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SAS Confidential
A Blog by @AcademicsSay
Jason Schmitt
Can't Disrupt This: Elsevier and the 25.2 Billion Dollar A Year Academic Publishing Business
January 4, 2016 January 7, 2016 / SAS Confidential
Author: Jason Schmitt
Original: Medium
Twenty years ago (December 18, 1995), Forbes predicted academic publisher Elsevier's relevancy and life in the digital age to be short lived. In an article entitled "The internet's first victim," journalist John Hayes highlights the technological imperative coming toward the academic publisher's profit margin with the growing internet culture and said, "Cost-cutting librarians and computer-literate professors are bypassing academic journals — bad news for Elsevier." After publication of the article, investors seemed to heed Hayes's rationale for Elsevier's impeding demise. Elsevier stock fell 7% in two days to $26 a share.
As the smoke settles twenty years later, one of the clear winners on this longitudinal timeline of innovation is the very firm that investors, journalists, and forecasters wrote off early as a casualty to digital evolution: Elsevier. Perhaps to the chagrin of many academics, the publisher has actually not been bruised nor battered. In fact, the publisher's health is stronger than ever. As of 2015, the academic publishing market that Elsevier leads has an annual revenue of $25.2 billion. According to its 2013 financials Elsevier had a higher percentage of profit than Apple, Inc.
Brian Nosek, a professor at the University of Virginia and director of the Center for Open Science, says, "Academic publishing is the perfect business model to make a lot of money. You have the producer and consumer as the same person: the researcher. And the researcher has no idea how much anything costs." Nosek finds this whole system is designed to maximize the amount of profit. "I, as the researcher, produce the scholarship and I want it to have the biggest impact possible and so what I care about is the prestige of the journal and how many people read it. Once it is finally accepted, since it is so hard to get acceptances, I am so delighted that I will sign anything — send me a form and I will sign it. I have no idea I have signed over my copyright or what implications that has — nor do I care, because it has no impact on me. The reward is the publication."
Nosek further explains why researchers are ever supportive by explaining the dedicated loyal customer base mantra, "What do you mean libraries are canceling subscriptions to this? I need this. Are you trying to undermine my research?"
In addition to a steadfast dedication by researchers, the academic publishing market, in its own right, is streamlined, aggressive, and significantly capitalistic. The publishing market is also more diverse than just the face of Elsevier. Johan Rooryck, a professor at Universiteit Leiden, says, "Although Elsevier is the publisher that everybody likes to hate, if you look at Taylor & Francis, Wiley, or Springer they all have the same kind of practices."
Heather Morrison, a professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa, unpacks the business model behind academic publisher Springer and says, "If you look at who owns Springer, these are private equity firms, and they have changed owners about five times in the last decade. Springer was owned by the investment group Candover and Cinven who describe themselves as 'Europe's largest buy-out firm.' These are companies who buy companies to decrease the cost and increase the profits and sell them again in two years. This is to whom we scholars are voluntarily handing our work. Are you going to trust them? This is not the public library of science. This is not your average author voluntarily contributing to the commons. These are people who are in business to make the most profit."
Should a consumer heed Morrison's rationale and want to look deeper into academic publishers cost structure for themselves one is met with a unique situation: the pricing lists for journals do not exist. "It's because they negotiate individually with each institution and they often have non-disclosure agreements with those institutions so they can't bargain with knowing what others paid," says Martin Eve, founder of the Open Library of the Humanities.
In addition to a general lack of pricing indexes, the conversation around the value of a publication is further complicated by long-term career worth. David Sundahl, a senior research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, says, "We actually understand how money passed through to artists who wrote music and authors who wrote books — but it is not clear how the value of a publication in a top tier journal will impact someone's career. Unlike songs or books where the royalty structure is defined, writing a journal article is not clear and is dependent not on the people who consume the information but rather deans and tenure committees."
Disruption Doable?
It is precisely the prior lack of a pricing and value barometer that leads to the complexities associated with disrupting the main players in academic publishing. "Adam Smith's invisible hand works to lower prices and increase productivity but it can only do so when valuation or pricing is known and the same thing is true for disruption. If you don't know how to value something, you actually don't have tiers of a market," says Sundahl.
