Science

The Real Cost of Knowledge

This past Thursday, the University of California, one of the largest research institutions in the world, blew up negotiations with Elsevier, one of the largest publishers of research articles in the world. The university would no longer pay Elsevier millions of dollars a year to subscribe to its journals. It simply walked away.

Not so long ago, blowing off a publisher as important as Elsevier would have been unthinkable. But academics have been joining in an open revolt against Elsevier’s extremely profitable business model. In 2012, mathematicians started a petition to boycott the publisher that has since been signed by more than 17,000 researchers. In December 2016, universities in Germany stopped paying for Elsevier’s journals. In 2018, the same thing happened in Sweden and then Hungary.

Elsevier still made $1.17 billion in publishing in 2017, which is precisely the problem, according to its critics. At its loftiest, academic publishing is supposed to be about disseminating hard-won knowledge. But publishers charge hefty subscription fees, making that knowledge often inaccessible to researchers at all but the wealthiest institutions. Last year, the University of California paid Elsevier $11 million.