Will Resignations in Science Journals Expose Their Business Models?

THE editorial process has emerged as the most significant aspect of quality control in knowledge production in science and other subjects. The traditional publication process follows a systematic route where researchers usually apply for competitive research grants to start their research work. If the proposal is good, it gets accepted and funded after a thorough review by the review committee. The source of research funding is public and comes mainly from the taxpayer’s money. It also comes from private parties. The researchers then work on the project for years to produce their findings, and once they are ready with some results, they share those with others in the field. Typically, the authors will submit papers to scientific journals and conferences. The editorial board of journals consists of editors, and reviewers, the primary gatekeepers to allow publishing, who are often experienced and trained researchers with a critical eye to look at details and decide the fate of newly submitted works. Therefore, when an author submits an article, it is first checked by the editor or a team of editors to decide if it is worth publishing. If the editor is happy to proceed, then the article is sent to reviewers, who will have to investigate the details and submit their report back to the editors, and then the review reports are analyzed, and the decision is made to either accept or reject. If the paper is accepted, the publisher will have the right to profit by selling the article to readers, including authors, editors, and reviewers.

Unusually, the authors, editors, and reviewers who worked tirelessly to scrutinize the paper and its quality are not paid any monetary benefits. Instead, they get rewarded with journal acknowledgements, names on the journal editorial boards, discounts on publishing etc. It is nothing.  The non monetary benefits to the authors, editors and reviewers have been going on for centuries, and publishers have made many billions without paying anything for the peer reviewers. I call it the most tactical exploitation of researchers.  The obvious exploitation mechanism enacted by publishers has yet to be discussed vigorously in the scientific community, as is, for example, the climate change issue. Publishing is one of the main gateways that enable knowledge creation and sharing with the world. Billions of people who get educated are reading books and other material created by publishers. But little do they know that the content reached them was created by people who have yet to be paid for it because they did it as a social service. But why. Because they thought it was related to knowledge sharing with the world. They felt that reviewing was a sacred service to pay back to society. But they need to be more aware of the financial system publishers have built over the centuries of the free service by the authors, editors, and reviewers.  However, the incoming of the Open Access mode of publishing, where authors must pay for publishing instead of consumers (readers), has rejuvenated the discussion about the economic benefits of publishing and who earns from it. It has done it right because now the authors are confronting the payments issues daily by being directly involved in payments to publishers. This is why it has made them suspicious of the age-old business with new tactics, leading to the opening of new journals that charge nothing to publish.

Elsevier is one of the top-ranked publishers, based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, publishing thousands of journals and books, and is known to everyone in the world of publishing. Recently, 42 editors of two of its leading neuroscience journals resigned over failed negotiations to reduce the journal’s high Article Processing Charges (APC). The journal NeuroImage charges US$3,450 per article, while the NeuroImage: Reports charges $900, expected to double to $1,800 from 31 May 2023.

The resignations are seen as one of the major blows to the centuries of seemingly obvious exploitation tactics of publishers, which could initiate probes and discussions on the tall economic structure of publishing companies, which has broadly remained under the carpet for a long time. Time will tell us if the authors, editors, and reviewers will reap any benefit from the publishers.

Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer

• The author is a  Sr. Assistant Professor,  Structural Geology,Department of Geosciences, Faculty of Science, Universiti Brunei Darussalam

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