If a disruptive force was to significantly change academic publishing it needs to happen in a market that is currently underserved or undesirable by the large-scale publisher. "Disruptive innovation is usually driven by a group who can't afford to build something that is as big, fancy and sophisticated as the existing solution — they then have to find a market where either people don't have anything available to them or they are satisfied with something less than perfect," says Sundahl.
Should academic scholarship keep existing in a similar trajectory as in the past decades Sundahl finds incumbents (existing big publishers) almost always win when competition takes place along those sustaining strategy lines. "To revolutionize academic publication, a new system would need to be developed in a basement market which would eventually enable people to gain enough credibility doing this new solution. People would then begin to value this lower end, well done research, and that is when the world starts to change," says Sundahl.
The prior is exactly what large entities like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or perhaps even top tier research one (R1) universities can't do. "They have to play the game the way the winners are already playing it. Incumbents almost always win under those conditions," says Sundahl. And to further complicate matters, junior colleges and community colleges, which perhaps would represent fertile grounds to be served by a newer, "basement market" entrant, may be less likely to spearhead this new outlet themselves due increasing government constraints focused nearly exclusively on job placement and starting salaries in lieu of a research-based, theoretical curriculum.
Open Access Packs a Punch
Driven by the lopsided power structure the move toward open access and the unrestricted access to academic information has been exponentially growing. Perhaps it is, itself, a "basement market" for leveling the academic publication environment and creating a market where respect and credibility can be fostered, grown and transitioned into the existing academic prestige, merit, and tenure conversations.
"The open access environment is one of the more fertile environments for people to be thinking: if we don't like the old way, what should the new way look like," says Heather Joseph, executive director at the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). Joseph finds that the quantifiable numbers of open access journals speak for themselves and says, "You can look at the number of strictly open access journals if you look at the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). When it started tracking open access journals there were a few dozen and now they list over 10,000 open access journals."
The push toward open access is not only growing in sheer numbers of journals but also in an increasingly confrontational strategy that academics leverage against large publishers. "At the moment, the Netherlands, the whole country, has said to Elsevier that we want all of our researchers to be able to publish open access in your journals at the same rates we would pay for a subscription last year and if you can't do that we're going to cancel every one of your journals, for all of our universities nationwide," says Eve. "They have a few days left to resolve this, and it looks like they are going to cancel all the Elsevier journals."
Rooryck found his recent very public decision to step down and move his Elsevier journal Linga to open access met with complete support from the other six editors and 31 editorial board members. "The process went very easily. We were all aware of the pricing and Elsevier's practices and within a week everyone agreed to resign," says Rooryck. Eve's platform, the Open Library of Humanities, will now house the new open access iteration of Lingua, which will be called Glossa. Eve says, "Right away it is 50% cheaper to run it through us then when it was with Elsevier. So anybody subscribing to it already sees 50% more revenue."
Rooryck finds the move toward broad open access a natural progression and says, "The knowledge we produce as academics and scientists should be publicly available in the same way we have a company that delivers water to our faucets and electricity to our home. These are things we have a right to. Public knowledge and education is a human right and it should not come with a profit tag of 35%."
Although it appears open access has the ability to simultaneously diffuse academic knowledge to a larger body of readers and cut costs significantly, many feel that the for profit academic publishers are still situated to continue into the near future. Joseph says, "I think the play for most smart commercial publishers is to try to preserve the current environment for as long as they can: delay the policy changes, delay the culture changes and to be working on things like tools and services applying to aggregation of data, where they are then embedding themselves more deeply in the workflow of researchers and becoming essential to researchers in a different way."
"If you are no longer essential to researchers in the, 'you have to publish in my journal in order to get tenure and promotion' what do they replace that with? I think the smart publishing companies like Elsevier, like Springer, who are very smart in that regard, have been thinking about where they can go to be playing a role of continuing to be seen as essential by the research community once they are no longer playing the role of providing assessment," says Joseph.
"In the US Congress we have been finally making progress with the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) bill. It moved through the committee it was referred to in the Senate and is poised to move out of the Senate and potentially be considered by the House and hopefully pass. Ten years ago, I would have said we didn't have a chance to do a stand-alone bill," says Joseph.
Perhaps the recent congressional support Joseph refers to is one more verifying measure that the majority of articles will be moving toward an open and accessible framework. Many in the academic community hope that this government support signals the reprioritization of a research framework and the switching of the guard. And while the prior is extremely important, others in the academic community are hoping to grow "basement markets" from the ground up.
