The academic publishing industry: Reflections from an OKHE course participant
Open Knowledge in Higher Education (OKHE) has generated discussion around a number of interesting themes. Some discussion elements — principally the continued evolution of Open Educational Resources — provided a more natural fit with my own professional interests (my current job has a heavy focus on teaching and learning). However, I decided that the business models and practices employed by the academic publishing industry — highlighted by Lucinda May’s OKHE1 post — were impossible to ignore when looking for a theme to explore further.
In contrast to much of academia the concept of “openness” has not been readily embraced by academic publishers. This blog-post will attempt to explain why… I will also look at ways in which openness is nevertheless beginning to disrupt the industry (referencing other posts from OKHE participants).
Lucinda talked about how the reactions of many course participants to the practices employed by the industry were ones of “incredulity and outrage”. I would definitely include myself amongst this number. As a member of staff working in a large university library I had always been vaguely cognizant that our subscriptions to academic publishers were expensive. However, the nature of my role (which is much more student focused) had left me blind to the reality of just how much money the industry was raking in. A particularly eye-catching observation was that the profit margins of the largest academic publisher (Elsevier) outstripped those of Apple Inc in 2013. How could this be??? Apple products have undeniable world-wide appeal, whereas academic journal articles surely have a much narrower target-market? I determined to find out more…
Justin Fox of Bloomberg describes Elsevier as a “money machine” perfectly illustrated by the chart below (showing a huge disparity between operating incomes and revenues). Although Elsevier are the market leaders, their competitors are not doing too badly either. Rival publishers such as Springer or Wiley are also pulling in multi-million dollar profits, with margins of 35% and over viewed as standard.
To understand how this apparently niche industry generates such enormous profits requires an understanding of the unique set of market conditions it enjoys. The academic journal article evolved as a means for those working at academic institutions to disseminate the results of their research and scholarly endeavours. Academic publishers therefore do not pay for the creation of this content. Neither do they (generally) pay for the peer review process which makes the content so valuable to other researchers. This is all borne within universities in the form of staff re-numeration costs and / or research grants (most of which is funded via the public purse). Publication (the costs of which were traditionally borne by the publisher) allows the research to be disseminated world-wide, raising the academic profile of the researcher and the institution they are affiliated to. Thus publication becomes its own reward, laying the foundation for a market that is ripe for exploitation.
The publisher’s ace in the hole comes from the fact that researchers need access to the research of others in order to better understand and hypothesize about their own work. This makes well-established journals such as Nature — the reputation of which has ironically been built on the back of the quality of research produced by universities — a hugely valuable commodity for the copyright holder (the publisher).
Universities find themselves in the unenviable position of being both the chief creators and the chief consumers of the content supplied by academic publishers. Their researchers need access to leading publications (leading to huge costs in university library journal subscriptions ) in order to research and publish themselves! Thus we have a quasi-farcical situation whereby public money buys back the results of publicly funded research — The illustration below sums the process up quite neatly:
The locking away of the results of publicly funded research leads many to justifiable outrage. George Monbiot (writing in 2011) argued passionately that “academic publishers make Rupert Murdoch look like a socialist” invoking the name of another media tycoon to provide a devastating denouement to his critique:
“Perhaps it’s not surprising that one of the biggest crooks ever to have preyed upon the people of this country — Robert Maxwell — made much of his money through academic publishing”.
The academic publishing model makes less and less sense in the age of digital publishing. Indeed, many saw the growth of the internet as the perfect opportunity for academia to break free from the straight-jackets imposed by academic publishers. No less than Forbes magazine and The Economist both envisaged academic publishers as likely victims of the new digital age. “Computer literate professors… (would) bypass academic journals” with simplified electronic methods of publication and peer review pushing publishers towards redundancy.
What we got instead was a ruthless new business model which would have a negative impact on university budgets for years to come. In response to the digital threat posed to traditional methods of publishing Elsevier (and their competitors) launched databases such as Science Direct. At a stroke these products reduced the feasibility of university libraries subscribing to individual journals in favour of bundled electronic package deals. Access to these packages needs to be negotiated every 2–3 years with the costs of doing so becoming more and more expensive. Access to academic articles also became hugely expensive on an individual basis (with a $30 fee for an article from a reputable journal now viewed as standard).
