On the Cost of Knowledge: Evaluating the Boycott against Elsevier

Abstract

In the pre-Internet era, commercial publishers, such as Elsevier and Wiley, played an important role in disseminating new scientific ideas and discoveries. The emergence of the Internet has forced publishers to rethink their business model (Cope and Phillips, 2014), partly because scientists could, in principle, easily reach a broad audience and cut out the proverbial middleman. It is fair to say that commercial publishers adapted quite successfully as they arguably remain key players in the scientific publishing landscape (Cope and Kalantzis, 2014; Larivière et al., 2015). However, academics have been criticizing publishers’ business practices for over a decade now [e.g., Dyer (2004)] and the call for reform has grown even louder in the past couple of years (Corbyn, 2012; Flood, 2012; Cope and Kalantzis, 2014). A prime example of such a reform initiative is the Cost of Knowledge campaign. Launched in response to a blog post by prominent mathematician Gowers (2012), the campaign specifically targets the publishing house Elsevier, denouncing its attempts to restrict the free exchange of information, the exorbitantly high prices for subscriptions, and the practice of selling journals in large bundles featuring many unwanted titles.1 Signatories of the petition pledge to not referee for, publish in, or do editorial work for Elsevier journals. Roughly 4 years aſter the boycott started, it seems appropriate to evaluate its impact and contemplate its future. As