13 ms·

Universities spend millions on accessing results of publicly funded research

624 points by versteegen 9y ago

bob_theslob646 9y ago
How the hell is this even legal? And people say the government is efficient? Is waste like this even preventable? Is it possible for people to have ethics?
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive rants to HN. I'm sure most of us agree with you but one still has to bring thoughtful comments, not howls, into the discussion. If you can't or don't want to do that, please just don't post until you can and do.
0xWilliam 9y ago
Because it costs money to read the research that costs money to produce... How is this controversial?
- FeteCommuniste 9y ago
  The research has already been funded through taxes. The money made from journal subscriptions goes to the publisher, not to the researchers or their institutions. The reason why researchers publish in such expensive journals is historical (the journal has a good reputation and is thus widely read), not because they are looking to fund their research.
- prklmn 9y ago
  The researchers don't get the money that's being discussed, the journals do.
- neuromantik8086 9y ago
  I would review the following articles for more context / so that you can actually produce an informed (rather than lazy) opinion: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-publishing-monopoly-challenged https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-... https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/31858/title/Opinion--Academic-Publishing-Is-Broken/ https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/31858... http://thecostofknowledge.com/ http://thecostofknowledge.com/
  - smn1234 9y ago
    the first thing I thought of when I came across this post is indeed https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...
- UncleMeat 9y ago
  The journals charge researchers. I literally paid thousands of dollars to have my papers published in journals, who did little in terms of editing or typesetting, so that they could turn around and sell those papers to other people and give me none of the proceeds.
ajoy 9y ago
One entity not mentioned in the article : https://www.plos.org/who-we-are https://www.plos.org/who-we-are
js8 9y ago
And it's gonna cost even more money, because some are trying to actively block access to Scihub. For example: https://sciencebusiness.net/news/court-tells-internet-companies-block-access-pirate-research-site-sci-hub https://sciencebusiness.net/news/court-tells-internet-compan...
VeronicaJJ123 9y ago
This is a market ripe for disruption but I really don't get the negative publicity to publishers. I think people mix up two different things. - You see research that is funded by taxpayer should be available to public is a fair assumption. - But not all research generated through this is valuable or worth reading. - Journals do the job of looking at all the submitted research and selecting the best research. The value that these journals add is of curation. - However that curation comes at a price. That price might be things like exclusive publication rights and so on. Nothing prevents Dr. X from publishing his paper on his own website but then no one will take it seriously. Personally, I think this is the correct thing to do. We should all work towards deletigimizing the journal cartels and rather rely on social media and technology to detect credible research. Remember that Bitcoin's foundational paper was written by someone whose real identity is not even known.
hectorr1 9y ago
The practice of charging for subscriptions to information that benefits the public good seems silly. Publishing fees make sense, researchers would work the costs into their grant proposals and taxpayers would ultimately bear the cost there instead of in university departmental budgets. But I also know nothing about running a journal. Can someone explain the cost structure of an academic journal, and why a model like publishing fees wouldn't work?
- rpedela 9y ago
  Publishing fees could introduce a perverse incentive for publishers to accept any paper regardless of quality. Although maybe making it a "review fee" may be better. Publishers get more money the more submissions, but quality would still be maintained. Otherwise, I agree with you.
- nordsieck 9y ago
  All things being equal, a journal that charges a subscription will out-compete a journal that charges publishing fees because it shifts fees from the researcher to a bunch of schools. The schools are relatively cost insensitive as long as the journal is high impact. Researchers will always be highly cost sensitive.
  - kkylin 9y ago
    Not to say whether they are a good idea or bad idea in general, but on thing worth considering is that publishing fees also act as a barrier to entry for less well-funded groups. Some journals even charge fees to submit (even if you are rejected in the end). This can be especially problematic for interdiscinplinary work -- in my field (applied math) grants are generally smaller, and if I submitting a paper to a biology journal that charges a submission fee up front is not always a triial decision.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  That fee is called a "page charge", and many journals have them. Some are mostly supported by page charges, some open-access journals are entirely supported by them.
westurner 9y ago
Are there good open source solutions for journal publishing? (HTML abstract, PDFs, comments, ...)?
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Yes, quite a few: [1], [2], [3], [4], to name a few. Maintain a server and keeping software up to date is no small feat, however, so just making those available does not seem to be enough (although it helps!). [1] https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/ https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/ [2] https://janeway.systems/ https://janeway.systems/ [3] https://coko.foundation/ https://coko.foundation/ [4] https://cos.io/ https://cos.io/
  - neuromantik8086 9y ago
    I don't think that [4] can really be accurately characterized as producing general-purpose journal management systems. The OSF is more for study management and sharing results, although I imagine that you're referring to OSF Preprints (https://osf.io/preprints https://osf.io/preprints) which serves a similar function for pre-peer review results sharing. For [3], the actual platforms produced by Coko and its affiliates are more readily discovered here: https://pubsweet.org/ https://pubsweet.org/ http://substance.io/ http://substance.io/ Hadn't heard of [2] before- looks neat. We have [1] currently deployed for a couple of websites where I currently work. We've found it to be a bit of a pain and are trying to phase it out to some degree. It's basically a layer on top of WordPress to the best of my understanding (I haven't dealt too much with it).
    - Vinnl 9y ago
      You're completely correct, thanks for the updated links! Your final point is probably correct, but I'd add that when it comes to wanting to take publishing out of the hands of the established publishers, having to run software yourself is going to be painful anyway (though hopefully not as painful as OJS, which has quite a history already).
- neuromantik8086 9y ago
paulsutter 9y ago
Everyone working for Elsevier should resign. The board is forced to pursue this rapacious harvest strategy, but the employees are not. They should go work for an honest, value-creating company.
- torpfactory 9y ago
  Crowd fund a program to offer buy-outs of key employees in immoral enterprises. How much would it take to get half of the employees to resign?
