Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but: there is a
specter haunting academia – the specter of well-meaning, but doomed initiatives
to work around the stranglehold that a small collection of corporate publishers
have on academic publishing and distribution, especially with respect to
journals. By now, at least some of the names are likely familiar to you –
Elsevier, SagePub, WileyBlackwell – or you’ve at least seen the names in
passing in the last few years as a number of large university library systems
have told these companies to go pound sand after lengthy, protracted contract
negotiations over subscription fees.[1] Amid the
debates and the frightful persistence of the question of “what is to be done?,”
Open Access is floated as a means of combatting negative effects of publication
paywalling while also maintaining the ability to publish in prestigious journal
titles held by conglomerates like Elsevier.[2] However,
despite what I am assuming are the best of intentions, Open Access is woefully
flawed for two specific reasons: (1) certain models of Open Access are
predicated on pay-to-publish models, demanding publication fees from authors
who may or may not be able to pony up and (2) it is too easily folded into
Elsevier’s—and Elsevier-esque–business models.
To begin at
the beginning of this particular history is a bit too much to ask in such a
compact space, nevertheless some explanation as to my targeting of certain
publishers is warranted. One could say that a funny thing happened on the way
to the future: as digital and networked technologies improved, distribution
costs were supposed to plummet, making it so many varieties of information
would become cheap or free. Instead, publishers responded with DRM tools and
paywalls of many varieties.[3] This is
only part of the story, however. A natural response to those who paywall
scholarly content would be to publish and seek out information elsewhere, but
tough luck! Not only does Elsevier publish some 25% of all scientific papers in
the world, but the top five conglomerate publishers (Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell,
Springer, Taylor & Francis, and SagePub) published 50% of all
academic papers in 2013.[4] From
1995 – 1998, and then 2001 – 2004 were both large periods of corporate
consolidation for conglomerate publishers, likely due to smaller publishers
being unable to keep afloat during the transition to the digital era![5] This
industry-wide consolidation helps to explain why some of these publishers are
able to approach profit margins of around 40%.[6] If ever
there were a posterchild for neoliberal age, it would be hard to find a better
example than these conglomerate publishers.[7]
So, where
does that leave us with Open Access and its inadequacies? In the first place,
Open Access is not a unified body of practices, but rather a disparate set of
practices which all bear something of a family resemblance: here I refer to the
practices of publishing in Open Access journals (meaning free – at least at the
point of access for the reader), or, as certain common university models
mandate, one makes available free copies of a pre-publication version of a
paper, then publishing a final–and perhaps altered version–elsewhere.[8] In the
former model, it is not uncommon for those wishing to publish papers as Open
Access to be charged for the privilege under the guise of author-processing
charges (“APCs”).[9]
This is fraught for any number of reasons: reliant on “publish or perish”
paradigms, those within academia rely on publishing as a means of both starting
and advancing their careers. In between generalized precarity resulting from
disappearing tenure-track jobs, low pay, and inadequate stipends, academics are
stuck bearing the stress of making ends meet, of meeting certain metrics or
expectations, all while bearing the risk of failure individually. No doubt some
lanyard-wearing perverts would salivate at such a description, arguing that
this modern scholar-entrepreneur is in a position of maximal freedom, able to
produce discreet units of knowledge liberated from the fusty, coddled and
tenure-obsessed model of academia 1.0.[10]
Furthermore, it seems that this displacement of both risk and cost to those
needing to be published would help explain the rapacious profit margins enjoyed
by Elsevier. The other glaring problem with Open Access is the fact that it is
so easily co-opted: just recently, Carnegie Mellon University, after
negotiations with Elsevier over the high cost of database subscription fees,
inked a deal with the publisher allowing those affiliated with CMU to publish
in Open Access journals![11] Once
more, capital shows the ease with which it can absorb critique, transforming it
into more dross to flog.[12]
What is to
be done? In the short term, it has been suggested that libraries step in and
take the burden of publication on themselves, becoming both producers of and
repositories for more radically open journals.[13] Though
this would require that libraries receive more funding, hire specialized staff
to deal with publishing, etc. while not also reproducing problematic labor
conditions currently endemic to both academia and LIS institutions
(non-contract and non-union labor, paid at non-living wages, and so on), there
is something of a sober utopianism to this: why bother going through the
credentialing needed to work in a university library when you are merely going
to be party to violations of basic laws of librarianship with respect to
journal access?[14]
There have also been calls to re-evaluate what types of publications ought to
“count” towards evaluating academic career performance; peer review is hardly
the only method by which to referee and publish rigorous thinking, and it is
certainly worth questioning whether or not those in the academy should only
be publishing for others in the academy. After all, if “scholarship is going to
intervene in the culture, it needs to be accessible.”[15]
However, to do this, the academy itself must be reconceived; and any reconception
must begin by shifting power back to labor, battling both in and outside of the
academy, as the battle against ossified neoliberal structures cannot happen
merely in one sphere. As some German once said: all that’s solid…
[1] The most
relevant of these for my–ahem–public would be the recent-ish parting
between the University of California and Elsevier: see Dawn Setzer, “UC Ends
Negotiations with Elsevier,” December 3, 2018,
http://www.library.ucla.edu/news/uc-ends-negotiations-elsevier. The State
University of New York was also in similar negotiations at the time. See: Kara
Burke, “SUNY Contract with Academic Journal Database Elsevier Will Expire in
December, Negotiations to Renew Are Fierce,” The Lamron, November 22,
2019, https://www.thelamron.com/posts/2019/11/22/lgbtq-support-groups-will-soon-switch-to-online-presence-through-closed-facebook-groups.
