For-profit Publishers Research Articles

The ‘unpaid’ labour of peer reviewers and the accumulation of capital in the industry of academic publishing

The ‘political economy’ of academic publishing industry has come under scrutiny in recent years, as scholars logically seek to understand how for-profit publishers can earn the exorbitant profits they report year after year. One explanation argues that academic publishers exploit scientists acting as peer reviewers and appropriate their ‘unpaid labour’, and that such ‘free labour’ is a major source of profit for publishing companies. These two assertions form the core tenets of the ‘unpaid academic labour thesis’, as this explanation has been termed. The purpose of this article is to subject the unpaid academic labour thesis to a systematic analysis and critique, aiming to elucidate whether it represents a valid explanation of the political economy of journal publishing. This question is considered in the light of the quantitative and qualitative determinations of surplus value production. The analysis conducted will show that peer review is neither an unpaid activity nor a source of profits (be it large of small) for the academic publishing industry. Moreover, by drawing on the distinction between labour time and production time expounded by Marx in Capital, volume II, the investigation will reveal that peer review represents for academic publishers a barrier to the valorisation of their capitals and, also, an unprofitable expense. Without a proper understanding of how capital accumulation operates in the industry of academic publishing, any political action or strategy against the current system of academic publishing will be powerless and ineffective.

DeSci Advancement and Gamification – Virtual University as A Model

The existing model for knowledge dissemination that universities and research centers adopt relies on central funding and central repositories of publications and books which are for the most part guarded by pay walls. These central repositories manifest as for-profit Publishing houses. While the editing and peer review processes are fully voluntarily performed by experts in the scientific field, the outcome of the scientific work i.e. the publication remains under the publishing house ownership accessible only by paying an exorbitant fee. In conjunction, conventional brick and mortar universities nowadays stand as the main knowledge creation flocked by students. Again, access to these educational institutions and/or to research funding require substantial effort and/or cost from students and scientists alike. In this work we present a new model for the creation and dissemination of knowledge relying on the DeSci approach and crowd funding. The model circumvents many if not all of the deficiencies of the existing centralized approach.

Editors' note: On rent extraction in academic publishing and its alternatives

In this editorial we introduce new members of our editorial team and the contents of this issue. In addition we discuss open access developments of the journal, namely our new license policy, which allows authors to choose a Creative Common license that best suits their needs or the requirements of their funders. This change in licenses makes our journal also compliant with the Plan S programme, which several large European research funders have signed, in order to promote open access publishing. We support such initiatives, but note that they are designed mainly to push large commercial publishers to publish publicly funded research in open access. While the Plan S is a welcome program, commercial for-profit publishers charge exorbitant charges for open access, usually paid for by the researchers' institutions. We note that these charges are a form of rent extraction, which produces little added value, as the commercial publishers rely on the free labor of researchers and publicly funded research to fill their journals' pages. More so, due to these charges the public ends up paying again for the research it funded in the first place. We argue that public support for both institutional and independent non-profit open access publishing is a socially more just and sustainable model.

The benefits of publishing in society‐owned scientific journals

The benefits of publishing in society‐owned scientific journals

Editorial: Open Access on the move

Editorial: Open Access on the move

Supporting Open Infrastructure through commercial partnerships

Watch the VIDEO. One of the key issues with open infrastructure within the scholarly communications and open science spaces is finding solutions for long-term sustainability. One important approach to this is ensuring that these infrastructures are also adopted and supported by the commercial sector, as in the case of key platforms we take for granted today, such as Linux. This can lead to significant benefits both for the scholarly community in terms of dependability and lower cost, and to companies in terms of lower risk, shared costs, and broadening impact on society. This presentation will present the approach taken by Ubiquity, a for-profit publishing services and open science platform, to base all of its products on open infrastructure. By deploying and contributing both financially and through open source code to infrastructure such as Open Journal Systems, Samvera repositories and OPERAS Metrics, Ubiquity is able to both strengthen these platforms for the wider community and to benefit significantly from their use. A cost-benefit analysis based on the Ubiquity example will be included to make the case for investment in open infrastructure by commercial companies. This will be further balanced by a discussion of ways to establish trust between the scholarly community and commercial providers, and the kind of guarantees these providers need to make based on our experience.

