Editorial In ACM On Open Access Publishing In Computer Science 60
call -151 writes "An editorial appearing in the ACM notices complains about the effects of the Elsevier boycott particularly with respect to academics refusing to do unpaid review for for-profit journals, particularly the extortionate Elsevier journals. Mathematician Tim Gowers's post gave energy to this about a year ago and recently he reflected on progress in several directions, including developing new arXIv overlay journals. Not disclosed in the ACM editorial is that the author serves on three Elsevier editorial boards; I take it that his complaining about the difficulty of finding referees is an indication that the boycott is having some good effect. Open access issues in academic publishing have been discussed on Slashdot before and it's a good sign that the broader issue has been getting good exposure, including a reasonable White House directive in response to a strong petition effort."
'Epijournals' are an arXiv overlay project (Score:5, Informative)
For those not familiar with the arXiv, it is a preprint server service that is free (expenses footed by multiple institutions around the world, notably Cornell University in the USA.) Researchers upload their preprints generally about the time that they submit the article for consideration for publication at a typical (eg. primarily dead-tree) journal. The article will be considered, accepted, rejected, modified etc. by the journal, which has generally asked other academics to review it (for free, motivated by a sense of community, typically) and then sometimes the author makes changes and gives the final version to the journal. They may or may not update the arXiv posting to reflect the changes (typos, revisions, serious issues) that have been made in response to the reviewing process. In any case, most of the people actually interested in the result will have long seen the arXiv posting long before the journal publication happens, so the journal is principally playing the role of a validator about importance, significance, originality, correctness, etc. rather than dissemination, for those who submit their work to the arXiv.
Different disciplines have different levels of participation in the arXiv; high-energy physics and many areas of math generally have broad participation, whereas computer science, statistics, and other areas in math have lower overall levels and different publishing culture.
What the Epijournals [episciences.org] are a project to have the validation process be similar, but not to bother with the actually having a (primarily dead-tree) journal. Rather, they will be overlays to the arXiv so the hosting and logistical expenses are all already sorted out. There are multiple free electronic journals, but the costs associated with archiving, etc. are generally either borne from "page charges" to authors, various institutional support options, or private generosity. See for example the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics [combinatorics.org] a long-standing top journal in combinatorics. With the hosting on the arXiv, this should remove one of the barriers to entry for new journals.
Other resignations (Score:5, Informative)
I did find that other prominent people are resigning from Elsevier boards; here's a senior researcher in malaria [malariaworld.org] resigned from an editorial board on the life-sciences side. His motivation was particularly strong- he is working in malaria research, and the idea that people who could benefit from the research may well be not able to pay for the paywall is abhorrent. But I think the same rationale applies to all of science- why keep research from people who cannot pay for it?
In other Elsevier news, I found some more journal shenanigans described here [wordpress.com] which include both rigging the reviews to be sock-puppet reviews and getting into their editorial board systems, resulting in yet more retractions.
Re:'Epijournals' are an arXiv overlay project (Score:4, Informative)
It's not the bandwidth expenses; there is a staff and moderation and a great deal of effort to make it as useful as it it.
There is a very competent staff and a good description of the arXiv expenses in their FAQ [arxiv.org]. Cornell has been trying to get other institutions to contribute as well; everyone agrees the arXiv is amazingly useful and hopefully the expense will be shared across many institutions. Current institutional contributors are listed here [cornell.edu] already, to the tune of under $3k/year each institution. The Simons Foundation has given a good amount of money towards expenses as well, $50k/year.
Their operating costs are laid out transparently in this document [cornell.edu] and come to about $800k a year, with Cornell contributing $300k a year presently. There are 3 full-time-equivalent staff positions which make up most of that. The hosting expenses are about $80k a year presently it seems.
Re:'Epijournals' are an arXiv overlay project (Score:4, Informative)
I did misread what is there; $80k/year is the total for direct expenses. Those include "Server costs" $41,700/year, and "Network bandwidth & telephony" of $1550/year and the rest is staff computers, staff travel, and advisory board travel. I have no idea about hosting costs in general. My experience with the arXiv has been that they are very cost-efficient compared to many academic institutions. They do have millions of downloads and some of those articles are hundreds of pages long. I suspect they are quite cautious when it comes to secure archiving and so on, but I don't know much about that.
It is interesting to compare those institutions that have paid the $3000: here [cornell.edu] with the heaviest users listed here [arxiv.org] and see where the gaps are.