What the big publishers offer is prestige and most academics are addicted to that prestige. Getting into Science or Nature is like a heroin. No academic-run open access web journal offers this high. Apart from that, journal prestige also plays a key role in the distribution of funding, for example in the UK. Many researchers feel they just cannot afford to publish in more ethically correct journals because these journals have less prestige which will make it harder for them to compete for funding. Of course all this doesn't change the fact that this industry is completely parasitic.
Exactly. If these publishers weren't offering anything of value, then why would authors continue to use them when open source alternatives are available?
No one is holding a gun to their head saying "you must publish your paper in Science!"
Actually there's incredible pressure on academics to publish as much as they can, in journals with as much prestige as possible.
There may not be actual guns involved, but funding and research opportunities are very much on the line.
Which raises the question: who are the pirates here?
In what sense is a corporation holding an entire professional community to ransom while adding no real value not being piratical?
In reality the journal publishing "industry" is just another example of aggressive for-profit enclosure of what was once considered a public good.
I'm more ambivalent about rights issues around creative works, because I think everyone wins when unusually talented artists and creators earn enough to work full time.
But academic publishing seems straightforward extortion of value from universities and governments - ultimately from tax payers - with no plausible upside.
> But academic publishing seems straightforward extortion of value from universities and governments
It seems universities and governments find value in the service provided by publishers. If they wanted, they could stop making funding and research opportunities dependent on how the results are published, right? I don't see how publishers have much leverage here, let alone a position where they can exert extorsion.
No, universities can't do this. They can't compete with publishers directly because publishers can decide to cut off the supply of journals to libraries.
They also can't set up a competing independent paper service because there's no way New Journal X can compete with the brand recognition of Nature or Phys Rev D.
The publishers have a de facto monopoly on the prominent brands. That's why it's extortion, and not a service. The only service provided by the publishers is access to the goodwill associated with the brand.
What universities can do - and are starting to do - is to set up alternative publishing systems that will start to bypass those brands. Arxiv is the most famous examples, but increasingly communities of academics - not universities - are creating their own online enclaves, with the optional prospect of live debate about papers instead of the current somewhat dysfunctional formal peer review system.
Eventually the goodwill for many disciplines will move to those online enclaves, and that's when publishers will lose their leverage.
I guess we agree, then. Publishers have something that customers want and cannot find elsewhere, and set the prices accordingly. I wouldn't call that extortion, though. ("The NFL has a de facto monopoly on the prominent teams. That's why it's extorsion, and not a service. The only service provided by the NFL is the ability to watch the games of the teams I care about in the stadium or on tv.")
You nailed it. Ignore the publishers. Just get academic institutions to put as much weight on a publication in an open sourced journal as they do for the leading journals. The problem will then solve itself.
