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 This has led to a (no longer active) petition by the Union of Concerned Scientists.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.

Springer threatens to go rogue, and retreats

In its negotiations with Springer, the consortium Couperin that was in charge of most French researchers’ subscriptions had been modestly asking that Springer renounce “double dipping”, i.e. does not get paid twice for the same articles – once via subscriptions, once via open access APCs. But this would have meant decreasing subscription prices by 15%, while Springer has been used to yearly increases of the order of 3-5%.

Today’s news are that negotiations have broken down, and most French researchers are set to lose legal access to most articles published by Springer on April 1st. (See CNRS’s note on the subject, in French.) In such a conflict, researchers can stand up against the publisher by

• not complaining when they lose access to journals, and getting the articles elsewhere (which nowadays mostly means at Sci-Hub),
• boycotting the publisher, i.e. not submitting articles to its journals, and not working for them as a referee or editor.

Coincidentally, I have received an invitation to referee an article for JHEP, a journal published by Springer. I have declined as follows:

Most French research institutions are set to lose access to Springer journals on April 1st. I am aware that this does not affect access to JHEP, which is covered by SCOAP3, and that in our field all articles are on arXiv anyway. However, as a matter of principle, I would like to protest Springer’s extortionate commercial practices, and to show solidarity with colleagues who will lose access to their own work. Therefore, I am suspending all new collaboration with JHEP, and I am declining to review this article.

Update on April 3rd: According to an email from Couperin, access to Springer journals has in fact not been cut off. It seems that Couperin got away with rejecting Springer's latest offer, and saying that they were willing to continue negotiating. So Springer was bluffing, and does not dare take a hard line against Couperin. If such a weak and ill-prepared consortium, with little support from researchers (who else is boycotting Springer?) can defeat Springer, pretty much anyone can.

Update on April 11th: There is now a petition called "Springer, we can do without".

Update on October 18th: An agreement has been found between Couperin and Springer. Couperin boasts that it has obtained a modest price decrease: this merely reverses a few years out of several decades of unjustified increases. And the 9-10 months where Couperin's member institutes kept access to Springer journals without a subscription, will eventually be paid retroactively. (Except for institutes who did not accept the new agreement.) Still, Springer's behaviour is not too bad for a predatory publisher. And the price decrease is in absolute terms a large amount of money, which could make much difference if it was injected into frugal publishing platforms. So I am no longer boycotting Springer.

Couperin is now negotiating with Elsevier, aiming to achieve comparable savings, and pushing for open access. Nevertheless, it is not clear to me how Couperin's deal with Springer, and negotiating stance with Elsevier, are compatible with the Plan S to which CNRS officially subscribes: if Couperin believed in Plan S, it should at least refrain from committing beyond 2020, the date at which Plan S is supposed to come into force.

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.

Imminent capitulation of research institutes in "negotiations" with publishers

Recently, I have read pathetic emails from librarians who are involved in "negotiations" with publishers for the renewal of subscriptions to academic journals -- subscriptions which, if not renewed, will lapse at the end of this year. Subscriptions are "negotiated" at a high level: nationwide consortiums of research institutes on one side, large publishers selling bundles of hundreds of journals on the other side. Here is how such "negotiations" go: the publisher demands an outrageous price, and the consortium agrees to that price, minus a symbolic discount if the publisher wants the consortium to save face.

This outcome is the inevitable result of the basic economics of the game. A big publisher enjoys a de facto monopoly on his journals, and can therefore set prices based on what they think the consortium can pay. The only way out for the consortium would be to threaten not to subscribe. But the larger the consortium, the more researchers there are who will say they cannot live without the subscription, and the least credible the threat is. Anyway, consortiums are built with the specific aim of subscribing, and do not have the option to do otherwise.

This is why the "negotiations" with publishers are not really negotiations, and why the negotiators are so dispirited.

Academic publishing reform 1. Boycott

Important reforms of academic publishing, such as achieving open access, reforming and opening peer review, and drastically reducing costs, are desirable and feasible. Such reforms will not come from traditional academic publishers, which enjoy de facto monopolies and make huge profits in the existing system.
Reforms have to come from academics and academic institutions. In a series of posts, I will review some of the actions which are being undertaken by individuals and institutions. The first post is about boycotts.

Boycotting the worst established publishers is the most straightforward way for academics to act: it directly addresses the main obstacles to reform, and it can be done by individuals. The most prominent example is the boycott of the publisher Elsevier. While this boycott is no existential threat to Elsevier, it is prominent enough to be noticeable by financial analysts.

Academics can boycott journals as authors, reviewers and editors.

Boycotting a journal as an author can be dangerous for one's career, as there are usually very few journals with a given level of prestige in a given scientific field. Moreover, authors often have coauthors, and dragging them into a boycott can be difficult, and even irresponsible when some of them are junior scientists.

Boycotting a journal as a reviewer is a priori easier, as an anonymous reviewer's work is only known to the editor, and has little or no impact on the reviewer's career. However, most reviewers consider their work as an altruistic act benefitting the community, and will not easily be conviced that working for certain journals is detrimental to the community, by perpetuating obsolete and overly expensive models of publishing. There is little a journal could do if faced with a widespread reviewers' boycott. Paying reviewers might help, but the sums would have to be small. (Assuming profits of 1000 euros per article, out of which 20% are diverted to paying reviewers, an acceptance rate of 50%, and two reviewers per article, we obtain 50 euros per reviewer.)

A journal cannot survive without good editors, and the prestige of the editors as researchers is decisive for the standing of the journal. Editors will not easily decide to resign: they have often given much effort to the journal, and want to continue the good work. Moreover, editors are typically paid. Nevertheless, it has sometimes happened that a whole editorial board resigns, in order to recreate a similar journal independently from the original publisher.

None of these three types of boycott is very widespread. This is not surprising: on the one hand, journals are established participants of the research enterprise, and academics mostly communicate with journals via other academics -- the editors. On the other hand, the publishers' mischief is not directly visible to academics, as journal subscriptions with their abusive prices are negotiated way above their heads. Journals show their nice faces to the academics, and their ugly faces to the hapless librarians. Then academics fail to understand why they should boycott, and librarians fail to understand why academics are reluctant to boycott.