[CREW]:: I'm going to have to sound-- [CREW]: Run it out. [NIRVANA, "YOU KNOW YOU'RE RIGHT"]
I want to put my thoughts into this conversation much in the way that a guitarist throws himself into a drum set at the end of a concert.
[NIRVANA, "YOU KNOW YOU'RE RIGHT"]
I think antitrust enforcement on publishers and a rejection of the current model is kind of the only solution. Also, I think, ethically, it's the only way to go. So burn it down. That's the solution.
Be a guitar player. Be Kurt Cobain smashing into the drum set. That's what we're going to call this strategy. It's the Kurt Cobain strategy.
[COUNTRY ROCK MUSIC]
You are listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is Lost in the Stacks, The Research Library Rock'n'Roll Radio Show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the studio with Marlee Givens, Fred Rascoe, and a young girl named Juniper. Each week, on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme, and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you are here for, we hope you dig it. Our show, today, is called "Publisher Shenanigans." That's a great word, right, shenanigans?
Shenanigans.
Means trickery, mischief, or questionable conduct.
I know what it means.
Some people might not. Some people might just hear, shenanigans, and say, oh, fun shenanigans, sprightly shenanigans. No, shenanigans.
The bad kind.
Yeah. Publishers of academic journals are increasingly turning to open access, which sounds great, except when that turn to open access is to increase revenue at the expense of the hard-working faculty editors of the journals, who often aren't paid for their labor.
I got a subtitle for this show. Looks like the editor is getting dissed by the predator Yeah?
How Gen-X is a '90s gangster rap reference in a show about academic research publishing editors? Fred, I love it.
Thanks.
[LAUGHTER]
Well, we're going to talk to one of those hard working editors about getting dissed by a predator. I don't know if she got dissed, but she certainly has had her share of disagreements with publishers, recently.
We'll be speaking with Dr. Anna Stilz of Princeton University and find out where the power lies in the editor-publisher relationship. And I think we already know the answer to that one.
Oh, yes, we know those publishers are a "Wiley" bunch.
Wait.
Yeah, they can just "Springer" surprise on you.
Oh, come on.
The consequences can be partially severe or they can be Elsevier.
No more publisher puns. OK. Our songs today are about relationships with powerful forces and how the business side of an endeavor can just ruin everything. Sometimes you have to walk away from the folks who are trying to take too much control. Let's start with a song about getting fed up and leaving. This is a version of Bob Dylan's classic, "Maggie's Farm," recorded by Solomon Burke, right here, on Lost in the Stacks.
[SOLOMON BURKE, "MAGGIE'S FARM"]
That was "Maggie's Farm" by Solomon Burke-- actually a Bob Dylan song. But as Fred just told me, that came out before the Bob Dylan version. Because time goes in both ways, dude.
Like spaghetti.
This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is all about how academic journal publishers and academic journal editors can sometimes be at odds, which is a nice way of saying it. We're going to speak to someone who has first-hand experience with the kinds of conflicts that can arise. Let's meet our guest.
My name is Anna Stilz. I'm a Laurance S Rockefeller Professor of Politics and Human Values, here, at Princeton University. And I'm also the editor-in-chief of a journal called Philosophy and Public Affairs.
So thanks for being here. We want to talk about what's going on in academic journals. A lot of journals are facing crises with their editorial boards resigning. But before we get to the bad, I want to establish a little bit of the good. You are very experienced in being a journal editor. You're currently editor-in-chief of a journal. You also were recently on an editorial board, which we will talk about. But I want to start with your experience, overall, in your career as a journal editor.
What made you decide to get into journal editing as a part of your academic career?
Yeah, that's a great question. I started getting involved with a journal not as editor-in-chief but, as what was called in my journal, an associate editor. So I started almost 10 years ago, in 2014 I think, so about nine years ago. And in that role, I was kind of involved in reviewing papers and helping to make decisions on papers. That was the editorial model of our journal.
But we also are a democratically self-governing organization, so I got to participate in larger conversations about where the journal was going and about the publishing field. And then in 2019, our then editor had to step down. And we needed someone else to take over. And the committee approached me. And my journal has been around since the 1970s. It has a really amazing tradition. And I wanted to keep it alive. So I decided to give it a whirl.
And for the most part, I've definitely really enjoyed the role. I mean, one of the great things is you both get to participate in seeing where the field is heading and also in shaping that. And that's a tremendous asset, I think.
Did you always expect to work on a journal? Once you became an academic, did you say, and that's going to happen sometime? Or was there an instigating event?
