Reed - Elsevier , Springer , Wiley - Blackwell , Taylor & FrancisandSage . Whether you recognize some , all , or none of these name , they are a big deal in the scientific publication community . The actual question : Are they becoming too much of a large deal ?
Apaper , published in the journalPLoS One , report that the five said publishing behemoth answer for for over50%of the papers put out in 2013 for both ' born and medical sciences ' ( NMS ) and ' societal sciences and world ' ( SSH ) . The data point came from 45 million documents on theWeb of Science .
You might shrug your articulatio humeri and say , " So what ? " publisher do a valuable undertaking : they manage typesetting , printing and statistical distribution of papers while letting the busy scientists get on with their next experiment . However , the danger is that when one house gets too powerful , they efficaciously hold in what info the public does , or does n’t , see .
The enquiry disciplines are not all equally stirred . Over70%of the chemical science paper are publish by one of the big five , whereas less than40%of physics paper are . This could be due to the variety of loose pre - publishing avail that survive for natural philosophy , for examplearXiv . There is n’t much room for a paid - for publication house .
The graph usher what percentage ofacademic paper for various disciplines was published by one of the big five publishers in 2013 /PLoS One : " The Oligopoly of Publishers "
cathartic away , it ’s unmanageable for researchers to side - step the publication houses . It ’s a tragical paradox : The more prestigious a publisher becomes , the more scientist want to publish in their journal , which in number makes them gain more prestige … You see the movie . honored publishing houses attract new scientist who are eager to better their reputation and long - time scientist who want to maintain a good name .
On top of this , big publication houses charge large fee for subscriptions and viewing article . Fortunately , the scientific community does n’t have a repute for remain subdued about wanting liberal data . You may have learn of the " Cost of Knowledge " campaign , which promote scientists to boycottElsevierdue to their high subscription costs . Around 15,000 researchers hold to not write in , review , or edit Elsevier journals .
This new data calls into inquiry whether a fistful of big pot deserve so much major power over the scientific community . And if not , how can we make the passage to smaller publishers more appealing ?
[ ViaPLOS ]
[ Image via Library al-Qur’an by faungg ’s exposure viaFlickr ]
