May 21, 2023
How Scientific Publishers’ Extreme Fees Put Profit Over Progress
By Eleanor Buchanan
Last month, the editorial team of NeuroImage resigned over the “unethical fees” charged by the journal’s publisher, Elsevier. Can scientists ditch the for-profit system?
On April 17, the premier journal NeuroImage’s entire editorial team, comprising more than 40 scientists, resigned over the “unethical fees” charged by the journal’s academic publisher, Elsevier. With more than $2 billion in annual revenue, the publisher’s profit margin approaches 40 percent—rivaling that of Apple and Google. “Elsevier has become kind of like the poster child for evil publishing companies,” said neuroscientist Kristen Kennedy, one of the recently resigned senior editors.
Kennedy relies on taxpayer money to study the aging brain. At the University of Texas at Dallas, federal grants help fund the staff, equipment, and experiments in her lab. But this public money, largely from the National Institutes of Health, is being drained by exorbitant publishing fees.
When scientists have a discovery worth sharing, they seek publication in scholarly journals. This “publish or perish” cycle has been trusted for centuries, as scientists rely on publishing to attract grants, maintain their jobs, and bolster their reputations. NeuroImage, a top journal in Kennedy’s field, charges scientists $3,450 to publish a single paper. When a typical productive lab publishes eight to 12 papers a year, the costs become considerable. Today, scientific publishing has become a multibillion-dollar business that not everyone can afford.
