{"id":24159,"date":"2023-05-04T04:29:08","date_gmt":"2023-05-04T11:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/?p=24159"},"modified":"2024-01-25T02:10:05","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T10:10:05","slug":"surveillance-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/surveillance-publishing\/","title":{"rendered":"How the World\u2019s Leading Academic Publishers Became Surveillance Publishers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We\u2019ve written on PIA blog about the rising use of workplace surveillance<\/a> to keep tabs on what people are doing in offices and elsewhere. But that\u2019s nothing compared to what is happening in the academic world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most people think of academia as a relatively slow-moving, genteel sort of place, where everyone is nice. Sometimes, sure. Most of the time, though, it\u2019s the setting for one of the most ruthless and thorough-going exploitation of personal data anywhere, particularly when it comes to academic publishers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Academic publishing<\/a> is noteworthy for a getting its customers to do all the work, and then selling the results of that work back to the same people. And if you thought there\u2019s nothing else they could do to increase their outrageous revenue\u2026 you\u2019d be wrong. Academic publishers are looking to get into the data business and, if they get away with it, it\u2019ll make them even more money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Academic Publishing Works<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a rundown of how academic publishing works. To make things fun, see if you can count how many people don\u2019t <\/em>get paid along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to get a job, keep a job, or just stay relevant in academia, publishing papers is a must. Publishing is also a great way to let others know about your academic research, so you write a paper which you then submit to academic journals for publication. Those papers are provided free of charge, since academics are mostly interested in establishing their reputations and contributing to their field, not earning money from their research. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A journal editor, usual another academic who is also unpaid, sends some of these submitted papers to external referees for checking. These referees are other academics, who have been doing academic stuff for a while and have made a name for themselves. They\u2019re also generally unpaid, but are willing to perform the often demanding work of \u201cpeer review<\/a>\u201d as part of their duties as academics. The academic publisher then performs some editorial functions, of varying thoroughness, and publishes the papers in one of its journals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subscriptions to academic journals are sold to the educational establishments where the academics who wrote the papers, those who edited them, as well as those who reviewed the work are all employed. Often, the subscriptions run to thousands of dollars per year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An alternative model, known as open access<\/a>, sees articles published for free, but publication requires a payment by the researcher\u2019s institution or funding organization. These \u201carticle processing charges<\/a>\u201d also typically run to thousands of dollars. No wonder, then, that many academic publishers have achieved profit margins of 30-40% for decades<\/a> \u2013 levels that are rare in any other industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Academic Publishers Become Data Brokers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But it seems that even this is not enough. The top academic publishers have used those profits to buy a range of complementary companies that allow them to track every stage of academic work, from formulating research questions through to obtaining posts based on previous academic publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the leading experts on this trend is Jeff Pooley,<\/a> professor of media & communication at Muhlenberg College. He has written a couple of articles, one short<\/a>, and one longr<\/a>, about what he terms \u201csurveillance publishing.\u201d The term is inspired by surveillance capitalism<\/a>, which we\u2019ve previously discussed on the PIA blog along with its sibling surveillance advertising<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pooley gives the example of Elsevier, arguably the most successful academic publisher \u2013 Pooley says that in 2021 it made $1.4 billion in profit on $3.6 billion in revenue \u2013 and the trailblazer in terms of moving to fully-fledged surveillance publishing. He explains how for each stage of the research process, from gathering and storing results, to publishing them as preprints<\/a>, checking an article\u2019s \u201cimpact factor\u201d<\/a>, or monitoring press coverage, Elsevier has a service, making it a \u201cfull-stack\u201d publisher:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tracking lab results? Elsevier has Hivebench, acquired in 2016. Citation and data-sharing software? Mendeley, purchased in 2013. Posting your working paper or preprint? SSRN and bepress, 2016 and 2017, respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsevier\u2019s \u201csolutions\u201d for the post-publication phase of the scholarly workflow are anchored by Scopus and its 81 million records. Curious about impact? Plum Analytics, an altmetrics company, acquired in 2017. Want to track your university\u2019s researchers and their work? There\u2019s the Pure \u201cresearch information management system,\u201d acquired in 2012. Measure researcher performance? SciVal, spun off from Scopus in 2009, which incorporates the media monitoring service Newsflo, acquired in 2015.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Many of those Elsevier services will now be gathering personal data about academics as they use them, including: <\/p>\n\n\n\n