{"id":128,"date":"2009-06-01T10:01:52","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T15:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/2009\/06\/01\/elsevier-journals\/"},"modified":"2009-06-01T10:02:39","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T15:02:39","slug":"elsevier-journals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/2009\/06\/01\/elsevier-journals\/","title":{"rendered":"Elsevier journals"},"content":{"rendered":"

A number of scientists I know refuse to deal with journals published by the publisher Reed Elsevier, for a couple of different reasons.\u00a0 First, they’re ridiculously expensive<\/a>, and Elsevier sometimes adopts pricing schemes where libraries have to purchase large bundles<\/a> of journals rather than just the ones they want.\u00a0 As John Baez<\/a> put it a while ago,<\/p>\n

There is really no reason<\/em> for us to donate<\/em> our work [i.e. authorship and refereeing] to profit-making corporations who sell it back to us<\/em> at exorbitant prices!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The second reason some academics were boycotting Elsevier is that the company had a sideline sponsoring international arms fairs<\/a>, a business which many people find repugnant.\u00a0 That’s no longer a reason to shun the company, though: they’re out of that line of work<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All of the above is at least a couple of years old.\u00a0 But here’s a new reason <\/a>not to like the company: for about five years, they published at least six fake journals.\u00a0 These were made to look like peer-reviewed scientific journals, but they weren’t.\u00a0 At least one was owned and operated by Merck, and published only articles promoting Merck’s interests.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, librarians and others don’t like this. <\/a><\/p>\n

Oh, and by the way, the company also ran New Scientist, which used to be a good pop-science magazine, into the ground<\/a>.\u00a0 Less important than some other considerations, but still annoying.<\/p>\n

Should there be an organized boycott over something like this fake-journal scandal?\u00a0 I don’t really know.\u00a0 But I do know that I have a choice when donating my labor to journals, and I’m fully entitled to take this sort of practice into account when making that choice.\u00a0 Other things being equal, I’m certainly going to steer clear of this company.\u00a0 If there were an occasion in which publishing in an Elsevier journal was far better than any other option for some reason, I’d have to decide how to weigh the various factors.\u00a0 Fortunately, for me that pretty much never arises: the main journals it makes sense for me to publish in are published by professional societies.\u00a0 They’re reasonably priced (compared to other scientific journals) and as far as I know are free from this sort of corruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A number of scientists I know refuse to deal with journals published by the publisher Reed Elsevier, for a couple of different reasons.\u00a0 First, they’re ridiculously expensive, and Elsevier sometimes adopts pricing schemes where libraries have to purchase large bundles of journals rather than just the ones they want.\u00a0 As John Baez put it a … Continue reading Elsevier journals<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}