Still, its an evergreen topic and worth a bing, or a google, or asking some
poor stranger on Grindr about it. Better yet: ask a librarian.
[3] Jacob Silverman,
“Sci-Hub vs. the Scarcity-Mongers,” The Baffler, April 1, 2016,
https://thebaffler.com/latest/scarcity-mongers-silverman. Whether or not these
expectations were simplistic or naïve is a discussion worth having, though I am
reticent to fault utopianism of this variety.
[4] Editorial, “The
Guardian View on Academic Publishing: Disastrous Capitalism | Editorial,” The
Guardian, March 4, 2019, sec. Opinion,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/04/the-guardian-view-on-academic-publishing-disastrous-capitalism.
Regarding figures on the “top five”, see Larivière et al Dave Ghamandi,
“Liberation through Cooperation: How Library Publishing Can Save Scholarly
Journals from Neoliberalism,” Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly
Communication 6, no. 2 (August 31, 2018): eP2223,
https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2223. For those interested in a disciplinary
breakdown, social science publishing is the most concentrated at 70%, with the
humanities clocking in at 20%. The natural sciences and medical sciences are
“in between, mainly because of the strength of their scientific societies.” For
more, see Larivière, Vincent, Stefanie Haustein, and Philippe Mongeon. “The
Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era.” PLOS ONE 10, no. 6
(June 10, 2015): e0127502. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502.
[5] Larivière,
Haustein, and Mongeon, “The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital
Era.” So much for utopia. Unsurprisingly, while the digital does
decrease distribution at a certain point, re-tooling production and
distribution carries with it certain infrastructural costs that would likely be
quite burdensome to smaller publishers.
[6] Silverman,
“Sci-Hub vs. the Scarcity-Mongers.” For comparison, large trade publishers like
Penguin and Simon & Schuster reported 16% margins in 2018. See Nicoloa
Solomon, “The Profits from Publishing: Authors’ Perspective,” The Bookseller,
March 2, 2018,
https://www.thebookseller.com/blogs/profits-publishing-authors-perspective-743226.
[7] David Harvey, “Freedom’s
Just Another Word...,” in A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Chicago:
University of Chicago Center for International Studies Beyond the Headlines
Series, 2005), 26. The neoliberal era, for Harvey, is one that (in spite of promises
to the opposite) fosters the consolidation of monopoly power in industry thanks
to intensive deregulation.
[8] This
prepublication and final article model is commonly referred to as “Green” Open
Access. Joe Karaganis, “Introduction: Access from Above, Access from Below,” in
Shadow Libraries: Access to Knowledge in Global Higher Education, ed.
Joe Karaganis (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press,
2018), 19. This is also, at present, the model employed by UCLA. It should be
noted that, in the case of the UC system, this only applies to things published
after a certain date. The University of California, “UC Open Access
Policies,” UCLA Library, n.d.,
https://www.library.ucla.edu/support/publishing-data-management/information-authors/uc-open-access-policy.
[9] Ghamandi,
“Liberation through Cooperation.” It should be noted that, in a practice
referred to as “double-dipping,” Elsevier has been caught charging for access
to articles published in Open Access journals in which authors did have to pay
APCs. Martin Paul Eve, “On Open-Access Books and ‘Double Dipping,’” Martin
Paul Eve, January 31, 2015, https://eve.gd/2015/01/31/on-open-access-books-and-double-dipping/.
[10] This is, I
believe, what Harvey would refer to as a neoliberal frame of thinking (Harvey,
“Freedom’s Just Another Word...”). Also, as meagre stipends were referenced
earlier, it is incumbent on me to deliver a hearty “fuck you” to Janet
Napolitano. Janet, buddy, on the off chance you’re reading this, just resign. Also,
it should be said that “lanyard-wearing perverts” is something of a catch-all
for certain entrepreneurial tech types, pretty much anyone who has worked at a
think tank, salivates over terminology like “public-private partnership,” and
worships a fickle god known as “the market.” Think Pete Buttigieg, maybe Neera
Tanden if you’re feeling particularly wild…
[11] Julie Mattera,
“Carnegie Mellon Publishing Agreement Marks Open Access Milestone - News -
Carnegie Mellon University,” Carnegie Mellon University News, November
21, 2019, http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2019/november/cmu-publishing-agreement-milestone.html.
[12] Fromm, “Review: The Hegemony of ‘Hegemony’:
Criticism, Capitalism, and Being the World,” The Georgia Review 42, no. 1
(1988): 183.
[13] Ghamandi,
“Liberation through Cooperation,” 11 – 13.
[14] Repeat after me:
every book (or journal), its reader….you should know how this goes. S.R.
Ranganathan, The Five Laws of Library Science (Madras: The Madras
Library Association, 1931), 299.
[15] Laura Elkin,
“The Digital Critic as Public Critic: Open Source, Paywalls, and the Nature of
Criticism,” in The
Digital
Critic: Literacy Culture Online , ed. Houman Barekat, Robert Barry, and
David Winters (New York: OR
Books,
2017), 60.
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