3 ms·

I just realized that this analogy of the academic publishing industry is also quite similar to that of the search engine industry. Most web pages are provided

by euske 8y ago

I just realized that this analogy of the academic publishing industry is also quite similar to that of the search engine industry. Most web pages are provided to the public free of charge, but they typically don't obtain them directly (technically they can, but it's often too tedious). A search engine takes them and redistribute to the public. They do it by using the metrics mostly provided by the (unpaid) public: PageRank. And they make a hefty profit for doing that. They also amass a lot of power. Both industries are essentially doing the same thing: content curation. The difference is that search engines don't get complaints like academic publishers. I think the reason is that the academic publishing is much simpler and actually more transparent than search engines; you can easily see the inner workings and the flow of money. On the other hand, people don't really understand how Google makes so much money. We're effectively blinded by the complexity.

jungturk 8y ago
The search engines have sidestepped grief because of their third-party pays model - advertisers fund their content curation and discovery expenses and the system retains open access at no (direct, monetary) cost to the consumers. The peer review process might be more expensive/intensive than PageRank for all I know, so perhaps journal publishers are doing much more work than search engines. Perhaps if journal publishers used an ad-supported model they wouldn't be demonized so readily since they'd be incentivized for open access since they're selling eyeballs I'm not advocating, just working with the parent's comparison.
- atq2119 8y ago
  > The peer review process might be more expensive/intensive than PageRank for all I know, so perhaps journal publishers are doing much more work than search engines. The peer review process is labor intensive, but to add insult to injury, publishers aren't the ones doing it and they don't pay reviewers. It's all done for free by researchers. At best publishers add some proof reading services, but in many cases not even that.

by euske 8y ago

jungturk 8y ago

The search engines have sidestepped grief because of their third-party pays model - advertisers fund their content curation and discovery expenses and the system retains open access at no (direct, monetary) cost to the consumers. The peer review process might be more expensive/intensive than PageRank for all I know, so perhaps journal publishers are doing much more work than search engines. Perhaps if journal publishers used an ad-supported model they wouldn't be demonized so readily since they'd be incentivized for open access since they're selling eyeballs I'm not advocating, just working with the parent's comparison.

atq2119 8y ago
> The peer review process might be more expensive/intensive than PageRank for all I know, so perhaps journal publishers are doing much more work than search engines. The peer review process is labor intensive, but to add insult to injury, publishers aren't the ones doing it and they don't pay reviewers. It's all done for free by researchers. At best publishers add some proof reading services, but in many cases not even that.