[HPSG-L] Do not work for / publish with Elsevier, please (like Stanford, Harvard and so on)

[Stefan Müller]

Dear Farell,

Yes, this was a quick reply to Chris mail. It ended with "more soon".
"soon" will probably be today. Another lengthy email is in the making ...

Best

    Stefan

Am 26.08.20 um 06:04 schrieb Ackerman, Farrell:
> Stefan, beyond the many words describing interesting issues, I don’t see how you’ve addressed the central issue that disturbed some of us. Is it appropriate to evaluate someone’s academic file in terms of whether their publishing behavior comports with your biases or should they be evaluated in terms of the worth of their contributions, even if they deviate from your personal beliefs?  If broadly accepted the position you state seems quite consequential to the lives of ordinary academics and their families. Farrell 
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Aug 25, 2020, at 8:21 PM, Stefan Müller <St.Mueller at hu-berlin.de> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Chris,
>>
>>> Am 24.08.20 um 22:56 schrieb chris brew:
>>> What, in your view, is the action that would best serve the authors of
>>> the paper? Remember that they may not be aware
>>> of the history, and may have submitted good work in good faith.
>> Yes, this is why I wrote this email. We had Glossa/Lingua discussions
>> before but this was a long time ago. Somebody replied to my mail: "I did
>> not know all that. One should discuss this on the Linguist List or
>> somewhere else more visibly."
>>> Assuming that, what the authors need is whatever will cause them to
>>> withdraw the
>>> work and submit a revised version, elsewhere, to a journal that will
>>> do them more credit. I am not sure what action that is, but I am dead
>>> sure that 
>>> it is NOT a long-drawn-out refusal to review.
>> You are right. This is why I wrote this email. I got the invitation to
>> review on Saturday right before the HPSG conference (15.08.2020). I
>> wrote first emails on this issue on Sunday. After the HPSG conference I
>> finalized typesetting two books (Thursday-Sunday) and waited on some
>> replies to my emails. On Monday I finalized the mail and sent it off. So
>> we are talking about a week here. I know of colleagues who do not even
>> touch there computers for several weeks ...
>>> Personally (not that Lingua is likely to ask me) I would choose a fast
>>> refusal, because I think that would
>>> be the best way of avoiding unnecessary harm to the authors.
>> Nobody should submit there. I hope that HPSG people agree and remember
>> this for a while and also tell younger researchers.
>>
>> But, yes, maybe I change this (but see next mail). When asked to review
>> for Syntax (Wiley), I immediately wrote to the editors explaining to
>> them why I would not work for Wiley (and why they should not work for
>> Wiley either). Their editorial system kept sending me reminders for some
>> while, which shows that the journal is not run properly.
>>
>>> I realize that your goal in posting this may be that the authors will
>>> read the post, understand the history and more rapidly withdraw the
>>> paper. But still,
>>> I don't think a drawn-out delay serves them well.
>> Honestly, I think this issue is overrated. If you look at reviewing
>> times in theoretical linguistics you find reviewing times between half a
>> year and one and a half year. I think Language holds the record here. I
>> forgot the exact numbers ...
>>
>> The bottleneck are the reviewers not the one to four weeks to find one.
>> There will be more on reviewing in the next mail.
>>
>> Delaying the review process at this point is more for those who run the
>> journal. They should think about what they are doing and for whom they
>> are working. They should know that the community is not with them and
>> makes their lives miserable as they are making our lives miserable on a
>> much bigger scale.
>>
>> Let's talk about careers. Some say it is very bad that careers are
>> delayed (by not answering review emails for three weeks). There are
>> different academic systems and the US differs from Europe. I tell you
>> about the situation here. All this is discussed in here:
>>
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://hpsg.hu-berlin.de/*stefan/Pub/oa-jlm.html__;fg!!Mih3wA!Uh2E631yh0XAiS_zmBwxAoCX5_8we6FMHKfNBHK4Bq8R00G86weQKLUXjCXgL3B6$ 
>>
>> Countries with the habilitation system have very few professors with
>> permanent positions. Everybody else has non-permanent positions. Germany
>> is worst here:
>>
>> Now, I tell you why German universities "love" non-permanent positions.
>> All German universities run on 80% of their positions. When a
>> non-permanent position gets free, there is a ban on hiring new people
>> for half a year or longer. There are financial cuts now and then.
>> Professor positions are cut, research fields are closed (Indogermanistik
>> and other subjects with few students), research staff positions are cut.
>>
>> So, the fight I am leading here is a fight for young people, for
>> resources, to be able to pay their positions, to maybe get permanent
>> positions for them. We can choose: either we fix our publication system
>> and keep our money for research or we throw it away and there are no
>> positions to hire somebody (with or without paper in Lingua).
