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I recently wanted to read one conference paper and one journal article. The conference paper is named Division by invariant integers using multiplication. By clicking on the "All 9 versions" link on Google Scholar, I found the full paper on gmplib.org.

The journal article is named improved division by invariant integers. It is also available at several sources as PDF.

Why do publishers allow such redistribution of papers / preprints? I mean, if everyone is doing the same as I'm doing, the main revenue source of publishers will go away. Is it because publishers obtain their main revenue from university libraries? If I can't find a PDF preprint of an article, the next thing I'm going to do is to try to find the article through my university library.

juhist
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    This is addressed in some of the answers to https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10284/what-are-the-reasons-for-journals-to-have-a-policy-against-publishing-material-a, https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/60277/why-dont-academics-bypass-restrictions-on-the-distribution-of-their-papers-the/60315#60315, https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/56984/do-publishers-simply-waive-their-exclusive-rights-without-any-resistance/57035#57035 – Nate Eldredge Apr 02 '18 at 22:12

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Although this is speculation since I don't work for a publisher, there are a couple of reasons I can think of:

  • Due to pressure from funders, who want the research they funded to be publicly available.
  • To take away the focus from gold open access. Publishing preprints is known as green open access, and means that authors are allowed to post their work elsewhere. Often, however, this is with restrictions: only the non-peer reviewed version is allowed, and only after a certain period. This discourages academic libraries from cancelling their subscriptions, and appeases the funders who might otherwise call for the published version to be publicly available immediately. (Note: I think this was mainly a motivation before the publishers figured out they could heavily charge funders for the latter requirements.)
  • Because it might be hard to argue in a legal case for publishers to restrict access to research that they haven't been involved with at all (i.e. not yet been peer reviewed, layout done by the researcher themself, etc.). Yes, they often coerce authors in transferring copyrights to the publishers, but they might rather not test the strength of that argument in court.
  • As a courtesy, to maintain goodwill. It's clear now that it doesn't really threaten their business model (no subscriptions appear to have been cancelled in response to preprints being available), so they can easily do this.
Vincent
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If a publisher doesn't allow distributors of preprints, they'll never get a submission from me. Why would I needlessly restrict the distribution of my own work? The publisher doesn't pay me anything in exchange for these rights.

David Ketcheson
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Because it will happen anyway, so they might as well appear magnanimous by permitting it.

Authors want their work to be read. The publishers effectively have three options:

  • ignore it, which makes them look as though they're not in control
  • sue their authors, which would probably be futile and would certainly reduce submissions to their journals
  • say that preprints are allowed, and focus their efforts on trying to convince people that it's worth paying for the "version of record" anyway.
Flyto
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That'll depend on the field. In computer science, where your example comes from, there is some competition between publishers for conference proceedings and also, to an extent, competition between conferences for quality submissions and high-profile researchers on the committee.

Some conferences are moving or considering to move to open access proceedings, and this makes commercial publishers try and offer better deals, which includes better attitude towards authors. PLDI in your example is ACM's own conference and won't just go to another publisher, but still, harassing authors with copyright restrictions is going to repel authors and committee members. I know, universities and grants in Europe often require to upload publications to open access archives, but I don't know whether this would prevent authors from publishing in a venue that does not allow to publish preprints, since this problem does not normally arise.

I imagine that this indeed hurts publishers. For example, at some point in the past I did have access to Springer's LNCS in my institution, and these days there's some story unfolding in France with universities not renewing their Springer subscriptions.

I'm also curious to know where this will lead. Perhaps, publishers will soon start tightening their copyright agreements (thus confronting the existing open access policies). Or perhaps, they will raise publication costs. Participation in a CS conference is already expensive, usually somewhere between 500-1000 Euro just for being able to present (and then there are travel costs), so it may not make a big difference if a larger portion of this money goes to a publisher.

Alexey B.
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It's a sign of goodwill, mostly.

Publishers, librarians and academics all rely on one another, and none of them can function without the other two. It's true that by allowing preprints, publishers are risking subscription revenue. University libraries are the main source of subscriptions, and they are highly incentivized not to subscribe if everything is available via Google Scholar! However prohibiting the author from uploading preprints will also generate hostility among academics, who might refuse to submit to the publisher (or worse - see The Cost of Knowledge boycott). It's a balancing act which most publishers err on the side of not prohibiting preprints.

Here's something related: can a university library completely discontinue journal subscriptions and ask its academics to use resources like Google Scholar or Sci-Hub? Yes and no. The library can do it and probably save some money instantly, but in the long run, the publishers will shut down and the journals too, and there'd be no one to handle peer review. Like it or not, all three of publishers, librarians and academics are stuck with one another.

