You spend years on your work. You probably have loans. Your income is pitiful. And this is the structural thing that gets your name out. Now someone says “hey take a risk, don’t do it and break the system.”
Well…you first 🤷♂️ they publish on this garbage because it’s the only way to move up, and these garbage systems continue on because everyone has to participate. Hate the game. Don’t blame those who are by and large forced to participate.
It would require lot of effort from people with clout. It’s a big fight to pick. I am very much in favor of picking that fight, but we need to be a little sympathetic to what that entails.
100% ppl need stop thinking big changes can be made “by individuals”, this kind of stuff needs regulation and state alternatives made by popular pressure or is impossible to break as an average worker dealing with in the private sector.
applied for a grant last month, now to finalize grant you need to publish things in open access format. (EU country; there’s a push for all publicly funded research to be open access, with it being a requirement from year ??? on, not sure when, but soon) there’s some special funding set aside just for open access fees, which is still rotten because these leeches still stand to profit. then, if you miss that, then there’s an agreement where my uni pays a selection of publishers to let in certain number of articles per year open access, which is basically the same thing but with different source of funding (not from grant, but straight from ministry)
decline to review for the big journals. why give them free labor? Do academic service in other ways.
if you’re organizing a workshop or conference, put the papers online for free. If you’re just participating and not organizing, then suggest they put the papers online for free. Here’s an example: https://aclanthology.org/ If that’s too time-consuming, use: https://arxiv.org/
Something else we can do: regulate. Like every other corrupt industry in the history of the world, we need the force of law to fix it–and for pretty much all the same reasons. People worked at Triangle Shirtwaist because they had to, not because they thought it was a great place to work.
Funding agencies have huge power here; demanding that research be published in OA journals is perhaps a good start (with limits on $ spent publishing, perhaps).
i hear you, but this leaves this massive gaping hole very quickly filled by predatory journals
the better solution would be journals created and maintained by universities or other institutions with national (or international, like from EU) funding
As someone who’s not too familiar with the bureaucracy of academia I have to ask: Can’t the authors just upload all their studies to ResearchGate or some other website if they want? I know that they often share it privately with others when they request a paper, so can they post it publicly too?
Nope, you just can’t get a job unless you suck it up and publish in these journals, because they’re already famous. And established profs use their cosy relationships with editors to gatekeep and stifle competition for their funding :(
Yea, academics need to just shut the publication system down. The more they keep pandering to it the more they look like fools.
It’s chicken/egg or “you first” problem.
You spend years on your work. You probably have loans. Your income is pitiful. And this is the structural thing that gets your name out. Now someone says “hey take a risk, don’t do it and break the system.”
Well…you first 🤷♂️ they publish on this garbage because it’s the only way to move up, and these garbage systems continue on because everyone has to participate. Hate the game. Don’t blame those who are by and large forced to participate.
It would require lot of effort from people with clout. It’s a big fight to pick. I am very much in favor of picking that fight, but we need to be a little sympathetic to what that entails.
100% ppl need stop thinking big changes can be made “by individuals”, this kind of stuff needs regulation and state alternatives made by popular pressure or is impossible to break as an average worker dealing with in the private sector.
applied for a grant last month, now to finalize grant you need to publish things in open access format. (EU country; there’s a push for all publicly funded research to be open access, with it being a requirement from year ??? on, not sure when, but soon) there’s some special funding set aside just for open access fees, which is still rotten because these leeches still stand to profit. then, if you miss that, then there’s an agreement where my uni pays a selection of publishers to let in certain number of articles per year open access, which is basically the same thing but with different source of funding (not from grant, but straight from ministry)
There are a couple things we can do:
Fully agree but I can tell you about point 1 that there enough gullible scientists in the world that see nothing wrong with the current system.
They will gadly pick up free review when Nature comes knocking, since its “such an honour” for such a reputable paper.
Such a reputable paper that’s no doubt accepted dozens of ChatGPT papers by now. Wow, how prestigious!
Something else we can do: regulate. Like every other corrupt industry in the history of the world, we need the force of law to fix it–and for pretty much all the same reasons. People worked at Triangle Shirtwaist because they had to, not because they thought it was a great place to work.
Funding agencies have huge power here; demanding that research be published in OA journals is perhaps a good start (with limits on $ spent publishing, perhaps).
i hear you, but this leaves this massive gaping hole very quickly filled by predatory journals
the better solution would be journals created and maintained by universities or other institutions with national (or international, like from EU) funding
As someone who’s not too familiar with the bureaucracy of academia I have to ask: Can’t the authors just upload all their studies to ResearchGate or some other website if they want? I know that they often share it privately with others when they request a paper, so can they post it publicly too?
Publishing comes with IP laws and copyright. For example, open access articles should be easy to upload without concern. “Private” articles being republished somewhere without license is “piracy”, and ResearchGate did get in trouble for it. It’s complicated. https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/publishers-settle-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-with-researchgate/4018095.article
Pre-prints are a different story.
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Nope, you just can’t get a job unless you suck it up and publish in these journals, because they’re already famous. And established profs use their cosy relationships with editors to gatekeep and stifle competition for their funding :(