>>
>> Lingua is the extreme case since there is Glossa, the very same journal
>> with the original board and editors and with the same name in a
>> different language. Lingua is dead now. There may be reasons to publish
>> with Springer and Wiley. But there is no reason to publish in Lingua.
>>
>> More soon.
>>
>> Best
>>
>>     Stefan
>>
>>
>>> Chris
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 10:26 AM Stefan Müller
>>> <St.Mueller at hu-berlin.de <mailto:St.Mueller at hu-berlin.de>> wrote:
>>>
>>>    Dear colleagues,
>>>
>>>    Yesterday I got a request to review an HPSG paper for the Zombie
>>>    journal
>>>    Lingua. I am sort of shocked by this and I was tempted to reject this
>>>    request right away, but here is what I will do: I will delay the
>>>    review
>>>    as long as possible and reject to review the paper then.
>>>
>>>    Background: In 2015 the complete editorial board of Lingua
>>>    resigned (31
>>>    people) and founded a new (fair) open access journal Glossa with the
>>>    same editorial board and the same output of papers since.
>>>
>>>    https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.rooryck.org/lingua-to-glossa__;!!Mih3wA!Uh2E631yh0XAiS_zmBwxAoCX5_8we6FMHKfNBHK4Bq8R00G86weQKLUXjI61_yFb$ 
>>>
>>>    I will not hire people with publications in Lingua after the Glossa
>>>    transition. I will argue against people with Lingua publications in
>>>    their CV in any search committee I am in since I consider
>>>    publishing in
>>>    Lingua unethical and against the scientific community.
>>>
>>>    Furthermore, due to the status as Zombie journal the number of
>>>    submissions to Lingua went down considerably, which of course has also
>>>    an influence on competition and quality. (details below)
>>>
>>>    Here are some further information on why working for Elsevier is
>>>    unethical and against the scientific community: Elsevier is a billion
>>>    dollar company that is basically killing academia. A parasite.
>>>    They have
>>>    profit margins of 37% in 2018. For comparison, the German bank once
>>>    declared that they have a profit margin of 25% and this resulted in a
>>>    huge outcry in German society. Labels like "turbo capitalism" were
>>>    coined back then. Normal companies have profit margins of 5 or 7
>>>    percent. The food sector even less. About 3%.
>>>
>>>    37%! If a university pays 1Mio for journal access 370.000 go to share
>>>    holders. We can choose: Do we want to hire people or give our research
>>>    money to the share holders of Elsevier? (Springer is similar and Wiley
>>>    is even worse >70%!!)
>>>
>>>    And note, we are not just paying the profit margin, we are also paying
>>>    the income of the CEOs. I do not know the income of Elsevier's
>>>    COEs, but
>>>    I know the income of Wiley's CEOs:
>>>
>>>    CEO salery
>>>
>>>    This is $16 Mio for five people. Per year.
>>>
>>>    These are quotes from the English Wikipedia:
>>>
>>>> In 2018, Elsevier accounted for 34% of the revenues of RELX group
>>>> (₤2.538 billion of ₤7.492 billion). In operating profits
>>>>
>>>    <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Earnings_before_interest_and_taxes__;!!Mih3wA!Uh2E631yh0XAiS_zmBwxAoCX5_8we6FMHKfNBHK4Bq8R00G86weQKLUXjFCWU82Q$ >,
>>>> it represented 40% (₤942 million of ₤2,346 million). Adjusted
>>>> operating profits (with constant currency) rose by 2% from 2017 to
>>>> 2018. Profits grew further from 2018 to 2019, to a total of £982
>>>> million.
>>>>
>>>    <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Elsevier*cite_note-RELX_2018_Report-1__;Iw!!Mih3wA!Uh2E631yh0XAiS_zmBwxAoCX5_8we6FMHKfNBHK4Bq8R00G86weQKLUXjGr6GtQo$ >
>>>
>>>
>>>> In the 21st century, the subscription rates charged by the
>>>    company for
>>>> its journals have been criticized; some very large journals
>>>    (with more
>>>> than 5,000 articles) charge subscription prices as high as
>>>    £9,634, far
>>>> above average, and many British universities pay more than a million
>>>> pounds to Elsevier annually. The company has been criticized not
>>>    only
>>>> by advocates of a switch to the open-access publication model, but
>>>> also by universities whose library budgets make it difficult for
>>>    them
>>>> to afford current journal prices.
>>>>
>>>> For example, a resolution by Stanford University's senate
>>>    singled out
>>>> Elsevier's journals as being "disproportionately expensive
>>>    compared to
>>>> their educational and research value", which librarians should
>>>> consider dropping, and encouraged its faculty "not to contribute
>>>> articles or editorial or review efforts to publishers and journals
>>>> that engage in exploitive or exorbitant pricing". Similar guidelines
>>>> and criticism of Elsevier's pricing policies have been passed by the
>>>> University of California, Harvard University, and Duke University.
