The report seems to be mostly concerned with the market economy nature of scientific publishing, which is fair. That said, I find that obsession with publisher profit margins and boycotts is not constructive.
On the one hand, the important roles of journals (evaluation, archival, dissemination, etc) come at a cost (and are crucial to science). Running a journal costs time and money. That money must come from somewhere. Publishers don't have to be for profit, but if they are, they will naturally attempt to maximize margins. That is just capitalism. But, it doesn't have to be that way. Alternative, non-capitalistic business models for publishing science are possible. They should emerge and compete with for-profit models (1).
On the other hand, boycotts and illegal solutions (e.g. Sci-hub) are non constructive simply because they offer no solution. Sci-hub is made of 88 million published articles, "published", indeed, by those same publishers it is fighting against. What is the end goal?
I personally support an open, innovative, and transparent publishing infrastructure, but one that is sustainable in the long term and solution-driven. My two cents!
(1) Note: just being non-profit is not enough, if you don't have a scalable and sustainable solution. Also... if you are non-profit and your business plan is to be funded by charitable foundations created by billionaires via capitalistic means, what is the whole point of changing the system?
On the one hand, the important roles of journals (evaluation, archival, dissemination, etc) come at a cost (and are crucial to science). Running a journal costs time and money. That money must come from somewhere. Publishers don't have to be for profit, but if they are, they will naturally attempt to maximize margins. That is just capitalism. But, it doesn't have to be that way. Alternative, non-capitalistic business models for publishing science are possible. They should emerge and compete with for-profit models (1).
On the other hand, boycotts and illegal solutions (e.g. Sci-hub) are non constructive simply because they offer no solution. Sci-hub is made of 88 million published articles, "published", indeed, by those same publishers it is fighting against. What is the end goal?
I personally support an open, innovative, and transparent publishing infrastructure, but one that is sustainable in the long term and solution-driven. My two cents!
(1) Note: just being non-profit is not enough, if you don't have a scalable and sustainable solution. Also... if you are non-profit and your business plan is to be funded by charitable foundations created by billionaires via capitalistic means, what is the whole point of changing the system?