Elsevier editorial boards: Serials Review
Next up in the Loon’s Hall of SOPA/RWA Shame, the editorial board of Serials Review. Since we’re reviewing:
The Loon suggests that the individuals on Elsevier’s boards have several ethical options, in increasing order of desirability:
- Express opposition to SOPA and RWA in an editorial inside the journal, calling upon Elsevier to change its stance and lobbying practices
- Make a public statement opposing Elsevier’s stance on SOPA and RWA, calling attention to it within Elsevier as well
- Leave the editorial board, individually or in a collective declaration of independence, and explain both publicly and privately why
Should you contact these folks (please do!), kindly remember that honey catches more flies than vinegar. After all, they likely don’t know how badly they’re damaging their professional reputations by donating work to sordid Elsevier. (Elsevier is so sure they’ll feel shame that it identifies them only by first initial! This complicates the Loon’s job, but she perseveres.)
Without further ado, Serials Review‘s editorial board and column editors:
- Connie Foster, Western Kentucky University
- Beverley Geer, San Antonio TX
- Isabel Bernal, Digital.CSIC
- S. Venkadesan, Indian School of Business
- Susan Barribeau, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Kurt Blythe, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
- Maria Collins, North Carolina State University
- Sharon Dyas-Correia, University of Toronto
- Katy Ginanni, Trinity University
- Les Hawkins, Library of Congress
- Chad E. Hutchens, University of Wyoming
- Faye R. Leibowitz, University of Pittsburgh
- Teresa Malinowski, California State University
- Mark Needleman, Florida Center for Library Automation
- Bonnie Parks, University of Portland
- Barbara Richards, University of Wisconsin at Madison
- Sharon Siegler, Lehigh University
- Kristen Wilson, North Carolina State University
- Tschera Connell, Ohio State University
- Daniel M. Durrett, Huixquilucan
- Julia Gammon, University of Akron
- June Garner, Mississippi State University
- Nancy Gibbs, Duke University
- Tyler Goldberg, University of Louisville
- Jill Grogg, University of Alabama
- Steve Kelley, Wake Forest University
- Carole Marsh, University of Texas
- Anne McKee, Greater Western Library Alliance
- Taemin Kim Park, Indiana University-Bloomington
- Regina Reynolds, Library of Congress
- Nathan Robertson, University of Maryland
- Steve Shadle, University of Washington
- Dan Tonkery, Content Strategies
- Sarah Tusa, Lamar University
- Elizabeth L. Winter, Georgia Institute of Technology
Here’s hoping these fine folks do some soul-searching.
Next up, Government Information Quarterly. If you can help expand given names, please do so in the comments, and thank you in advance.
I find it fascinating that you publicly call people out when you don’t have the guts to write your own name. The Elsevier bashing is tiresome. It just bugs me to see excellent librarians dragged through the mud on your blog when you are too cowardly to even say who and where you work. You have no idea what type of effort any of these individuals put forth in their contributions to Elsevier or to their own institutions. What about individuals who serve on editorial boards for other commercially published journals? What about ALA publications that are not open access or have restrictive author agreements?
Do you work for a library that subscribes to journals that are members of AAP? Have you investigated who else has given money to supporters of the Research Works Act? Say what you want about Elsevier but there are plenty of other publishers out there that deserve criticism for their support of this act or other actions taken by AAP. What about ACS? University of California Press? ACM? AGU?
The Loon has tried very hard not to bash librarians. Many librarians, especially those with younger careers in tenure-track libraries, have to provide evidence of professional service, the more overtly prestigious the better. Many folks on these editorial boards therefore don’t have easy choices. The Loon respects their dilemma, even as she calls on them to make ethical decisions. (She will also point out that she left two ethical options on the table that don’t actually involve leaving journal boards.)
That serving in good faith has allied them with a publisher repeatedly acting in excessively poor faith isn’t a judgment on them, but on the publisher—and to some extent, on the profession for not making sufficient space for ethical choices in this realm.
Why Elsevier specifically? Well, “one has to start somewhere” is a cop-out, so let’s leave it aside. The Loon chose Elsevier because it keeps throwing money at lobbyists, even slimeballs like Eric Dezenhall, money far in excess of what other publishers are shelling out. Another reason for the choice is that Elsevier is not only supporting RWA, which is bad enough, but is also one of the few academic publishers openly supporting the utterly loathsome SOPA.
There’s also the question of Elsevier’s profit margins coupled with its negotiating tactics (the Loon wishes she’d been swimming outside the window for this negotiation with Purdue).