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    My gut reaction is that this creates a moral hazard. Social pressure seems generally more viable and robust. Perhaps something like this could work under certain limited circumstances... but I'm skeptical.
    - torpfactory 9y ago
      Could make it available only for employees over a certain tenure at the company (to prevent a get hired, get paid scenario) and also make pay outs tied to length of time outside of those enterprises (i.e. 25% immediately, and another 25% for each of three years after you quit). Could offer incentives for people to convince their co-workers to quit en-masse (i.e., bonus payouts for getting many employees to quit an once)...
  - glitcher 9y ago
    Sounds like the Cobra Effect just waiting to happen. Besides, if the positions pay well there will be plenty of other candidates willing step in. There is no shortage of examples showing that morals are often secondary to money.
    - choward 9y ago
      You didn't explain how it would make the situation worse.
subcosmos 9y ago
Ugh. Why are we still having this conversation after so many years? Everyone knows the system is broken but no one will fix it.
- revelation 9y ago
  In Germany universities have joined efforts to at least bargain with Elsevier & others for overall cost reductions: https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/ https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/ Of course in the US with basically unlimited student loan money, no one seems to be in a particular hurry to cut costs.
  - Vinnl 9y ago
    > Of course in the US with basically unlimited student loan money, no one seems to be in a particular hurry to cut costs. Well... https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-univ...
- Vinnl 9y ago
  There are many people/organisations trying to fix it (a few examples at [1]). However, it's a system that keeps itself intact and is really hard to change, which I wrote about at [2]. [1] https://medium.com/flockademic/these-trailblazers-are-paving-the-way-for-open-access-7d098172112b https://medium.com/flockademic/these-trailblazers-are-paving... [2] https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarly-publishing-eef794937c9c https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarl...
- pfranz 9y ago
  I was surprised to see this article because I remember hearing steps to address this in the U.S. over the years. Then I actually saw the article was about New Zealand and comments are about Germany and other countries. After doing a quick search here's some info I found about U.S. federal funding for research: https://scholcomm.columbia.edu/open-access/public-access-mandates-for-federally-funded-research/ https://scholcomm.columbia.edu/open-access/public-access-man... I'm not in the research business, but available after 1 year sounds reasonable to me. I can see the cost in vetting and distributing and how certain businesses and universities would pay a premium for quicker access.
avs733 9y ago
Lets narrow it a little bit for anyone who wants to try and argue that there is nothing wrong here... Universities pay publishing companies millions to access the results of research their employees performed.
- auxym 9y ago
  Performed often with the help of public funds.
- benstrumental 9y ago
  ... and publishing companies use that money to lobby against free/cheaper alternatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Chemical_Society#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Chemical_Society#Cont...
lorenzhs 9y ago
There's currently a push in Germany to negotiate more reasonable licensing agreements nationwide, and to publish all research by authors in Germany under a CC-BY licence: https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/ https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/. There's a long list of universities that have decided not to renew their contracts with Elsevier for future publications. I recently got an email from my university's administration that "numerous scientists have pledged their support in the negotiations with Elsevier by not reviewing for or acting as editor of Elsevier publications until a mutual agreement has been reached".
- Vinnl 9y ago
  And apparently something similar is happening in France with Springer (and next year Elsevier): https://www.soundofscience.fr/755 https://www.soundofscience.fr/755 (article in French)
- manol74 9y ago
  I work at a German research center and we recently also got informed by our library that all contracts with Elsevier will end at the end of year. However, and this is the fun part, it was also noted that it has been reported by other institutions that Elsevier did not actually cancel the access permissions for them after the contracts ended. Seems to me we could finally got into a good position for negotiations about fair access to our own work.
hyperion2010 9y ago
Something on the order of 50% of all research funding goes to the academic publishing industry. edit: Downvote if you want, but it is true, maybe not at every institution, but some Latin American countries the budget for access to the literature is greater than what they spend on supporting basic research [0]. 0. https://www.slideshare.net/biodiego88/force2017-ppt-diegogomez-81175547 https://www.slideshare.net/biodiego88/force2017-ppt-diegogom...
- Kalium 9y ago
  For such a strong statement as that, some context is critical. Many readers are doing mental math based on American pay rates, and concluding that this can't possibly be true. Indeed, the access cost cited won't be anything even slightly approaching 50% in a first world context. In less well off developing countries, you are absolutely and completely correct in every way, shape, form, and manner. The cost for access to literature can be greater than that of the salaries a department pays its basic research faculty.
  - deerpig 9y ago
    I am charged with the task of returning a university that used to be a research school before the Khmer Rouge to be a national research university. Professors are paid a little over US$500 a month by the government. Staff often have to buy their own office supplies, computers and even light bulbs. We're finally getting some foreign grants from China to rebuild some of the laboratories, but there is no budget for paying subscriptions to journals. JSTOR provides reasonable discounts for developing countries, as does APNIC (for IP blocks) but it's difficult to try to build something when US45,000 a year is considered to be a low paying job and used as a baseline for access to information. Thankfully there is lib-gen and sci-hub. Sadly, the United States is trying to force developing countries to support copyright measures that will lock us out if we adopt them.
avar 9y ago
The most relevant quote in the article: > the research community uses historical journal reputation to > evaluate researchers, making it harder for new, better run > journals to enter the market. This problem would be solved tomorrow if those allocating public money to science made funding contingent on the research being published in open access journals. Scientists can't have their cake and eat it too. Either they fund their own research and publish in prestigious expensive journals that cost the public money, or they take public money and make the research available for all. But it's not easy to migrate to that because scientist aren't just using journals as a publication platform, but as a reputation platform as a function of their exclusivity and reputation.
- pdonis 9y ago
  Many scientists already publish preprints on open sites like arxiv.org. Which, btw, also illustrates that the supposed gatekeeping role that journals were playing, which made them worth their fees, is largely gone now.
  - Vinnl 9y ago
    And yet those fees continue to be paid...
