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Not only do you write the article for free, they will also charge you for the privilege of publishing in their journal.
Depends on the publishing method you choose. If you want free for readers, authors pay. If you want free publishing, readers pay. Reviewers never get paid. Editors get paid shit. Journals profit massively for doing barely anything. Terrible in all directions. Preprint servers are the future
Was the article really written for free or was it written with tax-payer funded government grants?
I mean, ok, then, I, a taxpayer, want free access to the document I paid for.
Oh it was funded with tax/university money so that means a 3rd party private company, which had nothing to do at all with the funding/research, gets to profit from it gottcha.
They even have the “whale” concept where they charge more for graphs and pictures and even more for *gasp* colored versions of same.
RIP Aaron Swartz
never forget, never forgive, always pirate.
Fuck elsevier.
So what exactly is their argument for the service they provide that ‘justifies’ the cost?
The reason is tradition.
Because they got money in turn for publishing and distributing the books in the past, now they want to continue getting exorbitant fees even though they are not providing any real value any-more.As I understand it, bc printing something on paper with ink has costs associated with it. Hey… wait a minute!? :-P
Plenty of people here saying: “But the scientists were paid by a public university!”, yeah whatever. If I’m financing a scientist with my taxes, they should have their work published publicly, not be incentivised to publish in private journals that will profit from their work while adding pretty little.
I’ve never seen this meme format! Exciting!
Love that new meme smell
The new model is actually to charge the author a shitton of money (think thousands of dollars) after the paper has been accepted. After it should be accessible through
Publish on a public university or institute
But mah points…
What points?
Points for the scientific metrics. You get more points for publishing in higher impact journals.
People downvoting cause they have no idea how this shit works
Well, I am sure there is a scam, because there’s money involved and it’s happening in this day and age, but talking is free, listening is free, yet the phone company makes both sides pay so they can talk and listen, and I wouldn’t consider that a scam.
Not to argue on behalf of publishers, but the papers aren’t written for free. It’s part of the job of being a researcher, it’s a significant KPI for which you’re hired and receive a wage.
Reviewing for free is pretty much bullshit though. As is paying to read them afterwards, if your research institution doesn’t pay to publish in an open access journal
It’s not the publishers paying the researcher’s salaries, they’re mostly paid by public institutions and receive funding from government grants. If anything, bl researcher pay structure should result in open access publication.
I didn’t say it was the publisher’s paying the salaries. My point is that researcher are paid to research, and publishing results is part of that.
Yes, but this really does just mean we should have a government provided publisher for government funded research. I paid for this research every 4/15 and i shouldn’t have to pay again if I want to see it
Sure, that would work. Or government grants available so anyone who wants to be an editor can apply for funds to get it going. Papers are rarely printed on paper nowadays, so the main costs would be paying editors, paying reviewers, and web hosting.
I was hired to teach at a non-research college… except admin are trying to finnegal us into doing off-contract studies and publishing, moving forward. So yes, in the worst cases, it’s done even off-wage.
Yup, been there, but the other side of it. Was hired to do research and then teaching suddenly appeared as an expectation.
