Scientific Exposure

Comments

• ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Fun (random shit I heard on the internet): the enshittification of journals mostly started with Pergamon Press which was founded by Ghislaine Maxwell’s father.

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  • Rooskie91@discuss.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    There’s a behind the bastards about him.

    iheart.com/…/part-one-robert-maxwell-how-ghislain…

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    • zqwzzle@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Are we sure that current events aren’t just one long behind the bastards episode?

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    • cRazi_man@europe.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Fantastic episode

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  • SendMePhotos@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Image

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  • frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    If you didn’t know this, it’d be weird how many academics are in the Epstein files. Once you do know it, it’s obvious.

    Oh, and Robert Maxwell was legitimately a badass in WW2. Everything terrible about him starts after that.

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    • thevoidzero@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      People that do well in wartime and during peacetime are different type of people.

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    • redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      The best villain origin stories start as heroes. Robert Maxwell is essentially Magneto if his power was greed and pedophilia instead of mannerism.

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    • unphazed@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      He was indeed a badass… and a war criminal (although I admit dude was incensed about Germany killing his Jewish family, so I get it) But seriously, a mayor?

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  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Sometimes I feel like everything shit in the world can be traced back to like a dozen people and their parents and grandparents.

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    • Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      🌏👨‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀🌌

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    • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      If you told me that dude was Reagan’s nephew, I wouldn’t even bother to check.

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  • ozymandias@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    hmmm… makes the hanging suicide murder of Aaron Swartz look extra funny

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    • Jason2357@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      And a few years later rich folk start mass downloading the same databases to train LLM models using the exact same methods to sell access to those. No FBI.

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  • Collatz_problem@hexbear.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    stress

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  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    But all large presses were doing the same thing. Eslevier, Nature, Etc.

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• BertramDitore@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  In grad school I remember being encouraged to submit a paper to a journal that would have charged me a few hundred dollars to put it in for peer review, and I told my advisor no, I needed to buy groceries, I would not throw my money away for an extra line on my CV. He got all flustered and it was a great example of why higher education is so fucked. My advisor, who ostensibly understood my background and means, could not understand how such a relatively small fee would be so prohibitive. He was incapable of understanding that I was essentially unemployed while enrolled as his grad student, and every dollar of funding went to bare essentials so I could continue breathing. He had access to discretionary funds for this exact kind of issue (I found out later), and didn’t think to offer.

  Without independent wealth and deep personal connections it’s incredibly difficult to succeed in academia, regardless of the quality of your research.

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  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I got lucky in that my publication was through a journal that doesn’t charge money for access or submissions. It’s part of our professional organization and our annual membership fees cover the journal’s expenses.

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  • Skullgrid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Without independent wealth and deep personal connections it’s incredibly difficult to succeed in academia, regardless of the quality of your research.

    Always has been, why do you think he’s called SIR Isaac Newton?

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    • baltakatei@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      • Neils Bohr, from a Jewish/Danish banking family.
      • James Clark Maxwell inherited land and wealth in Scotland.
      • Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz… look at the size of the wig on the man!

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    • yeather@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Also, Newton was not born with the connection, he made them in Grantham. He had a very strained relationship with his mother and step father and was raised by his grandmother.

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  • oppy1984@lemdro.id ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Really needs to be a wikipedia style service for academic papers.

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    • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      arxiv.org

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    • JohnSmith@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      plos.org

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    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      www.biorxiv.org

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  • FishFace@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    In grad school your institution should be paying for fees like that. If the school itself isn’t paying, then doesn’t the supervisor have a grant they can file it under?

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    • princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Did we not read the same comment? The advisor did have funding for that sort of thing and just plain didn’t offer. Maybe he wanted to have a big pizza party or something ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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  • radio_free_asgarthr@hexbear.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    What field were you in? Journal fees should either have been paid by your advisor’s funding or they should be the one paying.

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    • BertramDitore@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Archaeology. But it was in the UK and I’m American so everything was a bit tougher than it should have been. My advisor for sure should have paid, and could have, but he was an asshole who didn’t bother to understand my situation.

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  • Jason2357@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Uuhh, beyond the fucked up publishing system, your advisor was a self destructive dick. It was his job to pay that. His lab and career benefit and hes the one that gets funding for research operations.

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    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      your advisor was a self destructive dick

      He was likely an unfunded loser who could not even get a grant to cover page charges.

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  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    My advisor, who ostensibly understood my background and means, could not understand how such a relatively small fee would be so prohibitive.

    No advisor expects a student to pay publication charges. My lab pays about $10,000/yr into this racket.

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    • BertramDitore@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I don’t know what to tell you. Your experiences are your own, and I’m glad your lab takes care of you.