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Yes, but it's not that simple. Funders don't want to be seen as trying to decide where their researchers publish. They can stipulate Open Access (and many do! [1] [2] [3]), but then authors continue to want to publish in the journals with high scores because it helps those careers, so those journals/publishers charge egregious fees to publish there (instead of subscription fees), which are once again paid from public money and raise the barrier to publish research, e.g. for universities in developing countries. [1] https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/General-Information/Open-Access-Policy https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/General-Informat... [2] https://wellcome.ac.uk/funding/managing-grant/open-access-policy https://wellcome.ac.uk/funding/managing-grant/open-access-po... [3] https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=openaccess https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=opena...
diziet 9y ago
In the meantime, Reed Elsevier stock is at an all time high https://www.nyse.com/quote/XXXX:RELX https://www.nyse.com/quote/XXXX:RELX
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Obviously - they've so far managed to stave off threats to their subscription business model, and managed to make good money off of the open access movement (through charging publishing fees for opening up articles). That said, they do definitely feel the pressure as well, given their moving in the direction of a research analytics company rather than a publisher.
zitterbewegung 9y ago
I posted a commenton how I read mathematics [1] I would be able to not jump through so many hoops if universities got what they contributed. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15911888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15911888
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Now imagine that, but for reading up on experimental treatments for a rare disease that you or a relative got.
thg 9y ago
This reminds me that the EU had a proposal last year about mandating all publicly-funded research to be open access. I'm curious to see what will become of that. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/dramatic-statement-european-leaders-call-immediate-open-access-all-scientific-papers https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/dramatic-statement-e... https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=openaccess https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=opena...
- r3bl 9y ago
  Somewhat related, there's also small advocacy towards releasing publicly funded code under the open source licenses: https://publiccode.eu/ https://publiccode.eu/
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Vinnl 9y ago
I got so fed up with this that I quit my job a few months ago to work on this issue [1]. I've researched it quite a bit and have written about that (which I've been linking to where relevant in the comments here), and I'm gearing up to launch a non-profit to combat this in January. If you're interested, you can leave your email address at https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic (And of course, any questions and remarks are welcome!) [1] https://medium.com/flockademic/dear-scientists-help-me-help-you-help-me-fix-academic-publishing-fe31004b8de7 https://medium.com/flockademic/dear-scientists-help-me-help-...
ksk 9y ago
What is stopping somebody from not publishing in a journal and simply putting up a PDF on their own website? Otherwise, if you ran a Journal, how would you setup a free system to curate high-impact research? Or alternatively, how much would you charge to run such a journal?
- Vinnl 9y ago
  > What is stopping somebody from not publishing in a journal and simply putting up a PDF on their own website? That they want to have a job in research, which are really, really scarce. I explained this in more detail at https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-can-make-or-break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-ca... > Otherwise, if you ran a Journal, how would you setup a free system to curate high-impact research? Or alternatively, how much would you charge to run such a journal? If you run a journal, you're most likely one of the big publishers that is profiting heavily from the status quo. Much of the actual academic work (finding reviewers, etc.) is done by actual academics (mostly for free), but the rest of it, including promoting it to potential readers, is done by the publishers. (There have been some success stories of editorial boards leaving the publishers' journals to start their own, e.g. Glossa (formerly Lingua), but those are few and far between.
  - ksk 9y ago
    Thanks for your comment. I enjoyed reading your article.
singhrac 9y ago
Recently, I tried to access a paper I had written in the past to put in my grad school application, and couldn't get it. My current university doesn't have access to it. The irony is ridiculous.
- rafiki6 9y ago
  Same issue, luckily i found a copy buried deep in my google drive
Radim 9y ago
I've had dealings with the publishing industry over the years and some of the "Open Access to the rescue!" comments here badly underestimate the business acumen of Elsevier & co. They're no idiot. Do you think these guys have been asleep at the wheel for the past 6 years, oblivious to the Open Access debate and the general sentiment? When it comes to Open Access, the new distribution and sales channels have already been accounted for, new policies (and policy makers) worked out. Open Access will be the second coming of Christ for that industry, a new golden goose.
grawprog 9y ago
When I was in school we had to travel to the library of a different University to work on some of our projects because the one we went to didn't pay for the journals we needed to access to do our work and buying access to a single article would have been ridiculous. We cited over 100 papers in our final project many of those we couldn't access from our school. Paying for them would have cost anywhere from $20 to over $100 per article, not issue, article. A good majority of the studies we cited were funded either directly through government or through universities funded by government. It's entirely a way to keep knowledge out of the hands of the poor. Publicly funded studies should be made freely available to everyone. Even the project I worked on when I finished school. We were funded by government grants and our results were intended to be posted publicly, it was written in our proposal. Instead, once we started posting our data online we were told that we were no longer allowed to and our data must now be submitted to a government database. Otherwise we would recieve no more funding.This database of course had access fees that needed to be paid. It felt really shitty to have to lock everything away. I'd worked on an online database and map I was really excited about and it all had to be taken down.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  A friend was working for the EPA and she didn't have access to all the journals to do her work so she had to ask me to fetch them for her from the university library. Remember seeing the prices for each article and each subscription and thinking - they are making some nice profits charging $30 per paper.
  - bluenose69 9y ago