Oh, not at all. I mean, I had submitted to journals, and that can be a humbling process, and so on. Even if you get published, usually there's a fair amount of back and forth before your article appears. So I was surprised, in 2014, when I was initially approached to even be an associate editor. It was sort of a surprise. It was a little bit of a "who, me?" moment for me. So it wasn't something I had expected at all. But I have found it to be really rewarding.
I mean, there are lots of different kinds of professional service that one can do as an academic. And for me, just being involved in shaping other people's research to be as good as it can be is really nice. CHARLIE BENNETT: And since you're someone who actually has worked on journals, I'd like to hear your take on something that we often joke about on the show. We say, essentially, this great scam, where we give away our work, and then buy it back. Now, obviously that is a joke.
But there are some pieces of truth in it. I'd love to hear your take on that. Yeah that's tricky. So it's true that much of the content that appears in a journal is produced without remuneration, for either the author or the reviewers or the editors. The editors sometimes get an honorarium. But it's a minimal thing. On the other hand, sometimes you hear more stronger versions of that thesis, that it's really us, the academics, that do everything, and the publisher contributes very little.
I think publishers do contribute some important things to the process. So I wouldn't want to minimize that.
Have you shifted in your thinking along those lines, along the way? Have you leaned more one way or another as you've gained more experience as an editor?
Yeah. You definitely see what the publisher is doing, from the inside a bit more, in the role of editor. I think it's easier to take the view that we do it all and publishers don't contribute much if you're not actually seeing into the process. Because the stuff that they do, in terms of copy editing, typesetting, ensuring that your article is properly referenced and can be easily found by those who want to find it, maintaining an audience for your work, that is labor intensive.
And we don't do that part. And that is a crucial part of reaching the readers that you want to reach.
I feel good, like we've cushioned the shenanigans now, and we can talk about what's happening. Yeah, we definitely are going to talk about some shenanigans. So just to lay the groundwork a little bit, if there are listeners that are not in academia, not familiar with academic journals, every academic interacts with academic journals in some way. You mentioned you were an author first. But then you can be on the editorial board.
Or, like you are now, with the Philosophy and Public Affairs, you can be the executive editor-in-chief. But every academic works with a journal, because that is how research is disseminated. And journals are often selective. They don't want to just publish everything. They choose which results they want to disseminate to their fellow academics. Who is in charge of that dissemination? Do the publishers generally make that call or is it the editors?
Well, that's an issue of dispute, right now, at the moment, right? So traditionally, at least in my field, there's been a very strong principle of editorial independence. So by that, I mean that the editors of a journal figure out how to run the journal. And then the publisher is responsible for producing the copy and disseminating the copy to libraries and so on. That was the traditional business model. But that's under a lot of pressure right now.
But I think editorial independence is a really important principle. And there are big debates about what journals should be. And we serve more than one constituency. But one thing I think that we do try to do is to kind of curate a body of high quality field-defining work that we think people should be reading if they're in the field. And that's a service to our audience.
If you want to know what the most important work in the field is, right now, you can go read Philosophy and Public Affairs and hopefully get a sense of that. So we want to put together a set of articles that is readable for people and that does represent what we think are pathbreaking contributions. But we also want to provide authors good feedback on their work even if we don't publish it. So that's another service that we provide. We try to give high quality comments.
So even if your paper doesn't get accepted into our journal, hopefully you can take those comments, revise it, and get it published in another journal. So that's certainly another thing we do.
This is Lost in the Stacks. And we'll hear more about those academic publisher shenanigans after a music set.
File this set under Z286.S37S33
[THE NO-NO'S, "THE DAMAGE DONE"]
(SINGING) Let's hear me from the sick, sick sound. [THE SMITHS, "FRANKLY, MR. SHANKLY"] --give us money.
That was "Frankly, Mr Shankly," by the Smiths, and, before that, "The Damage Done," by the No-no's, songs about the business side of a relationship being kind of a pain.
[ROCK MUSIC]
This is Lost in the Stacks. Today, we're talking about how the publishers of academic journals sometimes can be at odds with academic journal editors. Our guest, Anna Stilz, faculty in the department of politics at Princeton University, has firsthand experience with what happens when that relationship between editor and publisher turns sour. In the last segment, we hinted that we were going to talk about some publisher shenanigans. So now it is time to dive in.
I guess you gathered I was kind of leading you a little bit to what's going on with the Journal of Political Philosophy, which is another journal that you were, until recently, on the editorial board of. So in that situation, there was a tension between what the editors wanted and what the publishers wanted as far as the future of the journal. Can you talk a little bit about that conflict.
