When academic societies keep their journals in the big publishing houses, what do they get in return? Cheap or free infrastructure? Or do they even still pay even for that?
I’m trying to wrap my head around what it would take for societies to transition their journals elsewhere (or have their own infrastructure). Can anyone pitch in with experience?
[#]ScholarlyPublishing
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@roaldarboel it's gotta be the infra, and i would bet they still pay , if not just as a cut of the APC.
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@roaldarboel hosting journals is genuinely hard. there are a decent amount of turnkey 'just runs' journal platform programs, but they keep getting abandoned or bought, though PKP just did the deal to become the platform for the EU and hcommons is doing stuff i love.
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@jonny @roaldarboel See my post above. Many of us at institutionally support libraries are doing it! https://librarypublishing.org/ https://escholarship.org
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@lschiff
@jonny @roaldarboel I ❤️ LPC!!
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@j_feral @lschiff @jonny@neuromatch.social @roaldarboel
Yes, lot's of libraries run their own journals (our's does, too), so that's a good stop-gap.
However, I think the biggest problem isn't technical, but conceptual. Many societies are simply not "societies" any more, in the original meaning of the word:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230207
Remedy this and all else will follow.
See, e.g., hcommons that @jonny@social.coop also referenced. With a scholarly mindset, even today's societies can again become "societies".
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@brembs @j_feral @lschiff @jonny @jonny@social.coop It's crazy coming at this, still, a bit blue-eyed. When I think of societies, I'm thinking small-ish congregations of nerds (in the best possible sense of the word, proud nerd). So these mega-societies are a really strange size to me. SfN, AAAS, ACS, they all seem to operate much more like businesses (e.g. with large exec salaries).
Regarding their publications, they all have high-prestige journals. Do you think that the journals derive their prestige from being under the umbrella of a large, esteemed society; or is that mostly a marketing gimmick (unfolded over many years)? If e.g. SfN were to take Journal of Neuroscience to a PKP platform, would the authors follow? (in this hypothetical scenario we don't care about the vast amount of money they surely lose from such a deal).
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@roaldarboel @brembs @j_feral @lschiff @jonny@social.coop
prestige is a mutually beneficial relationship for all who abide by the terms of the game. "we gain exposure for our authors and induce more submissions as a function of being plugged into {the big journal recommendation system}."
there is no incentive in self-hosting for a large society, it's bad for the bottom line, bad for operational stability, bad for the prestige of their top authors. there is little appeal to the upper end of the hierarchy to do things ethically that i'm aware of
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@jonny@neuromatch.social @roaldarboel @j_feral @lschiff @jonny@social.coop
Exactly. SfN created eNeuro, just so they could have an #oa journal without having to touch (read: risk anything with) JNeurosci.
As JNeurosci is still a subscription journal, authorship or readership isn't necessarily the top concern: subscribers are the top concern. And our institutions have a history of subscribing to anything, no matter the cost.
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@jonny@neuromatch.social @roaldarboel @j_feral @lschiff @jonny@social.coop
FWIW, in my fields (biology, neuroscience) most authors couldn't care less about readership or editorial boards or any other journal propertiers, as long as the journal is listed in PubMed and ranked highly enough.
Unlike in some fields, journals have long ceased to be the basis of any kind of community, if they ever have been.
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@brembs @jonny @j_feral @lschiff @jonny@social.coop I think there’s definitively an age-bias to that (no shade intended!😅). Most of the PhDs and post docs I’ve worked with care much more about the ethics of their publishing venues than their prestige (and could never even imagine looking up an impact factor!). Things are changing - and your fields are my fields roughly. ☺️
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@roaldarboel @jonny@neuromatch.social @j_feral @lschiff @jonny@social.coop
Yes, there is something to that, for sure. From my perspective it's maybe less a generational shift, but a combination of rule heterogeneity (in some places journal prestige is more important than in others) and a shift in labor market dynamics. In my times, it was Nature paper or flipping burgers. Now it is the choice between science and well-paying tech company.
People, on average, are probably less desperate than us.
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@brembs @jonny @j_feral @lschiff @jonny@social.coop I highly doubt people are less desperate! We run faster than ever, are more stressed, depressed and anxious than ever, all in the hopes of securing one of those few hopeful spots that allow us to stay in academia. It’s a different conversation for a different time for me 😉
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@brembs @roaldarboel @j_feral @lschiff @jonny@social.coop
and this is part of the promise of big publisher tech - all your people are still yelling at you about OA, here's a platform where you can make even more money (phrased as: process more submissions, promote more good science, etc.) while going "Gold OA"
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@jonny @brembs @j_feral @lschiff @jonny@social.coop Yeah, makes sense.
Does this in effect also leave us in a place where big societies=bad and small societies=good?
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@roaldarboel @jonny@neuromatch.social @brembs @j_feral @lschiff @jonny@social.coop that’s just one dimension of variation, no? academic discipline matters too: medicine and technology adjacent fields seem a completely different proposition to the humanities.
I don’t think a model of science or academia where each discipline is viewed as an island that needs to be self sustaining is a viable model, and that’s a dimension I’m missing in this discussion.
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@UlrikeHahn @roaldarboel @jonny@neuromatch.social @brembs @j_feral @jonny@social.coop I don't think small or big is the question, it's just that small societies typically have fewer resources. And as @UlrikeHahn points out, that is just one dimension of difference to consider, not the only one, and not always the most important one.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @brembs @j_feral @lschiff @jonny@social.coop That’s very likely - I have no idea about what humanities societies look like. What are some big and small societies we could look at as examples?
One reason I focus on natural and medical sciences (besides them being my fields) is that they pull the vast majority of funding. CNS papers are a thing because stakes are so high in those disciplines. So the aforementioned natural and medical societies seem like places where inertia towards change would be the largest. And the bigger the society, the larger sums, the more inertia towards change. My impression of the humanities (which might well be off) is that the money is much smaller and that they are generally much more open to change.
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@roaldarboel @UlrikeHahn @jonny@neuromatch.social @j_feral @lschiff @jonny@social.coop
We have some examples in our paper:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230207
Personally, for me the most shining example of how to do it is HCommons, with their own Mastodon instance:
https://hcommons.social/about
We wouldn't be having this conversation if all societies had their mindset.
Oh, and yes to your guess about money, of course.
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