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Yes. All of this is based on a completely outdated publishing model. Because back in the day, publishing scientific results in a distributable medium actually r

Yes. All of this is based on a completely outdated publishing model. Because back in the day, publishing scientific results in a distributable medium actually required a dedicated industry (typesetting, printing, distributing). Nowadays this has become completely obsolete thanks to the internet and digital documents. Reputation of journals exists only so that cheap metrics can be calculated. This way the funding bodies do not actually have to read the papers, but can simply judge them by a summary statistic. But plenty of times it is only a crude approximation of the value of scientific work.

Mediterraneo10 7y ago
> publishing scientific results actually required a dedicated industry (typesetting, printing, distributing) I’d say that many scholars still want that dedicated industry. Everyone appreciates having a proofreader and editor who is trained in the subject, but now working full-time professionally in editing services, so that this burden doesn’t fall on actual scholars who are already overworked. And in many fields high-quality typesetting is still appreciated (and a quick visual way to distinguish reputable publications from less reputable ones). The complaint is that mercenary publishers like Springer and Elsevier aren’t even providing that industry any more. They no longer provide proofreading, cutglass typesetting, and all the other benefits which, once upon a time, they used to convince learned societies to hand the running of the journals over to them. Instead, the big publishers put all the grunt work onto the scholarly community and they simply expect authors to simply provide a camera-ready .doc or PDF for publication. These for-profit publishers simply collect charges without providing any value.
- musicale 7y ago
  > they simply expect authors to simply provide a camera-ready .doc or PDF for publication. ^This: the research, writing and editorial work is provided to the academic publisher at no cost. The publisher prints paper copies which they sell at outrageous markup, and usually hosts the PDFs behind an obnoxious paywall (again with outrageous markup over the hosting, indexing, and distribution costs.) > These for-profit publishers simply collect charges without providing any value. For-profit academic publishers often provide negative value by making publications harder to access by polluting search results with links to their paywalls vs. links to author sites and free digital libraries like arXiv or sci-hub, and doing their best to shut down the latter. This is harmful to authors and readers alike.

Mediterraneo10 7y ago

> publishing scientific results actually required a dedicated industry (typesetting, printing, distributing) I’d say that many scholars still want that dedicated industry. Everyone appreciates having a proofreader and editor who is trained in the subject, but now working full-time professionally in editing services, so that this burden doesn’t fall on actual scholars who are already overworked. And in many fields high-quality typesetting is still appreciated (and a quick visual way to distinguish reputable publications from less reputable ones). The complaint is that mercenary publishers like Springer and Elsevier aren’t even providing that industry any more. They no longer provide proofreading, cutglass typesetting, and all the other benefits which, once upon a time, they used to convince learned societies to hand the running of the journals over to them. Instead, the big publishers put all the grunt work onto the scholarly community and they simply expect authors to simply provide a camera-ready .doc or PDF for publication. These for-profit publishers simply collect charges without providing any value.

musicale 7y ago
> they simply expect authors to simply provide a camera-ready .doc or PDF for publication. ^This: the research, writing and editorial work is provided to the academic publisher at no cost. The publisher prints paper copies which they sell at outrageous markup, and usually hosts the PDFs behind an obnoxious paywall (again with outrageous markup over the hosting, indexing, and distribution costs.) > These for-profit publishers simply collect charges without providing any value. For-profit academic publishers often provide negative value by making publications harder to access by polluting search results with links to their paywalls vs. links to author sites and free digital libraries like arXiv or sci-hub, and doing their best to shut down the latter. This is harmful to authors and readers alike.