>>>>
>>>> In July 2015, the Association of Universities in the Netherlands
>>>> announced a plan to start boycotting Elsevier, which refused to
>>>> negotiate on any open access policy for Dutch universities. In
>>>> December 2016, Nature Publishing Group reported that academics in
>>>> Germany, Peru, and Taiwan are to lose access to Elsevier journals as
>>>> negotiations had broken down with the publisher.
>>>>
>>>> A complaint about Elsevier/RELX was made to the UK Competition and
>>>> Markets Authority in December 2016. In October 2018, a competition
>>>> complaint against Elsevier was filed with the European Commission,
>>>> alleging anticompetitive practices stemming from Elsevier's
>>>> confidential subscription agreements and market dominance.
>>>    The whole scientific world is kept busy by finding ways to deal with
>>>    ever increasing prices and with the unethical practices by
>>>    Elsevier. You
>>>    would think you can save money by cancelling one subscription of a
>>>    journal you do not need? No, Elsevier sells bundles and next year you
>>>    pay as much as last year but you have some journals less. Elsevier
>>>    uses
>>>    non-disclosure agreements for making it impossible to compare prices.
>>>    Ask your librarian if you do not believe me. They will burst into
>>>    tears
>>>    if you name Elsevier.
>>>
>>>    Librarians, research founders, university administrations spend hours
>>>    and hours to deal with the publication crisis. Publishing with
>>>    Lingua in
>>>    such a situation is a sign of ignorance or uninformedness. Both
>>>    are bad
>>>    for job opportunities.
>>>
>>>    If you want to publish in a responsible way, submit your papers to
>>>    Language, the Journal of Linguistics or the Journal of Language
>>>    Modelling. These are journals run by scholars or societies. The German
>>>    journal Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft is published by De Gruyter
>>>    but run by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft. It is
>>>    open
>>>    access (free for authors, fees are payed by us, the DGfS members) and
>>>    the journal accepts English contributions as well.
>>>
>>>    This is a list of journals I reviewed for and which are judged as
>>>    OK or
>>>    not OK. Elsevier, Wiley, Springer are not OK.
>>>
>>>    https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://hpsg.hu-berlin.de/*stefan/gutachter.html__;fg!!Mih3wA!Uh2E631yh0XAiS_zmBwxAoCX5_8we6FMHKfNBHK4Bq8R00G86weQKLUXjN-zSRWa$ 
>>>
>>>    So, summing up:
>>>
>>>    People who work for and publish in Lingua behave unethical and harm
>>>    their field.
>>>
>>>    Authors who submit there submit to a zombie journal with low
>>>    competition
>>>    since good and responsible authors boycott the journal.
>>>
>>>    Authors who submit there get low quality reviews since high profile
>>>    academics do not review for Lingua or Elsevier in general.
>>>
>>>    The reviewing process will be delayed since it is difficult to find
>>>    reviewers and people asked for reviews do not reply in time.
>>>
>>>    Please check the English Wikipedia entry to find more reasons for not
>>>    publishing with Elsevier.
>>>
>>>    https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier*Academic_practices__;Iw!!Mih3wA!Uh2E631yh0XAiS_zmBwxAoCX5_8we6FMHKfNBHK4Bq8R00G86weQKLUXjOxhM9y_$ 
>>>
>>>    One is this:
>>>
>>>> In 2018, Elsevier reported a mean 2017 
>>>>
>>>    <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Elsevier*cite_note-20__;Iw!!Mih3wA!Uh2E631yh0XAiS_zmBwxAoCX5_8we6FMHKfNBHK4Bq8R00G86weQKLUXjOmkdQg_$ >gender
>>>> pay gap
>>>>
>>>    <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/Gender_pay_gap__;!!Mih3wA!Uh2E631yh0XAiS_zmBwxAoCX5_8we6FMHKfNBHK4Bq8R00G86weQKLUXjNXfwHcn$ > of
>>>> 29.1% for its UK workforce, while the median was 40.4%, more than
>>>> twice the UK average and by far the worst figure recorded by any
>>>> academic publisher in UK. Elsevier attributed the result to the
>>>> under-representation of women in its senior ranks and the prevalence
>>>> of men in its technical workforce.
>>>    There is also racism, manipulation of citation indexes and so on.
>>>
>>>    Thanks for reading this far and it would really make my day if I saw
>>>    this paper published in another journal and no further submissions to
>>>    Lingua. =:-)
>>>
>>>    Best
>>>
>>>        Stefan
>>>
>>>    Recommendations to deal with Zombie Lingua
>>>
>>>    1) Do not submit there.
>>>
>>>    2) If asked for review, do not reply via their editorial system.
