Björn Brembs

There are regular discussions among academics as to who should be the
prime mover in infrastructure reform. Some point to the publishers to
finally change their business model. Others claim that researchers need
to vote with their feet and change how they publish. Again others find
that libraries should just stop subscribing to journals and use the
saved money for a modern publishing system. Finally and most recently,
people have been urging funding agencies to use their power to attach
strings to their grant funds and force change where none has occurred.

I was recently interviewed by the Wissenschaftsrat, a
government-appointed science policy forum, and one of their questions
was also:

> How can the lock-in-effect of prestigious titles be avoided or
> mitigated and who do you see as responsible for initiating such
> changes?

I replied:

We, the scientific community and all institutions supporting them, are
all responsible for change.

The more relevant question is: who is in the strategically best position
to break the lock-in-effect and initiate change?

- *Researchers* decide if they evaluate colleagues on glamour proxies
  that deteriorate the reliability of science by valuing "novelty" above
  all else, or if they stand up and demand an infrastructure from their
  institutions that supports reliability, saves time and provides for an
  optimized workflow in which they can focus on science again, instead
  of being constantly side-tracked by the technical minutiae of reviews,
  meetings, submissions, etc.
- *Libraries* decide how to spend their \~10b€ annually: on
  subscriptions/APCs in opaque and unaccountable negotiations, exempt
  from spending rules or on a modern infrastructure without antiquated
  journals and with a thriving, innovative market that allows them to
  choose among the lowest responsible bidders?
- *Funders* decide whether to support scientists at institutions that
  fund monopolists and reward unreliable science, or those that work at
  institutions which spend their infrastructure and research funds in a
  fiscally responsible way to provide an infrastructure that preserves
  not only text, but data and code as well, ensuring the reliability and
  veracity of the results.

Right now, it seems only few realize their responsibility and even fewer
are even considering their strategic position for change. Until now,
many seem to think *researchers* need to change, but they can reasonably
claim that they cannot risk their or their co-workers careers. For many
years, some of us have tried to convince *libraries* to spend their
funds more responsibly, but they can reasonably claim that neither can
any library make such a change alone, nor can they divert their funds
without faculty support. I have yet to hear a similarly convincing
argument why *funders* need to coerce individual researchers rather than
their institutions, but I am sure they as well will soon have an
analogously reasonable claim as to why they also need to make things
worse while intending to make things better.

The remark to funders, of course refers to current initiatives (such as
PlanS and others) to force researchers to publish only in certain,
compliant venues. This is, rather obviously, a [suboptimal
approach](https://bjoern.brembs.net/2018/11/maybe-try-another-kind-of-mandate/).

Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and all
players here are demonstrably well-intended. There is only one group of
participants which are not well-intended and they don't need to be:
*academic publishers*.

Publishers, have absolutely no obligation or responsibility for change:
their sole purpose, their fiduciary duty, even, in cases where the
publishers are publicly traded, is to maximize profits in any legal way
they see fit. Following market rules and capitalist logic, publishers
today excel at avoiding competition, reducing their costs and increasing
their revenue, year in year out, whether there is a global financial
crisis or not. Paragons of capitalist work-ethics, the most profitable
of them sport margins between 35-40% for at least the last decade or
two. It is clearly not their fault if we academics create a perfect
scenario for capitalist success at the expense of the public. Publishers
only milk the academic cash-cow for all it is worth and we have proven
to be such sheepish hosts, that the parasites do [not even have to
hide](https://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/08/what-interacting-with-publishers-felt-like-for-this-open-access-proponent/)
their disdain for us suckers any more.


There are regular discussions among academics as to who should be the prime mover in infrastructure reform. Some point to the publishers to finally change their business model. Others claim that researchers need to vote with their feet and change how they publish. Again others find that libraries should just stop subscribing to journals and use the saved money for a modern publishing system.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Who’s responsible for the lack of action?