Category Archives: oa.elsevier

How Scientific Publishers’ Extreme Fees Put Profit Over Progress | The Nation

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“On April 17, the premier journal NeuroImage’s entire editorial team, comprising more than 40 scientists, resigned over the “unethical fees” charged by the journal’s academic publisher, Elsevier. With more than $2 billion in annual revenue, the publisher’s profit margin approaches 40 percent—rivaling that of Apple and Google. “Elsevier has become kind of like the poster child for evil publishing companies,” said neuroscientist Kristen Kennedy, one of the recently resigned senior editors.

Kennedy relies on taxpayer money to study the aging brain. At the University of Texas at Dallas, federal grants help fund the staff, equipment, and experiments in her lab. But this public money, largely from the National Institutes of Health, is being drained by exorbitant publishing fees….”

PREreview and CRNEUR launch a collaborative and community-based review pilot

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“We are thrilled to announce a new collaboration between PREreview and Current Research in Neurobiology (CRNEUR)—a gold open access journal that publishes original research in neuroscience. Together we will host 5 open, collaborative, and interactive review events styled after PREreview Live-streamed Preprint Journal Clubs….

PREreview has long partnered with the community to host and facilitate what we call Live-streamed Preprint Journal Clubs—topic-centered, interactive online calls in which participants are guided to provide constructive feedback to a preprint.

CRNEUR is a gold open access journal from Elsevier that seeks to be a leader in innovative open access publishing, working to improve global research culture and public engagement in neuroscience research. With this pilot, the CRNEUR editorial team is keen to explore how the open and collaborative aspect of the PREreview Live-streamed Journal Club conducted alongside more traditional peer review can contribute to their mission….”

40 editors at a scientific journal just resigned in protest of their publisher’s “greed”

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“This came to a boil on April 17, when more than 40 scientists resigned from their editorial positions at a journal called NeuroImage — one of the world’s leading publications concerning brain imaging. Founded in 1992, the journal publishes around 1,000 articles per year with an impact factor of 7.4, which is a metric for how often the journal’s research is cited by others. NeuroImage has been open access since 2020, a mode of scientific publishing that eschews paywalls, allowing anyone to read the research, share it and build upon it….”

Editors of neurology imaging journal resign to start new publication in protest at author fees | The BMJ

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“All 42 editors at the Elsevier journal NeuroImage and its companion journal NeuroImage: Reports have resigned from their posts to collaborate on a new non-profit open access journal called Imaging Neuroscience, aiming “to replace NeuroImage as the top journal in our field,” they said in a joint statement.1

The editors decided to stop working with Elsevier after the publisher refused their request to reduce article processing charges for authors publishing open access articles in NeuroImage and NeuroImage: Reports. These were set at $3450, roughly average for a medical journal of NeuroImage’s circulation and impact factor. But the departed editors estimate the actual cost of publication at $1000 or less….”

Is the Essence of a Journal Portable? – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“For context: many Scholarly Kitchen readers will have heard within the past few weeks about the wholesale defection of an editorial board at the Elsevier journal NeuroImage, and the departed board members’ stated intention to create a new, competing journal at MIT Press called Imaging NeuroScience. According to one news report, they plan “for the new journal to eclipse NeuroImage in standing, saying the fact that the entire editorial staff is making the shift will ensure the new journal’s quality.”

More recently comes the announcement that Wiley fired the editor of The Journal of Political Philosophy, prompting a wave of resignations from that journal’s editorial board and leading one board member to characterize Wiley’s move as “a catastrophic mistake” and to predict that “it will be virtually impossible to resstablish JPP as the immensely distinguished journal it has become once [the fired editor] has left the helm.” It is perhaps worth noting that editorial board defections are not a new phenomenon, as noted in this 2013 post, its 2015 follow-up, and another similar situation from 2019….”

‘Too greedy’: mass walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees | Peer review and scientific publishing | The Guardian

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“More than 40 leading scientists have resigned en masse from the editorial board of a top science journal in protest at what they describe as the “greed” of publishing giant Elsevier.

The entire academic board of the journal Neuroimage, including professors from Oxford University, King’s College London and Cardiff University resigned after Elsevier refused to reduce publication charges.

Academics around the world have applauded what many hope is the start of a rebellion against the huge profit margins in academic publishing, which outstrip those made by Apple, Google and Amazon.

Neuroimage, the leading publication globally for brain-imaging research, is one of many journals that are now “open access” rather than sitting behind a subscription paywall. But its charges to authors reflect its prestige, and academics now pay over £2,700 for a research paper to be published. The former editors say this is “unethical” and bears no relation to the costs involved….”

