Disrupting journal publishing - Wikimedia-l

5 May 2016

Hello all,

The following post on HN states the following:

...
  About fifteen years ago I was working on a venture to
make an open-content journal publishing system. It didn't pan out for various reasons,
but the general argument we were making this. Here are various services, and who (or what)
handles them:

 - Peer review and top-level decision-making. This is handled entirely by the editorial
board.
 - Typesetting. We have a free system for this: it's called LaTeX.
 - Copy-editing and typeset-checking. This is handled by the publisher.
 - Publishing and archiving. This is handled by the publisher.
 - Famous Name. This is controlled by the publisher and is pure rent-seeking.

 It used to be that the publisher handled much more than this. But with a decent online
publishing, workflow, and archiving system, and with a near-zero cost in publishing and
archiving online nowadays, essentially the only useful service the publisher provides is
copy-editing. That is very minor.

 If a free online business model can figure out how to fund copy-editing and automatic
standards enforcement (for example, people make awful bibtex entries, including
Springer's auto-generation system), and a university institution willing to host the
journal's archives, the entire utility of a publisher disappears 
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11637251
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11637251>

In all seriousness, what would stop the WMF from attempting to setup journals?

With the WMF’s reputation, I can't see what would stop them from recruiting reputable
people who can be reviewers on the panel. Copy editing could be done over the Wiki.

This would take the control of information away from for-profit companies, give maximum
transparency, increase the stature of Wikimedia, allow for verified content and allow
Wikipedia to keep its user generated, no original research model and allow for WMF
expansion into area that it didn't have the ability to be part of before - like
research!

Heck, it could then allow the WMF to serious consider funding pure research, or make it
easier to run a reputable online university.

The case for disrupting the current business models of Elsevier is compelling. In 2015,
Elsevier reported a profit margin of approximately 37% on revenues of £2.070 billion. [0]
I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the economic benefit of allowing publication
of free journals to countries such as Afghanistan. My calculation may be way off, but as
an example according to Elsevier they charge an individual researcher "$31.50 per
article or chapter for most Elsevier content [and] select titles are priced between $19.95
and $41.95 (subject to change).” [1]

My calculation, on the assumption that the median wage in Afghanistan is 50,000 AHD per
year and the exchange rate for USD to AHD of 68.3 AHD to 1 USD shows that for one article
it is about 2,150 AHD, or half the monthly wage of an Afghani with a median income!

We could step into this space. And we could do our disruption legally, and make things
like Sci-Hub less necessary for those in countries who cannot afford the extraordinary
prices of journal publishers!

So what do people think?

Chris Sherlock

0. "2015 RELX Group Annual Report" (PDF at
http://www.relx.com/investorcentre/reports%202007/Documents/2015/relxgroup_…
<http://www.relx.com/investorcentre/reports%202007/Documents/2015/relxgroup_ar_2015.pdf>).
RELX Group Company Reports. RELX Group. March 2016.

1. https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/sciencedirect/content/pay-per-view
<https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/sciencedirect/content/pay-per-view>