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No question scientific publishers are effectively a racket. The problem is that as a researcher you're stuck. If you want tenure, you need a publication in a bi
by entee 11y ago
No question scientific publishers are effectively a racket. The problem is that as a researcher you're stuck. If you want tenure, you need a publication in a big journal. There are a few that are open access in some domains, notably biology, but even there Plos Biology et. al. doesn't quite have the cachet of Nature/Science/Cell.
In other fields, it can be even harder to find a good open access solution. In chemistry for example, I can't think of one. You can pay to have ACS or other publishers make something open access, but that's more money out a researcher's pocket that's not going toward better science.
Sure, publishing has costs, but nowhere near what gets charged. Also, much of the labor of reviewing papers is also provided to publishers free of charge, scientists review each other's work for no fee before acceptance in a journal that will charge dearly for it.
We as tax payers pay for this work, the people we pay to do it are caught in a catch-22 situation where they can either hand over their work to someone who will charge an arm and a leg, or be pushed out of science.
- greeneggs 11y agoThe researchers deserve some of the blame as well. In physics, at least, and certainly in some other fields, there is a strong tradition of posting preprints to the arXiv or other similar free archives. The journals, including all the top journals, accommodate this---they have no choice. You mention chemistry. I don't know anything about chemistry journals, but given the precedent set by other fields, I feel that chemists don't have a good excuse for locking their research up behind paywalls.
- ylem 11y agoSome chemistry journals do not allow you to publish if you place a copy on a preprint server like arxiv. The key to this battle will be funding agencies.
- rdancer 11y agoPaywalls are a nuisance. Failures of peer review, lack of reproducibility, and political bias are some of the real problems. Scientists and the institutions that support them must work towards solving these problems. Nobody is going to do that for them. A good first step would be to start acknowledging that the practice of science is as political as any other important human endeavour, and not some impartial objective selfless oracle. Step two could be finding solutions based on this new admission.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]