Scholarly publication, open access and the commons

The article argues that social work academics, especially critical and radical social work academics, ought to contribute to alternative, open and more collective approaches to academic publication. The prevailing problematic of price gouging, that is, for-profit publishers enclosing scholarly articles behind paywalls, is discussed, along with mainstream liberal responses in the form of open access initiatives that aim to reorient the business models of for-profit publishers towards payment for publication. Mainstream approaches analyse the problem of achieving open access as one of oligopoly and market failure. Other more critical perspectives are introduced, along with the notion of the commons as a site of struggle within higher education. A brief case study of a collective, community-driven approach to transitioning the Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work journal to open access is offered, before concluding with an assessment of open access as just one part of a wider platform of anti-capitalist struggle within higher education.

Who games metrics and rankings? Institutional niches and journal impact factor inflation

Ratings and rankings are omnipresent and influential in contemporary society. Individuals and organizations strategically respond to incentives set by rating systems. We use academic publishing as a case study to examine organizational variation in responses to influential metrics. The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a prominent metric linked to the value of academic journals, as well as career prospects of researchers. Since scholars, institutions, and publishers alike all have strong interests in affiliating with high JIF journals, strategic behaviors to ‘game’ the JIF metric are prevalent. Strategic self-citation is a common tactic employed to inflate JIF values. Based on empirical analyses of academic journals indexed in the Web of Science, we examine institutional characteristics conducive to strategic self-citation for JIF inflation. Journals disseminated by for-profit publishers, with lower JIFs, published in academically peripheral countries and with more recent founding dates were more likely to exhibit JIF-inflating self-citation patterns. Findings reveal the importance of status and institutional logics in influencing metrics gaming behaviors, as well as how metrics can affect work outcomes in different types of institutions. While quantitative rating systems affect many who are being evaluated, certain types of people and organizations are more prone to being influenced by rating systems than others.

Collaboration between research institutes and large and small publishers for publishing open access journals

Research institutes frequently collaborate with for-profit publishers for the publication of open access journals. This study uses a structural break test to examine the effects of the collaboration between research institutes and large and small for-profit publishers for the publication of 15 gold open access journals on the journals’ internationality and academic influence. The results reveal an improvement in the internationality and academic influence for most of the journals following the collaboration. Additionally, the scale and persistence of the effects are not dependent on the size of the publisher. The findings indicate that large publishers do not have any advantage over small publishers in publishing journals for research institutes. This implies that small publishers can compete with large ones in publishing official journals on behalf of research institutes. However, as collaboration with research institutes strengthens the large publishers’ presence in the open access journal market, it is necessary to monitor their activities, including large publishers’ acquisitions of small ones.

The Factors Significant to the Introduction of Institutional Open Access Policies: Two Case Studies of R-1 Universities

INTRODUCTION US universities are increasingly unable to afford research journal subscriptions due to the rising prices charged by for-profit academic publishers. Open access (OA) appears to be the most backed option to disrupt the current publishing model. The purpose of this study is to understand the factors significant to the introduction of institutional OA policies at selected United States R-1 universities. METHODS An in-depth qualitative study, including interviews with stakeholders, was conducted on two R-1universities with OA policies that have been implemented for at least five years. results The results of this study reveal that while the perceived sustainability of the scholarly communication business model was an initial driver, open dissemination of knowledge was the primary factor for the development of institutional policies. discussion Open dissemination of knowledge aligns with the mission of both institutions. Interviewees believe that a wider and more open dissemination of the institution’s research cost could positively affect their faculty’s research impact, which could then affect the institution’s reputation, rankings, classifications and funding. CONCLUSION While the initial driver for exploring OA scholarly communication for both institutions was the perceived unsustainability of the scholarly communication model, the most important factor that led to the creation of their policies was the desire to disseminate the faculty’s scholarship.

Systematic examination of preprint platforms for use in the medical and biomedical sciences setting

ObjectivesThe objective of this review is to identify all preprint platforms with biomedical and medical scope and to compare and contrast the key characteristics and policies of these platforms.Study design...

