Speaker 1: Academia is broken. For years the for-profit publishing system has absolutely taken the mick when it comes to exploiting academics. Academics help these billion-dollar companies gain revenue by donating their time, first of all producing the papers, then reviewing the papers. That is the peer review process where you look at other people's papers and say yes so you're using your expertise and then a number of academics see it as very prestigious to be an editor on a journal and they do that for absolutely nothing. They do it for free and they do it for years and this means that academics are fed up and these companies are just trying to maximize their revenue. They have never had the intention of paying highly specialized, highly trained individuals to do work and the academics are starting to revolt. Let's take a look at that. The editor-in-chief of a Wiley journal called Biogeology has had enough and here we can see he's released this blog post about why he's resigning. After almost four years as editor-in-chief with Journal of Biogeography I've decided to step down and that is because he has realized that Wiley has no interest in actually sort of like helping scientists. So look he's very happy with what he's done over the years but you can see down here the challenges are that he decided to speak out and ask Wiley for some help and he's got all of these concerns and Wiley are no longer willing even to try to explore these productive solutions. So you can read these for yourself I'll leave a link in the description but ultimately it is about moving this journal from pay to access to pay to publish and that is a huge issue. Essentially you're saying to scientists here you can publish in our papers if you pay for open access. Now we all love the idea of open access but these for-profit publishing companies are now using that to just increase their revenue and the thing is this really really hurts the equality of publishing in science. Some institutions cannot afford these massive amounts of money for publishing in open access journals and by changing to that we are really limiting what science is published. In a tweet Michael Dawson says there is an argument to be made that several of these things in the current publishing climate have the potential to exert unhealthy pressure on editorial decisions and here he's saying he resigns because big publishers prioritize profit over access, journal quality and open marketplace for ideas whilst also eroding editorial independence and devaluing editors despite record revenues last year. Terrible terrible situation for science and these academics have had enough and stay around to the end of the video because you'll see Wiley's response which is a little bit lackluster and pathetic in my opinion and also you'll see other journals that are doing the same thing. So after Michael Dawson resigned guess what happened? Wiley just said actually you don't need to see out your tenureship let's just let you go. They essentially fired him from his position because I guess they were just so upset that they're like we've got to do something but that is excellent because what's happened is the other associate editors are completely fed up as well and you can see here that there is a work stoppage so a large majority 85% of the associate editors of that journal have decided to stop work beginning immediately and that was at the end of June 2023 and it is still unresolved and so this is fantastic this is academics taking back control. Essentially without academics providing free labor and free advice and knowledge to these journals there are no journals that is it. So they really are affecting the bottom line of Wiley here and I feel like this is only the tip of the iceberg. This is the letter that's been released. We are writing to inform you that we as associate editors of the Journal of Biogeography are currently unwilling to handle any new manuscripts due to a difference of opinion on the full open access model proposed increase in throughput of the journal. So essentially the journal was saying no no no you're not doing enough free work for us let's do a little bit more free work for us shall we and also the automatic referral to other Wiley journals. So you know it is not about keeping your science or your papers in one ecosystem. We're not about maximizing Wiley's profits as academics. We need to make sure your paper goes to the best journal not just one that we are editors for and that is not what they really like to to do because Wiley want the money. So they are firmly against this option because it takes away other author choice and editorial discretion. So that is that current state is you've got these people just saying you know what if you're going to treat us poorly we're not going to do work. Sounds an awful like industrial action to me. I love it. There's other people who are speaking out. Just here in May 2023 the editors of Neurology Imaging Journal resigned to start a new publication in protest that author fees. Brilliant. You can see here that the fees were set at $3,450 to publish in that journal but the departed editors estimate the actual cost of publication was about a thousand dollars or less. So where's all that extra money going? Straight into the for-profit publishing company's bank account. I love that these editors are just going like you know what we are the driving force. We'll just start our own journal. I absolutely love it. And here we are. This is what Wiley has to say. We are disappointed to receive the work stoppage notice for the Journal of Biogeography and that our response did not fully mitigate the editors concerns. Of course not. Of course they didn't. That's why they're doing this. Listen. We appreciate the concern shared by the members of the editorial team and acknowledge they are not always perfect solutions. No they're not perfect and what they mean by this is it's not perfect for maximizing profit. We thank all of the editors for their work. Come on now. Come on. That is the most pathetic way of saying thank you for all of the profit that you've driven to this company because you have shared your expertise, your time, your energy and a lot of your time that you could otherwise be spending on research to build our company. We are working on plans for the future of the journal and our priority is continue delivering the research that serves the biogeography community. This is a nothing statement. This shows that they have no interest in actually sort of furthering the work of science and much more focused on actually building up profit for shareholders. I think this is the start of something big. Start of something that will change the academic publishing game. I think more academics are becoming fed up with donating their time for free to do all of the work for these billion dollar companies. Start to think about where you're publishing, how you're publishing and if you can start to speak out. People in the positions of power, editors, associate editors in these for-profit publishing companies hold the key to making this a better publishing environment for everyone. So if you're in that position, think about speaking to the publisher about what they can do to make it better for science and I think this is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to industrial action by editors and associate editors of big-name journals. We hold the power, we hold the knowledge, we are the workforce and now it's about time to use that power for good. Let me know in the comments what you think. So there we have it. That is the current state and the scandal of the academic publishing game. Let me know in the comments what you would add and what you think about all this and also remember there are more ways that you can engage with me. The first way is to sign up to my newsletter. Head over to andrewstayverton.com.au forward slash newsletter. The link is in the description and when you sign up you'll get five emails over about two weeks. Everything from the tools I've used, the podcasts I've been on, how to write the perfect abstract and more. It's exclusive content available for free so go sign up now and also go check out academiainsider.com. That's my project where I've got my ebooks, my resource pack, my blog, the forum, everything's over there to make sure that your PhD and academia works for you. I'll see you in the next video.