Elsevier in the frontline

“Viewed this way, the logo represents, in classical symbolism, the symbiotic relationship between publisher and scholar. The addition of the Non Solus inscription reinforces the message that publishers, like the elm tree, are needed to provide sturdy support for scholars, just as surely as scholars, the vine, are needed to produce fruit. Publishers and scholars cannot do it alone. They need each other. This remains as apt a representation of the relationship between Elsevier and its authors today – neither dependent, nor independent, but interdependent.”

There were two items of news related with the publishark Elsevier in the latest issue of Nature I read. One was that Germany, Peru, and Taiwan had no longer access to Elsevier journals, after negotiations or funding stopped. Meaning the scientists there have to find alternative ways to procure the papers, from the authors’ webpage [I do not get why authors fail to provide their papers through their publication webpage!] to peer-to-peer platforms like Sci-Hub. Beyond this short term solution, I hope this pushes for the development of arXiv-based journals, like Gower’s Discrete Analysis. Actually, we [statisticians] should start planing a Statistics version of it!

The second item is about  Elsevier developing its own impact factor index, CiteScore. While I do not deem the competition any more relevant for assessing research “worth”, seeing a publishark developing its own metrics sounds about as appropriate as Breithart News starting an ethical index for fake news. I checked the assessment of Series B on that platform, which returns the journal as ranking third, with the surprising inclusion of the Annual Review of Statistics and its Application [sic], a review journal that only started two years ago, of Annals of Mathematics, which does not seem to pertain to the category of Statistics, Probability, and Uncertainty, and of Statistics Surveys, an IMS review journal that started in 2009 (of which I was blissfully unaware). And the article in Nature points out that, “scientists at the Eigenfactor project, a research group at the University of Washington, published a preliminary calculation finding that Elsevier’s portfolio of journals gains a 25% boost relative to others if CiteScore is used instead of the JIF“. Not particularly surprising, eh?!

When looking for an illustration of this post, I came upon the hilarious quote given at the top: I particularly enjoy the newspeak reversal between the tree and the vine,  the parasite publishark becoming the support and the academics the (invasive) vine… Just brilliant! (As a last note, the same issue of Nature mentions New Zealand aiming at getting rid of all invasive predators: I wonder if publishing predators are also included!)