<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div>Hello Everyone,<br><br></div>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.<br><br></div>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 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl-PWzcahS8">interview </a>by Leslie Chan with one Kenya's prominent agriculture researchers (only 8 minutes).<br></div><br></div>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).<br><br></div>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.<br><br></div>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.<br><br></div>All the best,<br></div>ElHassan</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 3:35 AM, Couture Marc <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:marc.couture@teluq.ca" target="_blank">marc.couture@teluq.ca</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div link="blue" vlink="purple" lang="FR-CA">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA">Hi all,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA">Jeroen Bosman wrote: "Elsevier is the single most important obstacle to achieving and getting support for open access".<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA">Ross Mounce wrote: "I hope no politicians or librarians are fooled by this simple ruse".<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA">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 ;-).<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA">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.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA">Now that, as I believe, that universal OA is on the way, no clear scenario as to what will be the new disseminating/publishing/<wbr>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"?<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA">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.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA">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).<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA">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
<a href="http://bit.ly/2iqYglv" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/2iqYglv</a>) 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)?<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA">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.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA">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.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><u></u><u></u></font></span></span></p><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA">Marc Couture<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:monospace,monospace">ElHassan ElSabry, <i>M.Sc.</i><br><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:monospace,monospace">Doctoral Candidate<br>Science & Technology Policy Program<br><a href="http://www.grips.ac.jp/en/" target="_blank">National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (Japan)</a><br></span></div><span style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:monospace,monospace">Content Development Specialist<br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><a href="http://dfaj.net/" target="_blank">Directory of Free Arab Journals (DFAJ)</a><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><br></span></div><span style="font-family:monospace,monospace"></span><div><span style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><br></span><br><span style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><br><br></span></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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