This Lawsuit Could Change Science

Science is crazy, but the craziest part is getting your work published. Scientists write it for free, review it for free, and then commercial publishers sell their work to universities for a big profit. Now, a psychologist in the US is suing the biggest scientific publishers. I had a look at the lawsuit.

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#science #sciencenews #metascience #publishing

[stischer]

Unfortunately, having been a reviewer, it's amazing how much crap actually gets published. The scandals at Harvard are symptomatic.

[goodspellr]

What has always bothered me is that taxes fund all of the work (the research grants as well as the salaries of the researchers and the reviewers of public universities), and yet the results of the research end up behind a paywall erected by someone who pays for nothing.

It's hard to understand what costs the publishing companies even have any more. There are no printing costs; the articles are now digital. They aren't paying the authors or the reviewers. In most cases, the editors don't even do formatting and typesetting; that is also pushed to the unpaid author.

[Michaelneiss]

Dear Sabine!
First, not all researchers happen to have the privilege of holding a job with full-time pay, while they are doing peer review for others.
Second, there used to be a plenitude of non-commercial journals in my field of research (archaeology) which did most of their job based on grants and other non-profit schemes, but the publishing mafia turned any attempt to publish oneself in this kind of journals into a career killer by inventing a ranking system between journals that clearly prioritizes commercial publications.

[michaellorton]

American physician-attorney here. Sabine makes reasonable points here but she does not (and we cannot expect her to) understand American antitrust law.
This is an action under Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act which makes it a crime to form a “contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of trade”. A civil suit on that basis may be pursued under the Clayton Antitrust Act, as in this instance. A “contract, combination, or conspiracy” has is a phrase of art and has been very broadly interpreted because those conspiring to restrain trade are often very clever and advised by lawyers very good at hiding their actions.
Under American law a conspiracy has four very broadly interpreted elements (all of which can be proved by circumstantial evidence): 1) two or more “persons” (which includes natural people and corporate entities); 2) acting in concert; 3) in furtherance; of 4) an illegal end or legal end by illegal means. “Restraint of trade” has been similarly broadly interpreted.
The primary thing Sabine fails to understand is that transgression of Section 1 is a “per se” violation of the U.S. criminal code. Whether one agrees with the policy or not, U.S. antitrust law firmly establishes that for conviction of a “per se” crime, the Government (or civil plaintiff as in this case) need merely prove that the co-conspirators acted in concert to further a restraint of trade. The defendants ARE NOT ALLOWED TO OFFER ANY AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSES JUSTIFYING THEIR ACTIONS—of the type Sabine offers in this video. Congress clearly established policy that perverting the capitalist market system was criminal no matter how many alleged benefits the “contract, combination, or conspiracy” produced—thus defendants were prevented from offering them. This policy arose from the paradoxically problematic double jeopardy protection in U.S. law. The early robber barons were vicious and clever. Once they were found “not guilty” of a scheme, they would tweak it ever so slightly to secure all the lucre for themselves with none of the proffered benefits to the public. Given that the scheme had been immunized by double jeopardy from further prosecution by the “not guilty” verdict, the Government was then powerless to stop it. Thus the seeming harshness of the “per se” doctrine.
As illogical as it may seem to a scientific mind, the civil complaint in this case presents a reasonably strong legal argument (under current case law) in support of a U.S.
Sherman Act per se Section 1 violation.
Finally, again kudos to Sabine for her courage and intellectual breadth in exploring topics far removed from physics. I learn a lot from her.

[Dr_Wrong]

Science Mafia : “That’s a nice Paper you got there, it’d be a shame if something happened to it..”

[DataIsBeautifulOfficial]

Imagine solving quantum gravity and then paying to read about it!

[SurfinScientist]

Unmentioned is that scientific publishers' profit margins are huge and increasing. Think 30% and more. That exceeds profit margins of for example Google.

[drbej]

Taxpayers perspective from the UE country.
We are already funding infrastructure, salaries and grants that are used to make science and write articles. But at the end I need to pay again some crazy money to have access to the results. Why we (as a society) need to pay extra for the thing that we already funded? At the same time academic publishers are making billions (yes, billions) in revenue with profit margins around 40% (yes, 40%).

