On the tragic fate of PeerJ

I said last time that Jisc’s feeble transition-to-open-access report was the first of two disapointing scholarly-communication announcements that week. The second was of course the announcement that PeerJ has been acquired by Taylor and Francis.

Matt and I have both been big fans of PeerJ since before it launched, and we were delighted to have our 2013 neck-anatomy paper in the first batch of articles published there. We’ve had a lot of good things to say about its open peer-review, its usefulness in teaching, its disruptiveness, about how it became our default choice of venue, and much more.

So it’s tragic to see it being eaten by one of the legacy publishers.

What’s even more tragic is to see the founders, who I have liked and respected for more than a decade, spouting such transparent b.s. in the press release:

“Becoming part of Taylor & Francis is an important step in PeerJ’s evolution,” explained Peter Binfield, PeerJ Co-Founder and Publisher. “This move will allow us to cement our original commitments to open research, equitable and inclusive publishing and rigorous peer review.”

Jason Hoyt, PeerJ Co-Founder and CEO added: “Our mission to make scientific research accessible to all whilst delivering 21st century technology aligns perfectly with Taylor & Francis’ vision.”

None of this is true. We know it’s not true. Pete and Jason know it’s not true. We know they know it’s not true. They know that we know they know. Why even insult us with this nonsense?

I suppose it’s part of the contract they signed with their new bosses, that they have to make public statements about how excited they are. But, seriously, who is buying this?

Here are two good things about the situation, though:

First, because everything published by PeerJ has been under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC By) licence, all the papers are still and will always remain free to read, redistribute, modify, etc. That’s the wonder of a licence. It’s not dependent on anyone’s good will. There’s nothing Taylor & Francis can do to change this. Even if they were to change PeerJ to use a different and more restrictive licence for new papers (and there’s no reason to think they would), nothing can change the legal status of what’s already been published.

And second, an email sent to PeerJ members promises that the publish-forever deals that we bought back in 2013 are still good:

You may have already seen the recent announcement that PeerJ has been acquired by Taylor & Francis, and I wanted to provide you with some reassurance regarding the status of your PeerJ Lifetime Membership: despite this change, your Lifetime Membership with PeerJ remains valid.

Your commitment to PeerJ and support for our mission are greatly appreciated and valued by PeerJ. If you have any questions or concerns about your lifetime membership or the acquisition in general, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly ([email protected]). Your peace of mind is important to us, and we are here to address any inquiries you may have. You can read more in the announcement here.

I wonder how long Taylor and Francis will continue to honour this promise, though. Forever, as initially promised? Ten years? Five? We’ll see what happens when integrity runs up against profit margins.

I’ll have more to say about this acquisition, and about what it tells us about the scholarly publishing landscape more generally, but I’ll leave it there for now. Bottom line for me: this is a very sad day.