    I've been in academia for three decades, and have yet to pay a cent to download a paper. I don't know any colleagues or students who have done so, either. I doubt that they make much money from per-article fees. I think they set them high so that universities will be forced to subscribe. My funding councils want people to publish in open-access journals, but they don't provide extra funds for the doubling of cost that's involved. The money has to come from somewhere, and the main cost item tends to be student stipends, so professors tend to continue publishing in pay-access journals. I've been on both sides of the "fetch for a friend" process. I've had to ask friends to fetch copies of papers that I've written, for which I've paid page charges, because my university had to drop the journal in one or another waves of cost saving. And for all this money, the journals do very little in the way of contributing to the process, nowadays. Reviewers work for free, as do most academic editors. Technical editors seem to barely exist anymore, since authors do their own typesetting and journals rely on academic reviewers to help with English. Academics are caught in a narrowing vice as they move through the career process. Papers have to appear in high-reputation journals, or else. And those journals just happen to be expensive.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
I'm not very well versed in academia, so correct me if I'm wrong. The research in these journals isn't funded by the journals, and researchers aren't payed royalties for people reading these journals (I assume they don't get paid by the journal at all). So why are these journals so expensive to access? Is it all just a rort?
- cma 9y ago
  Not just the research, all the hard work of peer review, etc. is volunteer. Typesetting and stuff is paid for by the journal. Researchers publishing in the journals often have to pay a per page publication fee in addition to missing out on any royalties.
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Basically, yes. There is barely any market pressure on the publishers, so they can keep asking ridiculous fees. More on why it doesn't change at [1], and how it got this way at [2]. [1] https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarly-publishing-eef794937c9c https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarl... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...
grrmx1 9y ago
It's easy to be outraged by this, but the bottom line is that journals need to make money to sustain their own operations. Research might be tax-funded, but the publishing houses are privately-held entities with employees and payroll (per their wiki page, for example, Nature employs 800 people). Someone has to pay for expenses associated with maintaining these platforms. Right now its either the tax payers or college students who pay for it indirectly, when their institution buys library access.
- fallatio 9y ago
  This doesn't make logical sense. We don't care about their problems, their employees should go find another job which isn't so predatory and leaching off public programs and funding. Nobody has to pay, a better alternative is for these publishers to cease to exist.
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Yes, but there are strong reasons to believe that the amount of money they are currently charging is in no way proportionate to the amount they need to sustain (+reasonable profits): https://medium.com/flockademic/the-future-of-open-access-should-not-be-left-to-the-legacy-publishers-634c188d28b9 https://medium.com/flockademic/the-future-of-open-access-sho...
exar0815 9y ago
Its not only the journals. Another thing that costs shittons of money are standards. A single two-dozen page ISO, DIN or comparable standard can easily amount to a couple thousand Euros. And it's not like you need one. You might need a second or third or fourth one because they just chain their references. "Test Devices can be found in ISO-123" In ISO-123:"The devices listed here have to be configured analogue to the devices mentioned in DIN-2153" And so on. And don't get me started about versioning. A couple of same-number standards in parallel because they are from different months or years or just small amendments (Single Sentences). And there is only one company selling em. It's laughable. Oh, and it's not as if anyone gets paid to write standards. Standards are written for free by engineers and scientists in their free time. It's a money-printing machine.
kayhi 9y ago
Can’t wait for the day that universities are massively overpaying supplies, chemicals and equipment comes to light.
- michaelhoffman 9y ago
  Those are not comparable to research publications. The university does not give corporations chemicals for free and then pay to get them back.
cosmic_ape 9y ago
A good journal needs good reviewers. The quality of peer-review at conferences for example is terrible, and that is well known. Even at not very big conferences, and despite the usually hard work of the organizers. So establishing a good review process is not easy and perhaps that is what is stopping the open access model rather than just the prestige issue mentioned in other comments.
- anbende 9y ago
  The review process at the "prestige" journals in many disciplines is garbage. This is a known issue. Competent experts simply don't have time to do the reviews, so they end up being farmed out to graduate students and post-docs if they get done at all. I had one paper get rejected, because they couldn't find anyone to review it! By the time a reviewer is found, you're often the action-editor's last desperate pool of 5th-tier people who are sort of maybe vaguely related to the topic area. Add to that that the majority of papers in many disciplines receive virtually zero statistical oversight from an actual statistical expert, and... well... you begin to wonder what service the existing journals are actually adding. Marketing and sales?
  - cosmic_ape 9y ago
    I know that in some journals it is good some of the time. But yeah, didn't mean to imply thats always good. Maybe we should introduce a process of reviewing the reviews, and some incentives accordingly. Not sure how to do that.
    - aldanor 9y ago
      An example - as a 1st year grad student, I had to review a number of articles in 'top-ranked' journals, just because my supervisor preferred to dump it on me rather than bother to do it himself...
gech 9y ago
Remember Aaron Swartz
Avshalom 9y ago
It's almost like everyone agrees capitalism is fucking terrible.
RandomCSGeek 9y ago
I am not a researcher, so I'd like to get some answers. Why do people publish papers. Is it to get acknowledged for the work? Is it a requirement for getting PhD? Or is it so that world could benefit from the research? Also, can someone simply use a paper, copy that idea to make a product, and make money out of it, without giving anything back to the researchers? If researchers publish out of necessity or to get acknowledged or so that the "world knows", can't they just put it on Arxiv? Why spend money on costly journals?
- Vinnl 9y ago
  > Why do people publish papers. Is it to get acknowledged for the work? Is it a requirement for getting PhD? Or is it so that world could benefit from the research? All three of those are correct. > Also, can someone simply use a paper, copy that idea to make a product, and make money out of it, without giving anything back to the researchers? Yes, although it's usually not that simple. The focus of research is usually more fundamental in nature, that only leads to products far down the road. But note that the researchers are funded using public money, so if there was anything to give back, it would be to the public (which sort of happens through new companies). > If researchers publish out of necessity or to get acknowledged or so that the "world knows", can't they just put it on Arxiv? Why spend money on costly journals? "Acknowledgement" goes beyond that - it needs to be considered good in order to qualify for further academic positions. See https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-can-make-or-break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-ca...

