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## Say NO to Elsevier<br>Say YES to community-led publishing

<br>

```
Stephen J Eglen                  DAMTP (Applied Maths/Theoretical Physics)
https://sje30.github.io          University of Cambridge
sje30@cam.ac.uk                  @StephenEglen
```

HTML Slides: <https://tinyurl.com/eglen-els21> (CC-BY 4.0 license)
<br>
[Unlocking research Blog](https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=3012)

#### Declarations

Affiliate editor of *bioRxiv*; advisory board member at *F1000Research*, *Gigabyte*.

#### Acknowledgements

Thanks to the University Librarian and the Office for Scholarly
Communications for engaging the academic community in this process.

Rupert Gatti, Tim Gowers, Ross Mounce (Arcadia Fund).

---

## Background

1. As signatories of DORA, we should focus on research content, not
   where it is published.  A publisher is a service provider.

2. [Revised UKRI open access
   policy](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/ukris-support-green-open-access-right-way-forward),
   allows both green and gold OA.  A [Rights Retention
   Strategy](https://bit.ly/rrs-primer) can reduce our need for gold
   OA.

3. Publish and read deals may be affordable to us, but not for the
   Global South.

4. Top-slicing
   [42%](https://zenodo.org/record/3657776#.YTJM9HVKhhE) for Elsevier
   (out of top ten publishers) prevents limited funds being used for other
   forward-looking initiatives.

5. Elsevier's parent company RELX had an operating margin of [29.2% in
   2019](https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/reports/annual-reports/2020-annual-report.pdf).

---
## Not just about publishing articles

All major publishers are expanding into the entire 'research life
cycle' and wishing to capture all interesting artifacts/ data
analytics. [(Bosman and Kramer)](https://101innovations.wordpress.com/workflows/).

<br>

---

- Many German institutions have been without Elsevier contract since
  2017/2018.

- Many alternative legal routes to accessing articles (albeit slower):
  [Unpaywall browser plugin](https://unpaywall.org/), 
  [#ICanHazPDF hashtag](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23icanhazpdf),
  interlibrary loans,  emailing authors.

- Several US universities have saved significantly (~1M USD/year each)
  by 'unbundling' -- subscribing to a small number of journals
  tailored to their institution.  [(Thornton and Brundy,
  2021)](https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2410).

- Could we do similar?

---

## What could we be doing instead?

Using our money and time to invest in community-driven approaches that
are equitable.

1. Support preprint servers.  UK contributed [55K
   USD](https://twitter.com/StephenEglen/status/1430589135060967424?s=20)
   in 2020 to running of arXiv.

2. [Peer Community In](https://peercommunityin.org/) reviews and
   recommends preprints [(movie)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PZhpnc8wwo).

3. [The Open Library Of Humanities](https://www.openlibhums.org/) uses
   library support to provide open access journals.

4. [Subscribe to
   Open](https://www.annualreviews.org/page/subscriptions/subscribe-to-open)
   has similar idea to OLH, converting existing journals.

5. [COPIM (Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs)](http://www.copim.ac.uk).

6. [Diamond OA journal initiatives](https://www.coalition-s.org/diamond-unearthed-shining-light-on-community-driven-open-access-publishing/).

Storing our research outputs openly in suitable repositories will
allow for large-scale text mining and integration of ideas.

We should be thinking about what we want the future of publishing to
look like, not simply renting what is on offer.