Wieder nichts Neues.
Am Boykott gegen den Wissenschaftsverlag Elsevier, über den wir hier schon häufiger berichtet hatten, beteiligen sich inzwischen mehr als elftausend Wissenschaftler, darunter immerhin 1988 Mathematiker.
Ende Februar hatte Elsevier als Reaktion eine Meldung mit geringfügigen Zugeständnissen verschickt (wir hatten hier berichtet) und einen ausführlicheren Brief an die Wissenschaftsgemeinde angekündigt. Dieser ist nun am Mittwoch erschienen:
In February, we informed you of a series of important changes that we are making to how the Elsevier mathematics program will be run. In this letter, we would like to update you on where we currently stand, and inform you of some new initiatives we have undertaken based upon the feedback we have received from the community.
Pricing
We already indicated that our target is for all of our core mathematics titles to be priced at or below US$11 per article (equivalent to 50-60 cents per normal typeset page), placing us below most University presses, some societies and all other commercial competitors. That will lead to a number of our titles seeing further and significant price reductions from their next volumes.Further to this, and in response to feedback from the community for more flexibility around the packages and collections that we offer to libraries, we will take the added step of defining a smaller subject collection (around 15-20 journals) with our key core mathematics titles. The definitive list of journals will be determined shortly but will in any case include journals like Advances in Mathematics, Journal of Algebra, Journal of Number Theory, Journal of Functional Analysis, Journal of Combinatorial Theory A and B, and European Journal of Combinatorics, available with the discount levels offered on our subject collections.
Open Archives
In February, we made the archives of 14 core mathematics journals open, from four years after publication, back to 1995, the year when we started publishing digitally. We made more scholarly mathematics content freely available than has ever occurred before. We have now gone further and expanded the open archives back to 1995 for 43 journals in mathematics and related areas. For a full listing of Elsevier journals with an Open Archive, please see our information page.Support for reviewers
At present, reviewers receive 30 days access to ScienceDirect and Scopus. For mathematics, this period is simply too short given the intensive and lengthy review process. We also hear of retired mathematics researchers without access to the current literature who still are actively reviewing work. Therefore, to support reviewers in their work, we will provide editors of the mathematics journals with the opportunity each year to select 50 reviewers whom we will provide with free access to all mathematics journals for one year.Access for the developing world
We are a founding partner in External link Research4Life, a public/private partnership providing journal content to researchers in the developing world. More than 2000 Elsevier journals and 6,000 Elsevier e-books are available through this program. In addition to the core Hinari and Agora programs, we have now ensured that all Elsevier mathematics titles will be also be available via the External link Access to Research for Development and Innovation (ARDI) program since we understand that this is particularly accessible to mathematicians in these countries.Support to the mathematics community
Based on the feedback we have received, we are taking steps to improve and make visible our support to the mathematics community. Individual initiatives, such as our support for the development of the STIX fonts, or the individual journal level sponsorships are often overlooked. As announced, we are in the process of setting up a Scientific Council for mathematics. We believe this Council will play an instrumental role in advising us on our journal programs and on how we can best support the mathematics community going forward.It is our goal is to ensure that the leading mathematics journals that we publish are as valuable and respected – and contribute as much to the community – as any other mathematics journal. We want to work in tandem with the mathematics community to ensure that our mathematics program is meeting the needs of this important community, globally and locally.
We have a long history in serving the research communities by publishing trusted, leading-edge information and by disseminating and preserving literature to meet the information needs of the world’s present and future scientists. The needs of our customers are changing but the 7,000 people who work at Elsevier are fully committed to advancing science by addressing the different needs of different groups and the research community as a whole around the world. We trust the above summary of initiatives shows our intention to address the issues of interest and concern in the mathematics community. Again, we very much welcome your views at: mathematics@elsevier.com
Sincerely,
David Clark & Laura Hassink
Senior Vice Presidents, Physical Sciences
Eine Diskussion der neuen Entwicklungen findet man wieder bei Timothy Gowers.
