Journal of Infometrics (JOI) editors resigned in 2019 to start Quantitative Science Studies because of the unethical and unfair practices of Elsevier, one of the “big five” academic journal publishers.
At the point of creating JOI in 2005, Elsevier was attractive as the ideal publisher for the academic journal because of its reputations as one of biggest global academic publishers and the consequence of the astronomical “big deal” cost was non-existent. By 2019, the quest for profits at the expense of ethical, fair and sustainable publishing practices drove the the partnership between Elsevier and JOI editorial board aground and this led to the collective resignation of the editorial board members. In Waltman et al., (2020) words “The financial model of Elsevier has become untenable for the scientific community and, we argue, in violation of the scientific ethos. Its excessive subscription fees have caused journal cancellations across the globe—from California to Germany (SPARC, 2020)—and Elsevier’s article processing charges (APCs) for open access publishing (currently USD 2000 at JOI) do not represent a fair value for the cost. Publishing with Elsevier inevitably places major limits on scholarship: The expense of the subscription model places a restriction on who can be a reader of science, the expense of APCs restricts who can be an author. These restrictions on access are harmful to science and society.”, an indication that the interest of Elsevier is driven by profit, not science.
This is one the types of responses from the academia against the unfair profit-driven attitude of the big publishers. Libraries are responding by cancelling their “big deals”, and finding means of accessing publishers resources in an affordable manner.
References
Waltman, L., Larivière, V., Milojević, S., & Sugimoto, C. R. (2020). Opening science: The rebirth of a scholarly journal. Quantitative Science Studies, 1(1), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_e_00025