624 points by versteegen 9y ago

How the hell is this even legal? And people say the government is efficient? Is waste like this even preventable? Is it possible for people to have ethics?

dang 9y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive rants to HN. I'm sure most of us agree with you but one still has to bring thoughtful comments, not howls, into the discussion. If you can't or don't want to do that, please just don't post until you can and do.

0xWilliam 9y ago

Because it costs money to read the research that costs money to produce... How is this controversial?

FeteCommuniste 9y ago
The research has already been funded through taxes. The money made from journal subscriptions goes to the publisher, not to the researchers or their institutions. The reason why researchers publish in such expensive journals is historical (the journal has a good reputation and is thus widely read), not because they are looking to fund their research.
prklmn 9y ago
The researchers don't get the money that's being discussed, the journals do.
neuromantik8086 9y ago
I would review the following articles for more context / so that you can actually produce an informed (rather than lazy) opinion: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-publishing-monopoly-challenged https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-... https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/31858/title/Opinion--Academic-Publishing-Is-Broken/ https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/31858... http://thecostofknowledge.com/ http://thecostofknowledge.com/
- smn1234 9y ago
  the first thing I thought of when I came across this post is indeed https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...
UncleMeat 9y ago
The journals charge researchers. I literally paid thousands of dollars to have my papers published in journals, who did little in terms of editing or typesetting, so that they could turn around and sell those papers to other people and give me none of the proceeds.

ajoy 9y ago

One entity not mentioned in the article : https://www.plos.org/who-we-are https://www.plos.org/who-we-are

js8 9y ago

And it's gonna cost even more money, because some are trying to actively block access to Scihub. For example: https://sciencebusiness.net/news/court-tells-internet-companies-block-access-pirate-research-site-sci-hub https://sciencebusiness.net/news/court-tells-internet-compan...

VeronicaJJ123 9y ago

This is a market ripe for disruption but I really don't get the negative publicity to publishers. I think people mix up two different things. - You see research that is funded by taxpayer should be available to public is a fair assumption. - But not all research generated through this is valuable or worth reading. - Journals do the job of looking at all the submitted research and selecting the best research. The value that these journals add is of curation. - However that curation comes at a price. That price might be things like exclusive publication rights and so on. Nothing prevents Dr. X from publishing his paper on his own website but then no one will take it seriously. Personally, I think this is the correct thing to do. We should all work towards deletigimizing the journal cartels and rather rely on social media and technology to detect credible research. Remember that Bitcoin's foundational paper was written by someone whose real identity is not even known.

hectorr1 9y ago

The practice of charging for subscriptions to information that benefits the public good seems silly. Publishing fees make sense, researchers would work the costs into their grant proposals and taxpayers would ultimately bear the cost there instead of in university departmental budgets. But I also know nothing about running a journal. Can someone explain the cost structure of an academic journal, and why a model like publishing fees wouldn't work?

rpedela 9y ago
Publishing fees could introduce a perverse incentive for publishers to accept any paper regardless of quality. Although maybe making it a "review fee" may be better. Publishers get more money the more submissions, but quality would still be maintained. Otherwise, I agree with you.
nordsieck 9y ago
All things being equal, a journal that charges a subscription will out-compete a journal that charges publishing fees because it shifts fees from the researcher to a bunch of schools. The schools are relatively cost insensitive as long as the journal is high impact. Researchers will always be highly cost sensitive.
- kkylin 9y ago
  Not to say whether they are a good idea or bad idea in general, but on thing worth considering is that publishing fees also act as a barrier to entry for less well-funded groups. Some journals even charge fees to submit (even if you are rejected in the end). This can be especially problematic for interdiscinplinary work -- in my field (applied math) grants are generally smaller, and if I submitting a paper to a biology journal that charges a submission fee up front is not always a triial decision.
greglindahl 9y ago
That fee is called a "page charge", and many journals have them. Some are mostly supported by page charges, some open-access journals are entirely supported by them.

westurner 9y ago

Are there good open source solutions for journal publishing? (HTML abstract, PDFs, comments, ...)?

Vinnl 9y ago
Yes, quite a few: [1], [2], [3], [4], to name a few. Maintain a server and keeping software up to date is no small feat, however, so just making those available does not seem to be enough (although it helps!). [1] https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/ https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/ [2] https://janeway.systems/ https://janeway.systems/ [3] https://coko.foundation/ https://coko.foundation/ [4] https://cos.io/ https://cos.io/
- neuromantik8086 9y ago
  I don't think that [4] can really be accurately characterized as producing general-purpose journal management systems. The OSF is more for study management and sharing results, although I imagine that you're referring to OSF Preprints (https://osf.io/preprints https://osf.io/preprints) which serves a similar function for pre-peer review results sharing. For [3], the actual platforms produced by Coko and its affiliates are more readily discovered here: https://pubsweet.org/ https://pubsweet.org/ http://substance.io/ http://substance.io/ Hadn't heard of [2] before- looks neat. We have [1] currently deployed for a couple of websites where I currently work. We've found it to be a bit of a pain and are trying to phase it out to some degree. It's basically a layer on top of WordPress to the best of my understanding (I haven't dealt too much with it).
  - Vinnl 9y ago
    You're completely correct, thanks for the updated links! Your final point is probably correct, but I'd add that when it comes to wanting to take publishing out of the hands of the established publishers, having to run software yourself is going to be painful anyway (though hopefully not as painful as OJS, which has quite a history already).
neuromantik8086 9y ago

paulsutter 9y ago

Everyone working for Elsevier should resign. The board is forced to pursue this rapacious harvest strategy, but the employees are not. They should go work for an honest, value-creating company.