The Highlander: The Art of Decolonising Publishing

In 2015, I embarked on a new project with my former PhD supervisor at Edinburgh: to create a respected area studies journal of Highland Asia that would be both accessible and accountable to the communities where, and with whom, we do our research: Highland Asia! We successfully built up an editorial board of renowned scholars, convinced the Edinburgh University Library to be our publisher, and soon we had our journal online, with a short first issue free to download anywhere. However, we suddenly realised that we had lost something in the process. While we now engage with the global academic community, offering excellent peer-review, and editorial value to authors, we also found we were beginning to replicate a publishing model we were trying to get away from. Like pay-wall journals we were operating in a space at a distance, closed off, and culturally inaccessible to the communities we were eager to engage with. Can Open Access forge new pathways that are different from the pay-wall journals and big publishers? In recent months, we have started to look at our old notes, to see where we might regain our footing, to get back that ‘anarchist’ DIY inspiration! Providing free downloadable PDFs is good, but it is no great achievement anymore. How can we meaningfully bridge the worlds we work in so that knowledge production itself is more open? In our case, we think one approach is to open up the entire publishing process. In addition to indigenous authors and reviewers, we want to engage proof-readers, copyeditors, typesetters, photographers, cover designers, printers and remote college departments and libraries across the Himalayas. We have only started exploring this in 2020, but in the process we have discovered that there is great demand, for example, for printed versions. Easily produced locally, we could set up a basic subscription model, and stock local college libraries, book stores, and coffee shops in Northeast India, Bhutan, Sikkim, and Nepal. By opening up, and engaging in dialogue with local scholars, librarians, designers, and artists we have found all kinds of opportunities that help our journal move in the direction of being truly ‘Open Access’ in every way. In Edinburgh, we have also found a community of PhD students doing research on the Himalayas, excited to learn about publishing. We are forming an editorial collective that is now connecting with our community in Asia, offering additional contacts that can facilitate research exchange. Our journal remains experimental. We have, for example, decided to go with a rolling publishing model instead of distinct issues. I also want to engage my own students in Tromsø, especially in editorial management. I also hope we can develop synergies with the Open Access community in Norway. Beyond library publishing, we see an opportunity to create a new space, instead of combatting an old space dominated by for-profit publishers. Finally, by crossing borders, and truly opening up in this way, we also push this idea of knowledge production towards greater accountability. Indeed we are calling for truly tangible ways in decolonising publishing.

The pricing of open access journals: Diverse niches and sources of value in academic publishing

Open access (OA) publishing has created new academic and economic niches in contemporary science. OA journals offer numerous publication outlets with varying editorial philosophies and business models. This article analyzes the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) ( n = 12,127) to identify characteristics of OA academic journals related to the adoption of article processing charge (APC)-based business models, as well as the price points of journals that charge APCs. Journal impact factor (JIF), language, publisher mission, DOAJ Seal, economic and geographic regions of publishers, peer review duration, and journal discipline are all significantly related to the adoption and pricing of journal APCs. Even after accounting for other journal characteristics (prestige, discipline, publisher country), journals published by for-profit publishers charge the highest APCs. Journals with status endowments (JIF, DOAJ Seal) and articles written in English, published in wealthier regions, and in medical or science-based disciplines are also relatively costlier. The OA publishing market reveals insights into forces that create economic and academic value in contemporary science. Political and institutional inequalities manifest in the varying niches occupied by different OA journals and publishers.

Open Access Publishing Trends in the Forest Sciences

Open access models for academic publishing offer an alternative to traditional subscription-based journals. In the open access model, the author generally retains the copyright and the published articles are available free on the internet. Publication costs are either borne by the author as article processing charges, or are free for some journals published by societies or institutions. Traditional subscription-based journals are funded by subscription costs to libraries and individuals, the publisher retains the copyright, and these journals are generally not freely available to the public. This traditional model has created two problems: (1) many for-profit publishers control access in a form of oligopoly and impose high costs to subscribers; and (2) it limits access of scientific information to the public which disproportionately affects poorly funded research institutions and developing countries. Other subscription-based journals are published by scientific and professional societies but are not “for-profit”. In the forest sciences, several open access journals emerged in the last 10–15 years. These open access journals are published by for-profit publishing companies, research institutions, and professional societies. Some of these journals have been successful at attracting manuscript submissions, becoming indexed by various indexation services, and have seen metrics representing their importance increase over time. This paper documents these trends and assesses the viability of the open access model in the forest sciences and compares them to other types of journals.

