3 ms·

No one is putting the proverbial gun to academic researchers heads to use these publishers.

• harry8 6y ago
  Yes they absolutely are. Decoupling academia from this horrendous publishing parasites is an ongoing project that has taken a vast amount of effort from a vast number of academics and continues. You have metrics. You pulish with the parasites, they're bigger than with some open-source journal nobody has heard of. Your career progression relies on getting published by the "most prestigious" journal. You want your work read. Everybody in your field read parasite journal A, there isn't a good substitute. You're stuffed. You don't get to decide. You're one author. the head of school had decided for you. I can go on. The parasitic publishers are /hated/ by everybody. They provide nothing at all of value. They have been a very successful example of rent-seeking through the puchase of prestige titles then jacking up the subscription prices. You underestimate the level of hatred accross the political spectrum from socialist to libertarian of these parasitic (insert metaphor here). The gun they have to the head isn't perfect. They will go but they continue to extract a vast amount of rent on the way down.