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i asked this question here and at many places before. why do people "rely" on an organization that sifts through hundreds of thousands of papers and then charg
by 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
i asked this question here and at many places before. why do people "rely" on an organization that sifts through hundreds of thousands of papers and then charge exorbitant prices for providing this service?
if we use the amazon analogy, is amazon with millions of products worse than a boutique cat food seller that specializes in a specific cat food for a specific cat breed? maybe. but what about the "rest" of products?
why are our scientists made to rely on elsevier et al to sift through the junk and find for them the perfect paper instead of doing it themselves? is science now such a cutthroat quick competition that it requires you to give a company the priviledge to work for you so that you dont have to do your own due diligence?
in india, we have a lot of local research that is done on open databases like shodh ganga and many more. but if you have to access foreign research material, better luck your university has an agreement with elsevier and others to pay them millions for a login. the alternative, go to scihub and find what you need.
i understand the whole quality/delivery debate but doesnt the average user already know who the big players in the specific domain are and who are trusted? or you want discoverability at the hands of a "trusted third party" without doing the legwork yourself.
then at the other end you have non-academics like me. I might have heard of a research paper in some article and i cannot read it without paying an arm and a leg. why? if we use the whole ebook/book argument that compensation is commensurate to the sales so more popular book means more money to the author but here authors arent compensated but elsevier so why should i pay elsevier? because they filtered through 1000 papers to provide 10 and for that privilege, they require unlimited royalty for ever? why?
- slater 5y agoThere's some truth to "publish or perish". Scientists are expected to publish in prestigious journals.
- Qem 5y agoNot only expected, but actually forced. In many places, a streak of a few years with no publications in prestigious journals can unrecoverably sink a researcher career.
- OmicronCeti 5y agoA typical PhD dissertation these days is 3 publications in high-quality journals. It is explicitly required at most schools.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y agoso there is "prestige" in getting in a reputed journal and not the fact that the paper is peer reviewed by good scientists. the reputation of the journal matters. cool. isnt there a need of change in the "social ideology" of such schools and this whole elitism would go away?
- OmicronCeti 5y agojournal prestige does not correlate with review quality. Usually it does, but then there's always reviewer 3...
- f6v 5y agoBecause otherwise you’ll have to sift through tons of garbage “research”. It’s already a common knowledge that many articles coming from certain countries are fraudulent. There’s a lower chance of having those in journals like Nature Medicine.
- Hendrikto 5y ago> why are our scientists made to rely on elsevier et al to sift through the junk and find for them the perfect paper instead of doing it themselves? Scientists do do that themselves. That‘s why it is called peer review. Journals take scientists work for free, they just pre-select papers, but don‘t do the review.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y agoare you saying you rely on "pre-selection" of the journals and for that the demand exorbitant prices? why dont you rely on peer-review data on scihub itself? is the pre-selection such an important thing that these companies necessarily have to remain in business?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]