Resisting Oligarchic Publishing
Scholarly publishing continues to tolerate influence from the rich and powerful
The independence of science from its funders has been core to its success, from breaking with the church to breaking with rich patrons and feudal lords to the insistence that government grants provide the government no power over results reporting to norms like disclosure and statements of independence from funders, it’s a history centuries in the making and all pointing in the same direction — science works best when there is no political, financial, or ideological meddling.
Today, politicians are attempting to hamstring science by giving political appointees oversight power over grants, and there are rumors the President may get involved.
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, this group finds a way.
While politicians have been pushing science around for decades in various ways, funders found another way to influence science, thanks in large part to the producer-pays model of Gold OA. Their technique? Create and fund vanity projects, OA initiatives, passable think tanks, and veiled lobbying groups. Heck, they even started journals that were blatant house organs (Wellcome Open Research, Gates Open Research), while corrupting the NCBI and PubMed for one (eLife).
Recently, the oligarchs have been on parade again:
- A CZI LLC-funded initiative has a candidate for the Board of CrossRef
- Coefficient Giving recently funded an meeting about AI in research integrity in Montreal
- OpenAlex has been talking about its “Colors Working Group” — I kid you not — which is funded by Arcadia, the Navigation Fund, and Wellcome Trust
- Both Arcadia and the Navigation Fund are new money derived from crypto winnings and eDonkey 2000
- Wellcome and CZI are older money from pharma and social media, respectively
Of course, other oligarchs are still hanging out in science spaces, with Elon Musk retaining his membership in the Royal Society despite being a funder of right-wing extremists and by all appearances an enemy of science funding and freedom.
Why is this all happening? Why does it continue to happen?