{"id":4096,"date":"2019-01-03T10:21:20","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T10:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wiki.davelevy.info\/?p=4096"},"modified":"2021-10-18T10:09:30","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T10:09:30","slug":"open-access-to-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/open-access-to-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Open access to research"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read Marc Armstrong’s academic paper Open Access to Research<\/a> and wanted to make a commentary on my blog. Here are my notes,<\/p>\n

Links<\/h3>\n
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  1. Rankings of academic publishers<\/a> on wikipedia<\/li>\n
  2. https:\/\/nouvelles.umontreal.ca\/en\/article\/2015\/06\/10\/five-companies-control-more-than-half-of-academic-publishing\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The latter pointed me at Elsevier’s 2017 annual report<\/a>, I don’t yet have time to do the next four.<\/p>\n

    The Guardian looked at this in 2017, Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?<\/a><\/p>\n

    A 2005 Deutsche Bank report referred to it as a \u201cbizarre\u201d \u201ctriple-pay\u201d system, in which \u201cthe state funds most research, pays the salaries of most of those checking the quality of research, and then buys most of the published product\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Economics<\/h3>\n

    I discovered that their academic publishing business is very large (\u00a32.4bn) and very profitable (37% gross margin) and their asset statement is impenetrable, partly because of the huge proportion of intangibles, but their real assets are tiny compared with revenue; while they declare a 13% RoA<\/acronym>, it turns into ~425% if calculated on real assets only.\u00a0 ( I did Elsevier because they are the biggest and their report was easy to find).<\/p>\n

    Related Post<\/h3>\n

    This is part of my research and campaigning for free software and knowledge. See also Fragments on the Machine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Fragment on machines<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n