5 ms·

You are completely right that the current system is nonsense. It only exists, because back in the day there was no internet. Scientists needed publishers that w

You are completely right that the current system is nonsense. It only exists, because back in the day there was no internet. Scientists needed publishers that would print and distribute scientific results. But publishers might deny publication in their journals if they thought the science is not good enough. Thereby the publishers established a reputation system. For example, it is really hard to get a scientific paper accepted to the journal Nature. But if you manage to do it, a lot of people will assume that it is good science. The current system doesn't provide much value in terms of printing and distribution (even though some journals still do printing). The thing that keeps these journals alive is their reputation as filters for bad science. But even that is questionable, as proven by a lot of bad science making it into top journals. And lastly, science needs funding. If you say: My science is published in journal X, then the funding agency will think it is good science/bad science without actually trying to understand what your science is about.

cordite 5y ago
With regard to your last point, that sounds like poor due diligence. But they’re not expecting monetary reward with risk for issuing a grant like a VC.
- edwardwatson 5y ago
  But there are significant sums invested to fund research. In many ways it's a similar transaction to the VC. An investment into 'bad' research does not help the university or funding council reach their goals e.g. to raise their own funding or contribute impactful research to science. Hopefully, they are diversified enough for the bad eggs not to matter
krumbie 5y ago
And this is why it's hard for newcomers to switch to open access journals. Because they cannot easily afford not to have well known journals in their publication list when applying for positions. Because the people in charge probably don't fully understand the applicant's research, but they think they get a good sense of quality by the names of the journals
- xNeil 5y ago
  So if I understood correctly, it's more about using the name of the journal as a verification of the study the scientist is doing, since the person funding them probably won't understand the research. Am I right?
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    It’s a prestige halo. People will answer calls from 212 or from 5th Ave addresses in NYC, because, prestigious.
ehsankia 5y ago
But even compared to other publishing, like books. From my experience books sell for less (both paperback and e-book), and also a significant chunk of it goes to the author. Do scientist get any of the profit from paper sales? Also, as you mention, newcomers need the reputation given to them by journal, but I don't understand how this is a stable system. In theory, well established scientists, who give the journals its reputation, should be able to easily migrate to an open journal, and therefore make the whole system collapse, no? Do these large publication have any sort of deal to give big researchers on their journals?
- Vinnl 5y ago
  No, scientists get paid (usually) by their institution. Often, they'll even have to pay to publish ("page charges", charges for illustrations, etc.), and also to make it openly accessible (although to be fair, at that point their works aren't sold anymore; the author's payment is the source of profit). Even established, tenured scientists will often need to obtain grants and will still be judged by where they publish. Though there's also, of course, quite some institutional inertia and people just not caring, since it doesn't affect them personally. And of course, there are also a lot of (established) academics who do care.
  - ehsankia 5y ago
    > No, scientists get paid (usually) by their institution I didn't say they get paid, I'm talking specifically amount the money flow to these journals. Does the funding from the research/scientists come from the profit the journals make, or from outside funding?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
      Usually grants or other funding sources: journals generally don’t pay for articles.
    - 5y ago
arp242 5y ago
> The current system doesn't provide much value in terms of printing and distribution (even though some journals still do printing). The thing that keeps these journals alive is their reputation as filters for bad science. But even that is questionable, as proven by a lot of bad science making it into top journals. Just because some bad science gets in doesn't mean it's 100% useless; perhaps the bad science we're seeing now is 1% of what we would otherwise? I have no real insight in this, so I can't really judge how useful it is, but it's not an on/off switch, and as you've stated here it strikes me as a fallacious argument.
- adrusi 5y ago
  It's not common for researchers to find that no journal at all will accept their paper, so it's not like there's a bunch of bad science being done that we just never see. The result of getting rid of the reputation system of prestige journals isn't obvious. It's possible that without the incentive to get into the most prestigious journal possible, many researches will lower the quality of their research. But I think it's more likely that without the hope of getting into a prestigious journal, researchers will try other tactics to coax others into reading and citing their work, and one such tactic is doing better research. My main concern with abolishing journals is that the need for prestige in science wouldn't disappear overnight, and instead of trying to get into prestigious journals, to only way to get that prestige bonus will be to do the social climbing to associate yourself with prestigious researchers.
  - kergonath 5y ago
    > But I think it's more likely that without the hope of getting into a prestigious journal, researchers will try other tactics to coax others into reading and citing their work, and one such tactic is doing better research. Or clickbait and algorithm gaming. And social networks would be even more important. You already allude to getting associated with big names. It is already common to get one in the author list to get accepted in a “good” journal. There are already too many papers being published on many subjects, so you tend to follow closely what comes out of a smaller community, and recommendations from the bibliography databases. Honestly, the problem is more with how research is evaluated by institutions and funding bodies than with the publishers, as greedy as they may be.
baron_harkonnen 5y ago
> If you say: My science is published in journal X, then the funding agency will think it is good science/bad science without actually trying to understand what your science is about. Not only is this correct, but it is the origin of peer review as we know it today. Despite what most academics assume, peer-review itself is a relatively new concept in science. Nearly all of the most incredible scientific discoveries were not subject to peer review as we know it today. Peer review was in fact created in as a response to a decrease in scientific funding in the 1970s. It was a deliberate attempt to create credibility in order to bolster funding. I find it somewhat absurd that the current state of peer review is considered a pillar of "good science", when not only has most of the greatest science done without it, but double-blind peer review and a culture of publish or perish has lead us to things such as the reproducibility crisis. And in general the vast majority of publish work being questionable garbage that only remains unquestioned because of a culture of fear around question the corner stone of artificial credibility created solely to increase funding.
- justinpombrio 5y ago
  > but double-blind peer review and a culture of publish or perish has lead us to things such as the reproducibility crisis The "reproducibility crisis" is that we recently realized that ~half of published results in many fields fail to reproduce, presumably because many of them are false. My impression was that this goes back as far as you care to look, and that old results are just as likely to fail to reproduce. So the only new thing is that we noticed this, which is a step forwards, not back. Is there reason to believe that older studies tended to be more accurate?
  - MacsHeadroom 5y ago
    It's not that older studies tended to be more accurate. It's that peers worked together in seclusion via lots of back-and-forth letters and collaboration over years, only "publishing" when they and their peer group were sure they had something worth sharing with the wider community. This is how science was done up until some time in the 1970s. This is how real groundbreaking science is still done. The publishing prestige economy is of little actual value.
agumonkey 5y ago
It's an important topic that I see in many places. Old system had to certify a certain level of quality to exist due to structural constraints (fragile business, cost of production/operation). Now that the costs are fading away, the danger is to end up like bad social networks who just do whatever because it's free and people waste years until it's obvious it doesn't provide any value anymore.

