Re: Survey on publishers for ISWC [responses welcome]

Ah, but typesetting and web hosting is only a very very small portion of
the value chain...

P.

Pascal Hitzler
communication from mobile
voice recognition may distort spelling

On Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 22:59 Aidan Hogan <aidhog@gmail.com> wrote:

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> Hi Pascal,
>
> Interesting questions! As some personal answers to these (I hope not to
> skew responses to the survey, so maybe folks should answer before
> reading on if they have not already ...)
>
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://forms.gle/E5oEfYR7H5Nx9MpK9__;!!On18fmf1aQ!3L0Fb2quC4jeg296QMHbyqeBn6-oNS0Dyi2wgXvD0e1v9SE0DFOrbUe6L-3ZGx8iTTHzNWBPCLShOONWLnAJ5Q$
>
> Regarding service vs. cost, for me I think this can be answered in large
> part (but not entirely) by comparing the quality of pre-prints delivered
> by authors and the final typeset version published by the publisher. It
> is often the case, in many areas of Computer Science, that the pre-print
> version is just as good, or in the case of some publishers (that do not
> typeset in LaTeX) even better than the official published version.
> Beyond that, all of the labour intensive tasks are undertaken by
> academics that volunteer their time. If a journal requires marketing,
> that can have overhead, but it is not clear to me personally if such
> marketing is effective. (For books, I think the matter is very
> different: marketing is very important.) Other than that, there are of
> course hosting costs, but running a web server is not expensive [1,2],
> and initial costs for platforms can be covered by adopting open source
> platforms and some in-kind contributions (economies of scale apply too).
> There are some additional minor costs like providing DOIs, but these are
> not particularly high [3].
>
> In terms of the costs of low-fee/free OA being hidden, or covered by
> institutions, or governments, or in-kind contributions, this is true to
> some extent. I cannot provide exact figures on how much the costs for
> publishing with Dagstuhl are borne by the German taxpayer, for example,
> but I imagine (speculating here) that in terms of the overall taxpayer
> investment in research, such initiatives provide excellent value versus,
> for example, funding APCs to meet OA mandates. For example, in the case
> of arXiv, the total costs come out to around $1 per paper hosted per
> year (including the publication of new papers, which is the most costly
> aspect) [2]. Again, the services arXiv provides are not the same as what
> some publishers provide, and arXiv benefits from many economies of
> scale, but there is, as you say, the question of what additional
> services (purely in terms of publishing) are necessary, aside from a
> volunteer-run peer-review process.
>
> But it is important to highlight again that the taxpayer burden is far
> from exclusive to low-cost publishers. Taxpayers have been inflating the
> profits and margins of commercial academic publishers for decades. For
> example, in 2005, Deutsche Bank [4] released a report that was highly
> critical of the business practices of Elsevier. Quoting from the
> translation (I did not find the original report):
>
>         "[M]argins in the journals business [are] ‘extremely high’. One
> could
> argue that they are unjustifiably high - bluntly, we believe that the
> professional publishers add little value to the research process.  We
> suggest that readers consider the margins (just momentarily) as
> taxpayers rather than investors. How happy are you, as taxpayers, that
> your governments are enabling private sector operators, with very little
> invested capital, to earn 40% operating margins?"
>
> The fees charged by Elsevier have only increased since then.
>
> I very much agree with your point for the need for competition, but this
> is not so straightforward from an economics/free-market perspective,
> principally because you cannot replace one publisher's product with
> another. You cannot switch your subscription from Elsevier to Springer
> to save costs because they have different catalogues; rather you need
> access to both to not miss out on literature. So each publisher has a
> local monopoly on their content. (Under Gold OA the picture looks a bit
> different.) And in the spirit of competition, it would seem beneficial
> to have low cost alternatives in this "marketplace"; if the services
> these low-cost alternatives provide on a small budget are not up to
> scratch, then researchers can choose to pay more APCs and publish
> elsewhere.
>
> I agree in terms of the dazzlingly high fees charged by professional,
> non-profit organisations for publishing. And agreed regarding the high
> costs of conferences. These factors, as Sarven mentions, hinder
> inclusivity, pricing certain people (to a certain extent unnecessarily,
> in my opinion) out of participating.
>
> Similar debates on cost vs. service -- and how free OA still has hidden
> costs -- have been had in the Machine Learning community [1], where JMLR
> (a free OA alternative) has had a lot of success.
>
> It's an important discussion. I don't know all the answers to your
> questions, but wanted to share my perspective. A much longer write-up is
> available at [5] for those with immense patience.
>
> Best!
> Aidan
>
> [1]
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://archive.blogs.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-journal/__;!!On18fmf1aQ!3L0Fb2quC4jeg296QMHbyqeBn6-oNS0Dyi2wgXvD0e1v9SE0DFOrbUe6L-3ZGx8iTTHzNWBPCLShOOOb0R8vvQ$
> [2]
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://info.arxiv.org/about/reports-financials.html__;!!On18fmf1aQ!3L0Fb2quC4jeg296QMHbyqeBn6-oNS0Dyi2wgXvD0e1v9SE0DFOrbUe6L-3ZGx8iTTHzNWBPCLShOOPV3Qp6iw$
