[Open-access] An anti-RWA bill

[Bjoern Brembs]

On 01/31/2012 09:41 PM, Nick Barnes wrote:
> I hypothesize: exactly the problems you describe would prevent such a 
> race. Top journal publishers are terrified of losing their status. 
> Seriously, terrified. 

Yes, so they keep the price up, because dumping prices mean they don't 
have any status any more. Since when did prestige come cheap? Name one 
instance of a market, where the top-notch segment raced for cheaper 
prices? When has Rolls-Royce ever competed with Daihatsu? Even after a 
solid 8 hours of sleep, this seems to argue in my favor: we'll still 
have a hierarchy, only that this one now is based on price: worse than 
before (at least for scientists).

If you're faced with the choice of flipping burgers if you drive a 
Daihatsu or leading as lab if you loan money to drive a Rolls, most 
people will take up money, so there's zero incentive to cut on prices. 
Where would be the incentive?

On 01/31/2012 10:42 PM, Mike Taylor wrote:
> One of the big advantages of a switch to author-pays is that it
> doesn't hide costs.
That's a standard argument. Still you have Rolls-Royce and Rolex and Dom 
Perignon. This would probably be the very first time in history that the 
top brands wouldn't charge outrageously for their place at the top. 
Paying only 8k for a Nature paper would be like buying a bottle of Dom 
Perignon for a measly 60$ - price dumping!
Why should that happen when you only need 8% of all scientists to 
publish with you to make a great living? What would make scholarly 
publishing so radically different from any other market?

> But when the scientists choosing which journals to place
> their work in are the ones paying, the costs of inefficient journals
> will no longer be concealed at decision time.  Journals will have to
> compete on quality of service and on price.  And once we have an
> efficient market, many of the practices that are currently common will
> become impossible to sustain.
If your livelihood depended on a Rolls Royce, would you not do 
everything possible to get it, even if it didn't make any sense to have 
it? Today, people fake data, brown-nose editors and bend over backwards 
to get published in CNS. This will all stay that way, plus people will 
take up personal money to pay for top journals because grants won't 
incorporate these sums.
Tuition in the USA used to be less than 500US$ for in-state students in 
state-owned schools. Now some of these schools charge 25k per semester. 
And people are willing to pay that because they feel they have to. What 
makes our publishing so special that would prevent something from 
happening that occurs everywhere else? What extremely unique trait does 
publishing have that not a single other market has?

Why would Nature not be Rolls Royce and Science Dom Perignon and Cell 
the Rolex of publishing? They already are, by several measures except 
price. Which market doesn't have a luxury segment and how is it similar 
to publishing? On the contrary, hyperinflation seems to be the 
consequence of anything where public money is involved.

We should be making evidence-based decisions. So far, all arguments seem 
to be hope and wishful thinking. Where is the evidence for publishing 
becoming a unique market which will not have a luxury segment as all 
other markets?

All the best,

Bjoern