Elsevier was "corrupting open Science in Europe" in 2018: how is it now?

In those days, Carlos Moedas was the European Commissioner responsible for the political visibility given to this very important challenge facing scientific publishing. Moedas, currently Mayor of Lisbon, disseminated his preference for Open Access publishing in opposition to the traditional closed model of articles paid per view or per individual download or subscription.

However, what most people may not know is that today if an author wants his/her article to be published as Open Access, most big publishers (including the three giants Elsevier, Wiley and Springer Nature) will charge, on average, more than 1300 euros per article (namely those authored by developed countries individuals).

A curious fact. Elsevier alone has published financial results of over US $9.8 billion in 2019 resulting largely from over 2600 Journals it owns. This is Big Business, right? And most people have no idea how this business works, including academics and scientists who actively publish using these large publishers.

However, as the 2018 report by the Guardian stated "...within scholarly communications, Elsevier has perhaps the single worst reputation. With profit margins around 37%, larger than Apple and big oil companies, Elsevier dominate the publishing landscape by selling research back to the same institutes that carried out the work..."

At the time of the report, the Portuguese Carolos Moedas, by then EU Commissioner, was involved in a polemic process, flagged by British Media, in which the EC subcontracted Elsevier to monitor the advancement of Open Access in Europe, in spite of the fact that the publisher has been for many years one of the major opponents to Open Access publishing.

Additionally, the Guardian report also enlightened us about the fact that "... many EU member states are currently turning against Elsevier due to its anti-open business practices, high and ever-increasing prices, and dangerously powerful size as a commercial publisher. Research institutes are typically prevented from disclosing details of their ‘big deal’ subscriptions with Elsevier, as this would place downward pressure on journal prices. This profoundly anti-competitive practice has created a dysfunctional scholarly publishing market, and a budget crisis for university libraries. We are seeing national boycotts of Elsevier and rejection of Elsevier journal bundles. Just recently,?Swedish?and?German?research institutes announced that they were cancelling all Elsevier subscriptions due to concerns about sustainability, unfair pricing arrangements and a general lack of value..."

The truth of the matter is that by then the Guardian was one of the few free European Press outlets to flag the rather strange event and the EC decision to hire Elsevier to monitor the development of Open Access in Europe as evidence for future political decision on the issue. In fact, as argued in the article "...it is like hiring McDonald's to monitor the eating habits of the Europeans..." and from that data produce a report to support the future direction of Healthy Eating policy and decision-making.

So, now we must ask: how did it go since 2018? How is the Open Access publishing business evolving? Is it now fairer for authors? I invite readers to try and find out and share here the findings.

Once again we must be grateful to the resisting freedom of press still alive in the UK, unlike and sadly most of the rest of Europe.

You can access the full Guardian Article here: Elsevier are corrupting open science in Europe | Jon Tennant | The Guardian

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