5 ms·
"The way the research process works is like this: 1.) An academic does some research, often funded by a government grant. 2.) The academic writes up a paper an
by pg_bot 15y ago
"The way the research process works is like this:
1.) An academic does some research, often funded by a government grant. 2.) The academic writes up a paper and submits it to an academic journal. 3.) The journal publisher adds some value to the paper, mainly formatting and secretarial services, and then publishes the paper.
The journal publishers believe that the public funding of research stops at step 2, where the academic submits the paper to a journal. At that stage, the journal publishers argue, the academic is free to share their paper with the world."
Why don't the researchers just format the papers themselves and publish their work independently online? It seems like a trivial amount of work compared to the actual research that they are doing. I understand that many people believe that they shouldn't have to do this, but after reading the article I see nothing stopping them from distributing their work to the public.
- mbreese 15y agoThey forgot that part of #3 is peer review, which is managed by the journal, but actually performed by academics for free. Oh, and the researcher usually has to pay a fee to get the paper published once the journal accepts their paper. So, most of the hard work in #3 is free, and the academic still has to pay the journal (usually from a government grant).
- pg_bot 15y agoObviously for your work to be validated it must go through the process of peer review. However, I am suggesting that even after they become published in a scientific journal that the researchers should go about publishing their articles online themselves or through a third party site. I just don't see how the data can be easily locked away behind a pay wall if researchers can do whatever they please with their work. If they want to make their work available to the public there are many ways to do so.
- ufo 15y agoWhen publishing at one of the paid journals the researchers must give away their copyright to the journal too. This means they cannot republish the paper on a different place (sometimes there is an exception for the personal website though). You might not believe this at first but yes, its really that stupid.
- RichardPrice 15y agoThe reason is that academics need the validation of being published in a prestigious journal. See the comment below http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3597125 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3597125