Imagine living in a world where it has to be explicitly said that you are allowed to send someone a free copy of something you wrote.
The research was paid for by someone. It is not unheard of for a company to offer a grant under the condition that they get the results, say, six months before the rest of the world.
This the the case for publically funded research as well. Scientific journals have paper submitted for free, papers reviewed for free, then they charge the $35/article fee to anyone who reads it, or more generally, they charge universities/etcs in the 5 to 6 figures sum/year for unlimited access.
Scientific journals are a billion dollar industry who do literally nothing for that money. They limit scientific progress to make money, and thats it.
If they review papers for “free” is that not worth something?
I definitely don’t think it should be for profit but it seems like there is value and costs to what they do. That money has to come from somewhere.
EDIT: I am unfamiliar with the process so I took OP’s words at face value. Several others indicate this is inaccurate. So, seems like all they do it host/publish the papers. Which does cost money, but that just seems like something that should be funded by other means rather than users paying. Kinda weird to hide science behind an arbitrary paywall.
I could be wrong, but my understanding is the reviews are done by other academics for free, if at all… That’s why getting published is kind of reputation based and circular because the cheapest review is just to look up whether they’ve been published before.
I have been the referee for two articles at an academic journal. It said in their agreement that for three or more papers per year you’d be compensated this and that much. But I guess I misunderstood because they emailed me and asked to pay me for just the two reviews. Anyhow, it basically no money. The time you put in to do a proper review is a lot more than what you are compensated for. Your uni still pays your salary, so this is just a bonus, but still, very little. This journal is hosted by a public entity, private ones may be very different.
I am unfamiliar with the process so I took OP’s words at face value.
You misunderstood. The journals get the papers submitted for free (i.e. they don’t pay the authors) and reviewed for free (i.e. they don’t pay the reviewers).
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AFAIK, peer reviewers are typically other academics in the field (peers) that are asked to voluntarily review a given article. The publisher doesn’t pay peer reviewers.
I had the option for some compensation for my reviews. Very little, but still.
The journals dont review anything. Other scientists do the reviews for free. Scientific prominence is a key to promotion for scientists, so they publish and review to keep and advance their jobs. Journals were built to abuse this fact.
Scientists publish papers for free, other scientists reviews papers for free, journals charge billions/yr to publish this free work, now mostly in digital formats, a medium that is effectivly free when serving text files.
Scientific journals are a racket, bar none. There are attempts to open source the publishing of these journals, but often if you publish in an open source one, the for profit journals will not accept the piece.
Given that even peer review is a shit show, I’d say there’s no value in these publishers reviewing anything.
Angry Elsevier noises intensify in the background…
“We work hard every day to stamp ‘peer-reviewed’ on ChatGPT botslop and collect money. It’s a valuable service.”
People shouldn’t have to email you. Put your papers on arxiv.org or your own web site.
A number of journals actually have clauses around how you can’t publish it anywhere else if they accept it.
So you can’t ‘publish’ it in those places, but you can send it privately to people who ask.
People can ask me for it by sending a “GET” request to my web server using the HTTP protocol.
And then those can “leak” it :)
It seems like that could just about go in one’s email signature:
“If this message has an attached published paper, please do me the service of making this publicly available via arxiv /scihub or other agency as I’m typically bound from doing this by the publishers conditions”
Usually that’s just for their version. Arxiv the version before it was accepted.
Scientist here. I encourage everyone to use a shadow library like Scihub to break the stranglehold that Elsevier and Wiley have on the free availability of knowledge. These are financialized corporations that add nothing to society and leach off of scientists’ hard work.
Why scientists HAVE to publish on those platforms rather than some other reasonable alternative?
I would guess university agreements with publishers
Aka academic corruption.
Oh, that sucks tho
Why scientists HAVE to pay to publish on those platforms rather than some other reasonable alternative?
I work as a non-academic at a research university.
Let me tell you, academics love discussing and sharing every phase of their papers, especially the findings and subsequent theories or discoveries. I get to participate in research activities quite frequently and some of it is so fascinating. They love someone showing interest and love sharing on their knowledge and findings. There’s a couple I’ll be waiting months more to hear conclusions on, but it’s that “so cool if true” stuff. I can’t imagine the anticipation of those involved, but even if they hit a wall, they explain they’re still just as excited to know they’ve closed the door on something and may open the door to something else.
It seems like such rewarding work.
There’s also a stigma around journals the older and more experienced academics get. I won’t get into it, but yeah, all good things are open to exploitation and often the younger ones are held under wings to guide them on the right path for quicker career growth. That’s just how it eventually works with humans for any thing that’s meant to be of best intentions.
But most people are good people and their passion is untameable, so all you need is just ask them to share knowledge—they absolutely will. The vast majority are certainly not in it for the money, not unless it can get them more financing for more research lol.
Scihub ftw! 🏴☠️
You could drop the pirate flag because this isnt even piracy
Yes, this is how I made it through grad school lol. Wish I knew as an undergrad, but that’s fine.
Until now I could get by with Scihub and Arxiv for college and personal hyperfixation research, but I’d actually love to ask an author directly some time if I ever run into a paper where that’s necessary.
Ive had mixed results with this, but one author was really excited (as was i) and we had a good back and forth for a bit after i had a chance to read/digest the paper.
