Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Mutiny at Elsevier Publishing

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Here at Fortune:

Elsevier Mutiny: Cracks Are Widening in the Fortress of Academic Publishing

The editorial staff of a research journal have resigned to protest the company’s failure to embrace open access.

A prestigious academic journal has just experienced the closest thing to outright mutiny: All six editors and the entire editorial board of the well-respected linguistics journal Lingua resigned en masse last week. And the reason says a lot about the ongoing disruption taking place in the formerly sleepy world of academic publishing.

In many ways, academic publishers are going through the same kind of wrenching change that traditional media companies like newspaper and magazine publishers are. Subscription-based business models that worked for decades are coming apart at the seams, thanks in part to the web’s ability to distribute content much more cheaply and broadly. And academia itself is becoming much more open as well.

Elsevier has been trying to add more open access features to its existing journals, but many academics believe it is moving too slowly. Critics also note that the company places onerous restrictions on those who do use the open-access features, such as a requirement that they not publish a paper anywhere else for up to two years. More.

Sure That’ll work.

Genie. Hard. Bottle.

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Hat tip: Small Dead Animals

Comments

Leave a Reply