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    thats why its so gatekeeped, cant get a career in biotech, research you have to be published at some point, very few get it at undergrad. thats why most bio majors are health and not something as convoluted as research.

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  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Without independent wealth and deep personal connections it’s incredibly difficult to succeed in academia, regardless of the quality of your research.

    oh bullshit.

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• zd9@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The scientific journal industrial complex is one of the highest profit margins in the world. It’s consistently at like 30-60% pure profit. Obviously not all journals are the same, some are reasonable, but some are insane. LOOKING AT YOU ELSEVIER

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  • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s like music. There’s a lot of value in the back catalogue.

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  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The labor is in the peer review and they pay nothing. Then they setup a system where peer reviewers get “credits” not one cares about.

    Fucking wooden nickels.

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    wonder whats natrues profit margin, they probably one of the most well renowned journal

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• ToiletFlushShowerScream@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Elsevier has a 3 billion dollar income, while most of its research is publicly funded. You are paying for the research, then paying again to access the results of the research that you already paid for. The executives can hang.

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  • mineralfellow@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It is so much worse than that.

    I spend my time researching the literature on a topic so that I can spend my time and energy writing a grant. It probably won’t get funded.

    If it does, I get to do a bunch of work. It might involve travel, where I will do everything at minimum expense to save enough money for the coming lab work.

    I will spend significant time getting the samples analyzed, spending most of the grant money. Then I will come up with a logical way to interpret the data.

    I will spend more time sending a document around to coauthors. This may take months, or even years if the coauthors fight.

    We eventually submit to a journal. It gets rejected.

    We rewrite and submit again. A few months later, congratulations, you get to publish. Money please.

    I work for the money to do the work, I work for the writeup, I fight for the acceptance, and I have to pay to publish.

    It’s a stupid system.

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    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      as a PI/researcher they are spending thier careers fighting to get published/grants. i can see why alot of them left thier fields.

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  • Friendlybirdseggs@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Behold nothing! >⠀<

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  • Ibaudia@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    They have bonkers profit margins too. 38% in 2023. They’re in the same category as Microsoft or Google when it comes to profitability. Absolutely insane for a company that’s supposed to disseminate scientific information.

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• baltakatei@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  “Clearly something you want me to do because you keep on paying, lol.”

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  • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The subscription service/pay-to-play being everywhere has to stop eventually, right?

    Like, eventually enough consumers will realize that they are bent over the barrel by their services.

    I was darkly joking that Microsoft is like an abuser in another post yesterday, but the more I thought about it, the more the metaphor stuck. They take and take, make decisions on your behalf, cut you off from outsiders and make it increasingly difficult to escape the longer you let them get away with it. And that’s not Microsoft’s fault…that’s capitalism, baby!

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• A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  In my univerity, they just told me how to pirate articles, straigt up, as if it was just normal and legal, very based but it was surprising.

  Nobody cares anymore about leech capitalism, almost nobody defends this companies and i’m so so happy it is that way.

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  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    any article author will gladly send you a PDF.

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    when i was in state u, we just used google scholar which the school already pays “subscritions for” so you have acess to articles that arnt gatekeeped behind a paywall. if you were to use it without a faculty or student account.

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• FrankLaskey@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This article in the Guardian is definitely worth a read if you’re not intimately familiar with just how it got this way… It’s 8 years old so it won’t cover recent history but does give you an idea of how/why it got this way.

  And yes Robert Maxwell (father of Ghislaine) is mostly to blame.

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  • marcela@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It is as if the New Yorker or the Economist demanded that journalists write and edit each other’s work for free, and asked the government to foot the bill. Outside observers tend to fall into a sort of stunned disbelief when describing this setup. A 2004 parliamentary science and technology committee report on the industry drily observed that “in a traditional market suppliers are paid for the goods they provide”. A 2005 Deutsche Bank report referred to it as a “bizarre” “triple-pay” system, in which “the state funds most research, pays the salaries of most of those checking the quality of research, and then buys most of the published product”.

    Racket.

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  • marcela@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Maxwell insisted on grand titles – “International Journal of” was a favourite prefix. Peter Ashby, a former vice president at Pergamon, described this to me as a “PR trick”, but it also reflected a deep understanding of how science, and society’s attitude to science, had changed. Collaborating and getting your work seen on the international stage was becoming a new form of prestige for researchers, and in many cases Maxwell had the market cornered before anyone else realised it existed.

    If you explain to any outsider that what we call science is a game of collecting and showing off units of prestige, they will be flabbergasted. Maxwell catered to the most superficial and vain aspects of the human psyche, and traded in a measure of righteousness. This is genius, I will grant him that, but opposite to the objectives of science. He made the worst possible metric about which to measure everything, and created a global system of narcissistic organizations selling their souls to publish to these journals.

