I don’t get why publishers get paid either by the researchers or the users, when their service is minimal compared to the researchers or peer reviewers, who don’t get paid at all.
The meme is the price tag.
Submitted 7 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/52ec6522-a6b2-4cc8-83a1-663b87ad5490.jpeg
Comments
JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 7 months ago
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 7 months ago
What service do they even provide at this point? Web hosting? Formatting? Proofreading? These are not particularly difficult services. Can’t we just create our own low cost or free publishers?
xkforce@lemmy.world 7 months ago
You know what is really messed up about the publishing system we have? There are people out there that defend it. They claim the high costs are a “feature” that prevents fake/garbage papers from being published. Which best case scenario, shows that the emperor is stark naked.
whotookkarl@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Yes, it seems right now the only thing holding back that change is researchers treating paid journals as prestigious and adding clout to their name and publishings, and lacking a system to engage in peer review outside is journals and conferences. ArXiv is basically halfway there to registering users and publishing, they just need features for registering as a peer review, engaging for a review, and judging as acceptable or not. Most of that could be covered by votes and comments like Lemmy but limited to an accredited community of peer researchers.
Black616Angel@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
To be fair, real proofreading is no easy task. You need someone proficient in that field of study to really do that, but as recent AI-escapades showed, none of those publishers do that anymore.
justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
The pricy thing is the establishment of a journal. A new journal, particularly a cheap one will get only crap articles, and because it has only crap articles, it won’t get better. Neither from the side of referees, nor authors. In some countries it is not even relevant how successful your article is. It only counts how “fancy” the journal is (according to some outdated ministry list)
And btw, researchers don’t pay for that. Subscription journals are payed by University licences and open access articles are payed by project funds, which also pay the researchers. You don’t get any less salary because of an expensive journal. You just might not be able to publish all your work as open access.
fossilesque@mander.xyz 7 months ago
Ask Gislane Maxwell.
Rolando@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Refuse to review for these scam journals. Only review for open-source venues.
RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Agreed, but is there a directory to find alternatives that are both reputable and reasonable in their pricing?
RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
The price tag is a joke.
uservoid1@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Ibaudia@lemmy.world 7 months ago
The profit margins on these journals are like 40% btw
Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Well at least the vast majority of that money will go towards supporting this kind of research… right?
whotookkarl@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Published by Elsevier their parent company 2023 financials: www.relx.com/~/…/relx-2023-financial-review.pdf nothing noted as funding research or science that I can see, it would probably eat into their 37% profit margins.
Tja@programming.dev 7 months ago
Just in case someone doesn’t know it at this point: email the authors directly, they will be more than happy to send you a copy of their paper. The authors don’t get a penny from the sale of the article and they are basically rewarded for citations, so it’s in their interest to spread the word.
jxk@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
This is not the price to access a paper. This is the price to publish one paper.
Tja@programming.dev 7 months ago
Oh, I missed that due to the /r/uselessredcircle (uselessBlackCircle in this case)
qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 7 months ago
Additionally, you can find the preprint of many articles for free (e.g., arXiv). Not the exact article, but often very similar.
(Only tangentially related to the meme, which is about publishing costs.)
whotookkarl@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Good point, check pre-prints like arXiv or yarr like scihub before checking with the author, maybe save you both some time.
flora_explora@beehaw.org 7 months ago
This is the other way around. The price tag in the meme is for researchers to pay so their article gets published in the journal. And it will be an open access article, so people who want to read it won’t have to pay anything. What’s so crazy about this is the huge prize tag for publishing your paper. It cannot be that costly to run an online journal.