The Scholarly Fingerprinting Industry

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Abstract:  Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer Nature, Wiley, and SAGE: Many researchers know that the five giant firms publish most of the world’s scholarship. Fifty years of acquisitions and journal launches have yielded a stunningly profitable oligopoly, built up from academics’ unpaid writing-and-editing labor. Their business is a form of IP rentiership—collections of title-by-title prestige monopolies that, in the case of Nature or The Lancet, underwrite a stable of spinoff journals on the logic of the Hollywood franchise. Less well-known is that Elsevier and its peers are layering a second business on top of their legacy publishing operations, fueled by data extraction. They are packaging researcher behavior, gleaned from their digital platforms, into prediction products, which they sell back to universities and other clients. Their raw material is scholars’ citations, abstracts, downloads, and reading habits, repurposed into dashboard services that, for example, track researcher productivity. Elsevier and the other oligopolist firms are fast becoming, in other words, surveillance publishers . And they are using the windfall profits from their existing APC-and-subscription business to finance their moves into predictive analytics.

 

Editors quit top neuroscience journal to protest against open-access charges

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“More than 40 editors have resigned from two leading neuroscience journals in protest against what the editors say are excessively high article-processing charges (APCs) set by the publisher. They say that the fees, which publishers use to cover publishing services and in some cases make money, are unethical. The publisher, Dutch company Elsevier, says that its fees provide researchers with publishing services that are above average quality for below average price. The editors plan to start a new journal hosted by the non-profit publisher MIT Press.

The decision to resign came about after many discussions among the editors, says Stephen Smith, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, UK, and editor-in-chief of one of the journals, NeuroImage. “Everyone agreed that the APC was unethical and unsustainable,” says Smith, who will lead the editorial team of the new journal, Imaging Neuroscience, when it launches….”

‘It Feels Like Things Are Breaking Open’: High Publishing Charges Spur Neuroscientists to Start Their Own Journal

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“The editors of a prominent neuroscience journal are sending a clear message to their publisher — and, they hope, to the broader academic-publishing community — by resigning en masse to begin a new journal in protest of what they say are “unethical and unsustainable” publishing fees.

More than 40 handling editors, associate editors, senior editors, and editors in chief for NeuroImage and its companion journal NeuroImage: Reports, which are published by Elsevier, on Monday announced they were leaving their positions to assume similar roles at the newly formed Imaging Neuroscience, which will be published by the nonprofit MIT Press. They plan for the new journal to eclipse NeuroImage in standing, saying the fact that the entire editorial staff is making the shift will ensure the new journal’s quality.

The high-profile move is the latest chapter in the long-unfolding battle over who pays and who benefits in the academic-publishing world. The departure from a well-regarded journal, and the plan to mount direct competition to it, also highlight the complex ecosystem that surrounds journals’ prestige and impact — and the interplay of a publisher’s reach and scale with the academic bona fides of the scholars who run a title….”

open-access.network: Elsevier: Protest gegen zu hohe Publikationsgebühren

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From Google’s English:  “In a letter dated April 18, 2023, the 40 members of the editorial board of the open access journal NeuroImage , which is considered a leader in the field of neuroscience , announced that they – including the four chief editors – had resigned jointly. With this step, they are protesting what they consider to be excessive publication fees ( Article Processing Charges – APC ) of $3,450 that the scientific publisher Elsevier charges for publications in the journal. According to its own statements, the editorial board had previously tried in vain to persuade the publisher to reduce the fees. The entire former team is now founding theOpen access journal Imaging Neuroscience with the aim of becoming the leading journal in the field of neuroscience….”

open-access.network: Elsevier: Protest gegen zu hohe Publikationsgebühren

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From Google’s English:  “In a letter dated April 18, 2023, the 40 members of the editorial board of the open access journal NeuroImage , which is considered a leader in the field of neuroscience , announced that they – including the four chief editors – had resigned jointly. With this step, they are protesting what they consider to be excessive publication fees ( Article Processing Charges – APC ) of $3,450 that the scientific publisher Elsevier charges for publications in the journal. According to its own statements, the editorial board had previously tried in vain to persuade the publisher to reduce the fees. The entire former team is now founding theOpen access journal Imaging Neuroscience with the aim of becoming the leading journal in the field of neuroscience….”

Imaging journal editors resign over ‘extreme’ open-access fees | Spectrum | Autism Research News

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“The entire editorial boards of two leading neuroscience journals, NeuroImage and NeuroImage:Reports, resigned en masse on Monday over what they say are exorbitant article fees from their publisher, Elsevier.

The group intends to launch a new nonprofit open-access journal called Imaging Neuroscience, “to replace NeuroImage as the top journal in our field,” according to a statement posted 17 April to Twitter by an account called Imaging Neuroscience EiC. The statement was signed by all 42 editorial board members of both journals….”

Imaging journal editors resign over ‘extreme’ open-access fees | Spectrum | Autism Research News

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“The entire editorial boards of two leading neuroscience journals, NeuroImage and NeuroImage:Reports, resigned en masse on Monday over what they say are exorbitant article fees from their publisher, Elsevier.

The group intends to launch a new nonprofit open-access journal called Imaging Neuroscience, “to replace NeuroImage as the top journal in our field,” according to a statement posted 17 April to Twitter by an account called Imaging Neuroscience EiC. The statement was signed by all 42 editorial board members of both journals….”