The major scientific publishers that dominate the publication market earn their money less and less with genuine publishing activities.
The Dutch company Elsevier, which forms an oligopoly with Springer Nature and Wiley, now generates most of its sales with data analysis.
Following the example of Google, he wants to expand this sector in the coming years.
The raw material for this is the data from the scientists.
A paper by the DFG Committee for Scientific Libraries and Information Systems clearly indicates the dangers that this poses for science. The personal information about the researchers is enriched by the publishers with data from other sources and sold on the data market or used for scientific services. For example, Relx, Elsevier's parent company, is establishing its Pure software worldwide with the express aim of providing insights into the entire research cycle. Based on the data, scientists are advised which journals they publish in and which topics they are pursuing their careers with. Universities are advised in which discipline they are best to expand and which scientists they call to themselves.The analyzes thus have a profound influence on science and change the setting of topics according to opaque, purely quantitative criteria. The authors conclude that science must not allow the private sector to take the helm and must prevent its values from being eroded.
Scientific freedom is threatened here from two sides. Because usually nobody knows what happens to the data except the publishers and their negotiators. Scientific institutions, the DFG paper concludes, can become jointly responsible for violating the right to informational self-determination. This is primarily to be understood as a reference to the “deal” group. The amalgamation of seven hundred libraries under the auspices of the University Rectors' Conference gave the major publishing house Wiley extensive access to the personal data of researchers in a contract worth almost eighty million euros. When science acts with collective bargaining power, as in the "deal" contract, it must prevent its freedom from being sold off.