4 ms·

The big difference here is that prestige has nothing to do with cost, unlike your Louis Voutton comparison. Prestige is entirely based on the perception of the

The big difference here is that prestige has nothing to do with cost, unlike your Louis Voutton comparison. Prestige is entirely based on the perception of the journals among scientists and on the prestige of the papers themselves that are published in them. And the scientists individually don't have a choice unless they are closer to the end of their career. Intentionally publishing in less prestigious journals will sabotage your career, period. And there are certainly aspect here that people without any more in-depth knowledge can criticize, e.g. the overall issue that publicly-funded research is put behind paywalls or that a very large part of the work gets done by reviewers that are not even paid by the publishers but mostly by the public.

kelipso 3y ago
> The big difference here is that prestige has nothing to do with cost, unlike your Louis Voutton comparison. Yep, usually it's the opposite. You pay more money to get published through easy to get into conferences. If you're not in academia or don't have some membership, you pay way more to get into conferences. You pay thousands more to get published in low quality open access journals because your paper is not good enough. Etc. (Also no one pays $50 to read a single article, you get it for free through the university library.)
- nottorp 3y ago
  > Also no one pays $50 to read a single article, you get it for free through the university library. Let's rephrase. No one who doesn't get the article for free through the university library can afford to read it.
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> And the scientists individually don't have a choice unless they are closer to the end of their career. Intentionally publishing in less prestigious journals will sabotage your career, period. I think it would be helpful if corporate scientists published more. They too value prestige for bragging rights, or whatever, but a corporate career is more about patents and blockbuster products than about publication. So corporate scientists could sabotage the prestige of publications. Many corporations could also afford to hire editors and self-publish their own journals. For students looking for jobs in industry, or for PIs who want to place their students in industry, publishing in the corporate journals would be better than publishing in tier 1 journals.

kelipso 3y ago

> The big difference here is that prestige has nothing to do with cost, unlike your Louis Voutton comparison. Yep, usually it's the opposite. You pay more money to get published through easy to get into conferences. If you're not in academia or don't have some membership, you pay way more to get into conferences. You pay thousands more to get published in low quality open access journals because your paper is not good enough. Etc. (Also no one pays $50 to read a single article, you get it for free through the university library.)

nottorp 3y ago
> Also no one pays $50 to read a single article, you get it for free through the university library. Let's rephrase. No one who doesn't get the article for free through the university library can afford to read it.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

> And the scientists individually don't have a choice unless they are closer to the end of their career. Intentionally publishing in less prestigious journals will sabotage your career, period. I think it would be helpful if corporate scientists published more. They too value prestige for bragging rights, or whatever, but a corporate career is more about patents and blockbuster products than about publication. So corporate scientists could sabotage the prestige of publications. Many corporations could also afford to hire editors and self-publish their own journals. For students looking for jobs in industry, or for PIs who want to place their students in industry, publishing in the corporate journals would be better than publishing in tier 1 journals.