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.

Le boeuf qui voulait se faire aussi petit qu'une grenouille

Je propose ici quelques commentaires sur la stratégie du CNRS pour l'information scientifique et technique, telle qu'exposée dans un document de 133 pages. Le titre de mon texte exprime le constat qu'avec cette stratégie, le CNRS ne semble pas vouloir se comporter en gros acteur institutionnel capable d'influencer le comportement des nombreux chercheurs et laboratoires qui dépendent de lui, mais plutôt en prestataire de services qui se contente de les informer et de leur proposer des outils.

La stratégie en matière de libre accès (Open Access) illustre bien ce constat.

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.