>>>
>>>        After some time send the editor an email explaining why you do not
>>>    work for Lingua/Elsevier.
>>>
>>>    3) If you cite work that appeared after January 17th 2017 in Lingua,
>>>    cite it as Zombie Lingua, eg:
>>>
>>>    Lin, Francis Y. 2017. A refutation of Universal Grammar. Zombie Lingua
>>>    193. 1–22. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://doi.org/__;!!Mih3wA!Uh2E631yh0XAiS_zmBwxAoCX5_8we6FMHKfNBHK4Bq8R00G86weQKLUXjCHxz3XR$  10.1016/j.lingua.2017.04.003.
>>>
>>>
>>>    Appendix:
>>>
>>>    Proof that Lingua is a low quality journal
>>>
>>>    Lingua was ranked 7th in Google Scholar’s h5-Index Top Publications –
>>>    Humanities, Literature & Arts, and 3rd in the subsection Language &
>>>    Linguistics in October 2015
>>>    (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.rooryck.org/lingua-to-glossa__;!!Mih3wA!Uh2E631yh0XAiS_zmBwxAoCX5_8we6FMHKfNBHK4Bq8R00G86weQKLUXjI61_yFb$ ).
>>>
>>>    Now it is not contained in Humanities any longer and it is ranked
>>>    14 in
>>>    Language & Linguistics, but all papers with a high number of citations
>>>    that are responsible for this listing were published by the old
>>>    editorial team (they had contracts for volumes till beginning of
>>>    2017).
>>>
>>>    https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&vq=hum_languagelinguistics__;!!Mih3wA!Uh2E631yh0XAiS_zmBwxAoCX5_8we6FMHKfNBHK4Bq8R00G86weQKLUXjCKjKlWA$ 
>>>
>>>    In 2021, Lingua will be gone since the 2015 items will not be counted
>>>    for the h5 index and there aren't any new ones.
>>>
>>>    I also had a look at stuff published there. One piece is open access:
>>>
>>>    Lin, Francis Y. 2017. A refutation of Universal Grammar. Zombie Lingua
>>>    193. 1–22. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://doi.org/__;!!Mih3wA!Uh2E631yh0XAiS_zmBwxAoCX5_8we6FMHKfNBHK4Bq8R00G86weQKLUXjCHxz3XR$  10.1016/j.lingua.2017.04.003.
>>>
>>>    I had a look since the title caught my attention and I have to say
>>>    it is
>>>    below any scientific standards. I am not a fan of UG, but the paper is
>>>    really bad. For example it argues that Chomsky is wrong in making
>>>    claims
>>>    about languages since he has not seen/cannot examine all existing
>>>    human
>>>    languages. (p.4)
>>>
>>>    Another pet peeve of mine is infinitely long sentences. The author
>>>    goes
>>>    into some detail expalaining why we could in principle process
>>>    infinitely long sentences:
>>>
>>>> A couple of clarifications are in order. First, one might object
>>>    that
>>>> an infinitely long sentence, e.g.:
>>>> (11) John believes that Peter believes that Bob believes . . .
>>>> is a sentence in a human language but the brain, being a finite
>>>> substance, cannot process it. In fact there is no contradiction
>>>    here.
>>>> To say that (11) is a sentence in a human language is to say that
>>>> speakers of that language can speak or understand it. In a strict
>>>> sense, a human being cannot speak or understand an infinitely long
>>>> sentence. So, what is going on here is that when saying that
>>>    (11) is a
>>>> human sentence we mean something like this: if there were no
>>>> limitation on memory and other relevant factors, then humans
>>>    would be
>>>> able speak or understand it. In this sense, (11) is a human
>>>    sentence;
>>>> and in the same sense, it can be processed by the brain.
>>>    Note that no formally trained syntactician (in the Chomskyan
>>>    tradition)
>>>    ever claimed that we can formulate or process infinitely long
>>>    sentences.
>>>    We can't. And PSGs do not license infinitely long sentences. This is
>>>    easy to see if you consider Merge-based systems. If we combine
>>>    words or
>>>    roots with a binary operation, we have objects of length two. We can
>>>    combine these with other simple or complex objects but all of
>>>    these have
>>>    a finite length. So there is no way to get objects of infinite length.
>>>
>>>    Apart from formally and conceptually flawed content, the language is
>>>    week (even I with my limited command of English could spot this)
>>>    and you
>>>    will find an example of this in the quote above. So, our high price
>>>    publisher does not even care for copy editing.
>>>
>>>    Conclusion: Do not submit there.
>>>
>>>    Thanks!
>>>
>>>    Best
>>>
>>>        Stefan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>    _______________________________________________
>>>    HPSG-L mailing list
>>>    HPSG-L at listserv.linguistlist.org
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>>>
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