business with Elsevier.

How strong are the objections to Plan S?

After a coalition of European science funding agencies announced their Plan S initiative for open access, a number of researchers wrote an open letter criticizing the move, under the title “Reaction of Researchers to Plan S: Too Far, Too Risky”. To summarize, they fear that Plan S would increase costs, lower quality, and restrict academic freedom. In order to evaluate how seriously these fears should be taken, let me start with a 5-point analysis of the issues, before discussing the open letter’s specific concerns.

Point 1: Traditional journals are overpriced by an order of magnitude.

 

Overall, publishers earn about 3800-5000 euros per article they publish. The true costs of organizing peer review are much lower: a few hundred euros per article at SciPost or PeerJ. The difference is therefore not mainly due to commercial publishers’ profits, but rather to large inefficiencies at all traditional publishers. (Have a look at the salaries of the American Chemical Society’s executives.)

Some publishers also use the money for subsidizing other activities, such as conferences (learned socities) or science journalism (Nature, Science). While these activities are valuable, they are not the main purpose of scientific publishing, and should not determine its future.

CNRS rejects Couperin's claimed victory in Springer big deal

After long and tortuous negotiations, the French consortium Couperin has claimed victory in its recent agreement with Springer, after having secured price decreases. This claim seems reasonable, as prices of big deals with publishers tend to increase steadily. Of course, critics can still point out that Springer remains very expensive compared to smaller, more efficient publishers. But at least Springer seems amenable to some compromises in negotiations. And one should not forget that the greediest and most obnoxious publisher remains Elsevier, who even refused to join the Initiative for open citations.

I was therefore surprised when CNRS announced its rejection of the Springer deal, although CNRS takes part in Couperin and was actively involved in the negotiations. The email announcement came from Alain Schuhl, a CNRS official who is also a member of Couperins’ governing council. (See the email and its English translation below.) This email was a warning to CNRS researchers that access to Springer journals was now cut off. However, articles from 2017 and earlier are still available, as they are coverd by the previous subscription.

The explanation for the rejection is that the deal’s price was too high according to the Ministry’s open science plan. This explanation makes little sense for two reasons:

Couperin vs Springer and Elsevier: towards less extortionate deals?

Historically, the French consortium Couperin has obtained poor results in negotiating with predatory publishers, mostly consenting to their high and increasing prices. This is not necessarily Couperin’s fault, although it does not help that Couperin’s leadership appears weak and ill-informed. Rather, this is a consequence of the basic economics of scientific publishing, with publishers systematically abusing their strong position. Even the Finnish consortium FinELib, which was determined to seek a good deal and enjoyed a fair amount of support from researchers, recently consented to one more extortionate deal with Elsevier.

However, recent developments suggest that Couperin could fare better in current and upcoming negotiations:

Germany won't pay for Nature's "scientific porn", and other messages from Couperin's open science days

Earlier this week, there was a mini-workshop in Paris called Couperin’s open science days 2018. (Original title in French: Journées sciences ouverte 2018.) I followed most of it via webcast, and I will now summarize some of the salient points. The videos are available online, but most of them are in French.

The German way: Horst Hippler and Ralf Schimmer

 

The most important messages came from Germany: the country whose academic institutions have thought seriously about scientific publishing, and have organized themselves so as to drive the needed reforms. The most salient manifestation so far has been the standoff with Elsevier, and it was nice to have further details on the strategy.

After Elsevier, should we boycott Springer?

While the ongoing “Cost of knowledge” boycott of Elsevier may not be very effective, the likely “no deal” hard exit of Germany from Elsevier subscriptions renews the boycott’s relevance, and maybe its urgency. It is indeed likely that most German universities and research institutions will lose access to Elsevier articles in 2018.

As a researcher, why would I continue publishing in journals that are in principle inaccessible to most of my German colleagues? Universal access to the literature via Sci-Hub is under increasing legal assault and should not be taken for granted. In these circumstances, boycotting Elsevier is no longer only a matter of fighting an obnoxious publisher, but also a basic necessity of ensuring that articles are accessible to their intended audience. (Unless one thinks that the intended audience is not the scientific community, but the paying Elsevier subscribers.)

Now it turns out that if I boycott Elsevier because of Germany, I may have to boycott Springer because of France.

Germany vs Elsevier: a puzzling maneuver

In the tense negotiations between the German consortium DEAL and Elsevier, there is a new twist: on February 13th, Elsevier announced that it was restoring the access of the affected German institutions to its journals.

Elsevier’s two explanations for this maneuver fall short of being convincing. The first explanation, given to Nature, is that “it is customary [...] to retain access to content after a contracted period is concluded and as long as renewal discussions are ongoing”. Why then cut off access in January, and restore it in February?

Germany vs Elsevier, and the race for legal open access

The debate about green versus gold open access leaves aside a more fundamental difference: that between legal open access and pirate open access. This difference is essential because, as Bjorn Brembs put it,

In terms of making the knowledge of the world available to the people who are the rightful owners, [pirate] Alexandra Elbakyan has single-handedly been more successful than all [legal] open access advocates and activists over the last 20 years combined.

With Sci-Hub, pirate open access is so successful that one might wonder whether legal open access is still needed. The obvious argument that pirate open access is parasitic and therefore unsustainable, because someone has to pay for scientific journals, is easily disposed of: with up-to-date tools, journals could cost orders of magnitude less than they currently do, and be financed by modest institutional subsidies. A better reason why pirate open access is not enough is that it is subject to technical and legal challenges. This makes it potentially precarious, and unsuited to uses such as content mining.

Abonnements aux revues scientifiques: les chiffres du CEA

En page 10 de son rapport d’activité 2015, le Service de Valorisation de l’Information du CEA publie les coûts des abonnements aux revues électroniques pour les années 2014, 2015 et 2016, avec pour 2015 l’évaluation du coût par article téléchargé. Je voudrais ici diffuser et commenter ces chiffres.

The world according to Elsevier

Elsevier is considered by some academics as the worst predatory publisher, and is a favourite target for boycotts. In particular, the negotiations for subscriptions to bundles of journals, which were the subject of my previous post, are particularly difficult in the case of Elsevier, leading to much frustration for academic institutions. But what sets Elsevier apart from other academic publishers? Let me give some tentative answers, based on observations on Elsevier's behaviour. I will first give the data, and then try to explain them in terms of a coherent strategy.

1. Elsevier considers open access to scientific publications as a threat, and fights against it. This is explicitly said (in milder terms) in their 2011 financial review.