Notes from Elsevier / UNL meeting

Alastair Dunning, 8 November 2022. Elsevier commented and made suggestions for this blogpost.

Every few months the steering group for the Elsevier contract meets to discuss the progress and the new and current projects

The meeting from 4 November also acted as a chance to reflect on how the overall contract is proceeding.

Some of the key points related to Read and Publish part of the contract were:

• Growth continues – 4% year on year since 2016 in number of published articles, 8% in downloading of (non open access) articles. The contract means more science is being published, and more people are reading that science. But what precisely is causing that growth?
• From the perspective of the public sector bodies, and also in the context of similar increases with other publishers, the growth is also unsustainable – particularly in terms of the number of articles being published. Elsevier acknowledge that such growth will make new demands on them and this will need to be managed.
• Other metrics beyond simple growth are therefore essential. For example, measuring how open access articles are used outside the academy, and how they are used within open science practices like public engagement. Traditional publisher statistics that simply rely on downloads and publications still play a role but should not be taken as the dominant indicator of success. The added value the publisher is (can be) more than just downloads. Developing such metrics will not be done by Elseiver or indeed any one publisher alone – rather it needs to be a community effort
• We also need to go beyond just the number of (open access) publications within the contract. We need more qualitative aspects that demonstrates the added value. More generally, how do we measure the quality of the publishing system? How do assess and measure things like:
  • Efficiency of the submission process
  • Speed of the peer review
  • Quality and effectiveness of the peer review
  • Value of the Open Access publishing
  • While also acknowledging that there are different norms for peer review within different academic disciplines.

Both sides round the table that more investigation was needed to tackle the issues highlighted above.

The group also approved a new pilot (pre-prints monitor – more info to follow on the website) and discussed the state of play in the current four pilots)

 

 

Blogpost by
Alastair Dunning,
Head of Research Services, TU Delft Library
& member of the steering committee of the agreement