Sweden stands up for open access – cancels agreement with Elsevier

http://openaccess.blogg.kb.se/2018/...-open-access-cancels-agreement-with-elsevier/

2018-05-16 AV ANNICA WENTZEL

Sweden stands up for open access – cancels agreement with Elsevier

Large science publisher Elsevier does not meet the requirements of Swedish universities and research institutes

In order to take steps towards the goal of immediate open access by 2026 set by the Swedish Government, the Bibsam Consortium has after 20 years decided not to renew the agreement with the scientific publisher Elsevier. To be able to make the necessary transition from a subscription-based to an open access publishing system the Bibsam Consortium requires:

– Immediate open access to all articles published in Elsevier journals by researchers affiliated to participating organisations
– Reading access for participating organisations to all articles in Elsevier’s 1,900 journals
– A sustainable price model that enables a transition to open access

The agreement will be cancelled 30th of June
Elsevier has not been able to present a model that meets the demands of the Bibsam Consortium and the current agreement will not be renewed after 30th of June.

 

Interesting. Personally, I like the OpenAccess idea.

But this means Swedish universities have no access to Elsevier starting with July. Hm...

 

For those who have not been following this topic, the way Elsevier earns money is basically by having researchers do work paid for by taxpayers and doing unpaid peer review, then selling access to the published papers back to researchers.

 

So open access would mean having to pay for peer review instead?

 

Open access means that the public who paid for all this would no longer have to also pay the publisher to access scientific papers.

 

I know what open access means. I'm talking about the consequences of open access. Journals and peer review don't pay for themselves. I suppose universities could publish their own research on their websites, and we wouldn't need journals.

 

Right now open access is paid for by charging high fees for each article.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/What-Open-Access-Publishing/234108

But since peer review isn't doing the job that was advertised anyway, and in an online era it's not clear what value there is in having eleventy-million separate print journals, I am not sure what reason we need journal editors.
http://www.voiceinstituteofnewyork.com/editorial-are-medical-journals-obsolete/ (I have read similar sentiments more than once)

I am not certain that universities could do their own (because QMUL, but then again, maybe if other university departments were looped in, they could prevent such a disaster), but I am fairly sure that publishing journals themselves have potential conflict of interest (to print "clickbait", essentially, that gets lots of citations and drives up the impact factor).

http://cameronneylon.net/blog/peer-review-what-is-it-good-for/

https://retractionwatch.com/2018/01...traction-poem-journal-formats-mangle-science/

 

The consequences of restricted access brings you the likes of PACE, and the need for people like Alem Matthees striving to gain access.

 

I'm not arguing for restricted access. I'm saying that there needs to be another model in place. Saying we want everything to be free isn't a solution. Things don't pay for themselves.

How should peer reviewed be funded and organized? How should pusblishing be handled? These are questions that needs answers.

 

That's maybe the long-time plan of university based data archiving? Or it could be.

 

Peer review costs nothing. It has always been done free of charge and should continue to be. The only costs of journals used to be the printing and distribution. Editors did it out of love for the subject or the satisfaction of the job. I am an unpaid editor. I love it.

 

I am very interested in this topic but know utterly nothing.
I would like to ask for anyone who can answer. Is there such a thing as a guideline for peer reviewers.
And if there is not would such a (well thought out) guideline be of any use?

I'm not thinking of boxes to tick but a statement that provides a framework for approaching how to be thinking about what they are reading (if that's even possible).

 

No, there are no guidelines for what opinion to give. There are often guidelines for what issues to address - is the methodology good, was ethical approval obtained, are the statistics OK, etc etc. but for most journals it is assumed that reviewers know what to cover.

But the only real guideline you can have is 'give an honest answer based on clear reasoning'. Most referees' reports do not follow this so the system is a shambles. That is why I think it would be better to have open requests for peer review with names given, rather than anonymous, after initial publication. Anybody should be able to comment, but with reasons. An advantage of this is that authors would make sure they get their own reviews privately to make sure they have not said something stupid and then public review would only have as much impact as it was justified by reasoning. It would not be possible to diss papers on political grounds because that would be obvious to everyone else.

 

This just cuts out the middleman (profit monger) so i'm all for it.

 

Since academics are under pressure to "publish or perish", I wonder if peer review could be offered as an alternative to those who'd rather do that than publish all the time? That could be an interesting solution maybe?