Y.S. Chi is delivering a very crisp, focused, humble, and accessible talk on publishing's current identity crisis. This should've been the first keynote, because Y.S. is able to talk about online innovations in a way that's not befuddling some of the incumbents, and he's positioning the current publishing space within its landscape of history. He's pointing backward to show, as with the 100-something year old journal Lancet, that publishing has always been disruptive, and has always had the same purpose: to "let in the light" or "cut out the dross."...Joe Bremner's asking about new pricing models. Y.S. is pointing out that 40% of Elsevier's revenues come from journals, leaving lots of room to experiement with new models with books, database products, etc. No details forthcoming, but "it's going to be quite revolutionary in many ways." Tom ? asking about "open access"/author pays, where authors pay to be freely accessible to everyone. Elsevier has trouble with this model --it evokes vanity publishing, rasing authority concerns, and means that the rich (in this case, colleges with bigger endowments) get a louder voice. Suggests a delayed model that combines peer review and a timed exposure...Sales model at Elsevier moving from intermediary ("we didn't know our customers") to generalists to specialists. "It's a mess. The good news is that we have excellent people..."
PS: Thanks to William Walsh not only for drawing this to my attention, but for quoting me in his comment:
Vanity publishing? Haven't we moved past this? See, for example, Peter Suber's response to a question during a January 2004 CHE Colloquy Live on OA:
...nothing deserves to be called "vanity publishing" if it includes peer review. OA journals conduct peer review. Second, the processing fees charged by OA journals are not typically paid by authors; they are usually paid by those who sponsor the author's research, such as the author's funder, employer, or government. If you're saying that OA journals might accept weak papers, papers that would not ordinarily survive their peer review process, simply to collect a fee that only covers their costs, that's very far-fetched. First, similar conflicts of interest arise at conventional journals, e.g. when an author works for an advertiser. All experienced editors think about these conflicts and are used to handling them. If anything, the problem is worse at subscription-based journals where profit margins are high and price hikes are publicly justified by the growing volume of articles.
Chi's claim that author-side fees will favor rich authors is also misleading, but I've rebutted it at length elsewhere.
Update (4/12/06). Shannon Holman writes on her blog this morning that the phrase "vanity publishing" is hers, not Chi's, a quick paraphrase to keep up with the streaming lecture. Thanks for the clarification, Shannon, and apologies to Y.S. Chi for misplaced criticism.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/12/2006 08:44:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