torpfactory 9y ago
Crowd fund a program to offer buy-outs of key employees in immoral enterprises. How much would it take to get half of the employees to resign?
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  My gut reaction is that this creates a moral hazard. Social pressure seems generally more viable and robust. Perhaps something like this could work under certain limited circumstances... but I'm skeptical.
  - torpfactory 9y ago
    Could make it available only for employees over a certain tenure at the company (to prevent a get hired, get paid scenario) and also make pay outs tied to length of time outside of those enterprises (i.e. 25% immediately, and another 25% for each of three years after you quit). Could offer incentives for people to convince their co-workers to quit en-masse (i.e., bonus payouts for getting many employees to quit an once)...
- glitcher 9y ago
  Sounds like the Cobra Effect just waiting to happen. Besides, if the positions pay well there will be plenty of other candidates willing step in. There is no shortage of examples showing that morals are often secondary to money.
  - choward 9y ago
    You didn't explain how it would make the situation worse.

subcosmos 9y ago

Ugh. Why are we still having this conversation after so many years? Everyone knows the system is broken but no one will fix it.

revelation 9y ago
In Germany universities have joined efforts to at least bargain with Elsevier & others for overall cost reductions: https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/ https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/ Of course in the US with basically unlimited student loan money, no one seems to be in a particular hurry to cut costs.
- Vinnl 9y ago
  > Of course in the US with basically unlimited student loan money, no one seems to be in a particular hurry to cut costs. Well... https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-univ...
Vinnl 9y ago
There are many people/organisations trying to fix it (a few examples at [1]). However, it's a system that keeps itself intact and is really hard to change, which I wrote about at [2]. [1] https://medium.com/flockademic/these-trailblazers-are-paving-the-way-for-open-access-7d098172112b https://medium.com/flockademic/these-trailblazers-are-paving... [2] https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarly-publishing-eef794937c9c https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarl...
pfranz 9y ago
I was surprised to see this article because I remember hearing steps to address this in the U.S. over the years. Then I actually saw the article was about New Zealand and comments are about Germany and other countries. After doing a quick search here's some info I found about U.S. federal funding for research: https://scholcomm.columbia.edu/open-access/public-access-mandates-for-federally-funded-research/ https://scholcomm.columbia.edu/open-access/public-access-man... I'm not in the research business, but available after 1 year sounds reasonable to me. I can see the cost in vetting and distributing and how certain businesses and universities would pay a premium for quicker access.

avs733 9y ago

Lets narrow it a little bit for anyone who wants to try and argue that there is nothing wrong here... Universities pay publishing companies millions to access the results of research their employees performed.

auxym 9y ago
Performed often with the help of public funds.
benstrumental 9y ago
... and publishing companies use that money to lobby against free/cheaper alternatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Chemical_Society#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Chemical_Society#Cont...

lorenzhs 9y ago

There's currently a push in Germany to negotiate more reasonable licensing agreements nationwide, and to publish all research by authors in Germany under a CC-BY licence: https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/ https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/. There's a long list of universities that have decided not to renew their contracts with Elsevier for future publications. I recently got an email from my university's administration that "numerous scientists have pledged their support in the negotiations with Elsevier by not reviewing for or acting as editor of Elsevier publications until a mutual agreement has been reached".

Vinnl 9y ago
And apparently something similar is happening in France with Springer (and next year Elsevier): https://www.soundofscience.fr/755 https://www.soundofscience.fr/755 (article in French)
manol74 9y ago
I work at a German research center and we recently also got informed by our library that all contracts with Elsevier will end at the end of year. However, and this is the fun part, it was also noted that it has been reported by other institutions that Elsevier did not actually cancel the access permissions for them after the contracts ended. Seems to me we could finally got into a good position for negotiations about fair access to our own work.

hyperion2010 9y ago

Something on the order of 50% of all research funding goes to the academic publishing industry. edit: Downvote if you want, but it is true, maybe not at every institution, but some Latin American countries the budget for access to the literature is greater than what they spend on supporting basic research [0]. 0. https://www.slideshare.net/biodiego88/force2017-ppt-diegogomez-81175547 https://www.slideshare.net/biodiego88/force2017-ppt-diegogom...

Kalium 9y ago
For such a strong statement as that, some context is critical. Many readers are doing mental math based on American pay rates, and concluding that this can't possibly be true. Indeed, the access cost cited won't be anything even slightly approaching 50% in a first world context. In less well off developing countries, you are absolutely and completely correct in every way, shape, form, and manner. The cost for access to literature can be greater than that of the salaries a department pays its basic research faculty.
- deerpig 9y ago
  I am charged with the task of returning a university that used to be a research school before the Khmer Rouge to be a national research university. Professors are paid a little over US$500 a month by the government. Staff often have to buy their own office supplies, computers and even light bulbs. We're finally getting some foreign grants from China to rebuild some of the laboratories, but there is no budget for paying subscriptions to journals. JSTOR provides reasonable discounts for developing countries, as does APNIC (for IP blocks) but it's difficult to try to build something when US45,000 a year is considered to be a low paying job and used as a baseline for access to information. Thankfully there is lib-gen and sci-hub. Sadly, the United States is trying to force developing countries to support copyright measures that will lock us out if we adopt them.

avar 9y ago

The most relevant quote in the article: > the research community uses historical journal reputation to > evaluate researchers, making it harder for new, better run > journals to enter the market. This problem would be solved tomorrow if those allocating public money to science made funding contingent on the research being published in open access journals. Scientists can't have their cake and eat it too. Either they fund their own research and publish in prestigious expensive journals that cost the public money, or they take public money and make the research available for all. But it's not easy to migrate to that because scientist aren't just using journals as a publication platform, but as a reputation platform as a function of their exclusivity and reputation.