So far, so good for academic publishers then? It would certainly appear so. However the market conditions described above have undoubtedly created a form of ‘information apartheid’. This has set off a chain of events which may yet end up having unintended consequences for academic publishers which I will attempt to explain in the remainder of this post.
Let us first consider the OKHE1 posts of Nicky High and Kate Holmes. Kate’s post clearly highlights the negative implications that the expensive pay-walls created by academic publishers can have for those who are not affiliated to an academic institution with good journal access:
“I was between research jobs and couldn’t access the information I needed to continue conducting research; this was even more problematic as I needed to build my own publications in order to get another research job”.
Here we begin to see the first seeds of conflict between the money-making demands of the publishers, and the needs and practices of those who are creating the content. Sharing is a hugely important part of the academic research process. Pay-walls have become a major hurdle to this, as academics at different institutions may share research interests but their libraries may not provide the same levels of journal access. Mike Taylor alludes to this talking about how the original purpose of academic publications (“to allow us to stand on the shoulders of giants”) is now hindered by the propensity of publishers to “stand on our toes”!
Nicky’s post conveys the willingness (and need!) to share information present in the academic community. She also hints at methods that can be used to circumnavigate the pay-wall process:
“In the age of the internet, when obtaining information is so easy, many students and researchers around the world are still having to send off reprint requests, albeit by e-mail, to access key papers that they need for research and teaching. It is clear that scientists are willing to share their published work because they know that dissemination of information is what drives research”.
A game changer came with the rise in popularity of social media. This made the process of “sharing” much easier. Once, academics may have sent a paper by email or post to a fellow researcher who needed to access it. Now platforms such as Twitter (using hashtags such as #icanhazpdf ) have removed the need for any form of direct connection:
If publishers might view #icanhazpdf as an inconvenience then the emergence of Scihub in 2011 must be seen as far more threatening. Set-up by a young researcher from Kazakhstan in reaction to the high costs of copyrighted articles, SciHub operates from an uncompromising position that is easy to admire. “Everyone should have access to knowledge regardless of their income or affiliation” argues its creator Alexandra Elbakyan.
SciHub facilitates this by allowing users to enter details of a required paper / article. If it is stored on SciHub then the user is simply emailed a copy. If not then SciHub automatically “acquires” a copy on the user’s behalf (which is simultaneously added to its own archive for future users). SciHub relies on “donated” academic institutional log-in credentials to source this material. This is of course highly illegal and in strict contravention of all the user terms and conditions of those who have “donated” their credentials. Significantly though 51,000,000 papers and articles have been added to the archive since 2011.
The site’s popularity in the developing world, where it knocks down the barriers of information privilege, has inevitably led to a number of analogies which invoke the spirit of Robin Hood . A closer look at usage statistics however reveals that all is not as it may seem. John Bohannan’s recent article in Science analysed SciHub’s server log data over a 6 month period and demonstrates some interesting patterns. While there are indeed significant pockets of activity within the developing world, there is also a LOT of activity within Europe and on the East coast of the U.S. This merits further analysis as we might reasonably expect SciHub users based in these locations to be members of institutions with good journal access!
Intrigued by what I saw, I used the handy interactive map (see below) to check out what activity had been taking place in my own city — Manchester. The data shows that Manchester IP addresses accounted for the download of just over 5500 articles (from Sep 15 — Feb 16). The most requested article came from the Bioresource Technology journal. Interestingly articles from this journal are available to download legally for registered members of the University of Manchester Library, Manchester Metropolitan University Library and University of Salford Library
The Manchester data supports Bohannan’s own analysis (based on server data and anecdotal evidence) that members of academic institutions with good journal access are turning to SciHub regardless of the sites illegality. Consider the following quote from a student at George Washington University:
“If I do a search on Google Scholar and there’s no immediate PDF link, I have to click through to ‘Check Access through GWU’ and then it’s hit or miss… If I put [the paper’s title or DOI] into Sci-Hub, it will just work.”
The Scholarly Kitchen provides further evidence that this may be a growing trend which requires the attention of academic publishers:
“A young scientist told me that even though he has access to almost all the research papers he needs from his university library, he routinely uses Sci-Hub instead because of its more congenial user experience”
This should be cutting right to the heart of any future debates about openness. James Heathers makes a compelling argument that the growth in academic piracy might actually be more of a problem to do with service rather than pricing. He argues that in their bid to safeguard individual content, publishers have created an impenetrable system of gateways, passwords and search strategies which can be very frustrating to an individual researcher. A key reason why he thinks Sci-Hub will win…
“It’s not significant that it has access to your material. It’s significant that it has simpler, more straightforward, ad-free, faster, more streamlined access”.
