Wenn ihr euch über Elsevier’s Lobbying-Praktiken aufregen oder Elsevier’s letztes Scheitern belächeln wollt, lest das Interview von Richard Poynder mit Claudio Aspesi und Peter Suber’s neuesten Newsletter. Im folgenden einige Zitate von Aspesi, einem Finanzanalysten:
the scholarly journal system is being buffeted by three overlapping trends: “a long term unsustainable trend, a cyclical funding crisis and a more tough minded and analytical community of librarians.”
I believe their plan B (of Elsevier) is actually to try to shift spending decisions away from academic libraries and into research labs and departments.
Aspesi weiß, was Elsevier in die Knie zwingen könnte:
What would change that is a visible number of editorial board resignations. This would paralyze journals, and — if it proved impossible to replace the people leaving — could lead to shut downs. Even if the number of journals initially affected was small, the news would have a profound impact on the company. The stock market is a powerful mechanism to discount the future value of even small events, and if investors started to abandon the stock, the company would have to rethink its approach.
Nachsatz: „Academic publishers have become the enemies of science“ wird überall zitiert, selbst in The Lancet (was für die editorielle Unabhängigkeit von Elsevierzeitschriften von Elsevier sprechen würde).