“Plan S” falls short for society publishers—and for the researchers they serve

Over the course of my long scientific career, I have had experience with academic publishing from several perspectives: as an author, as an associate editor of both academic and for-profit journals, as chair of a society’s journals board, as editor-in-chief of a major society journal ( Science ), and now as the chief executive of a membership organization (the National Academy of Sciences) that publishes a highly regarded society journal (PNAS). While for-profit publishers do bring value to the overall enterprise, ultimately I decided to direct my own research output (whenever it was my choice to make), time, and talent to nonprofit scientific society publishing. I see merit in redirecting publishing profits to enhance the welfare of the research community through the variety of society programs that support students, underrepresented minorities, community engagement, and other worthy causes—rather than having those monies benefit for-profit shareholders. The proposal known as Plan S has the admirable aim of achieving full OA across a wide swath of journal publications. But the path currently suggested has serious drawbacks that could jeopardize nonprofit science societies. Image credit: Dave Cutler (artist). In recent decades, society publishers have responded to a number of changes in the publishing landscape. In all cases, these responses have been guided by the wisdom of leading researchers serving on oversight boards charged with ensuring the overall health of the research enterprise. This charge is, of course, broader than simply the broadest dissemination of the research or necessarily the lowest-cost publication model. I continue to monitor that landscape, knowing that further changes are inevitable and part of scholarly publishing’s evolution as it aspires to serve science and society. Hence, I, like many in scientific society leadership and publishing, have been following with great interest the ambitious plan (“Plan S”) put forward in September by a group … [↵][1]1Email: MMcNutt{at}nas.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

Analysis of journal content characteristics and metrics reported in the Clarivate Analytics Journal Citation Reports and Web of Science Core Collection Agricultural Engineering categories.

The Clarivate Analytics Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and Web of Science (WoS) platforms are arguably the most influential journal citation/metric databases worldwide. Journals must first be indexed in the WoS Core Collection (CC) before being indexed in the JCR. The JCR and WoS platform are separate Clarivate Analytics products, but the JCR is included in the WoS platform for organizations that purchase both databases. The analysis for this study focused on citation data reported in the 2017 JCR (based on 2016 citation data) and other data reported in the WoS CC up to 2016. A total of 14 journals are indexed in the 2017 JCR agricultural engineering category; however, only 13 journals are analyzed in this because one journal was listed by mistake. Six of the 13 journals are published by large for-profit publishers (i.e., Elsevier B.V. or Springer Verlag) and the other seven are published by respective professional societies. The journals were analyzed as a function of type (specialty versus comprehensive), type of publisher and publication frequency, metrics such as the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), volumes of articles published by year and journal, and the source institutions and countries of published articles. Bioenergy- and industrial crop-focused journals included in the 2017 JCR agricultural engineering category manifest the strongest overall metrics, as evidenced by relatively high JIF scores: Bioresource Technology (4.917), Biomass and Bioenergy (3.219) and Industrial Crops and Products (3.181). In contrast, the highest JIF reported in the 2017 JCR for a comprehensive agricultural engineering journal was 2.044 for Biosystems Engineering. During 2006 to 2016, the number of articles indexed in the Core Collection for the JCR agricultural engineering category rose from 1,124 to 4,078, an increase of 263%. Over 70% of the total articles published in 2016 were published in the three bioenergy- or industrial-crop focused journals. The top three countries that published the highest levels of WoS Core Collection agricultural engineering articles in 2016 were China (1132), United States (669) and Brazil (474). The similar top publishing institutions were the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA; 136), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; 136) and Indian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR; 79). The results of the study also show that publishing by Chinese scientists in the 13 journals indexed in the JCR Agricultural Engineering (AE) category is rapidly increasing, with seven research institutions ranked in the global top 20 in 2016, based on studies published in journals indexed in the JCR agricultural engineering category. The analysis also reveals that the specialty journals (e.g., the three bioenergy-focused journals) are not directly comparable with the comprehensive agricultural engineering journals and should potentially be excluded from future versions of the JCR and WoS CC AE categories. Keywords: Web of Science, JCR, agricultural engineering, impact factor, USDA, CAS, comprehensive, specialty DOI: 10.25165/j.ijabe.20181105.3083 Citation: Wang Y J, Gassman P W, Wang Y K, Pu Y J. Analysis of journal content characteristics and metrics reported in the Clarivate Analytics Journal Citation Reports and Web of Science Core Collection Agricultural Engineering categories. Int J Agric & Biol Eng, 2018; 11(5): 1–26.

Clearing the garden: ScholarlyHub as a new non-profit digital commons

Open scholarly communications are being suffocated by for-profit and large-scale academic publishers on the one hand and undermined by commercial academic social networks on the other. A possible part of the solution to both is ScholarlyHub, a new initiative to create a non-profit digital commons. ScholarlyHub proposes to serve as a social ‘front end’ of the open access movement and offer an aggregating space for diverse initiatives in the world of scholarly communications, from mentoring and pre-print services and data storage, to peer review and publication. This article explains the pressing need to ‘clear the garden’ in order to enable research to flourish in its natural environment and details the progress of ScholarlyHub to date, looking ahead with optimism to a more collaborative and open future. A correction article relating to this publication can be found here: http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.425

The ClarivateTM Analytics acquisition of Publons – an evolution or commodification of peer review?