An anonymous publisher interviewed for Bohannan’s article acknowledges the issue of Sci-Hub’s growing popularity within the developed world. For him, the blame should lie with librarians who have failed to make their online systems easier to use, or to properly educate their researchers…. “I don’t think the issue is access — it’s the perception that access is difficult”.
This has drawn a furious response from a number of librarians, and I would be in complete agreement with my professional colleagues. Speaking from my own experience, pay walls and the idiosyncrasies of different publishing platforms have always accounted for a large percentage of difficulties encountered by library users but there are limits to what librarians can do about it.
From 2009 to 2012 one of my chief professional responsibilities was to support the needs of a large student body (3000+ in total) who were registered on Manchester Business School’s distance-learning MBA programme. As many of these students were studying within the workplace, company firewalls would often prevent them from installing our VPN software (which in theory allows them access to subscribed materials without the continual need to authenticate).
As a result I spent countless hours answering queries, designing tutorial videos, and hosting webinars. The focus of all these activities could best be summed up as “How the hell do I access journal articles from the library?”. Continually explaining the nuances of login procedures for Elsevier products (“Select UK Access Management Federation”) against those of Wiley (”Select Institutional login then United Kingdom. You will need to search for the resource again”) was hugely frustrating, though not as frustrating as it was for the students, I imagine (I at least was being paid!)… I dread to think how much time was wasted across the board. The gates to academic research have been padlocked so hard that librarians have no choice but to metaphorically throw our users a massive bunch of keys and then expect them to know which one is the right one (or read the instructions that tell them). The situation was crying out for some form of skeleton key. Now one exists. It’s called SciHub… Is it any wonder some users might prefer it?
The popularity of Google Scholar provides further evidence that complicated searching platforms and login procedures are now, at best, an inconvenience to users. I think it is a bit rich for publishers to expect librarians to provide the answer to this service problem on their behalf. As blogger Library Babel Fish states : “when did we sign on to become your guards, and when do we get a check for this labor?” Publishers would do well to check the make-up of a modern academic library training programme first as they may then come to realise that we have much better ways to be spending our contact time with students. They might also want to ponder a scenario whereby the word “Sci-Hub” has the potential to turn a 15 minute user query into a 30 second one and ask themselves what they might choose to do…
It is hard to predict where all of this will lead us, though there is no doubt that it poses serious challenges for both publishers and librarians in the years ahead. For now I guess we can entertain ourselves by watching Elsevier engage SciHub in a form of “whack-a-mole” (internet takedown style) and see where the dust settles.
Ultimately, I think that SciHub should be viewed as an inevitable consequence of a deeply broken model that has needed to change for a very long time (as opposed to any form of solution). Librarian Maragret Janz articulates this very nicely in her recent blog post:
“Sci-Hub still relies on the broken publishing system we have… (it) requires that publishers keep publishing stuff and libraries keep paying for it..”
For universities (and their libraries) the move toward Open Access publishing presents the best way to achieve a more sustainable future. I will leave it to others better qualified than myself to argue how this could be best achieved, though from a purely societal perspective it is great to see all the work that is being done within both higher education and the government to help make this happen.
Sci-Hub has if nothing else provided a hefty jolt to the system. It will be interesting to see if the massive publicity it has generated in mainstream publications such as The Atlantic or The New York Times has any wider impact. Interestingly both publications chose to focus on the angle that publicly funded research makes massive profit for private companies — not good PR for the publishers.
Sci Hub provides a threat that cannot be ignored, chiefly because it has made access to scholarly publications so much easier. To quote James Heathers again “the big news is not that it’s free, it’s that it’s better”. Perhaps naively I am hoping that publishers will respond to the challenge by working more closely with universities and librarians to make access to scholarly publications more intuitive and more equitable. Ideally of course we need a more open affordable system with fewer articles locked behind paywalls… Perhaps a dream. At the very least though I would like to see some of those massive profits invested into designing a single system of authentication that doesn’t drive its users crazy (and straight into the arms of pirate systems such as SciHub). Alternatively, I guess, they could just carry on building their employees basketball courts… It is after all their decision to make.