So right. So I am the editor-in-chief of Philosophy and Public Affairs. And then our closest sister journal, which also shares the same publisher as us, is the Journal of Political Philosophy. And both of our journals have had conflicts with the publisher, recently. Now theirs went much more awry and ended up with a worse outcome than ours did. And I was on their editorial board, as well. So I was privy to a little bit of what was going on with them.
So what happened is that Wiley, the publisher, dismissed the editor of that journal, The Journal of Political Philosophy, with no reason given. And the editor was the founding editor of that journal. He started the journal. He started the journal, I think, in the late 1990s, built it from scratch into one of the top three journals in political philosophy. So this journal has an amazing reputation. And the editor was an amazing guy. As a journal editor I can't match him.
He was known for giving, especially young authors, very quick responses on their material. So if he wasn't going to publish your paper, he would sometimes get back to you, within a day or two, to tell you that he wasn't going to publish your paper. And he also, for young authors, was really good at getting their first article out. So a lot of people, if you sent him something promising, but he didn't know your name, he helped you develop it and got your first major publication.
So he really was well known in the field as somebody who had done quite a lot. So he was dismissed without any reason given. And then he had three co-editors working with him that were younger people, who, I think, he hoped that they would eventually take over the journal. After he was dismissed, Wiley negotiated with his co-editors about taking over and running the journal. But they asked for significant increases in the number of articles that the journal would publish as a condition.
Wiley asked for this?
Yeah, Wiley asked for this as a condition of appointing them. And they wanted not only a one time increase but like increases per every year. So not just more next year, but then more the year after that and more the year after that and more the year after that. And they wanted an action plan of those targets. They wanted numerical targets. And if the targets were not met, they wanted, basically, like a disciplinary action program for the editor.
And so from what I've heard, what I understand from them is that they were just not willing to take over on those terms. So negotiations broke down. And that's where we are. That fact became widely known in the political philosophy community.
There was a petition put up on Change.org, that over 1,000 people have signed by now, pledging not to be on the editorial board, not to send your work to or review for The Journal of Political Philosophy after the current editors' term expires, which it's set to do in December of 2023. So the Bob Goodin. The founding editor. Is still with / but he's been told that he will no longer be there as of December-- at the end of December.
And after that, many political philosophers have said they're not going to work with them anymore.
In your personal opinion, how strange or unexpected or unprecedented were the actions of the publisher in this moment?
Well, we had-- so my journal, which is a-- So to be clear, I was on the editorial board of the Journal for Political Philosophy, and I resigned as did most other members of that board. I think virtually all of them did. But I am the editor-in-chief of a different journal in the same field. And we had our own conflict, with Wiley, that took place a few years prior, in 2019, right around the time that I became editor.
And in that conflict, Wiley had also presented us with a demand that we publish many, many more articles per year. In fact, their demand to us was orders of magnitude bigger than what they demanded of the journal.
And can I just clarify that the increase in the number of articles, this is a direct correlation to increase in revenue for the publisher, because this relates to open access fees that are paid by the author.
That's right. So my understanding of the background to this is that many publishers, including Wiley, are relying more on author processing fees, for open access articles, than they are on traditional library subscriptions or they're relying on both. But they're envisioning a future in which open access becomes more common. And these author processing fees are a bigger part of their revenue stream.
They can be really high. And these can be in the thousands of dollars.
That's right. Yeah, so the more articles they publish, the more revenue they generate. So obviously, they have an incentive to try to publish many, many, many more articles. And I think the sky's the limit, really, on how much they aspire to publish there. So especially with the journals that they own-- some journals are owned by professional societies and just contract with the publisher, but other journals are just owned by the publisher.
And my own journal and Journal of Political Philosophy are both in that category. So they are trying to use their ownership position to place a lot of pressure on editors to publish much more.
This is Lost in the Stacks. We're speaking with Anna Stilz, faculty at Princeton University and, until very recently, an editor at the Journal of Political Philosophy. We'll talk more about publisher shenanigans on the left side of the hour.
[ROCK MUSIC]
You are listening to Lost in the Stacks, The Research Library Rock-n-Roll Radio Show on WREK Atlanta. CHARLIE BENNETT: Thank you, Jaybird. Our show today is about publishers exerting their influence over the direction that academic journals take. In today's interview, we're focusing on a specific example, but there have been several other journals, recently, where academic faculty editors were either forced out or resigned in protest of the business aspect of publishing.
Let's just briefly list a few, right now.
