NEED FOR TRANSFORMATIONS IN ACADEMIC PUBLISHING

There is something fundamentally wrong with academic publishing. Recently, authors and series editors of Amsterdam University Press had to find out in a three sentence email we had been sold to Taylor & Francis. Taylor & Francis is a full-profit company that is in the business of academic publishing to make money, not to share knowledge with others, academic peers and the wider audience alike. During the past ten years Taylor & Francis has bought practically all journals in the humanities (Springer more or less ‘takes care’ of the social sciences, and Elsevier covers the hard sciences). All this is harmful for the transfer of knowledge and for the future of academia, where one has to be very rich to get published at all (open access fees are astounding, between 10.000 and 15.000 Euros per book); or be part of a rich institute to that pays APC’s (Article Processing Costs) that authors need to bring to the publisher (which can be 3000 Euros per article) to get published; or to get access to published articles behind paywalls. A collective of series editors, including myself and co-series editors of the 30 years old book series Film Culture in Transition, have now resigned from their (unpaid) labor as writers, editors and reviewers. Below some articles and a video about these developments. This is a widely shared problem in academic publishing that urgently needs to be addressed. We need a truly open and sustainable research and publication environment where profit is not the only drive, and where publishing is a collective joyful effort to share what science has to offer.

Here some interviews in Folia in Dutch and English (includes public resignation letter):
https://www.folia.nl/nl/actueel/167120/auteurs-ontzet-na-onverwachte-verkoop-van-uitgeverij-aup
https://www.folia.nl/nl/actueel/167396/28-redacteuren-stappen-op-na-overname-bij-uitgeverij-aup
https://www.folia.nl/en/actueel/167120/authors-shocked-by-unexpected-sale-of-publisher-aup
https://www.folia.nl/en/actueel/167396/28-editors-resign-after-takeover-at-aup-publishing-house

Here a more general article about the problems with academic publishing:
https://theconversation.com/academic-publishing-is-a-multibillion-dollar-industry-its-not-always-good-for-science-250056

And here is Andy Stapleton’s very clear explanation of the absurdity of the current situation in Academic publishing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Si-UHkAT_A

An overview about the resilience of Open Science can be found here:
https://upstream.force11.org/the-resilience-of-open-science-in-times-of-crisis/