> [3]
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://datacite.org/fee-model/__;!!On18fmf1aQ!3L0Fb2quC4jeg296QMHbyqeBn6-oNS0Dyi2wgXvD0e1v9SE0DFOrbUe6L-3ZGx8iTTHzNWBPCLShOOML6wrLdA$
> [4]
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://notes.knowledgefutures.org/pub/supertanker/release/3__;!!On18fmf1aQ!3L0Fb2quC4jeg296QMHbyqeBn6-oNS0Dyi2wgXvD0e1v9SE0DFOrbUe6L-3ZGx8iTTHzNWBPCLShOOMG9q1hSA$
> [5]
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://aidanhogan.com/blog/index.php/2022/10/27/publishing-research-semantic-web/__;!!On18fmf1aQ!3L0Fb2quC4jeg296QMHbyqeBn6-oNS0Dyi2wgXvD0e1v9SE0DFOrbUe6L-3ZGx8iTTHzNWBPCLShOOP6QZK3sw$
>
>
> On 2024-01-16 14:17, Pascal Hitzler wrote:
> > I probably shouldn't ... but I'll reply anyway.
> >
> >
> > What publishers do is a service. That service comes with a cost. That's
> > the case also for ceur-ws or Dagstuhl.
> >
> > The cost (for the provider/publisher) is dependent on the service
> > provided (quality and scope). Little service (e.g. just putting it on a
> > webserver for the public) comes with less cost, of course.
> >
> > Somebody has to pay for the cost. I don't know who that is e.g. for
> > ceur-ws or Dagstuhl, though I'd guess that it includes German taxpayers?
> >
> > So you can ask a few questions then.
> >
> > * How much service do you need?
> >
> > * What is a good service/cost trade-off? Branding (reputation of the
> > provider) in fact comes into this as well.
> >
> > * Is (for a particular provider), the cost reasonable wrt. the service
> > provided?
> >
> > * Is a commmercial or a non-profit or a public provider the best
> solution?
> >
> > I don't think that any of these questions have obvious answers. For me,
> > it is interesting to see that there are providers that have arisen out
> > of professional academic associations, that feel to me like more of a
> > rip-off than some commercial publishers.
> >
> >
> > For me, one of the key issues in today's landscape is that some
> > commercial providers charge a multiple of the cost for their services.
> > They rely on momentum (like, it's easier to work through familiar
> > channels; very high reputation of outlet/journal), or on mechanisms like
> > lower per-proceedings cost if there's a high number of proceedings in a
> > series, but then not passing on these cost savings. For the commercial
> > model to do really well, competition needs to increase.
> >
> > This said, compared to publication costs in journals or conference
> > proceedings, a much higher cost factor are in-person conferences,
> > including participation fees, travel costs, accommodations. Not to
> > mention the "working time lost" by people in transit. Compared to that
> > (in computer science) publication costs are not that big of a deal at
> > the moment. So if there's an argument made to decrease cost, I'd say
> > that low-cost hybrid conference options are a way to go.
> >
> > Pascal.
> >
> > On 1/16/2024 10:49 AM, Sarven Capadisli wrote:
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> >>
> >> On 2024-01-16 17:13, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
> >>> It would have been useful to make the survey better for those of us
> >>> who do not have research funds.
> >>
> >>
> >> Perhaps. I'd think of it as an inherit issue with how the whole this
> >> particular Semantic Web/Web Science research space has been operating.
> >> The survey just reflects that.
> >>
> >> Conferences like ISWC/ESWC, .. journals like SWJ .. all essentially
> >> operate with the understanding and need that's highlighted in the
> >> survey, i.e., the certification and rating system:
> >>
> >>  >The choice of publisher should not directly affect ISWC's CORE rating.
> >>
> >> Let's see what happens when we remove that variable. Decoupling
> >> certification from registration.
> >>
> >> The existing system lacks fairness and inclusivity, especially when
> >> scholarly communication has been relying on third-party (for-profit)
> >> services, all meanwhile the read-write Web has been available for
> >> decades at the fraction of costs.
> >>
> >> With respect to this survey, transitioning to the use of Dagstuhl for
> >> publishing represents a good / significant step. Or actually
> >> *investing* in ceur-ws.org (you still can!)... or alike.
> >>
> >> Any numbers on how much (taxpayer) money and rights that got stolen by
> >> using the for-profit publishers to date?
> >>
> >> It is the age old issue of for unknown wild excuses Web researchers
> >> not having the incentive or motivation to ... publish and communicate
> >> their findings on some sort of a global information superhighway for
> >> all to access.
> >>
> >> Recycling an obligatory quote by *the* Web developer:
> >>
> >>> From: timbl@info .cern.ch (Tim Berners-Lee)
> >>> Newsgroups: alt.hypertext
> >>> Subject: WorldWideWeb: Summary
> >>> Date: 6 Aug 91 16:00:12 GMT
> >>>
> >>> The WWW project merges the techniques of information retrieval and
> >>> hypertext to
> >>> make an easy but powerful global information system.
> >>>
> >>> The project started with the philosophy that much academic
> >>> information should
> >>> be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing
> >>> within
> >>> internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information
> by
> >>> support groups.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/1991/08/art-6487.txt__;!!On18fmf1aQ!1T4f-kRl8XnK2nHBsg_VHN6j41t_KFLC8dTZzeEBC9wTqn_UMbEdkA-bqMSUKQuA0mJ_Fji2NEldmUhK2s7P4w$
> >>
> >> Aidan, thanks for sharing the survey and the underlying considerations.
> >>
> >> -Sarven
> >>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://csarven.ca/*i__;Iw!!On18fmf1aQ!1T4f-kRl8XnK2nHBsg_VHN6j41t_KFLC8dTZzeEBC9wTqn_UMbEdkA-bqMSUKQuA0mJ_Fji2NEldmUhigY7xAg$
> >
>
>