Lastly, there’s a strategic question of industry influence. Elsevier has a lot of it. Where Elsevier goes, the industry follows! So convincing Elsevier of the error of its ways with respect to RWA and SOPA would go a disproportionately long way, compared to convincing several of the outfits on your list.
Is Elsevier the only bad actor? Of course not. They may not even be the single most loathsome; a cagematch with the American Chemical Society is more than warranted. The Loon encourages action against all bad actors—but she also knows that that’s an awful lot to bite off, for any librarian. So for the reasons cited, she decided to start with Elsevier.
As for the Loon’s pseudonymity, if it’s a problem, you are more than welcome to ignore Gavia Libraria entirely. It’s an immense Web, after all.
The Loon will make bold to ask this, though: what would happen, do you think, to a librarian who posted these lists and these suggestions with his or her name attached? How long would s/he keep a job? (Imagine further, if you like, that some of the names posted belong to individuals at the librarian’s workplace.) That, again, is an indictment of the profession. It should not be necessary for the Loon to exist in order to name names and call for an ethics discussion.
But the Loon believes, quite strongly, that it is. The Loon can say things that named librarians can’t. She tries her level best to use this privilege—it is just exactly that—for good, and not for evil.
She may indeed have failed. It’s the chances loons take.
The Loon has looked at her previous posts, and in light of your critique, she’ll be changing the “Hall of Shame” tag to something less inflammatory. Thank you for pointing out the necessity.
(The Loon isn’t being sarcastic. She knows she goes over the top sometimes and needs to settle her damn feathers.)
Oh, and one last thing—because of the email address you listed, the Loon knows your full name, and is fairly sure she’s matched it to a real-world librarian (name duplicates do of course happen). She wants to reassure you, and all other commenters, that the Loon takes the Chatham House Rule seriously. Commenters’ identities, when the Loon knows them, will go nowhere, and the Loon will never use any comment here in any way real-world-ly prejudicial to the commenter, save in extreme cases such as threats, which your comment was certainly not.
If you felt a frisson after the first sentence, though, you may perhaps understand a little better why the Loon is an incorporeal pseudonym. Librarianship can be a tough profession to get along in, like any profession confronted with a lot of change and a lot of tough decisions.
The Loon has deleted the email address from Gavia‘s back end, and she’s about to hunt for a WordPress plugin that requires name/pseud but not email address, on the well-known library privacy maxim that “what you don’t know you can’t spill, even by accident.” Once she finds it, she’ll go kill off all email addresses in her commenter table. In the meantime, be it known that the correctness of email addresses is not policed here; by all means enter a fake one, folks.
Well, hm. There appears to be no such plugin, and WordPress’s code has ballooned out of all recognition.
The Loon will continue to seek a solution that allows her to require name but not email. If any of her readers are PHP hackers, this hack may be modifiable to fit modern-day WordPress.
“(She will also point out that she left two ethical options on the table that don’t actually involve leaving journal boards.)” — and how would you know what they have said to Elsevier? Again, it strikes me that you are passing a lot of judgment on these individuals.
” a publisher repeatedly acting in excessively poor faith isn’t a judgment on them, but on the publisher” — yet, you are passing judgment on them by asking people to contact them. You are focusing on individuals. I don’t see any mention of contacting Elsevier in this post or Government Information Quarterly highlighting editorial board members.
I’m sorry but there are plenty of other publishers that openly support this legislation and pay lobbyists. I do think that Elsevier is an easy target when other publishers hide behind their affiliation or name.
“what would happen, do you think, to a librarian who posted these lists and these suggestions with his or her name attached? How long would s/he keep a job? (Imagine further, if you like, that some of the names posted belong to individuals at the librarian’s workplace.)” — if you believe strongly enough in your convictions then you should attach your name. You don’t have a problem calling out these individuals by figuring out their affiliations and institutions and posting them on your blog. Or, you could take a more constructive approach and advocate for change by trying to work with publishers to understand their perspective, advocate with the people on your campus to consider where they publish, and work with your professional organizations to lobby for issues you think are important.
Creating a list of people without any understanding of how they feel about this situation is just not helpful and actually hurts potential support.
For the record, I am against the Research Works Act. I am involved in scholarly communication efforts on my campus. I have stepped down from writing positions with commercially published library journals because I don’t believe in their pricing models. I do have a problem with hypocrisy and efforts that divide our community, which does include Elsevier and other publishers.