The Center for Open Science, which provides seed funds to startups in the academic scientific research space, is led by Nosek and focuses on aligning scientific values to scientific practices. "The open science framework is just a means at connecting all the research services that researchers use across the entire research life cycle," says Nosek.
Nosek is optimistic about the evolution of technology in open science and says, "There are a lot of startups going at different parts of the research life cycle. Whether it is publication and what a publication means, or looking at full articles and whether you can make articles convey information in smaller bite size pieces." Nosek tells me that there are so many solutions happening in research right now and mentions it is hard to judge what the true solutions will look like. "I sometimes think some of the ideas haven't a chance, but what do I know? I could be completely wrong about it. And that is the whole point — do some experimentation and try out ideas. And the fact is there are a lot of people who see what the problems are and have a unique sense of a potential solution — it is a very lively time to try out different answers."
Time will tell if open access will be the needed disruption to allow the academic environment to right itself or if a new market emerges from startup incubators like the Center for Open Science. Regardless of how the future vision is realized, most in the academic community hope that the new iteration of scholarly articles and publishing will do more good toward humankind than that of a hefty profit margin.
Academic Journals: The Most Profitable Obsolete Technology in History
November 6, 2015 November 27, 2015 / SAS Confidential
Original: Huffington Post
The music business was killed by Napster; movie theaters were derailed by digital streaming; traditional magazines are in crisis mode–yet in this digital information wild west: academic journals and the publishers who own them are posting higher profits than nearly any sector of commerce.
Academic publisher Elsevier, which owns a majority of the prestigious academic journals, has higher operating profits than Apple. In 2013, Elsevier posted 39 percent profits, according to Heather Morrison, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa's School of Information Studies in contrast to the 37 percent profit that Apple displayed.
This lucrative nature of academic publishing comes at a price–and that weight falls on the shoulders of the full higher education community which is already bearing the burden of significantly decreasing academic budgets. "A large research university will pay between $3-3.5 million a year in academic subscription fees –the majority of which goes to for-profit academic publishers," says Sam Gershman, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT who assumes his post as an assistant professor at Harvard next year. In contrast to the exorbitant prices for access, the majority of academic journals are produced, reviewed, and edited on a volunteer basis by academics who take part in the tasks for tenure and promotion.
"Even the Harvard University Library, which is the richest university library in the world, sent out a letter to the faculty saying that they can no longer afford to pay for all the journal subscriptions," says Gershman. While this current publishing environment is hard on large research institutions, it is wreaking havoc on small colleges and universities because these institutions cannot afford access to current academic information. This is clearly creating a problematic situation.
Paul Millette, director of the Griswold Library at Green Mountain College, a small 650 student environmental liberal arts college in Vermont, talks of the enormous pressures access to academic journals have placed on his library budgets. "The cost-of-living has increased at 1.5 percent per year yet the journals we subscribe to have consistent increases of 6 to 8 percent every year." Millette says he cannot afford to keep up with the continual increases and the only way his library can afford access to journal content now is through bulk databases. Millette points out that database subscription seldom includes the most recent, current material and publishers purposefully have an embargo of one or two years to withhold the most current information so libraries still have a need to subscribe directly with the journals. "At a small college, that is what we just don't have the money to do. All of our journal content is coming from the aggregated database packages–like a clearing house so to speak of journal titles," says Millette.
"For Elsevier it is very hard to purchase specific journals–either you buy everything or you buy nothing," says Vincent Lariviere, a professor at Université de Montréal. Lariviere finds that his university uses 20 percent of the journals they subscribe to and 80 percent are never downloaded. "The pricing scheme is such that if you subscribe to only 20 percent of the journals individually, it will cost you more money than taking everything. So people are stuck."
"Money should be taken out of academic publishing as much as possible. The money that is effectively being spent by universities and funding agencies on journal access could otherwise be spent on reducing tuition, supporting research, and all things that are more important than paying corporate publishers," says Gershman. John Bohannon, a biologist and Science contributing correspondent, is in agreement and says, "Certainly a huge portion of today's journals could and should be just free. There is no value added in going with the traditional model that was built on paper journals, with having people whose full time job was to deal with the journal, promote the journal and print the journal, and deal with librarians. All that can now be done essentially for free on the internet."