cordite 5y ago

With regard to your last point, that sounds like poor due diligence. But they’re not expecting monetary reward with risk for issuing a grant like a VC.

edwardwatson 5y ago
But there are significant sums invested to fund research. In many ways it's a similar transaction to the VC. An investment into 'bad' research does not help the university or funding council reach their goals e.g. to raise their own funding or contribute impactful research to science. Hopefully, they are diversified enough for the bad eggs not to matter

krumbie 5y ago

And this is why it's hard for newcomers to switch to open access journals. Because they cannot easily afford not to have well known journals in their publication list when applying for positions. Because the people in charge probably don't fully understand the applicant's research, but they think they get a good sense of quality by the names of the journals

xNeil 5y ago
So if I understood correctly, it's more about using the name of the journal as a verification of the study the scientist is doing, since the person funding them probably won't understand the research. Am I right?
- Spooky23 5y ago
  It’s a prestige halo. People will answer calls from 212 or from 5th Ave addresses in NYC, because, prestigious.

ehsankia 5y ago

But even compared to other publishing, like books. From my experience books sell for less (both paperback and e-book), and also a significant chunk of it goes to the author. Do scientist get any of the profit from paper sales? Also, as you mention, newcomers need the reputation given to them by journal, but I don't understand how this is a stable system. In theory, well established scientists, who give the journals its reputation, should be able to easily migrate to an open journal, and therefore make the whole system collapse, no? Do these large publication have any sort of deal to give big researchers on their journals?

