this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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It's worse than that. Authors actually pay (up to several thousand dollars) to publish, the editors who find referees are doing this as a side job, so probably they're not exactly overpaid either. Finally you have the anonymous referee, who not only doesn't get paid, but they get literally zero recognition. Also, papers aren't printed in journals any more, they are online only, so there's no printing fee either, there's only just server hosting costs, paying some people for language editing and final typesetting (in many fields authors must submit LaTeX manuscripts, basically ready for publishing). And profit of course.
Yep, it’s a fucking embarrassment. Clearly science and academia stopped attracting our brightest and best a while ago or their egos are so fragile they’re as easy to manipulate as children. Either way, institutionally, very poor leaders and caretakers of institutions, which truly undermines the faith we can have in the quality of research they are doing.
I can understand why it seems the way. But the people doing academic research by and large could make a lot more money working less hard at some company, but choose instead to try to advance human knowledge.
The incentives are just terrible. When I was a PhD student, I railed against this system, but when it came time to publish, I was overruled by my PI. And I know now that he was right - success is built off publication, and the best journals have this shitty model.
I used to think that when I became boss, I wouldn't participate in the bullshit, but if any of my trainees want a career in academia, that stance would be screwing them over. The rules need to come from the top, but the people at the top, almost by definition, are the ones that have prospered with the current system.
You can't change the system single-handedly overnight, but you can be active in your research community, e.g. you can suggest that conference proceedings be available for free online.
Also, if your trainees publish in journals, just make sure to put your pre-prints on arxiv or somewhere similar for free.
I do these things. I also refuse to review for-profit journals and paper mills, post all of my code in open source repositories, and advocate for these practices whenever I get the chance. When I had a popular science blog over 10 years ago,
writing about this stuff a bunch.
But as long as hiring committees are scanning CVs for the number of Nature/Science/Cell journals, and granting agencies aren't insisting on different practices, this shit will continue.