Although the prior clearly sounds like the path toward the future, Bohannon says from his vantage point the prior is not one-size-fits-all: "The most important journals will always look pretty much like they do today because it is actually a really hard job." Bohannon finds that the more broad journals such as Science, Nature, and Proceeding of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) will always need privatized funding to complete the broad publication tasks.
Another Option?
"A better approach to academic publishing is to cut out the whole notion of publishing. We don't really need journals as traditionally conceived. The primary role of traditional journals is to provide peer review and for that you don't need a physical journal–you just need an editorial board and an editorial process," says Gershman.
Gershman lays out his vision for the future of academic publishing and says that a very different sort of publishing system would be that everybody could post papers to a pre-print server similar to the currently existing arXiv.org. After posting research, then the creator selects to submit it to a journal, which is essentially sending them the links to your paper on the pre-print server. The journal editorial board do the same editorial process that exists now–if your paper is accepted to their journal they can put their imprimatur on your paper saying it was accepted to this journal–but there is no actual journal–it is just a stamp of approval.
What Gershman's concept does is remove most of the costs from the equation. The cost for running this pre-print server would be a shared cost for all universities and funding agencies and could clearly infuse millions upwards of billions back into the broad higher education system should an overarching system be implemented and respected. Bohannon is not convinced the prior is an easy sell. "We would need a real revolution. By revolution I mean a cultural revolution among academics. They would have to totally change the way they do business and, despite having the reputation of being revolutionary, academics are pretty conservative. As a culture, academia moves pretty slow." Nathan Hall, professor at McGill University, follows Bohannon's reasoning and says, "I think there is a sense of security in maintaining a set of agreements with known publishers with reputations like Wiley or Elsevier. I think universities aren't quite aware of the benefits and logistics of a new system and they are comfortable maintaining existing relationships despite some questionability for what the publishers are providing."
Open Access for the Future?
"The phrase 'open access' can mean several things," says Lariviere. Open access on a broad scale refers to unrestricted online access for peer-reviewed research. Lariviere details how publishers have co-opted this terminology and in doing so perhaps increased profit further. "Elsevier says you can publish in open access, but in reality it means paying twice for the papers. They will ask me 'do you want to publish your paper open access' which means paying between $500 and $5,000 additional for that specific paper to be freely available to everyone. At the same time, they will not reduce the subscription cost to the overall journal, which means they are making twice the money on that specific paper. If you ask me if this type of open access is the way to go, the answer is no."
Luckily large granting bodies have begun using their clout to push toward true open access. The National Institute of Health (NIH) has been a longstanding champion for creating open access. Since 2008, the NIH has had a mandate for all research funded by that body to be published open access. Recently, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation brought their clout into the open access conversation. Starting in January 2015 all work funded through the Gates Foundation will be open access and the foundation says: "We have adopted an Open Access policy that enables the unrestricted access and reuse of all peer-reviewed published research funded, in whole or in part, by the foundation, including any underlying data sets."
As higher education is redefined to meet the needs and affordability required of the 21st century certainly the most basic functions of sharing academic research need to be retooled. There is no reason an academic publisher should have such a significantly different economic picture from standard publishers. The stark contrast is troubling as it tells just how far from reality our higher education system has traversed. Correspondingly, there is no reason universities should pay $3.5 million to have access to peer-reviewed data. This academic conversation is society's conversation–and it is time that the digital revolution level one last playing field: because we, the people, deserve access.
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Do you have a beach vacation? Hang this sign for friends and family to enjoy.
It also makes a great gift for someone who just bought a new home.
*Hand painted in the carved lettering with a cool ocean blue.


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Health fund complaints increase
November 2, 2000 - Jennifer
There has been a 23 per cent rise in complaints against private health insurers in the three months to July, according to the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman's office. The rush to take out private health cover under the Government's Lifetime Health Cover scheme appears to have caused confusion for consumers and overloaded the funds' call centres. The report identifies Australian Unity, AXA Australia, Manchester Unity and NIB as the funds that received the most complaints. However, AXA Australia Health Insurance managing director Richard Bowden said that most of its complaints came from new members – attracted by AXA's no-gap cover – who were refused claims because their medical conditions were believed to have existed prior to taking out their policy. Mr Bowden stated that "it is not a matter of not wanting to pay out claims, AXA has paid out $35 million in no-gap claims".
