IN DEPTH
What will a turning point in academic publishing look like?
Does the mass resignation of editors from two Elsevier journals mean the whole sector is close to a tipping point? Rob Mackinlay speaks to editors, publishers, funders and librarians about where things stand.
WHEN 43 editors resigned from two Elsevier journals in April they not only transferred smoothly to a new title at a new publisher, they also successfully highlighted growing concerns about the profits of the largest commercial pub- lishers from open access publishing. The recently-resigned Editor in Chief of NeuroImage, Stephen Smith, is now EiC of recently-launched Imaging Neuroscience at MIT Press. Stephen, a professor of biomedi- cal engineering at Oxford, listed three factors that enabled the move.
l a clear motive; l support from stakeholders; l a realistic destination.
This article is an attempt to understand the extent to which other journals are in a position to follow and if so, when.
Motive
NeuroImage is one of 2,800 journals published by Elsevier. Unlike the majority of Elsevier’s journals, NeuroImage is open access so readers don’t pay to access arti- cles. Instead, the costs are covered by the authors, or the institutions they work for, through Article Processing Charges (APCs) paid to Elsevier. NeuroImage’s APC is currently $3450 or £2760, a price which NeuroImage editors asked Elsevier to reduce to under $2000
June 2023
Rob Mackinlay(
rob.mackinlay@
cilip.org.uk) is a journalist at Information Professional
arguing that “estimates of direct article costs at relevant journals are generally around $1,000 or lower” but it became clear, after a year, that Elsevier wasn’t going to.
“Scientists and funders increasingly feel that it is wrong for publishers to make such high profits,” Stephen says, “particularly given that the publishers do not fund the original science, or the writing of articles, or payments to reviewers, and pay minimal editorial stipends. As a result, authors and reviewers are increasingly refusing to work with high-profit journals.”
Support
Editors can’t do this without the support of the academics in their specific field. “This
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