Re: How to sort this out, I’d like to hear from knowledgeable others.

Where to start? This is a hot topic that I deal with continually. I’ll start with a disclaimer: I’m a freelancer in the publishing world of the humanities. I work for small, independent publishers and one university press on a contract/work-for-hire basis. 

I don’t know if this particular statement about the size of academic publishing is true, but  I do know that, as usual, life is a whole lot more complicated than is frequently acknowledged. To get up to speed on the whole open access situation and Plan S, I suggest you start by doing some reading of the posts on the Scholarly Kitchen (https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fscholarlykitchen.sspnet.org&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cc46818d4e20a4bfd6a5708d6b1315077%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636891222694511265&sdata=%2BoFjLgQ%2FakSQB9iEPxRzETMkDab0vjt556ozv%2BQA25o%3D&reserved=0) [safelinks avoidance: https://scholarlykitchen [.] sspnet [.] org]. The site is decidedly pro-publisher, but not anti-open access.

Article processing charges (APC) are currently being touted as the way to implement open access. These are decidedly biased toward highly moneyed institutions in the Western world. And they are decidedly weighted toward making the rich cats richer (read Elsevier, et al.) because they can streamline processes electronically via software investments that the smaller publishers (and societies) can’t afford. If Plan S goes through as currently formulated, expect many society journals to get gobbled up by the big publishers. And watch the smaller publishers disappear so that your choices are narrowed even more than they are now. As usual, the law of unintended consequences.

One thing most agree on: the current situation with the “big deal” whereby libraries or library consortia buy access to a package of journals for a large sum is unsustainable, which is why you see places like Germany and California rebelling against it. I know there are librarians on this list; they should chime in here. A large slice of their budget goes to buying this access—mostly for STEM titles. And the publishers touting these big deals have extremely high profit margins. That’s what has precipitated a lot of the discontent—justifiably so in my opinion.

As for what you as an individual researcher can do? Stop publishing with presses that charge too much for books that you are required to deliver in camera-ready copy (along with a subvention, in some cases). Sure, a Brill or OUP, or de Gruyter, or …  label on your book looks nice. But, there are smaller presses out there that do at least as well, if not better, at getting your book into the hands of libraries (and as a bonus, they might even be affordable for the individual scholar!) I work for some of them in the ANE and biblical studies world as a free-lancer. And I worked for Eisenbrauns, as you probably remember, which always managed to produce affordable books that were of the highest quality (Eisenbrauns is now an imprint of  PSU Press).

One thing that needs to be realized is that there is a LOT of work that goes on behind the scenes in book (and article) creation, once it gets past peer review, that costs money—even if it is never printed or bound. You need to have it copyedited, proofread, and typeset (now called prepress). If you want to market it, you need a marketing department. If you want it to be an e-book, you need to convert it to whatever format is the one you decide on. And, as an aside, have you ever tried to convert a book with nonwestern alphabets? It doesn’t work well. It requires a lot of manual tweaking—if you can get it to work at all. At Eisenbrauns, we never could get our complicated books to convert.

So, what I’m saying is that you can’t paint the whole academic publishing world with a broad brush—especially in the humanities! Much/most of the complaining is coming from the ridiculous prices that STEM publishers are requiring. And don’t get me started on the high cost of STEM textbooks! In the humanities, students complain about $50.00 textbooks. That wouldn’t even touch an introductory STEM book… 

I hope that has complicated things sufficiently. 

James
_______________________
James Spinti
Proofreading and copyediting of ancient Near Eastern and biblical studies monographs
E-mail: jdspinti at gmail dot com
Phone: 260-445-3118
1835 South Park St
Red Wing MN 55066

> On Mar 23, 2019, at 8:22 PM, DANIEL P. Tompkins <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> 	Emma Chapman (@DrEOChapman)
> 3/22/19, 12:10 PM
> The academic publishing industry has larger global revenues than the recorded music industry, and is not far short of the film industry. 
> 
> “It’s like going to a restaurant where you have to take your own food, cook it and pay for the privilege”. ⁦‪@telescoper‬⁩ talks Open Access. pic.twitter.com/p5nvqgxRgw
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