The shameful politics of Palgrave
For the first time in my life a publisher - Palgrave - refused to accept the green open access policy that I apply for all my publications. Obviously, I withdrew my chapter.
I always ask for the possibility to upload a copy of the text (print or pre-print) on my institutional repository and all the publishers usually accept. Several studies have shown that the availability of an open access copy does not reduce the sales of books.
More to the point:
1. My research is financed by my University with public funds. A paper or a book section is the result of years of research. This means that it is very expensive... One year of my salary is more than 100K CA.
2. My research is also funded by SSHRC - often several thousand dollars per year.
3. My library will also buy a copy - or many of them - of the book/journal where I publish, and it will finance the publisher in this fashion.
4. Peer reviewing is also done by academics, for free for the publishers and actually paid by the researchers' institutions.
Palgrave wants to take advantage of the thousands of dollars paid by federal and provincial institutions in order to sell the result of this work to public institutions, including the same one which helped produce it.
It is unacceptable for a researcher to allow some private publisher to limit the accessibility of research which has been paid by public funds.
Palgrave has an unacceptable policy concerning OA. They ask for huge money to allow the golden OA (about 20K$), and they do not allow a basic Green OA policy which is accepted by every publisher with a little common sense.
I think as researchers we have the moral duty of boycotting this kind of publishers.
In my case:
1. I will never publish again with Palgrave;
2. I will never read or cite any Palgrave publications;
3. I will never count a Palgrave publication for career purposes if I am on a committee nor list them amongst my own publications in my cv.
I think this is the least we can do to stop predators of this kind stealing our public money.
Or, if they want, they can pay for my research themselves. A book chapter should be payed something like 100K$.
If they want to keep making money thanks to public research, publishers must change their behaviours. Otherwise, I hope they will disappear quickly. We do not need them.