Without peer reviewers, the entire scholarly publishing system as we currently know it would collapse. However, as it currently stands, publishing is an extremely exploitative system, relative to other business models, in which trained and specialized labor is exploited, in the form of editors and peer reviewers, primarily by for-profit publishers, in return for a pat on the back, and a public nod of thanks. This is the “standardized” and “accepted” form for deriving mainstream peer reviewed literature. However, except for open peer review, where reports are open and identities are known, traditional peer review is closed, and the content of peer reports is known only to the authors and editors involved. Publons launched in 2012 as a platform that would offer recognition to peer reviewers for their work. In 2016, Publons rewarded the most productive reviewers with a “Sentinels of Science” award, accompanied by a dismal monetary reward (38 US cents/review) for their efforts. A site aimed at registering pre- and post-publication peer efforts, Publons was perceived as a positive step towards a more transparent peer review system. However, the continued presence of fake peer reviews and a spike in retractions, even among publishers that were Publons sponsors, suggests that perhaps peers may be exploiting Publons to get recognition for superficial or poor peer review. Since all reviews are not public, their content and quality cannot be verified. On 1 June 2017, ClarivateTM Analytics, which owns the journal impact factor—most likely the most gamed non-academic factor in academic publishing—which is a measure of the number of citations of papers in journals, many of which are published by the for-profit publishers—including Publons sponsors—that “employ” free peer reviewers to quality check the literature they then sell for profit, purchased Publons. Touting the purchase as a way to increase transparency, and stamp out fake peer review, some who had supported Publons felt betrayed, even cancelling their Publons accounts immediately when learning of this purchase. Their concerns included the possible “gaming” of peer review as had taken place with the journal impact factor. This commentary examines possible positive and negative aspects of this business transaction, and what it might mean to academics and publishers.

Ethical exceptionalism: can publishing rules be manipulated to give the impression of ethical publishing?

Faced with increased threats, biomedical publishing is fortifying its publishing fortress. More rules, greater ethical standards, more verification steps, stricter penalties all seem to characterize a publishing environment that has become considerably hostile, and aggressive. It does not help that the system is being increasingly exploited by unethical individuals or groups, either intellectually or financially, and now monitored by an equally aggressive post-publication science watchdog vigilante movement. When extremes build up within a system, they create intolerable stress and at some point, the system will explode. In the past few years, biomedical publishing has witnessed several important ruptures to its integrity and a concomitant rise in the power of influence of ethical groups or organizations who have been entrusted, in some cases self-entrusted, with creating and monitoring the evolution of the ethics rules that the vast majority of biomedical academics are then expected to follow. This paper puts forward a hypothetical argument that “ethics” associations, or publicly acclaimed ethics specialists, are also subjected to the same corrupting forces as authors, editors or publishers. Despite this, none are being scrutinized, or being held accountable in an independently verifiable manner. “Ethical” power holds great marketing value for for-profit publishers. This paper examines hypothetically how “ethics” associations could become corrupted, could accumulate excessive power, or could manipulate rules to create a dual system of ethics to favor themselves.Bangladesh Journal of Medical Science Vol.16(4) 2017 p.610-614

The Revolt of the Reviewers: Towards Fixing a Broken Publishing Process

The sociology review process is broken. There are too many reviews per paper and the norm that all papers go through a revise and resubmit process burns through reviewers, slows down the publication process, creates distorted papers as authors try to satisfy incompatible demands, and puts too high a premium on novelty over methodological rigor. Editors should get fewer reviews per paper and make editorial decisions. No new reviewers should be added in reviewing a revised manuscript. Peer review should not be treated as an opportunity to receive editorial assistance and mentoring and instead should be focused on ensuring that published papers are correct. Asking for large numbers of reviews will not solve the problem that sociologists do not agree on their standards. The reviewer problem points to larger questions about the structure of sociology as a field, the need for more venues for publishing solid empirical work, and the importance of replications. It also points to the structure of academic publishing in which for-profit publishers make money by selling to university libraries the products of the free labor of university professors.