danielbolnickAug 2, 2023
Julian Schrader

News on the Journal of Biogeography publishing situation. We (the Associate Editors) wrote an editorial on the situation and name all our concerns especially of researchers from the global south and ECRs. You can read it here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jbi.14697

And please spread the word if you like to support our case!

#publishing #biodiversity #ecology

Aug 2, 2023 at 5:00amWeb
Show threadJulian SchraderAug 2, 2023
Ironically, Willey turned down our request to publish this OA for free... Somehow that says it all.
Show threadScott MatterAug 2, 2023

@JulianSchrader

Publishers are landlords.

Show threadarthurgesslerAug 2, 2023
@JulianSchrader the gross profit margin of 70% is obscene. This is an extreme example of private companies’ parasitism on public money. Researchers payed by public money provide the content (they have to pay for to be published), researchers provide the scientific service (as editors and reviewers) for free (or for ridiculously low compensation). Text editing, typesetting and other services have been outsourced to low income countries. So the whole system is not to serve science…
Show threadarthurgesslerAug 2, 2023
@JulianSchrader …but to maximize Wiley’s (and Elsevier’s and Springer’s) profit. And when it now comes to a filtering process that you only can publish if your institution is rich enough to pay your article this will amplify the already existing money bias in science. This can’t be the scientific practice we aim for.
Show threadStan SchymanskiAug 2, 2023
@arthurgessler @JulianSchrader At least, with #openaccess, their profit making becomes more visible and the costs more transparent. In the traditional paywall system we never get to know how much money the journals extort from us. Yes, extort, because they hold decades of research hostage if our libraries refuse to cough up their ever increasing subscription fees.
Show threadarthurgesslerAug 2, 2023
@JulianSchrader @schymans fully agree - I was at the beginning really positive with open access with the idea in mind that everyone has now access to research results - but the negative aspects become more and more obvious (to me). The problem were, are and will be the publishers - if we (the scientists, universities and national research foundations) don’t support a new and better system that will not change.
Show threadeswillwalkerAug 2, 2023
@JulianSchrader So long as we assign value to journal prestige rather than article quality, we perpetuate this situation. It behooves scholars to actually evaluate research quality for hiring and promotions rather than depending on journal prestige as a short-cut to the real work of evaluating the quality of individual papers.