Health fund complaints on the rise March 1, 2001 Recent figures show that complaints regarding health funds are on the rise. Complaints to the Private Health Insurance ombudsman in the quarter to December 2000…
Contact your health fund before treatment or going… October 9, 2000 Provide the fund with your membership number, the name of your doctor, details of the hospital and procedure (including the "item numbers" that can be…
Record health fund profits prompt payout call December 11, 2000 Private health funds are under increased pressure to help out consumers and struggling private hospitals after recent figures indicate a record $343 million profit for…
Health Fund failing to renew contract February 22, 2001 One of Australia's largest health funds MBF has been accused of trying to lure patients on Sydney's North Shore away from smaller private hospitals to…
Health fund guarantees no gap for childbirth July 5, 2001 NRMA Health is guaranteeing no out of pocket expenses for mothers who give birth in private hospitals with a doctor of their own choice. Up…
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


This show has been cancelled.
Unfortunately, due to injury, the band is unable to perform. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Enjoy the spring weather and the sounds of the '50s as Don Susa, and his Pittsburgh, PA friends Bob Palombi, Rick Funaro, and Patsy Molinaro sing tunes from the doo-wop era. Let The Dantes take you back in time as you relax on the ZMA lawn.
Thursday, May 18, 5:30–7:30 pm, on the ZMA lawn.
Should it rain, the concert will take place inside the ZMA.


Introducing State of the Arts!
State of the Arts is a community consultation aimed to better understand how we as artists, cultural workers, arts organizers, funders, and audiences are all connected, and how we can help each other strengthen our arts community together through thoughtful collaboration and meaningful exchanges.
ELAN recognizes that there are many rapidly evolving conversations regarding access, inclusion, working conditions, economics, appropriation, and other barriers that prevent our community from thriving.
Through this project, we commit to actively listen and find practical ways to recognize and validate the diverse experiences of artists who speak in English and who make up an important segment of Quebec's evolving identity.
Get Involved! Your opinions and feedback are important to us.
Be sure to watch out for upcoming surveys, which will be shared via email.
contact Amy Macdonald at amymacdonald@quebec-elan.org.
https://www.quebec-elan.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/State-of-the-Arts.-e1541006909641.png 242 843 ELAN Communications https://quebec-elan.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/elan-final-logo-banner-1.png ELAN Communications2018-10-31 21:46:582018-11-09 18:41:09Introducing State of the Arts!
A couple of years ago, I was invited to join the board of le Salon du Livre de Montréal, which was seeking to become more diverse and inclusive. Part of ELAN's mandate is to build bridges with Quebec's French-speaking artistic community, so I agreed to join, despite knowing that past efforts to create visibility for English-language writers and publishers at the Salon were not successful. That was at a time when the two solitudes were more deeply entrenched. Quebec has changed. The current staff and board of the Salon du Livre made a compelling case to the Quebec Writers' Federation and the Association of English-Language Publishers of Quebec that it is time to make a fresh start. An agreement was struck, and a large contingent of English-Language writers will appear at this year's Salon du Livre de Montréal from November 14-19. We hope this will be the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship. If you love books, I highly recommend the adventure. Hope to see you there.
I have two other important new initiatives to mention. Both are products of the federal Action Plan for Official Languages 2018-23. The first is a new Micro Grants programme that will provide funding for all of the 300 schools in Quebec's English-language school boards to engage artists to work with students. ELAN is helping the Department of Canadian Heritage design a program so simple and user-friendly that every school in Quebec will want to participate several times over the four-year life of the project. This programme will create opportunities for many artists to work in schools.
The second Official Languages programme is designed to assist community media, whose survival has been threatened by the rise of global media conglomerates. Stronger local media means stronger communities. Our French-speaking colleagues outside Quebec have associations to represent community radio and community newspapers. In Quebec, we have the Quebec Community Newspapers Association (QCNA), but no group to represent community radio. ELAN has agreed to fill the gap with the assistance of Hugh Maynard who brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise. You will be hearing a lot more about these two initiatives in the future.
We have a new government in Quebec and a new Minister of Culture and Communications. I wish to congratulate Mme Nathalie Roy on her nomination. Mme Roy has been a member of the National Assembly since 2012 and I've had a couple of very positive interactions with her. We were also happy to learn that Mme Roy's Chief of Staff will be Manon Gauthier, who was responsible for the Cultural and Heritage Portfolio in Denis Coderre's Montreal administration. ELAN looks forward to working with both of them.


