5 ms·
A secondary and less visible consequence of this is that many people don’t go into academia in the first place because they are put off by the publishing system
by keiferski 1y ago
A secondary and less visible consequence of this is that many people don’t go into academia in the first place because they are put off by the publishing system. And so many people that would otherwise be contributing to human knowledge are working in an office somewhere helping a random company sell more widgets.
- eru 1y agoFiguring out how to improve industrial processes also contributes to human knowledge.
- tomsmeding 1y agoIt does, but it would contribute more if said knowledge was published openly for others to learn from. Yes, I am aware of the irony of paywalled academic publications.
- ke88y 1y agoContributing to humanity’s knowledge is MUCH easier in the private sector than in academia. In the private sector you can choose your patrons and your dissemination mechanism. Many, many scientists publish papers, publish code, give talks, write blogs, and otherwise distribute technical details about their work product. In academia the Federal Government is your only serious patron and you must disseminate in academic journals/conferences, which generally do a piss poor job of providing incentives for either doing good work or communicating well about that work. Any time I hire a junior PhD I have to UNDO a ton of academic writing/provlem-solving propaganda and reteach both common sense and normal writing style. The harsh truth is that private sector scientists tend to do better science and disseminate it in more useful and lasting ways. They are paid better for it. The academic scientists who are up to private sector standards tend to have diverse funding mechanisms and therefore rely far less heavily on prestige publication for their labs revenue stream. But most professors must publish papers because they are unable to do good work and/or communicate the value of that work to anyone other than their inner circle of friends (who sit on the grant review panels or take stints at federal agencies).
- mitthrowaway2 1y agoEvery private-sector company I've worked for has had me sign an NDA saying that I can only disseminate knowledge within that company.
- rcxdude 1y agoWithout permission, yeah. But many companies do publish scientific papers. In both worlds, there's usually a game of publishing enough to give people confidence that the results are good, without actually giving away enough details to actually lose any competitive advantage (this is perhaps even more so in academia). In basically every field there will be things that everyone talks about and things that no-one talks about, and the latter is often even more important (but usually more boring know-how type things).
- ke88y 1y agoAlso, to state the ultra-obvious given our venue: you can find patrons outside of mega companies that require NDAs.
- mitthrowaway2 1y agoNDAs are standard even in small businesses. Any company developing technology will require them for technical staff because not doing so can cause the company to lose protection for its IP, even if none of the staff actually leak any technical secrets. Patent applications can be invalidated on the ground that the technology had been disclosed to individuals outside of an NDA, and trade secret protections forfeited for not taking reasonable precautions. I have only worked with one business that did not require NDAs, and that was because it was built around an open-source sharing philosophy. Every other client, even very small organic-growth businesses and pre-seed startups, required an NDA, and if they hadn't I would have advised them that they should.
- GJim 1y ago> In academia the Federal Government is your only serious patron Are you are aware there is a world outside the USA?