[malcolmscott]

Your comment's on profitability are just wrong.

1. Elsevier (RELX Group): Elsevier is by far the most profitable academic publisher, with a profit margin close to 40%. In 2022, Elsevier had revenue of $3.7 billion, with an operating income of approximately $1.37 billion.


2. Springer Nature: While exact profit figures for Springer Nature are less readily available, its annual revenue is around $1.86 billion. Academic publishing has high margins, and Springer Nature likely operates with an estimated margin between 30% and 35%, in line with industry standards for large academic publishers.


3. Wiley: John Wiley & Sons reported revenues of about $2.08 billion. Estimated to operate within a 20-25% profit margin.


4. Taylor & Francis (Informa PLC): Taylor & Francis generated around $500 million in 2022. Its parent company, Informa, reported a profit margin of approximately 34%.


5. Sage Publishing: While Sage’s revenue approximately $375, profit margins around 30%.



Profit margins are notably high, ranging from 25% to 40%, which is exceptional compared to many other industries.

[ToradLP]

I mean, there is another fix - move the journals out of the publisher industries hands and have them be done by the academic community itself.

[tonywagner]

The basic business model is that the journals want free content, free labor, exclusivity, and then sell their product for a profit.
One obvious solution is for there to be a non-profit journal publlsher that operates on a cost basis.

[Kohlenstoffkarbid]

Im interested in many science topics and i really dislike to have to pay 19 $ for a two page PDF from 1967. When i want to know all about a certain mineral, it's composition on it's localities and it's properties i would have to pay often more than 100 $ for 3-5 PDFs which are hidden behind a paywall. And im doing it for my own curiosity. Of course i don't pay a dime for that. I gladly spend lots of money for books but not for greedy publishers which don't pay the actual writers. I can hardly imagine, how much real scientists would have to spend to just find out if they got something new or not. Science is expensive but in most cases the scientists will never see a dime. The publishers are driven by pure greed.

[chrishall]

From my days as an associate editor at an Elsevier journal, I can say that they do keep track of how many reviews people agree to do and how many they refuse. How editors use that information is a personal decision.

[scenemuch]

I hate that when I go searching for information and it frequently lands on an abstract page for a paper in some journal that I cannot access that information. Not a scholar. Not subsidized by an institution

So much of progress and even so many in the ranks are professionals and scholars begin with people casting them out according to their interests and passions. These journals present the firewall against the curiosity of the young eager

That's a bad thing

[arawilson]

For profit journals are a racket. They don't pay for research, articles (some charge authors), often not much for editors or editorial staff, or reviewers. They charge universities an insane inflated amount to access the products of labor universities have published. University presses are non-profit at least -- support their journals and books.

[eitherrideordie]

I get where your coming from. But the key for me is i think people are just fed up with these companies having all the power, all the negotiation, and making bank off all the hardwork of researchers for essentially a platform.

Not saying i have a solution, but currently things are out of balance and needs to change.

[mskiptr]

Why do we need to publish research in journals? Basically every single university has a website and hosting PDFs is really not that expensive. Why not publish everything online and be done with this mess?

(Ye, ye, I know that's not how you get funding.)

[jamestickle]

With the rise of ‘hoax’ papers that essentially mock the entire process it is clear that many peer reviewed articles are just rubber stamped. If the journals had to pay for the reviewer’s time they could assert some higher standards and quality control so they got their money’s worth.

[R-okcl]

"Write a paper about it and submit it to 20 journals" is a very scientific way of telling someone "I don't want to hear your opinion"

[kellylucyglostott]

One question I came away with is, why does it cost so much to publish journals? I can understand that, decades ago, it would have taken time and cost to type set the articles, create the graph(ic)s, print hard copies, and ship them - and then bind the year's worth. But, now that everything from submission to formatting to distribution can be done by computer or online, I have to imagine that it's much less expensive now that it used to be.

I haven't had a university affiliation for 15 years, but I would dearly love to be able to keep up to date with my favorite science topics. But, I can't afford to.