So on July 5, of this year, the editorial team of the journal, called Critical Public Health, published by Taylor & Francis, resigned to start their own competing independent journal. In the editor's resignation letter, which is posted online, they wrote that the tensions between their academic aims, against the business aims, had become increasingly difficult to hold together.
Also, earlier this month, the editor-in-chief of the journal, Design Studies, was removed by Elsevier, the publishing company that owned the title. The removal was a result of the editor, Peter Lloyd, resisting Elsevier's desire to publish more articles per year, which, of course, would result in more revenue.
On June 21 of this year, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Biogeography, published by Wiley, resigned from his position saying, quote, "It is becoming increasingly hard to stave off the undesirable consequences of the primary motivations of the for-profit scientific publishing industry." Those are just a few recent examples hidden away in somewhat diplomatic language. The point is it's a familiar story no matter which publishers you can name or make puns about.
To academics, publishing research is their work and their service. To publishing companies, it's a revenue source. And increasingly, those motivations are at odds. So as we contemplate that, let's file this next set under HD5461.L3.
[DILLARD AND CLARK, "OUT ON THE SIDE"]
(SINGING) And there could be, at any moment, a change. [ANDY PRATT, "INSIDE ME WANTS OUT"] Ooh. It's all. It's all. Yeah. Ooh. That was "Inside Me Wants Out," by Andy Pratt. It was a weird one. And before that, "Out on the Side," by Dillard and Clark-- songs about powerful forces taking control over things that we care about.
[ROCK MUSIC]
This is Lost in the Stacks. And we return to our conversation, with Anna Stilz of Princeton University, talking about how a publishing company's plans to generate revenue, via charging open access fees, can lead to an exodus of their journals' editorial staff.
I'm wondering, is this something that has come about because of open access and the gold open access model? Or if this might have happened otherwise, because publishers want to make more money for their shareholders, period?
Right. I mean, I think open access, in principle, is a terrific model. As academics and, certainly, also, as a journal editor, I would like to see as many people have access to the articles, that I publish in my journal and that I write, as possible. And I think relatively few academics are that concerned about generating profits from their academic research.
But obviously, publishers, especially ones that are publicly held companies, they have, as you say, shareholder pressures and so on to maximize their profits. And those are, to some degree, right now, in a structural contradiction with the traditional role of the editorial team.
And just to be clear, were there offers of more staff to manage these increased publishing metrics?
No. No.
Yeah.
Nothing about-- nothing about what they give to us has increased at all. And to be clear, also, I get a relatively low annual honorarium, much of which I then distribute to my associate editors, who review the papers for me. And the rest of which I save in case we need to have another lawsuit with our publisher.
Oh, no.
Yeah. So the labor that they get from the academic side is basically uncompensated, I mean, or compensated at such a low rate that it would be minimum wage or below.
Do you ever have opportunity to talk to your students about this?
Well, I do, especially with graduate students. So I'll say that I rely on some graduate students to help me with copy editing, because I found that Wiley's copy editing was not especially reliable. And graduate students are often really interested in getting involved with the journal and seeing how the process works, because they're on the author's side. And they're trying to submit articles. And it's all very opaque, when you are submitting your first articles, how this even works.
So I do think it's important to give a realistic picture, to young students, about the publishing process. Unfortunately, I wish I could give them a slightly more positive picture about how it's going right now. CHARLIE BENNETT: Anna, do you feel any connection, even just emotionally, between what's going on, with the journal and researchers, and the writers strike that's going on right now? The Hollywood writers strike?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, to some degree. I mean, we haven't organized ourselves fully to strike. But I think that the boycott letter that we signed, for the Journal of Political Philosophy, was essentially a kind of strike. And yeah, I think the issues are similar. I mean to the extent that I understand what's at stake in the writers' strike, it's about the kind of future of the industry and where that's going to go in a world of technological change and so on.
And I think that is a lot what's sort of driving this conflict, here, is how we navigate a good path, to the future, and a path to the future that's really driven by the interests of the academic community rather than by the interests of for-profit industry.
Was there a moment when we could have gone one way and we didn't? Was there a way to stave off this change or has it just been happening the whole time?
Well, let's get-- I mean, I'm not sure. So I've been an editor-in-chief since 2020. So I don't know if I've seen the full span of the change. My understanding is that, at first, for-profit publishing really resisted the move to open access, because they saw it as threatening to their business model, which was based on subscriptions.
But then once they figured out that they could charge author processing fees and, also, even more, that they could do this thing where they could sign agreements with government, big grant-making bodies, and universities to cover those fees, so that they really could generate them, then they got behind it. And I think that last thing, publishers embracing open access, that has been pretty recent change. Maybe in like the last five, seven years that this has really come on board.