Kurz zu den einzelnen Punkten:
– Preise für einzelne Zeitschriften sind letztlich irrelevant, weil den Bibliotheken angesichts der Preise ohnehin nichts anderes übrigbleibt, als die von Elsevier angebotenen Bündelungen zu kaufen. Die angekündigte “smaller subject collection of key mathematical titles” scheint da zunächst ein Ausweg zu sein – nur: die Universitätsbibliotheken kaufen ja ein Bündel für alle Fächer, mit einem Spezialangebot für ein einzelnes Fach ist ihnen nicht geholfen. Es ist nicht billiger, statt des Gesamtbündels die einzelnen “smaller subject collections” aller Fächer zu kaufen. Von der “subject collection” profitieren also allenfalls Institute wie das MFO, in denen ausschließlich Mathematik betrieben wird.
– Offene Archive (ab 1995): Das zumindest ist eine Verbesserung. Die Begründung, daß erst ab 1995 digital veröffentlicht wurde, ist natürlich kein wirkliches Argument, denn inzwischen sind die älteren Ausgaben digitalisiert und gegen Bezahlung erhältlich. (Man kann hier natürlich argumentieren, daß Elsevier Kosten für die Digitalisierung aufgewendet hat, die sich zunächst amortisieren müssen.)
– Längerer Zugang für Gutachter: Völlig irrelevant. Wer bei einer Universität oder einem Forschungsinstitut angestellt ist (und bei 99,9% der Gutachter dürfte das der Fall sein), hat ohnehin Zugang zu ScienceDirect. Insofern ist dieser Punkt völlig uninteressant.
– Unterstützung der dritten Welt: Das ist natürlich ein hehres Anliegen, nur handelt es sich auch hier um keine wesentliche Änderung (die meisten Zeitschriften und Bücher waren schon durch das vorherige Programm erhältlich).
– Unterstützung der Mathematiker-Gemeinde: Hat jemand schon mal vom STIX fonts gehört? Ich nicht.
Wenn man noch Argumente braucht, warum Bündeln ein Problem ist, dann findet man sie übrigens im aktuellen Beitrag von Timothy Gowers:
I’ll finish by mentioning two particularly notable parts of Urs Hartl’s conversation with Laura Hassink. I hope the first in particular will demonstrate why so many people care about the current state of academic publishing and want big changes.
At the University of Münster, which is Urs Hartl’s university, Elsevier increased the price of its Freedom Collection (which is negotiated individually with universities) by 20% per year between 2011 and 2013. Here is the explanation from Urs: “Ms Hassink explained to me that in the contract with Elsevier a ‘committed spend’ of the University of Muenster is fixed. Since the institutes individually canceled titles before 2011 the ‘committed spend’ was not reached and this caused Elsevier to make up for it in the price increase for the Freedom Collection. I replied that this coincides with what various librarians and colleagues had told me. Namely, that no matter what they tried to do, the total amount they pay for Elsevier did not go down. Ms Hassink agreed that in this particular case with the Freedom Collection in Muenster the price increase had this intention.”
The second point is to do with the secrecy that surrounds Elsevier’s negotiations with universities. One of the reasons that Laura Hassink gave to Urs about this was that it would be impossible to offer generous discounts to developing countries if all contracts were disclosed. (I think the argument here is that if you admit to giving a discount to one university then they’re all going to want one.) Urs countered that “according to Florian Breuer’s computations the University of Stellenbosch, South-Africa pays roughly the same than the University of Muenster, Germany.” See also this this comment about the situation in India.
Interestingly, when I tackled David Clark about this issue (we met a few weeks ago) the reason he gave for non-disclosure was completely different. He claimed that there was a danger that disclosing the agreements would be in breach of competition laws, since it would allow the big publishers to coordinate their prices. If that explanation is correct, then the law is an ass. After all, competition laws are there to protect consumers against monopoly power, whereas (i) the lack of transparency of Elsevier hugely enhances their power and (ii) Elsevier effectively is a monopoly, since if they charge more than you like, you can’t get the same journals from a different source.
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