We’ve beat up a bit on Elsevier a number of times on this blog, but this time they’ve really made it too easy: they’ve admitted to publishing journals that are un-peer-reviewed advertisements for drug companies.

Let that sink in for a moment; a supposedly respectable academic publisher put their imprimatur on Merck propoganda disguised as scientific journals. They even had the nerve to claim that they weren’t journals, even though one is called The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, and is printed to look like any other Elsevier journal.

So, any time you hear people from the publishing industry blathering about how for-profit journals are necessary to maintain peer review, keep this story in mind. The drive for profit is undermining the integrity of peer review, and Elsevier is on the forefront of doing so.

EDIT: Let me elaborate a little, in response to the excellent comment of Greg below. I agree with most of what Greg said, and I think we’re coming from roughly the same position, but putting a different emphasis on things. I absolutely agree that our current publishing system is broken, and needs to be changed.

The present journal system is essentially 19th century in character, except with shorter travel times, and has done very little to capture the free-floating information on the web. But part of building support for moving to a new model is pointing out how deeply flawed the previous model is, and how badly it’s failing us. While this and El Naschie are extreme cases (one could also include the bizarre events around the breakup of K-theory), they’re also vivid illustrations of how unreliable our current system is. I think people are somewhat conservative by nature and are very reluctant to drop a model long after it has become extremely suboptimal. If one is to prod them into considering something new, I think loudly pointing out the failure of the current regime is very necessary, if not at all sufficient.

So, perhaps you’ve heard about the Conyers bill (“Fair Copyright in Research Works Act”).  There are some emails circulating about this online (I got a forward of one originating with David Yetter), mostly leading back to a post of Lawrence Lessig’s at the Huffington Post.

You can read more details at the Lessig post, but the short version is this:  this bill would make it illegal for any federal agency to require you to cede any copyright privileges to the government in exchange for research funding.  The only current instance of this I know of is that all NIH funded research must be posted on PubMed.  This bill would make it illegal for the NIH to require that, which would be a terrible thing to do.  John Conyers should be ashamed of himself for introducing such a bill, and you should write you congresscritter about it, especially if they’re on the Judiciary Committee (it would be much better if this died in committee).

On the other hand, certain email forwards seem to have gotten it in their heads that this bill would forbid people who get NSF grants from posting on the arXiv, but it sure doesn’t look like the text of the bill could possibly imply that.  Am I right here, or am I somehow misreading things?

On the other other hand, this is something of a big deal, in that it is a big middle finger from all the publishers to even the most mild-mannered open-access advocate.  The message is roughly that the publishers think their profit margins are more important that people dying.  Which is fine;  they’re corporations, that’s how corporations are required to function by law.  It just should make you think twice about whether corporations are a good vehicle for scientific publishing.

Anyways, everybody chill out.  Then call your congresscritter.

EDIT: Right after posting this, I got another forward of an email by David Yetter, saying that he had misunderstood the legislation and that my (still displeasing) interpretation is correct. (Just so we’re clear, that had nothing to do with the post.  It’s just a coincidence.)

Just in case any of you were still wondering: yes, evil journals actually are evil. They hire evil PR reps. They attempt to deny taxpayers access to research that is publicly funded, just to make a buck. They start astroturf front groups with names as Orwellian as Bush’s “Clear Skies Initiative.”

They do what they can to sound like science is their priority, but this is transparent bullshit. Should we be surprised that these companies put money before science? No, they’re a corporation; that’s their job, in fact, their legal responsibility to their stockholders.

So, everybody, please, take a couple of minutes out of your day to go to write your congresscritter, and senators too and tell they the exact opposite of these clowns’ talking points: publicly funded research should be public. Period. None of this “well, maybe if the author gets around to it” stuff. And if that’s such a threat to the bottom line of Elsevier et al., maybe they should consider getting out of the scientific publishing business. I doubt they would be all that sorely missed.

My discovery of the week is that we don’t even need these jokers for publishing books anymore; you can sell books as print-on-demand for a base cost of less than $10 (for a paperback; less than $20 for a hardcover), and keep the copyright, and 80% of the margin. [Don't you want a link here?
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Pass the word on.

Since my post on journals seemed to strike a few nerves (I even received an email about it from the publisher of the Elsevier pure mathematics editor), I thought I would clarify a little bit about my previous post. You might call it a prequel.

There was an important but unstated personal belief of mine as regards journals. I would sum it up as follows: “It no longer makes sense for mathematics research aimed at mathematicians to be published by for-profit publishers.” Let me unpack that below. (more…)

Well, it would seem that the editorial board of K-Theory has “pulled a Topology” (I’m really hoping this becomes an actual phrase) and resigned en masse.

Since we seem to be the last in the mathematics blogging community to have noticed, let me offer some editorial content to make up for our tardiness: good for them. Whether you believe that there is a place for for-profit publishers in research mathematics, or like me, you think they are doomed by technology changes (the capital investment required for a journal has dropped so much that they’re just not necessary), I think all mathematicians should see this as a positive development. Why?

(more…)