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Home » Several Teens Attacked Woman as She Called 911 to Report Fight
Several Teens Attacked Woman as She Called 911 to Report Fight
AKRON, Ohio — Investigators are searching for several teens who attacked a woman as she called 911 to report a fight she recorded with her cellphone.
The teens attacked the 27-year-old woman as she took video of a fight about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at Hardesty Park on Wallhaven Circle, police said in a news release.
No arrests have been made in the case.
Woman Recorded the Teens During a Massive Fight
The woman sat in her car as she called 911 to report a "brawl" involving approximately 20 teens, according to a recording of the call released Friday afternoon.
"I just told them that the cops are coming," the woman said in the 911 call. "Now they're all running."
The woman opened her car door to confront them, but they grabbed the door and pulled it open. The woman got out of the car, and several boys assaulted her while a girl took her cellphone, police said.
Most of the teens ran away, but several walked over to the woman's car and began to kick it, police said. The woman yelled at the teens and told them she had a video of their antics.
The 911 call becomes muffled as the scuffled occurs. Eventually, a boy can be heard in the recording yelling "let's go." They ran away before officers arrived at the park.
The woman suffered minor injuries in the attack, police said. She refused medical treatment but later went to a hospital.
Anyone with information about the teens is asked to call the Akron Police Department's detective bureau at (330) 375-2490.
Incidents like this one remind us that there are ways to stay safe in these incidents. If you find yourself in this woman's position, try not to engage with the people involved. If they engage with you, make sure you are as safe as possible and attempt to leave the situation if possible. Make sure to stay safe out there, people of Cleveland!
Men Arrested in Connection to 2015 Murder
16 Tornadoes in Most Parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana


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Trump Made Lasting Impact On Federal Courts
(RepublicanInformer.com)- One of President Donald Trump's legacies is sure to be his impact on federal courts throughout the United States.
In addition to nominating and then having confirmed three justices on the Supreme Court, the president appointed more than 230 judges to various federal courts.
One of Trump's biggest campaign promises was to stick with judicial appointees who would please his conservative base. It was one of the biggest keys that ended up winning over some of his Republican doubters before the 2016 presidential election.
Once Trump took office, he worked hand-in-hand with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to get a list of conservative judges nominated and then appointed to positions throughout the country.
President Trump didn't care one bit about any of the criticism he and McConnell faced from Democrats who weren't happy with the precision at which the system operated.
McConnell himself has been very pleased with how it's all gone. He said:
"I think it's far and away the most consequential thing I've ever been involved in. And it's the most long-lasting accomplishment of the current administration, by far."
Jonathan Adler, who is a law professor at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University School of Law, talked about Trump's impact in more detail. He said:
"Trump has basically done more than any president has done in a single term since (President Jimmy) Carter to put his stamp on the judiciary."
During the Carter administration, Congress created roughly 150 new judgeships.
It isn't just the sheer number of judges who Trump appointed to federal benches. It's also the lasting impact they will have.
All the federal judges hold lifetime positions. And since Trump selected a number of younger judges to fill the positions, including several who are in their 30s, they are likely to serve for decades. It's possible that all three people who Trump selected for the Supreme Court — Amy Coney Barrett (48 years old), Neil Gorsuch (53) and Brett Kavanaugh (55) — could serve for 30 years or more.
William O. Douglas holds the record having served the longest on the high court — 36 years, seven months and eight days. The liberal justice was appointed under Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939 and served until 1975.
Trump's appointees appear on some vital court's, too. Almost a third of all his appointees serve on a federal court of appeals.
What's most significant isn't the sheer number of appointees, or the courts to which they were appointed. It's the fact that Trump stuck to selecting judges who are dedicated to conservative ideals. This includes protection religious rights, gun rights, fighting against abortion and a lot of other cultural issues.
This isn't just theoretical, though. An independent study by Lisa Holmes, Kenneth Manning and Robert Carp compared decisions from Trump's appointees to more than 117,000 opinions that were published since 1932. Their conclusions:
"Trump has appointed judges who exhibit a distinct decision-making pattern that is, on the whole, significantly more conservative than previous presidents."