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The real solution is to create more positions and increase the grant budgets. The reason the publishers have such a strangle hold over academic science is becau

The real solution is to create more positions and increase the grant budgets. The reason the publishers have such a strangle hold over academic science is because there are so few academic positions available to scientists that it becomes imperative to be published in an existing high impact factor / well known journal. If there wasn't such a hyper competitive atmosphere, people could explore open access journals more openly without fear of negative career implications.

hugh4 11y ago
People don't avoid open-access journals because they're low impact factor; many are quite high. People avoid them because there's a whopping big publication charge. What we really need to think about is decreasing the number of journals. But nope, spammy new for-profit journals are launched every week. Overall science funding is a separate issue, and so is the flawed metrics we use to determine who gets it.
- micwawa 11y ago
  Most of the spammy for-profit journals are ignored by serious academics. You wouldn't be caught with one of these on your CV. The big Elsevier ones are a problem, because they are revered as the good journals. For example, Advances in Math is very highly regarded, in particular in my department. I had promised to be done with Elsevier several years ago, but now my collaborator has spoken with an editor at Advances who suggested we submit there. It's the optimal journal for a number of different reasons. If this paper gets accepted, it strengthens my grant and tenure situation. I can't really justify putting myself at this disadvantage.
micwawa 11y ago
Hyper competitive atmosphere is a problem, but in order to scale out of it you would have to scale by a very large number. Many tenure-track positions have near 1000 applicants.
dredmorbius 11y ago
I'd argue that it's to fundamentally re-think how we reward and finance creative and information works. It's becoming hugely apparent that the "free market" approach isn't working well. The reasons for this are very well understood.

hugh4 11y ago

People don't avoid open-access journals because they're low impact factor; many are quite high. People avoid them because there's a whopping big publication charge. What we really need to think about is decreasing the number of journals. But nope, spammy new for-profit journals are launched every week. Overall science funding is a separate issue, and so is the flawed metrics we use to determine who gets it.

micwawa 11y ago
Most of the spammy for-profit journals are ignored by serious academics. You wouldn't be caught with one of these on your CV. The big Elsevier ones are a problem, because they are revered as the good journals. For example, Advances in Math is very highly regarded, in particular in my department. I had promised to be done with Elsevier several years ago, but now my collaborator has spoken with an editor at Advances who suggested we submit there. It's the optimal journal for a number of different reasons. If this paper gets accepted, it strengthens my grant and tenure situation. I can't really justify putting myself at this disadvantage.

micwawa 11y ago

Hyper competitive atmosphere is a problem, but in order to scale out of it you would have to scale by a very large number. Many tenure-track positions have near 1000 applicants.

dredmorbius 11y ago

I'd argue that it's to fundamentally re-think how we reward and finance creative and information works. It's becoming hugely apparent that the "free market" approach isn't working well. The reasons for this are very well understood.