I was asked to referee a paper for Planetary and Space Science, a journal published by Elsevier. I declined. The reason is that Elsevier is a for-profit publishing giant that is making boatloads of money out of the scientific process, and I do not want to contribute to that on ethical grounds.
For the non-scientists out there, this is how the publishing process works: you write an article, send it to the journal, the journal looks for a specialist in the field that will review your article. This specialist is called referee. The referee will comment on the work and give his/her opinion of it to the editor. Often the referee will ask for changes to the work or clarification; the commented work will be sent back to the author, who will work on these changes, and resubmit the article. The process is iterated (usually two or three times) until the referee is satisfied with the work.
This process is called peer-review, and is what makes scientific literature so special. Without peer-review, anything would go. Anyone could uncheckedly say whatever s/he wants, and science could easily become pseudo-science.
Great, isn't it? As for the money thing...
Strangely enough, the referee is not paid. The referee's motivation is manifold: the prestige (and you can add it to your CV); the thrill of knowing in advance about the work; the possibility of influencing the work (pre-reviewed works are usually very flawed, specially works from unsupervised undergrads and grad students); and, first and foremost, the notion that peer-review is essential to scientific progress.
Even stranger, the author pays to publish. The author's motivation is to have the work disseminated. Articles are to the scientist what money is to the businessperson. Our currency is recognition. After acceptance, the author will be billed around 100 US dollars a page and sign a transfer of copyright to the journal. Then the publishing company sells the journal to science institutes worldwide. Yes, the author pays twice. They charge the author, and then sell the article back to him/her.
The details change among journals. Some don't charge the author, but have exorbitantly high subscription fees. Some are funded by governments, and thus waive the fees altogether for authors and institutions from those countries. Some charge everybody.
Granted, money is needed so that the publisher can organize the peer review process and disseminate the work, either online or in print. But Elsevier stands out because of its huge for-profit behavior. It makes an annual profit of over one billion dollars and has reported a profit margin of 36%.
Yes. Elsevier makes big money out of charging scientists and selling their work back to them.
Uncomfortable with this situation, over ten thousand scientists have been campaigning for an embargo on Elsevier.
I had joined them some time ago. When today I was asked by Elsevier to referee a work submitted to one of their journals, I replied with the words below, that I based on a similar decline letter from a colleague of mine, Hanno Rein from Princeton
I am posting it here with the intent that other scientists will join the boycott on Elsevier. Other motivation is that I did not find a standard "rejection sample" in the web. May the text below serve the purpose.
Dear Editor,
Thank you very much for asking me to referee this paper. Unfortunately, I will not be able to do so.
Together with almost 10000 other scientists, I have signed a pledge to not publish, referee or do editorial work for any article that is published by Elsevier (http://thecostofknowledge.com/). I strongly believe that scientific publications should be freely available to everyone. Elsevier is the antithesis to that statement and I do not want to support their business model. The company makes an annual profit of over one billion dollars and has reported a profit margin of 36%. These exorbitantly high figures are due to disproportionately expensive library subscriptions charged to universities and research institutions which are forced to buy journal subscriptions in large bundles. Elsevier itself is adding almost no value in the peer-review process. The work is done by researchers and referees which are mainly paid with public funds. Moreover, Elsevier supports measures such as SOPA and PIPA, that aim to restrict the free exchange of information.
For these reasons, I am sorry to say that I cannot assist you in this case. I hope that you will find another person willing to referee this paper. If the authors decide to withdraw their paper and submit it to another journal, I would be more than happy to be the referee.
Kind regards,
PS: I'm afraid that the 30 days full access to Scopus that you have offered me in your e-mail is not going to change my mind.
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