pdonis 9y ago
Many scientists already publish preprints on open sites like arxiv.org. Which, btw, also illustrates that the supposed gatekeeping role that journals were playing, which made them worth their fees, is largely gone now.
- Vinnl 9y ago
  And yet those fees continue to be paid...
Vinnl 9y ago
Yes, but it's not that simple. Funders don't want to be seen as trying to decide where their researchers publish. They can stipulate Open Access (and many do! [1] [2] [3]), but then authors continue to want to publish in the journals with high scores because it helps those careers, so those journals/publishers charge egregious fees to publish there (instead of subscription fees), which are once again paid from public money and raise the barrier to publish research, e.g. for universities in developing countries. [1] https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/General-Information/Open-Access-Policy https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/General-Informat... [2] https://wellcome.ac.uk/funding/managing-grant/open-access-policy https://wellcome.ac.uk/funding/managing-grant/open-access-po... [3] https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=openaccess https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=opena...

diziet 9y ago

In the meantime, Reed Elsevier stock is at an all time high https://www.nyse.com/quote/XXXX:RELX https://www.nyse.com/quote/XXXX:RELX

Vinnl 9y ago
Obviously - they've so far managed to stave off threats to their subscription business model, and managed to make good money off of the open access movement (through charging publishing fees for opening up articles). That said, they do definitely feel the pressure as well, given their moving in the direction of a research analytics company rather than a publisher.

zitterbewegung 9y ago

I posted a commenton how I read mathematics [1] I would be able to not jump through so many hoops if universities got what they contributed. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15911888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15911888

Vinnl 9y ago
Now imagine that, but for reading up on experimental treatments for a rare disease that you or a relative got.

thg 9y ago

This reminds me that the EU had a proposal last year about mandating all publicly-funded research to be open access. I'm curious to see what will become of that. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/dramatic-statement-european-leaders-call-immediate-open-access-all-scientific-papers https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/dramatic-statement-e... https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=openaccess https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=opena...

r3bl 9y ago
Somewhat related, there's also small advocacy towards releasing publicly funded code under the open source licenses: https://publiccode.eu/ https://publiccode.eu/

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Vinnl 9y ago

I got so fed up with this that I quit my job a few months ago to work on this issue [1]. I've researched it quite a bit and have written about that (which I've been linking to where relevant in the comments here), and I'm gearing up to launch a non-profit to combat this in January. If you're interested, you can leave your email address at https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic (And of course, any questions and remarks are welcome!) [1] https://medium.com/flockademic/dear-scientists-help-me-help-you-help-me-fix-academic-publishing-fe31004b8de7 https://medium.com/flockademic/dear-scientists-help-me-help-...

ksk 9y ago

What is stopping somebody from not publishing in a journal and simply putting up a PDF on their own website? Otherwise, if you ran a Journal, how would you setup a free system to curate high-impact research? Or alternatively, how much would you charge to run such a journal?

Vinnl 9y ago
> What is stopping somebody from not publishing in a journal and simply putting up a PDF on their own website? That they want to have a job in research, which are really, really scarce. I explained this in more detail at https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-can-make-or-break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-ca... > Otherwise, if you ran a Journal, how would you setup a free system to curate high-impact research? Or alternatively, how much would you charge to run such a journal? If you run a journal, you're most likely one of the big publishers that is profiting heavily from the status quo. Much of the actual academic work (finding reviewers, etc.) is done by actual academics (mostly for free), but the rest of it, including promoting it to potential readers, is done by the publishers. (There have been some success stories of editorial boards leaving the publishers' journals to start their own, e.g. Glossa (formerly Lingua), but those are few and far between.
- ksk 9y ago
  Thanks for your comment. I enjoyed reading your article.

singhrac 9y ago

Recently, I tried to access a paper I had written in the past to put in my grad school application, and couldn't get it. My current university doesn't have access to it. The irony is ridiculous.

rafiki6 9y ago
Same issue, luckily i found a copy buried deep in my google drive

Radim 9y ago

I've had dealings with the publishing industry over the years and some of the "Open Access to the rescue!" comments here badly underestimate the business acumen of Elsevier & co. They're no idiot. Do you think these guys have been asleep at the wheel for the past 6 years, oblivious to the Open Access debate and the general sentiment? When it comes to Open Access, the new distribution and sales channels have already been accounted for, new policies (and policy makers) worked out. Open Access will be the second coming of Christ for that industry, a new golden goose.

grawprog 9y ago

When I was in school we had to travel to the library of a different University to work on some of our projects because the one we went to didn't pay for the journals we needed to access to do our work and buying access to a single article would have been ridiculous. We cited over 100 papers in our final project many of those we couldn't access from our school. Paying for them would have cost anywhere from $20 to over $100 per article, not issue, article. A good majority of the studies we cited were funded either directly through government or through universities funded by government. It's entirely a way to keep knowledge out of the hands of the poor. Publicly funded studies should be made freely available to everyone. Even the project I worked on when I finished school. We were funded by government grants and our results were intended to be posted publicly, it was written in our proposal. Instead, once we started posting our data online we were told that we were no longer allowed to and our data must now be submitted to a government database. Otherwise we would recieve no more funding.This database of course had access fees that needed to be paid. It felt really shitty to have to lock everything away. I'd worked on an online database and map I was really excited about and it all had to be taken down.

rdtsc 9y ago
A friend was working for the EPA and she didn't have access to all the journals to do her work so she had to ask me to fetch them for her from the university library. Remember seeing the prices for each article and each subscription and thinking - they are making some nice profits charging $30 per paper.
- bluenose69 9y ago
  I've been in academia for three decades, and have yet to pay a cent to download a paper. I don't know any colleagues or students who have done so, either. I doubt that they make much money from per-article fees. I think they set them high so that universities will be forced to subscribe. My funding councils want people to publish in open-access journals, but they don't provide extra funds for the doubling of cost that's involved. The money has to come from somewhere, and the main cost item tends to be student stipends, so professors tend to continue publishing in pay-access journals. I've been on both sides of the "fetch for a friend" process. I've had to ask friends to fetch copies of papers that I've written, for which I've paid page charges, because my university had to drop the journal in one or another waves of cost saving. And for all this money, the journals do very little in the way of contributing to the process, nowadays. Reviewers work for free, as do most academic editors. Technical editors seem to barely exist anymore, since authors do their own typesetting and journals rely on academic reviewers to help with English. Academics are caught in a narrowing vice as they move through the career process. Papers have to appear in high-reputation journals, or else. And those journals just happen to be expensive.

