this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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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.
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.
Totally agree
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.
Exactly. Asking some grad student to take on these ancient, corrupt publishing systems at the expense of their career and livelihood is ridiculous
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)
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).
This is probably the avenue to shut this down. If funding is contingent on making the publication freely available to download, and that comes from a major government funding source, then this whole scam could die essentially overnight.
That would need to somehow get enough political support to pass muster in the first place and pass the inevitable legal challenge that follows, too. So, really, this is just another example of regulatory capture ruining everything.
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
I'm sympathetic, but to a limit.
There are a lot of academics out there with a good amount of clout and who are relatively safe. I don't think I've heard of anything remotely worthy on these topics from any researcher with clout, publicly at least. Even privately (I used to be in academia), my feeling was most don't even know how to think and talk about it, in large part because I don't think they do think and talk about it all.
And that's because most academics are frankly shit at thinking and engaging on collective and systematic issues. Many just do not want to, and instead want to embrace the whole "I live and work in an ideal white tower disconnected from society because what I do is bigger than society". Many get their dopamine kicks from the publication system and don't think about how that's not a good thing. Seriously, they don't deserve as much sympathy as you might think ... academia can be a surprisingly childish place. That the publication system came to be at all is proof of that frankly, where they were all duped by someone feeding them ego-dopamine hits. It's honestly kinda sad.
That’s all I’m saying 🤷♂️
more like the only way to float, not just move up. good luck getting grants without papers in these scum of the Earth publishers
Too true
I feel like most of the academia in the research side would be happy to see it collapse, but the current system is too deeply tied in the money for any quick change
I worked in academia for almost a decade and never met a researcher who wouldn't openly support sci-hub (well, some warned their students that it was illegal to type these spesific search terms and click on the wrong link downloading the pdf for free)
One lecturer actually had notes on their slides for the differences between the latest version of the course book and the one before it, since the latest one wasn't available for free anywhere but they wanted to use couple chapters from the new book (they scanned and distributed the relevant parts themself)
So you're saying the problem is capitalism...
Yep. But that is all a part of the problem. If academics can't organise themselves enough to have some influence over something which is basically owned and run them already (they write the papers and then review the papers and then are the ones reading and citing the papers and caring the most about the quality and popularity of the papers) ... then they can't be trusted to ensure the quality of their practice and institutions going forward, especially under the ever increasing encroachment of capitalistic forces.
Modern day academics are damn well lucky that they inherited a system and culture that developed some old aristocratic ideals into a set of conventions and practices!
Tbh they already do everything they can, if you ever need a paper, e-mail the author and they'll most likely send you the "last version" before publication they still hold the rights to distribute
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.
That can easily be fixed at the source: as the author of the paper, you can just license it to be open if you want.
you're risking copyright nastygrams, but people still do it, and even upload preprints and full articles to scihub, because fuck that and it's maybe free citations
The problems are wider than that. Besides, relying "individuals just doing the right thing and going a little further to do so" is, IMO, a trap. Fix the system instead. The little thing everyone can do is think about the system and realise it needs fixing.
Imagine there must be a payoff for them ? Wider distribution ?
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 :(