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| Taking On the Academic Publishing Industry: Scientists' Battle to Take Control.
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Marcie Granahan,
NFAIS Executive Director
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Subscriptions to academic journals cost UK universities an average of £4 million a year according to information obtained through Freedom of Information requests [see full article here]. The majority is spent with the five major academic publishing houses—Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor & Francis, and Sage. With the average subscription expense increasing 19% over the past four years, many university libraries and researchers have become increasingly resentful that almost all of the big five publishing houses continue to report growing profits with the perceived injustice of making profits from donated work.
A recent trend for libraries is to unbundle their subscriptions and, instead, opt for limited titles to save on costs [see full article here]. While university libraries continue to push for open access, university researchers are taking the industry head-on.
Although some are predicting that the blockchain bubble will burst in the next two years [see full article here], a growing cadre of scientists believe that blockchain could introduce new efficiencies and transparency by providing innovative ways to share academic research.
The ability of scholars and scientists to find and track information is often surprisingly limited [see full article here]. A researcher can search through a variety of library catalogs and journal databases but, because there is no single database that registers all published research, there is no guarantee that the search will be comprehensive. Even Google Scholar and Worldcat are not totally comprehensive in their coverage, and they also don’t address issues like fraudulent data sets or inappropriate reuse of another scholar’s work.
Even though blockchain-based solutions can’t fully address all of these issues, new publishing platforms such as Orvium, which plans to offer an initial coin offering (ICO) in July or August, and Project Aiur, which is still in development, represent a significant step forward.
Orvium, a decentralized platform for scientific papers, hopes to bring competition to academic journal publishers by enabling researchers to post findings on the blockchain, and making it instantly available to the community to read and assess [see full article here]. Orvium allows contributors to retain ownership of their papers, letting the author decide whether private institutions, such as pharmaceutical or engineering firms that profit from their work, will be subject to a paywall. Although Orvium won’t charge contributors for using its platform, its financial model is based on the ICO and collecting a percentage of the fees charged for paid content.
Iris.AI—one of Europe’s hottest artificial intelligence companies that uses AI to help scientists tackle information overload by pulling together precise reading lists—is launching Project Aiur. a blockchain- and AI-based peer review and publishing service [see full article here]. Project Aiur allows researchers to compare their papers with other scientific research through what is coined as a “semi-automated peer review process” that will help researchers to spot any studies they may have missed as well as other papers contradicting their research so it can be addressed in advance of publication. Project Aiur will maintain its own online economy, where researchers can earn tokens for peer review and publishing on the site. Those looking for a more traditional model of publishing can simply pay to access Project Aiur’s features.
Will blockchain be the technology to disrupt traditional publishing models? Certainly the permanency of the blockchain records is a positive. And, at least for our industry, processing time and storage isn’t too much of an issue because we would only be recording the transactional record, which points to other storage repositories or conventional databases, instead of recording the full content. Blockchain may not hold all the answers but it is important that library and researcher concerns are acknowledged and, whenever possible, publishers continue to develop solutions for addressing those concerns. It’s also important to remember that no system of publishing is free, be it a self-contained online blockchain economy, open access, or a traditional publishing model.
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Past insights and reflections on industry developments written by NFAIS Executive Director Marcie Granahan are now archived in NFAIS Community Forum. Feel free to post your comments about these and other key topics there. |
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Times Higher Education
Subscriptions to academic journals are costing leading U.K. universities almost £4 million a year on average, new figures reveal.
Data obtained from 18 Russell Group institutions under Freedom of Information requests show that the majority of this outlay is typically spent with the five major academic publishing houses: Reed-Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor & Francis and Sage.
READ MORE
The Scientist
On June 12, Florida State University head into negotiations with the publisher Elsevier to see how it can resolve a pricing issue. Back in April, FSU announced that it would not renew a so-called “big deal” with Elsevier in 2019, due to its “high and ever-increasing cost,” and would instead subscribe to a subset of the most-needed journals.
READ MORE
Mar Tech Today
A new report sticks a pin into the huge hype bubble surrounding blockchain.
The report from research firm GlobalData, “Blockchain – Thematic Research," argues that the new technology’s bubble “will burst in the next two years and will have lost much of its gloss by 2025.” Summarizing blockchain as “awash with hype, but with a powerful core value proposition” of distributed ledger tech, the report was researched over the last 18 months and involved interviews with about a hundred organizations.
READ MORE
Nasdaq
By providing new ways to share academic research and verify the origin of information, blockchains could introduce significant new efficiencies and transparency to the world of research.
Here's a look at how blockchain-based solutions are driving innovation in the world of academic research.
READ MORE
Crypto Briefing
Which industry has higher profit margins than Google and saw a growth in revenue last year that was larger than that of the global film industry?
No, not the big banks or smartphone manufacturers, nor any sector whose presence in mainstream society seems ubiquitous.
Instead, in the niche world of scientific publishing, the three biggest companies – which constitute over half the industry – have yet again found themselves near the top of the profit tree.
READ MORE
Forbes
In the U.K. universities paid an average of nearly £4 million ($5.4 million) for journal subscriptions last year, with the majority of this budget going to five academic publishing companies: Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor & Francis and Sage.
At the close of 2017, a group of 200 German Universities even stood together against Elsevier, sparking further unrest in Sweden alongside renewed outrage from European academia.
READ MORE
Unlocking Research
In his blog, The circuitous road towards open access: Swedish universities to pull the plug on Elsevier, Ole Petter Ottersen Rector of Karolinska Institute in Sweden noted: “Almost 600 years ago the development of the printing press led to dramatic changes in how knowledge was spread and communicated. This did not happen without opposition. Today, digitalization opens for an equally dramatic and welcome change towards the democratization of knowledge. It’s time that knowledge becomes a public good.”
