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 @jonny @dstephenlindsay
https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/lindsaylab/wp-content/uploads/sites/4861/2023/09/Lindsay-Ross-Hunt-Psychonomic-Publishing-16-May-2023.pdf
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@UlrikeHahn @roaldarboel @jonny Thanks for the bump, Ulrike. Long story on that piece, but the short version is that we lavished a lot of care and thought into it.
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@dstephenlindsay
@UlrikeHahn @roaldarboel
Thanks for writing this, hadn't run across it before and very curious
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@jonny @dstephenlindsay @UlrikeHahn @roaldarboel
tl;dr but I stumbled upon the last paragraph. I'd be so bold and generalize this to a large number of societies who have "partnered" with one of the parasites - at least this is what is often mentioned prominently: the parasites enable societies to reach into the pockets of non-members to finance their member services. I have rarely encountered any awareness of the ethical implications of this shift, on the contrary.
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@brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel but the journal was already “reaching into the pockets of non-members” because libraries subscribed to it (in order to make it available to the thousands of non-member authors and readers)
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
I don't know this specific case, but what often happens is that mostly the institutions of society members subscribe as long as the society runs the journal. Then, when a corporation takes over, the journal becomes part of the "Big Deal" of the corporation, multiplying the number of subscribers. Many/most of these new subscribers never use a single page of this journal, but only subscribe to it via the Big Deal.
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@brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel I would ask that you read the piece: prior to the move the society was operating at a loss because it couldn’t cover the costs of production.
(I think your comment misses the mark and is also unfair to the extensive thought and care people at Psychonomics like Steve put into the decision and transition at the time -I say that as someone who was not a member nor in any way involved in that move)
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
I agree that it is possible that by looking merely at the end product, I do not do the people and their efforts sufficient justice. I tried to make that cleaar right away. I also tried to take this to a more general level, by saying that this seems to happen very often, i.e., similar efforts seem to tend to lead to similar outcomes also in other (but not all) societies.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
So I'm not blaming anybody in particular, but am trying to point out that there are common pitfalls, that some societies tend to fall into. I think it is worth looking at other efforts that did not have the same outcome.
After all, the end-product is what it is regardless of the efforts that went into it. There is a reason why the saying has been coined: "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". 😇
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@brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel Bjoern, that “the road is paved with good intentions” was exactly the thought that motivated me to dig into the PB&R history in the first place. That history, I feel, is better served by Steve’s piece than your reductive explanation. I’d love to have more examples, but maybe we could actually look at this one? Were there plausible alternative routes for the society at the time? What would the options be now? I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on that
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
OK, I've read it. By and large, it sounded pretty much like other stories I've heard form other societies. Didn't change anything in my assessment. From my personal perspective, this is a very standard story witrh analogous thoughts and concerns in many societies.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
There are a few aspects that strike me as common themes (no particular order):
There always seems to be more "how can we continue doing what we have been doing without changing too much?" rather than "is this an opportunity to improve the things we are doing by doing them diffeerently?"
Another is that "communication" or "dissemination" is snyonymous with selling journals.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
A third and major common theme is that everyone seems more than happy, eager I would say, to charge members relatively less and instead take more from non-members to finance member benefits. I have rarely seen anybody even raising this as an issue, instead this is seen as a feature, not a bug.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
A fourth, related common theme seems to be that the people running the society seem to see it as a company, rather than a society: the money is the prime consideration and society function comes second. They ask: how can we get money for the society and then come up with things they can finance: satellite meetings, Family Care Grants, Awards, etc.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
This strikes me as odd: I'd imagine they would be asking: what is the core mission of our society and what could members contribute to this mission? After all, one would tend to think that a scholarly society is formed by like-minded individuals with overlapping goals and interests.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
In short, it seems a lot of these societies look like they're caught up between historical baggage and corporate group think. I say that in the most general terms and with no individuals in mind, of course. I'm just an outside oberserver.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
Whenever I hear stories like these, it strikes me how diverse the scholarly landscape really is and how some societies (it seems to me a minority, but I have no data) have found completely different solutions. Perhaps, they have asked themselves some of the following questions during their comittee meetings:
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
I apologize for the verbosity, but my brief remarks were met with "read the effing article" so I did as instructed 😇
This is the result 😆
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
P.S.: Similar to scholarly articles, perhaps also for societies, the best thing would be to ask:
if we were to found our society today, what would it look like, what would it do what would be its purpose?
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@brembs @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel It seems obvious to me from Steve’s write up that the Psychonomic Society asked itself all of those questions and more. So a more useful question to me is how would the answers be different now, 15 years later, and why.
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@UlrikeHahn @jonny @dstephenlindsay @roaldarboel
I wrote the questions down because I didn't see them addressed in the article. They may have been implicit, of course, but I can only go by what's in the article and can't guess what potentially may have happened that isn't mentioned in the article. Dammit Jim, I'm a scientist, not a prophet. 😆
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