academic publishing

Inside Academic Publishing,and How it is Changing

Reflections on 30 Yearsas a Journal Editor

David AlexanderUniversity College London

To begin with,a little

personal history

Editor-in-Chief, Int. Journal of Disaster Risk ReductionFormerly, Co-Editor, DisastersCurrent editorial board memberships:-• Planet@Risk• Disaster Prevention and Management• Environmental Management• Geomorphology• Journal of Geography and Natural Disasters• Journal of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering• Integrated Disaster Risk Management Journal• ICPEM Alert• Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies• PLoS Currents - Disasters• Journal of Natural Resources Policy ResearchPast editorial board memberships:-• Natural Hazards• Natural Hazards and Earth System ScienceSpringer Series in Environmental Management (ex-Editor)

Editor-in-Chief1985-2001

54 Volumes, 4,215 Articles, 1977-2013

Flatiron Building (1905)175 Fifth Avenue NYCOur editorial office

Julius SpringerBerlin, 1842

Springer (+Kluwer,+Wolters) is nowowned by EQTInvestments Inc.and Governmentof SingaporeInvestment Corp.

Co-Editor,2002-2015

Editor-in-Chief2011-present

Special issuesBeijing

ProductionChennai

OxfordManagement

IrelandIT and training

AmsterdamCo-ordination

Rhodes W.Fairbridge1914-2006

Encyclopedias of Earth Sciences, 1950s-present:-• Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross• Hutchinson Ross• Van Nostrand Reinhold

(Thompson, Wiley)• Reinhold• [D. Reidel Company]• Chapman & Hall (Routledge, Taylor & Francis)• Kluwer Academic Publishers• Springer-Verlag• Springer Science

Academic publishing as acommodity and investment

UCL Press (1993)Chapman & HallTaylor & FrancisKluwerRoutledgeCRC Press...possibly others

Currently£67.13 new,£1.66 used!

Now,the trends

The big academic publishers:

• some international professionaland learned societies (e.g. ASCE)

• Cambridge University Press• Oxford University Press• Reed Elsevier• Springer Science+Business Media• Wiley-Blackwell• Taylor & Francis• Sage

Academic publishing has bulimia!

About 70 per cent of academicpublishing is for personnel reasons:• getting a job• keeping a job• getting promoted

The field has becomeintensely competitive.

The big problems with academic papers, when they are not good, are:-• unoriginality• repetitiveness• mediocrity• plagiarism.

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

Papers published in Natural Hazards and NHESS

Natural Hazards Natural Hazard and Earth System Sciences

Papers published in Natural Hazardsand NHESS, 1988-2013

1990s:Average 45

2013:Total 815plus 265 in press

― Natural Hazards― Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences

1988 2013

450

An 18-fold increasein 13 years

2014: 769

Paper ordigital?

• page budget

• size, price, frequency relationship

• cost of colour printing

• declining print subscriber base

• partly uncontrollable delaysin publication of articles.

Paper publication is limited by:-

• unlimited page budget

• standardised cost and access pay-walls

• rapid publication(e.g. "open container" model)

• ability to link different media

• www.articleofthefuture.com.

Digital publication:-

"We believe the publisher adds relativelylittle value to the publishing process...

We are simply observing that if the processreally were as complex, costly and value-added as the publishers protest that it is,

40% margins wouldn't be available."

Academic publishing unmasked

Deutsche Bank, 2005

What Ranieri has done was simply to respond to Boschi'sappeal in Science. Science did not accept Ranieri's

eloquent response and asked him to shorten it, which he did but [they] eventually rejected as if Science "do notwant to go into the issue anymore" ― which is incredible!

Lalliana Mualchin,International Seismic Safety Organization

• open access is NOT free- someone has to pay

• there are differentmodels of who does pay

• ability-to-pay discriminationexists in all models

• commercial publishersoperate via commercial logic.

Open access versus the pay-wall

Bibliometry is fundamentallymeaningless, harmful and unnecessary

Bibliometry

The peer-review process

Basic review judgement categories:-

A typical verdict: one 'accept', one'reject' and one 'revise' or 'rewrite.'

Conclusion: academic judgements are personal - there is no fundamental objective truth about most articles.

• Accept• Revise• Rewrite• Reject

Your editor'sperspective

Editor's pitfalls

• plagiarism, intellectualproperty theft, dishonesty

• authors' and reviewer's egotism

• academics don't understandhow publishing works

• can't find reviewers

• reviewers decline to help, ormore likely fail to respond.

• quarterly, by volume, not issue• started publishing in August 2012• 13 volumes published, 14th in progress• 54 articles published (9 per issue)• 830 submissions, 330 in 2015• 62% rejection rate

• ave. 2.86 invitations to get one review• record: 34 invitations for two reviews.

Conclusions

• excessive number of journals

• excessive specialisationand duplication of journals

• excessive publication rates

• personnel issues motivate many(most?) journal paper submissions.

Crises in academic publishing

• excessive cost of journals...?

Future trends are unpredictablebecause present trends are unsustainable.

Now let's discuss it!