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Editorial Mutiny at Elsevier Journal
The entire editorial board of the Elsevier-owned Journal of Informetrics resigned Thursday in protest over high open-access fees, restricted access to citation data and commercial control of scholarly work.
Today, the same team is launching a new fully open-access journal called Quantitative Science Studies. The journal will be for and by the academic community and will be owned by the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI). It will be published jointly with MIT Press.
The editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics said in a statement that they were unanimous in their decision to quit. They contend that scholarly journals should be owned by the scholarly community rather than by commercial publishers, should be open access under fair principles, and publishers should make citation data freely available.
Elsevier said in a statement that it regretted the board's decision and that it had tried to address their concerns.
"Since hearing of their concerns, we have explained our position and made a number of concrete proposals to attempt to bridge our differences," Tom Reller, vice president of global communications at Elsevier, said in a statement. "Ultimately they decided to step down and we respect that decision and wish them the best in their future endeavors."
Elsevier's response to the board's requests can be accessed in full here.
This is not the first time the editorial board of an Elsevier-owned journal has quit to start a competing journal. In 2015, the editorial board of top linguistics journal Lingua made headlines by leaving their posts and announcing plans to start a rival open-access publication called Glossa.
Like Lingua, the Journal of Informetrics is considered one of the top journals in its field. It was started in 2007 and focuses on research of measures used to assess the impact of academic research, including bibliometrics, scientometrics, webometrics and altmetrics.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 17 2019, @05:38AM (13 children)
Awesome. Many people bitch and moan about evil monopolists, then go crawling back for more, think they haven't got a choice, can't live without the product or service. And then there are those deluded but willing slaves *cough* Apple fanbois *cough* who love their masters.
If any group ought to have the wits and guts to see they're getting a raw deal and throw off their chains, scientists are it. One would hope this spirit would extend to writers of SF, but it seems fiction was never as big a screwing as academic publishing is.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday January 17 2019, @09:07AM
Not to be confused with the International Society for Informetrics and Scientometrics, who have been getting some bad press recently about their recruiting efforts in the middle east.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @11:54AM (11 children)
Sticking to your principles is hard when your evil overlord pays your mortgage. It doesn't matter if you're a scientist or a janitor. I'm glad these people took a stand, but I have a lot of sympathy for others in similar situations that simply couldn't afford to do the same.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 17 2019, @03:23PM (5 children)
I was going to say something very similar.
Money is so powerful of a corrupter that it corrupts our entire government and other governments. Even people who run for office and have honest intention to stick to their principles and be a public servant can't stay uncorrupted for very long.
Entire police departments have been corrupt. Prison wardens and/or guards.
A little money leaveneth the entire loaf.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @06:04PM (2 children)
I hate to piss on your parade, but the amount of money the editorial board of these journals get is the same as the amount that Trump is paying the air traffic controllers right now.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 17 2019, @09:16PM (1 child)
They were getting paid to do their job at Elsevier-owned Journal of Informetrics. That is money. To stand up for their own principles and no longer get this paycheck was a bold and commendable move. Money can be a powerful influence.
What am I missing?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @04:54AM
Typically editors of academic journals are not paid for what they do. Not sure if this is the case here - do you know these were paid positions or are you just assuming?
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday January 17 2019, @10:21PM (1 child)
Didn't somebody say something like this a long time ago? "The love of money is the root of all evil."
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 17 2019, @11:12PM
Yes. And also that eye of a needle thing.
Another one I think of is 2 Peter 2:14 [biblegateway.com]
> . . . they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts in greed . . .
Hmmm, that sounds like MBAs or Cxx's maybe?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @05:33PM (4 children)
that's called being a whore. fuck your job, you goddamn cowards. this is why the whole nation/world is going to shit. people think "muh jerb" is a reasonable excuse. it's not, you dishonest sycophants.
(Score: 3, Touché) by AssCork on Thursday January 17 2019, @07:15PM
How's furlough treating you?
Just popped-out of a tight spot. Came out mostly clean, too.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Friday January 18 2019, @04:10PM (2 children)
That's called needing to eat. Capitalism makes whores of us all.
(Score: 2) by AssCork on Friday January 18 2019, @06:37PM (1 child)
Could always hunt, preserve meat for the winter months. But then again vegans don't really "eat" in the traditional sense, either. Pretty sure they just drink water and complain a lot.
Just popped-out of a tight spot. Came out mostly clean, too.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Friday January 18 2019, @10:32PM
Nice. The owner of a vegan restaurant nearby shared on social media a post with the caption, "When you haven't told anyone you're a vegan in more than five minutes" and a gif of a person tensing up, turning red, and then exploding in a ball of fire.
But for what it's worth, my vegan friends don't bring it up unless we're going to a restaurant that has absolutely nothing they can eat. I am not a vegan, I had eggs and meat yesterday. But I went to the vegan place for lunch and had a hoagie with a black bean pattie, onions, peppers, corn, olives, vegan cheese (which honest to goodness isn't that far off America), on a hoagie roll and a strawberry banana smoothie (water, strawberries, bananas, ice, nothing else). It's not bad food, I could live off it.