Vinnl 5y ago
No, scientists get paid (usually) by their institution. Often, they'll even have to pay to publish ("page charges", charges for illustrations, etc.), and also to make it openly accessible (although to be fair, at that point their works aren't sold anymore; the author's payment is the source of profit). Even established, tenured scientists will often need to obtain grants and will still be judged by where they publish. Though there's also, of course, quite some institutional inertia and people just not caring, since it doesn't affect them personally. And of course, there are also a lot of (established) academics who do care.
- ehsankia 5y ago
  > No, scientists get paid (usually) by their institution I didn't say they get paid, I'm talking specifically amount the money flow to these journals. Does the funding from the research/scientists come from the profit the journals make, or from outside funding?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
    Usually grants or other funding sources: journals generally don’t pay for articles.
  - 5y ago

arp242 5y ago

> The current system doesn't provide much value in terms of printing and distribution (even though some journals still do printing). The thing that keeps these journals alive is their reputation as filters for bad science. But even that is questionable, as proven by a lot of bad science making it into top journals. Just because some bad science gets in doesn't mean it's 100% useless; perhaps the bad science we're seeing now is 1% of what we would otherwise? I have no real insight in this, so I can't really judge how useful it is, but it's not an on/off switch, and as you've stated here it strikes me as a fallacious argument.

adrusi 5y ago
It's not common for researchers to find that no journal at all will accept their paper, so it's not like there's a bunch of bad science being done that we just never see. The result of getting rid of the reputation system of prestige journals isn't obvious. It's possible that without the incentive to get into the most prestigious journal possible, many researches will lower the quality of their research. But I think it's more likely that without the hope of getting into a prestigious journal, researchers will try other tactics to coax others into reading and citing their work, and one such tactic is doing better research. My main concern with abolishing journals is that the need for prestige in science wouldn't disappear overnight, and instead of trying to get into prestigious journals, to only way to get that prestige bonus will be to do the social climbing to associate yourself with prestigious researchers.
- kergonath 5y ago
  > But I think it's more likely that without the hope of getting into a prestigious journal, researchers will try other tactics to coax others into reading and citing their work, and one such tactic is doing better research. Or clickbait and algorithm gaming. And social networks would be even more important. You already allude to getting associated with big names. It is already common to get one in the author list to get accepted in a “good” journal. There are already too many papers being published on many subjects, so you tend to follow closely what comes out of a smaller community, and recommendations from the bibliography databases. Honestly, the problem is more with how research is evaluated by institutions and funding bodies than with the publishers, as greedy as they may be.

baron_harkonnen 5y ago

> If you say: My science is published in journal X, then the funding agency will think it is good science/bad science without actually trying to understand what your science is about. Not only is this correct, but it is the origin of peer review as we know it today. Despite what most academics assume, peer-review itself is a relatively new concept in science. Nearly all of the most incredible scientific discoveries were not subject to peer review as we know it today. Peer review was in fact created in as a response to a decrease in scientific funding in the 1970s. It was a deliberate attempt to create credibility in order to bolster funding. I find it somewhat absurd that the current state of peer review is considered a pillar of "good science", when not only has most of the greatest science done without it, but double-blind peer review and a culture of publish or perish has lead us to things such as the reproducibility crisis. And in general the vast majority of publish work being questionable garbage that only remains unquestioned because of a culture of fear around question the corner stone of artificial credibility created solely to increase funding.

justinpombrio 5y ago
> but double-blind peer review and a culture of publish or perish has lead us to things such as the reproducibility crisis The "reproducibility crisis" is that we recently realized that ~half of published results in many fields fail to reproduce, presumably because many of them are false. My impression was that this goes back as far as you care to look, and that old results are just as likely to fail to reproduce. So the only new thing is that we noticed this, which is a step forwards, not back. Is there reason to believe that older studies tended to be more accurate?
- MacsHeadroom 5y ago
  It's not that older studies tended to be more accurate. It's that peers worked together in seclusion via lots of back-and-forth letters and collaboration over years, only "publishing" when they and their peer group were sure they had something worth sharing with the wider community. This is how science was done up until some time in the 1970s. This is how real groundbreaking science is still done. The publishing prestige economy is of little actual value.

agumonkey 5y ago

It's an important topic that I see in many places. Old system had to certify a certain level of quality to exist due to structural constraints (fragile business, cost of production/operation). Now that the costs are fading away, the danger is to end up like bad social networks who just do whatever because it's free and people waste years until it's obvious it doesn't provide any value anymore.