[Open-access] [open-science] Elsevier: some facts, by Tim Gowers

[Mike Taylor]

For myself, I couldn't care less about profit margins provided that
(A) those profits are made by creating rather than destroying value,
and (B) there is a true market rather than a monopoly. So if PeerJ
could make a 90% profit-margin on their $99 APCs, good luck to them.

The problem with Elsevier isn't the 40% profit margin per se. It's (A)
that they make that 40% not by making works available but by
preventing the world from accessing them; and (B) they're able to
perpetuate that only because they have a monopoly on the content in
their journals. Oh, and (C) they just have a really terrible product,
full of bugs that they show no signs of interest in fixing. And all
the stuff that Peter mentioned.

-- Mike.






On 30 April 2014 22:15, Mr. Puneet Kishor <punk.kish at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> On Apr 30, 2014, at 1:59 PM, Bjoern Brembs <b.brembs at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Maybe I can understand what this is all about, if someone can explain to me what giving Elsevier a rap on the knuckles should actually accomplish in the grand scheme of things?
>
> I didn't mean to derail the conversation nor make it focus (or not) on a specific publisher. My intent was to determine if the fight is to lower the profits for the publishers or to make them do what they promised and what the researchers expect them to do?
>
> Personally, I am more interested in the latter than in the merits or demerits of unbridled capitalism, but I understand different strokes move different folks.
>
> Puneet.
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