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> A publisher provided distribution. That’s it. throwawaaarrgh argues that they provide prestige, too. I agree. Certainly, I can’t see that publishers only pr
by Someone 4y ago
> A publisher provided distribution. That’s it.
throwawaaarrgh argues that they provide prestige, too.
I agree. Certainly, I can’t see that publishers only provide distribution, as that should be almost trivial to replicate, and lead to a race to the bottom, price-wise, and the entire process would long have been “replaced by a CMS solution hosted in the cloud”.
- spamizbad 4y agoThat prestige exists because of its editors and its history in a specific field of study. There’s no “value” being created by the publisher itself in this respect.
- lores 4y agoThere is, in hiring a highly qualified set of reviewers.
- hgsgm 4y agoReviewers are volunteers. Journals main business is selling the stone for stone soup.
- lores 4y agoI worked in the kitchen and know how the soup is made. If you insist on calling it stone soup, then it's granite - unglamourous, lots of skilled but drudge work to process, but valuable then.
- lores 4y agoYou are absolutely correct. I have made a tool that suggests the most suitable journal for a particular paper to publish. Fewer than 50% researchers care; they all want to be in Nature, price be damned. Academia is not wrong to say publishers make too much profit, but is entirely unwilling to change the way it works too. And how much is Nature supposed to charge when they need 600 highly qualified people to pick the best handful of papers amongst thousands?