    And scientists are the least probable to rebel against this status quo. If anything, it will make them appear as big-time asses who are full of themselves. They are bound to project more legitimacy onto the system, similar to doomsday cultists.

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    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      He made the worst possible metric about which to measure everything, and created a global system of narcissistic organizations selling their souls to publish to these journals.

      In the words of Sydney Brenner (a biologist, it’s in the article): the system is “corrupt”.

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  • marcela@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Aspesi was not the first person to incorrectly predict the end of the scientific publishing boom, and he is unlikely to be the last. It is hard to believe that what is essentially a for-profit oligopoly functioning within an otherwise heavily regulated, government-funded enterprise can avoid extinction in the long run. But publishing has been deeply enmeshed in the science profession for decades. Today, every scientist knows that their career depends on being published, and professional success is especially determined by getting work into the most prestigious journals.

    It is the departments’ choice to cancel subscriptions anytime and start publishing on their own terms. They are equally to blame when they esteem reputation above all, and measure reputation by publishing to these journals. Let’s not pretend that big-shot universities are simply taken hostage by a handful corrupt billionaires. They’re in on it.

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  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This article in the Guardian is definitely worth a read if you’re not intimately familiar with just how it got this way… It’s 8 years old so it won’t cover recent history but does give you an idea of how it started.

    A very interesting read!

    So, what i take form the article, is that Elsevier and other publishers are most similar to a search engine or index: They give you a list of all interesting articles in a field, so you don’t have to search through the millions of scientific articles produced each year yourself.

    That makes it kinda similar to google, which is also very profitable, which also turns a profit by giving back user-supplied content to the users. Just that Elsevier charges for that “indexlist” functionality directly, while google takes the game one step further and harvests data, which it then uses to display targeted ads.

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• ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  IHMO: All science should be freely accessible, free as in freedom and price.

  The more eyes can actually see something and find flaws, the better. There is no such thing as institutional credibility. Everyone makes mistakes and it takes everyone to find them, even more so the more complex something is. Leech publishers are not only problematic because they prohibit access, but also because they make real science considerably harder.

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  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    IHMO: All science should be freely accessible, free as in freedom and price.

    Taxpayers pay $6B/yr worldwide to the private publishing industry, for content they cannot read.

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  • stelelor@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Everyone makes mistakes

    Except psychopaths who know their claim is garbage but lie through their teeth to get it published. That’s not a mistake, that’s corruption.

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    • ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Nah, real science starts with a conclusion and then works backwards to find evidence for said conclusion. I think it is a more modern approach. Instead of validating reality, we are validating feelings.

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• GreenKnight23@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’ll just start my own journal with blackjack and hookers.

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• SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives

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• JokeDeity@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I honestly don’t understand this. It’s not that expensive to just host a website where you publish your research to instead of using these scheisters.

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• ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  You missed the part where like half the time they don’t actually do the peer review part

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• minorkeys@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  They control the means of distribution and accreditation of science publishing. Business should not be trusted to control anything.

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• Matriks404@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Why not create open-source online “scientific jorunal” with service provided by donations then? Am I missing something?

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• bananabenana@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This comic is partially right. If you pay, you get open access, so no cost for readers. If you go old-school you don’t pay and the article is paywalled. Terrible system either way, but open access is necessary nowadays, as otherwise you will get cited less

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• Soapbox@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  You can thank Ghislaine Maxwell’s dad for that shit.

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• SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  “and for the hours of peer review, we pay nothing.”

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• Xerxos@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Ctrl+C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-P. Another hard workday done.

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• Gullible@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Behind you, an executive encourages your participation in academia. *plap* *plap* *plap* *plap* get published get published get published

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• architect@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Not just science. I own a small art business. The magazines in my world all do this. I see my competitors paying hundreds of dollars for “interviews” in them. The entire magazine is an ad masquerading as some type of journalism. I don’t even pay for ads and I’m buried in work. So it’s not needed, at all (who reads this stuff? At least a science journal makes sense).

  Honestly it’s shameful across the board. Anyone participating should feel bad about it.

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• FundMECFS@anarchist.nexus ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  more Open Access non-profit journals please

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• PixelPilgrim@lemmings.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Do these researches even get paid for publishing their work

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• Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What scientific publishing really needs is a cost-free publishing system that is run by the universities, and where the universities publish all their papers in.

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• LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  knowing literally nothing about the state of academic journalism in China I’m going to just confidently say, lol, lmao, China keep winning (and this is why it will) some-controversy

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• deczzz@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Experienced this first hand. Don’t understand why something better has come up. Everyone agrees that this system is broken

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• Fedizen@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Governments support this nonsense by not attaching publishing requirements to research grants.

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