Allure
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    Commercial publishers are not crucial to peer review: they aren't paying for it to begin with. Several high-quality OA journals are doing just fine in this aspect. I suspect the real reason why libraries are reluctant to cut down on subscriptions is that this money is earmarked and they won't get to use it for anything else (but correct me if I'm wrong). – darij grinberg Apr 03 '18 at 03:22
  • @darijgrinberg Are you implying that OA journals do not conduct peer review, or that there are no commercial publishers operating OA journals? – Allure Apr 03 '18 at 03:41
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    I guess I was ambiguous somewhere I don't see. I am implying that a number of high-quality OA journals (Algebraic Combinatorics, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, to name two) conduct peer review no worse than Elsevier's, without charging authors or readers. – darij grinberg Apr 03 '18 at 04:18
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    @darijgrinberg is that relevant? If those journals dropped their OA APCs to $0, they would soon fold, too (unless they received external funding). Even if all its staff worked pro bono, a journal cannot function without money. – Allure Apr 03 '18 at 04:26
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    These journals have no OA APCs to begin with. The only relevant item on the budget for a modern OA journal seems to be the editors, and this isn't that large a cost. Peer review has never been part of the cashflow, so it cannot be a concern. – darij grinberg Apr 03 '18 at 04:30
  • @darijgrinberg then they're either loss-making and will fold eventually, or are receiving external funding. Money is necessary to run a journal. Even if you don't bother with typesetting/copyediting, don't do marketing, and don't offer customer service, you still have to pay for the submission management system and website. – Allure Apr 03 '18 at 04:34
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    The submission management system is free for all I know (it's software, and not very complicated one at that, so one should expect its marginal cost to be 0), the web servers probably university-sponsored and cheap. See https://www.centre-mersenne.org/ for one example of this in action (funding for the whole project comes from CNRS). Costs of publishing have gone down Moore's-law-style, as an overwhelming majority of authors have learnt a sufficient amount of LaTeX to make typesetting assistants obsolete. – darij grinberg Apr 03 '18 at 05:10
  • @darijgrinberg no editorial management systems (at least the more powerful ones) are not free. It's like OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office, or Intel's C compiler vs. Gnu's C compiler. An overwhelming majority of authors actually don't know LaTeX very well; if not, publisher would be able to make even more money by laying off their typesetters. If costs of publishing really is going down quickly, we'd see new publishers offering the same services for lower prices, but these publishers rarely succeed. – Allure Apr 03 '18 at 05:28
  • I'm not going to argue this because I think it's pretty pointless; I'll just point out that we've seen lots of technology-driven revolutions (like smartphones taking over from feature phones) in a few years but the traditional publishing model has stayed largely intact. There's a reason for this, and it's not because of a mega conspiracy among publishers to rip everyone else off. – Allure Apr 03 '18 at 05:31
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    Well, if you're in the combinatorics research community, you can see for yourself. I don't have a personal experience with the backends, but I know of the EMSs of Electronic Journal of Combinatorics (OA, founded in 1994, not as selective as some but respected and high quality) and Algebraic Combinatorics (former Springer journal that recently declared independence, top tier). The former is bare-bones but functional in all cases I've encountered. The latter is modern and ... – darij grinberg Apr 03 '18 at 05:33
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    ... feels better to me as a referee than Elsevier's (which seems to be from the 90s judged by the web design). Either way, an EMS is mostly a one-time cost, and can be shared across journals (this is what the Centre Mersenne is for). Sure, not 100% of authors know LaTeX well enough to publish without editorial assistance, but a journal can afford dismissing the 5% that don't. The fact that Elsevier and Springer are (probably) sinking a lot of money in these processes doesn't mean that they cannot work on a leaner budget. Your mileage may vary depending on what science you're in. – darij grinberg Apr 03 '18 at 05:35
  • EMS is not a one-time cost and in fact from what I'm aware charges are based on per paper handled. If you've reviewed papers before you should've seen how drastically different the raw form is vs. the published form. Finally a few individual journals mean little. The number of papers published per year academia-wide is also increasing, and publishing a (very) small fraction of that isn't earthshaking. When these journals take over the world like Apple & Google did to Nokia & Blackberry, then and only then can we say it's the superior model. – Allure Apr 03 '18 at 05:47
  • @darijgrinberg Please do not trivialise the cost of software. Yes, Open Journal Systems for example is free to use (which supports your point), but it still costs money to make and money to host. But yes, as Allure hints at, that is covered by external funding - although I don't see why that would be a problem? – Vincent Apr 05 '18 at 10:21
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    @Vincent: Good point; I should be speaking of marginal costs. There is a slew of costs to managing a journal (over at the Fair OA gitlab they are talking about the legal department), but I still believe that the biggest cost centers of the current big-name publishers (Springer, Elsevier, TF, etc.) will not exist in Fair OA periodicals and no one will be worse off for that. – darij grinberg Apr 05 '18 at 18:47
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    @Allure: Scaling is not the hard part of academic publishing. Seeing 2 of (I'm guessing) 10 important journals on combinatorics gone fair-OA and (so far) doing well, I don't really see obstructions against the rest following. – darij grinberg Apr 05 '18 at 18:48
  • @darijgrinberg why haven't they followed then? Are you implying that the rest of the journals are conspiring with the publishers? Please understand, if you've not worked in publishing your knowledge of publishing is likely to be rudimentary, and it's rude to imply that publishers have evil intentions. – Allure Apr 05 '18 at 20:20
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    @Allure: Academics are slow and often risk-averse. I assume this isn't exactly news to you. And as I mentioned above, the system is being held in place by habit, sunk costs and principal-agent mismatches. I suspect the editors of many combinatorics journals are currently watching Alg. Comb., and will draw their conclusions after a couple years of successful operation. Note that I have not made any moral statements (let alone "evil") in this comment thread. – darij grinberg Apr 05 '18 at 21:16
  • I'll apply Occam's razor and take the much simpler explanation of "it can't be done", especially since I have years of experience working in publishing. That is all. As for moral statements, I read you as implying that commercial publishers do no work but charge high prices, which is a clear allegation of bad faith ("evilness"). – Allure Apr 05 '18 at 21:37