Autopsy

Lessons for editors

I monitored the response to getting fired by Elsevier. It got a bit intense until someone threatened to me-too a bunch of editors in finance. I realized that I never gave a complete account of what went wrong at Energy Economics. So here goes.

I used to be a silly person.*

Elsevier pressured me to increase the number of published papers. I had assumed that this was about market share. The number of scholars is increasing, particularly in poorer countries where energy is relatively more important. Instead, it was about profits. The switch to open-access is not as innocent as I once thought. We used to pay to read. Publishers exercised monopoly power,** which increased in the prestige and quality of the journal. Many universities had a package deal, so the marginal cost of reading a paper was zero. We now pay to publish. Publishers exercise monopsony power,** which increases in the prestige and quality of the journal. Many universities have a package deal, but with a cap on the number of papers that can be published for free. Other universities do not have a package deal. Profits thus increase with volume. Publishers trade off higher returns in the short run with maintaining prestige in the long run.

Open access has failed. Papers are accessible in principle but just as unreadable to the uninitiated as they have always been. Incentives changed at the margin. Quantity is up, quality is down.

The number of submissions to Energy Economics grew faster than the number of editors. We solved this with special issues and guest editors. I see editing a journal as a service to the community; guest editors as selfless servants. Editorial work is a criterion for promotion at some universities, but such guest editors would still want to do a good job. Some people see opportunities for patronage, but we kept that in check with teams of guest editors and random assignments within such teams. That model was not robust to token editors and people publishing their girlfriend’s papers.

Journal articles have long been important for promotion and thus have economic value for authors. Some universities give teaching relief to those who publish well. An increasing number of universities in East and West Asia pay bonuses for publications.*** This is a game-changer. Fake authors is one thing. In the end, it does not matter whether a good piece of research has one or five authors — although four may have defrauded their employer.**** But, if five authors get a $5,000 bonus, they can easily spare $1,000 each to bribe a (guest) editor. That quickly adds up.

Should I have spotted these three changes — open access, patronage, bribery? I did find out, but late, and we retracted more papers than is healthy (but fewer papers than we should have.) In my defense, editing a large journal is a lot of work, on top of being a researcher, a professor, a husband, and a father. Elsevier never briefed us on any of this — indeed, I alerted them.

I am wiser now, only to discover that Elsevier does not look kindly on whistleblowers. I hope that people reading this benefit from the knowledge gained at my expense.

* This is a quote by Bill Nordhaus. He spoke these words at a large OECD/IEA conference to the horror of the non-academics in the audience. Bill referred to the double dividend, the interaction between internalisation of environmental externalities and fiscal distortions.

** Publishers are natural monopolies as it takes decades to build a highly reputed journal. Natural monopolies should be strictly regulated. One option is to charge royalties — publishers profit, after all, from the research base funded by public money. For instance, publishers could be made to donate all profits in excess of a 10% margin to the national science foundations.

*** I understand that someone just signed a contract for a secondary affiliation, stipulating that he publish 100 papers per year. (Yes, really.)

**** Some employers may not be equipped to deal with this. Or they may not care. I have reported the sale of authorships to several universities, but only a minority responds. One head of department attacked me. I also encountered a junior scholar who was astonished that I would not accept a bribe; his professors had told him this was the only route to publication.