[GOAL] Elsevier as an open access publisher

[ElHassan ElSabry]

Hello Everyone,

I cannot claim that my analysis applies to all journals under discussion
here, but (at least in the case of journals from Egypt), you cannot ignore
the perspective of how governments and universities in developing countries
react to the global impact-factor/university-ranking frenzy.

The standard "coping mechanism" is that government (which usually centrally
controls hiring and promotions in all universities) would make it a rule
that only publishing in WoS/Scopes-listed journals counts, or at least
weighs more than publishing in local journals. This pushes many researchers
to ignore local journals and "aim to the top". However, this doesn't always
work. Using the tyranny of "irrelevance" to global research trends
(whatever that means), many of these "international" journals dismiss
papers by authors from developing countries if they treat local issues. If
interested, you can watch this great/sad interview
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl-PWzcahS8>by Leslie Chan with one
Kenya's prominent agriculture researchers (only 8 minutes).

Cases like this give way to another mechanism, which is when
governments/universities try to get their own local journals indexed in
WoS/Scopus. This is when they sign partnerships whereby the
university/local authority "sponsors" the publication and the big publisher
helps to enhance the journal, extend its reach and prepare it for indexing.
In this case researchers can publish research that tackles local problems
while still maintain global "impact" (I couldn't help but smile on writing
this last sentence).

Of course, I am not saying this is how journals from developing countries
secure places in international dabases. This would be insulting to all the
journal editors who work their fingers to the bone to get this to happen,
as well as to the honest people evaluating journal applications. It was
just very sad for me to know that 19 out of the 26 Egyptian (non-Hindawi)
journals in scopus are published by Elsevier.

By the way, I am putting together a research proposal now to further
examine these issues. If anyone is interested to collaborate I will be more
than happy to join efforts.

All the best,
ElHassan

On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 3:35 AM, Couture Marc <marc.couture at teluq.ca> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
>
> Jeroen Bosman wrote: "Elsevier is the single most important obstacle to
> achieving and getting support for open access".
>
>
>
> Ross Mounce wrote: "I hope no politicians or librarians are fooled by this
> simple ruse".
>
>
>
> Well, I very much agree with Jeroen's statement and Ross' wishes. However,
> I think it's important to understand and take the full measure of the
> situation and figures mentioned by Heather. If not, I don't know how one
> can hope influence those who make the decisions. Calling Elsevier "the bad
> guy" and its recent OA move a "simple ruse" won't do the job, I'm afraid
> (not that I think Jeroen or Ross thought so ;-).
>
>
>
> There have been discussions since the very beginning of the OA era (I
> recently reread the "Subversive Proposal" of 1994, where this issue was
> already amply discussed) on a possible significant, even radical, decrease
> of the overall cost of scientific publishing, now estimated at more than 10
> G$ worldwide, permitted (or rendered inevitable) by the transition to
> online dissemination.
>
>
>
> Now that, as I believe, that universal OA is on the way, no clear scenario
> as to what will be the new disseminating/publishing/funding model(s) has
> emerged. Abolishing journals or publishers? Open solutions (OJS) in the
> hands of the research community? Harnad's Fair Gold (overlay journals based
> upon repositories)? Major for-profit publishers revenue-preserving (or even
> revenue-increasing) "solutions"?
>
>
>
> In this regard, the fact that it's none other than Elsevier that now
> offers the largest fleet of OA journals, 60 % of them not charging APCs,
> must be looked at carefully.
>
>
>
> What I find the most interesting (not in a positive way though) is that
> those 300 journals without APCs seem to be all society journals. The same
> applies to journals in the low-end of the OA and hybrid APC distributions
> (a systematic investigation should be made).
>
>
>
> So it seems that these societies decided that it's a good thing to
> subcontract to Elsevier their OA publishing operation. The problem is, we
> don't know how much (per paper, for instance) it costs them, compared to
> the "normal" Elsevier non-hybrid APCs ($1500 - $3000). We don't know either
> if they have envisioned other solutions, like less costly publishers (for
> instance Hindawi or Ubiquity Press; see http://bit.ly/2iqYglv) or systems
> like OJS. Maybe society members, if they care, could obtain these figures
> and, hopefully, explanations; maybe some societies have to be transparent
> in this regard. Is it possible that Elsevier (and, surely, the other major
> publishers) succeeds easily in convincing societies that it's worth paying
> for a more expensive solution? Because it's less trouble? Because of the
> perceived value of the publisher's imprint (compared to that of the
> society)?
>
>
>
> By the way, I noticed in the web pages of some non-APC Elsevier OA
> journals (again a systematic investigation should be made) that peer-review
> is "under responsibility" of the society (or institution). This seems to
> mean that Elsevier is in no way involved in this part of the publishing
> process, which is often deemed the most significant publisher added value.
>
>
>
> We certainly need more information to better understand these issues. For
> my part, I’ll probably take some time to dig a little bit further.
>
>
>
> Marc Couture
>
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> GOAL at eprints.org
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>
>


-- 
ElHassan ElSabry, *M.Sc.*

Doctoral Candidate
Science & Technology Policy Program
National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (Japan)
<http://www.grips.ac.jp/en/>

Content Development Specialist
Directory of Free Arab Journals (DFAJ) <http://dfaj.net/>
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