Yeah, so I think, had we been able to organize around a different open access model, maybe seven years ago, where it would have been a more publicly funded open access model, we could have prevented this. But we didn't. CHARLIE BENNETT: And here we are.
I hear you. And I think that, if the mandates, like in the recent memo from the OSTP, come into play and more and more articles are mandated to be open access, we'll get there. I have to admit, I despair if we rely on libraries flipping a switch and not giving money to publishers and deciding to do it ourselves. I don't see hope in that model. There's too many threads that lead to an unraveling, I think.
To be fair, Fred, your eyes have a problem with seeing hope. It doesn't really--
Yeah, I guess.
--get in there.
Well, I mean, I guess you could rely on governments or university-- more the university administrative structures to make these decisions. But I think that the train is already moving in the wrong direction there. So it's challenging.
Has your experience, with Wiley, in this instance, where you had to resign an editorial board, has it colored how you will view being an editor of an academic journal in the future?
Sure. Definitely. I mean, when I stepped into the role, we were in the midst of a dispute with Wiley. So I did know that these pressures would exist. At the time that I assumed the role, they were trying to get us to publish more. But I do think that being in the role and then seeing what happened, with Journal of Political Philosophy, where they destroyed a flourishing journal, one of the best in our field, has given me a real sense of the stakes of this conflict.
And you know, I would definitely counsel anybody, who's considering being an editor-in-chief, to take it seriously, that this is an issue that they will face. On the other hand, there needs to be people willing to fight the good fight. So we need to try to do our best.
Anna Stilz is the Laurance S Rockefeller Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University. And she remains the editor-in-chief of the journal, Philosophy and Public Affairs. Anna, thanks for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me.
[ROCK MUSIC]
File this set under KF26.5.S672.
[GADI SASSOON W/ ELENNA CANLAS, "PREDATOR"]
[STEPH COPELAND, "EDITOR"]
That was "Editor," by Steph Copeland, and before that, "Predator," by Gadi Sassoon with Elenna Canlas. Those are songs about editors and predators.
[ROCK MUSIC]
Today's show was called "Publishing Shenanigans" or "Publisher Shenanigans." What's the latest frustration you have had with a publisher, Marlee and Charlie? Actually, I'm going to start. I've had a frustration with a publisher, lately. Got an article that I submitted back with some corrections. And they put into the notes, you know, hey, these are the corrections. Please make these. So I looked at them. And some of them I made. And some of them I sent back some comments.
And I said, hey, what about this Correction what about this one? Can you answer some clarification questions on that? Never heard back.
Yep.
That's my frustration.
Yeah.
How about you, Marlee?
Well, I'm going to name the publisher, Oxford University Press. They recently updated the homepage of the Oxford English Dictionary. It's very pretty, but the revamp included a big button in the middle that said, view our subscription options, which made it look like we didn't subscribe anymore. They've since fixed that. But I mean, come on, these people are supposed to be language experts.
Why they did it is a hidden or secret thing, something inexplicable or beyond human comprehension, an enigma.
Oh, I see what you're doing.
Yeah. What about you, Charlie?
I actually have a happy ending publisher frustration. You all may have heard of the big five publishers. 2013 is when Penguin and Random House merged, creating the big five, Penguin, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, MacMillan, and HarperCollins. Last year, Penguin tried to buy Simon & Schuster. But antitrust regulators, the US government stepped in, took them to court. And they stopped it. There was no merger. So it's still just the big five covering the globe not the big four.
The Man? The Man stuck it to the Man.
It was like Kurt Cobain diving into the drum set.
Just roll the credits.
[ROCK MUSIC]
MARLEE GIVENS: Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens. Legal counsel and an editor's red pencil, that might have been used to stick it to the Man, were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
Special thanks to Anna for being on the show, to journal editors, everywhere, for putting up with shenanigans. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.
Our webpage is library.gottech. edu/lostinthestacks. You'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you want to get in touch with us.
Next week, we continue our instruction series with a discussion of synchronous and asynchronous teaching. Maybe not a discussion, more of a debate or a dissection, debacle. Well, we'll see.
We'll see. Time for our last song, today. The struggle between academics and publishers continues with academics supplying the content and publishers supplying the bank accounts where the revenue is kept. Because those publishing rights sure are valuable. So let's close with a song about a person who is realizing how powerful business interests are. This is "Powerman," by the Kinks. Have a great weekend, everyone.
[ROCK MUSIC]
[KINKS, "POWERMAN"]