toomanybeersies 9y ago

I'm not very well versed in academia, so correct me if I'm wrong. The research in these journals isn't funded by the journals, and researchers aren't payed royalties for people reading these journals (I assume they don't get paid by the journal at all). So why are these journals so expensive to access? Is it all just a rort?

cma 9y ago
Not just the research, all the hard work of peer review, etc. is volunteer. Typesetting and stuff is paid for by the journal. Researchers publishing in the journals often have to pay a per page publication fee in addition to missing out on any royalties.
Vinnl 9y ago
Basically, yes. There is barely any market pressure on the publishers, so they can keep asking ridiculous fees. More on why it doesn't change at [1], and how it got this way at [2]. [1] https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarly-publishing-eef794937c9c https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarl... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...

grrmx1 9y ago

It's easy to be outraged by this, but the bottom line is that journals need to make money to sustain their own operations. Research might be tax-funded, but the publishing houses are privately-held entities with employees and payroll (per their wiki page, for example, Nature employs 800 people). Someone has to pay for expenses associated with maintaining these platforms. Right now its either the tax payers or college students who pay for it indirectly, when their institution buys library access.

fallatio 9y ago
This doesn't make logical sense. We don't care about their problems, their employees should go find another job which isn't so predatory and leaching off public programs and funding. Nobody has to pay, a better alternative is for these publishers to cease to exist.
Vinnl 9y ago
Yes, but there are strong reasons to believe that the amount of money they are currently charging is in no way proportionate to the amount they need to sustain (+reasonable profits): https://medium.com/flockademic/the-future-of-open-access-should-not-be-left-to-the-legacy-publishers-634c188d28b9 https://medium.com/flockademic/the-future-of-open-access-sho...

exar0815 9y ago

Its not only the journals. Another thing that costs shittons of money are standards. A single two-dozen page ISO, DIN or comparable standard can easily amount to a couple thousand Euros. And it's not like you need one. You might need a second or third or fourth one because they just chain their references. "Test Devices can be found in ISO-123" In ISO-123:"The devices listed here have to be configured analogue to the devices mentioned in DIN-2153" And so on. And don't get me started about versioning. A couple of same-number standards in parallel because they are from different months or years or just small amendments (Single Sentences). And there is only one company selling em. It's laughable. Oh, and it's not as if anyone gets paid to write standards. Standards are written for free by engineers and scientists in their free time. It's a money-printing machine.

kayhi 9y ago

Can’t wait for the day that universities are massively overpaying supplies, chemicals and equipment comes to light.

michaelhoffman 9y ago
Those are not comparable to research publications. The university does not give corporations chemicals for free and then pay to get them back.

cosmic_ape 9y ago

A good journal needs good reviewers. The quality of peer-review at conferences for example is terrible, and that is well known. Even at not very big conferences, and despite the usually hard work of the organizers. So establishing a good review process is not easy and perhaps that is what is stopping the open access model rather than just the prestige issue mentioned in other comments.

anbende 9y ago
The review process at the "prestige" journals in many disciplines is garbage. This is a known issue. Competent experts simply don't have time to do the reviews, so they end up being farmed out to graduate students and post-docs if they get done at all. I had one paper get rejected, because they couldn't find anyone to review it! By the time a reviewer is found, you're often the action-editor's last desperate pool of 5th-tier people who are sort of maybe vaguely related to the topic area. Add to that that the majority of papers in many disciplines receive virtually zero statistical oversight from an actual statistical expert, and... well... you begin to wonder what service the existing journals are actually adding. Marketing and sales?
- cosmic_ape 9y ago
  I know that in some journals it is good some of the time. But yeah, didn't mean to imply thats always good. Maybe we should introduce a process of reviewing the reviews, and some incentives accordingly. Not sure how to do that.
  - aldanor 9y ago
    An example - as a 1st year grad student, I had to review a number of articles in 'top-ranked' journals, just because my supervisor preferred to dump it on me rather than bother to do it himself...

gech 9y ago

Remember Aaron Swartz

Avshalom 9y ago

It's almost like everyone agrees capitalism is fucking terrible.

RandomCSGeek 9y ago

I am not a researcher, so I'd like to get some answers. Why do people publish papers. Is it to get acknowledged for the work? Is it a requirement for getting PhD? Or is it so that world could benefit from the research? Also, can someone simply use a paper, copy that idea to make a product, and make money out of it, without giving anything back to the researchers? If researchers publish out of necessity or to get acknowledged or so that the "world knows", can't they just put it on Arxiv? Why spend money on costly journals?

Vinnl 9y ago
> Why do people publish papers. Is it to get acknowledged for the work? Is it a requirement for getting PhD? Or is it so that world could benefit from the research? All three of those are correct. > Also, can someone simply use a paper, copy that idea to make a product, and make money out of it, without giving anything back to the researchers? Yes, although it's usually not that simple. The focus of research is usually more fundamental in nature, that only leads to products far down the road. But note that the researchers are funded using public money, so if there was anything to give back, it would be to the public (which sort of happens through new companies). > If researchers publish out of necessity or to get acknowledged or so that the "world knows", can't they just put it on Arxiv? Why spend money on costly journals? "Acknowledgement" goes beyond that - it needs to be considered good in order to qualify for further academic positions. See https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-can-make-or-break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-ca...