READ MORE
Laboratory News
Blockchain for Peer Review focuses on the problems of research reproducibility, recognition of reviewers and the rising burden of the peer-review process. The project will develop a protocol where information about peer review activities, submitted by publishers, are stored on a blockchain.
READ MORE
The Verge
Microsoft is acquiring GitHub. After reports emerged that the software giant was in talks to acquire GitHub, Microsoft is making it official today. This is Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s second big acquisition, following the $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn two years ago. GitHub was last valued at $2 billion back in 2015, and Microsoft is paying $7.5 billion in stock for the company in a deal that should close later this year.
READ MORE
Coin Central
The traditional book publishing industry continues to see lower payments, licensing, and rights for authors in a range of categories. Several projects and organizations focused on blockchain publishing aim to change this industry for the better. Here are some examples of the current challenges and proposed blockchain publishing solutions.
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History News Network
History is a key source of public information and debate. With public figures making regular historical claims and engaging in debates over the meaning of historical sites, more historians are beginning to enter the public fray. Yet historical expertise is still largely perceived — or at least represented — as male.
READ MORE
The Washington Post
Science has a sexual harassment problem. From the most polished ivory tower to the local community college, harassment pervades lecture halls and laboratories, observatories and offices, teaching hospitals and Antarctic field sites. And it takes an economic and emotional toll on female researchers and stifles their scientific contributions, according to a sweeping new study released.
READ MORE
Electronic Frontier Foundation
There’s a bill in the California legislature that would be a huge win for open access to scientific research. The California Assembly recently passed A.B. 2192 unanimously. We hope to see it pass the Senate soon, and for other states to follow California’s lead in passing strong open access laws.
READ MORE
Crypto Disrupt
Blockchain can be applied to every industry imaginable, and the scientific publishing community is no exception. Orvium is an application which aims to improve the quality of scientific publications. Its goal is to become the number one platform for scientific journals and to make the literature more readily accessible to a broader audience. It will also encourage more collaboration between different actors with a model that is less proprietary and centralized.
READ MORE
Frontiers
Swedish researchers can now publish their articles in Frontiers’ Open Access journals through a simplified process that covers publishing fees, thanks to a national agreement announced between Frontiers and the National Library of Sweden, on behalf of the organizations participating in the Bibsam Consortium.
READ MORE
New Jersey Business and Industry Association
A comprehensive database of scientific research from five prominent New Jersey universities was unveiled this morning at BIO International in Boston, the world’s largest gathering of the biotechnology industry.
University leaders joined officials from New Jersey’s Office of the Secretary of Higher Education and New Jersey Economic Development Authority to announce the newly created “Research with NJ” database, which will provide access to the state’s cutting-edge research assets, to strengthen collaboration between academia and industry.
READ MORE
EurekAlert
In response to requests from the community for flexible registering of peer review content (and associated discussions of published content), Crossref has extended its infrastructure to not only support the registration of this content, but also the easy retrieval, use and reuse of it, through its public API. This is a major advancement for the discoverability and usability of peer review reports.
READ MORE
Publishers Weekly
John Wiley & Sons reported that revenue in the fiscal year ended April 30, rose 5.1 percent over fiscal 2017. Operating income was up 16.1 percent. The gains in both sales and earnings benefited from favorable exchange rates.
Total revenue in the year was $1.80 billion, up from $1.72 billion in fiscal 2017. Operating income was $239.5 million in the most recent year, compared to $206.2 million in fiscal 2017.
READ MORE
Scitech Europa
Access to primary research data is vital for advancing science. It facilitates the validation of existing observations and provides the raw materials to build on previous work. In the last 20 years the availability of public resources that hold reference genomes from many different organisms and structures of proteins and other biomolecules have become the bedrock of all life sciences and biomedical sciences.
READ MORE
Altcoin Buzz
Publica, an upstart blockchain publisher, is about to revolutionize the whole concept of publishing and book distribution. And tomorrow it will launch an ICO which will allow Matthew Kepnes, a.k.a Nomadic Matt ,to presell his travel guide “Backpacker’s Guide to Europe” on an Ethereum-based platform. The countdown has started.
READ MORE
Ripple
Ripple is launching the University Blockchain Research Initiative, a program comprised of collaborative partnerships with leading universities globally to support academic research, technical development and innovation in blockchain, cryptocurrency and digital payments. Through the program, Ripple will donate $50 million to universities around the world to help shape the workforce of the future.
READ MORE
NFAIS
Call for Presenters! Movements and Models Supporting Open Access
Closes Tue Jul 31, 2018
Webinar: The Best of Blockchain
Thu Jun 21, 2018 10:00 AM
Lunch & Learn: Data Reigns in the Cloud: Measuring the Impact of Open Access Content
Tue Jul 24, 2018 12:00 PM
Copyright Leadership Certificate 2018 Fall Session
Session starts Mon Sep 17, 2018
2019 Annual Conference
Wed Feb 13, 2019 - Fri Feb 15, 2019
Director, User Experience (UX) Research
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EBSCO Information Services
| Ipswich, MA, United States |
NIH Chief Data Strategist and Director, Office of Data Science Strategy
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NIH
| Bethesda, MD, United States
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Metadata Technologies Librarian
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University of Notre Dame
| Notre Dame, IN, United States |
Interim Director/Editor in Chief, Eos
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American Geophysical Union
| Washington, DC, USA States |
The NFAIS Career Center is the premier one-stop place for employers and job-seekers in the information services field to make the right connections. Click here to view all job opportunities or to post an open position.
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