4 ms·

Why are the academics forced to publish their papers through these paywalls? Hosting a PDF on the university website seems cheeper than going through these publ

Why are the academics forced to publish their papers through these paywalls? Hosting a PDF on the university website seems cheeper than going through these publishers. Are these university imposed rules? Are they forced to go through these publishers if they want their paper peer reviewed and published in journals?

earl_gray 11y ago
This was my immediate question. If the "faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all for free", and then are forced to "buy back the fruits of [their] labour at outrageous prices", why do academic institutions even bother paying money to these companies? If the refereeing is being done for free, naively it surprises me that universities haven't just set up an independent organisation to do peer reviewing.
- VLM 11y ago
  A good analogy is a farmer shopping at a supermarket.
- plafl 11y ago
  Researchers don't pay for access to journals, universities do. There is a personal benefit for a researcher to publish on a prestigious but paywalled journal but no personal cost.
friendzis 11y ago
To put it short: Academic "weight" works much like google - the more citations paper has, the higher it is ranked. Of course a citation from local university journal (probably every university has at least one) is worth much, much less than a citation from Nature. It is calculated from Impact Factor, that is in turn calculated from number of citations. Sort of a closed loop. This would not be too much of a problem if not for funding. You see, funding, that is necessary for anything non-trivial, is usually awarded according to researcher's reputation - something again based on impact, citations, etc.
- sevensor 11y ago
  It might even be more accurate to say that google works like academic "weight" -- it's my understanding that PageRank was originally intended to rank research papers.
- auvrw 11y ago
  yep, "Impact Factor" (IF) is the term, and (just to clarify) it encourages but does not force. there are open access journals like PLoS w/ significant IF, albeit not comparable to Nature. since the link below was written, PLoS has become not only open access for articles but also open access for the data those articles are based on. imo, open access to data (w/ privacy measures, of course, for human subjects) is of the same order of importance as access to articles. http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/06/20/the-rise-and-fall-of-plos-ones-impact-factor-2012-3-730/ http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/06/20/the-rise-and-f...

earl_gray 11y ago

This was my immediate question. If the "faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all for free", and then are forced to "buy back the fruits of [their] labour at outrageous prices", why do academic institutions even bother paying money to these companies? If the refereeing is being done for free, naively it surprises me that universities haven't just set up an independent organisation to do peer reviewing.

VLM 11y ago
A good analogy is a farmer shopping at a supermarket.
plafl 11y ago
Researchers don't pay for access to journals, universities do. There is a personal benefit for a researcher to publish on a prestigious but paywalled journal but no personal cost.

friendzis 11y ago

To put it short: Academic "weight" works much like google - the more citations paper has, the higher it is ranked. Of course a citation from local university journal (probably every university has at least one) is worth much, much less than a citation from Nature. It is calculated from Impact Factor, that is in turn calculated from number of citations. Sort of a closed loop. This would not be too much of a problem if not for funding. You see, funding, that is necessary for anything non-trivial, is usually awarded according to researcher's reputation - something again based on impact, citations, etc.

sevensor 11y ago
It might even be more accurate to say that google works like academic "weight" -- it's my understanding that PageRank was originally intended to rank research papers.
auvrw 11y ago
yep, "Impact Factor" (IF) is the term, and (just to clarify) it encourages but does not force. there are open access journals like PLoS w/ significant IF, albeit not comparable to Nature. since the link below was written, PLoS has become not only open access for articles but also open access for the data those articles are based on. imo, open access to data (w/ privacy measures, of course, for human subjects) is of the same order of importance as access to articles. http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/06/20/the-rise-and-fall-of-plos-ones-impact-factor-2012-3-730/ http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/06/20/the-rise-and-f...