Academic Publishing Critique

I've said this before on other threads but frankly, scientific publishers represent institutionalised theft of tax payer money:- Academics (most often publicly funded via grants and university salaries) do the work for free.- They are expected to learn to use LaTeX and to typeset their work for free.- They are expected to copy-edit the papers for free, or else pay a copy editor themselves with, you guessed it, public funds.- Volunteer Academics (on university time and therefore,

Usually publishing fees are not the problem. The problem is reading papers is expensive if you're not using Scihub.In fact, publishing in an open journal (e.g. Plos) cost about twice as much as an equivalent closed journal, but it's the model that everybody except Elsevier wants.When you get a (public) grant, some of the money is reserved for publishing costs. It's outrageus that public money is used to research and publish but then the public and other researchers cannot ac

> They bought the rightsNo elsevier does not pay authors, in fact:> author gets free publicationIf author wants his paper to be open access (something that is often required by their funding grants), they have to pay a high publication fee. Other journals charge paper submission (for consideration) fees as well.But the error in your argument is at the start. You assume that the market is free and scientists have an alternative to publishing in elsevier. If scientists want their

Frankly, scientific publishers represent institutionalised theft of tax payer money:- Academics (most often publicly funded via grants and university salaries) do the work for free.- They are expected to learn to use LaTeX and to typeset their work for free.- They are expected to copy-edit the papers for free, or else pay a copy editor themselves with, you guessed it, public funds.- Volunteer Academics (on university time and therefore, again, public money) are expected to review the

Many people outside academia assume that researchers receive some sort of financial benefit when their paper is distributed, read, or bought for $35 on Elsevier.But in fact, the publishing companies receive money from both the researcher and the reader. They charge the researcher up to $1,500 to publish the article, and then they extract money from the readers by charging a subscription fee to their institution (which constitute a large portion of the library budget).Not even the ed

I'm afraid the case isn't that simple for academic publishing.The authors, i.e., scientists who conducted the research, usually pay a lot of money (typically 1500--2500 USD, depending on the journal) to the journal to get their paper published (of course, after peer review). In this process, neither the authors nor the reviewers get any payment for their work, although they put the most amount of efforts into it. On the other hand, most research papers are funded by the taxpayers, y

It's the publisher who restricts access by charging a fee and taking a profit, not the university for choosing not to pay it.The author and reviewers gave their work for free. Journals should charge enough to cover costs and be sustainable, and no more.

I've just had a paper accepted last week in a traditional journal (peer-reviewed and paywalled) and I'd share a few things I know and feel about scientific publishing from an anthor's perspective.The publisher provide a valuable service to authors. Their online submission protal was a joy to use and their staff very friendly and responsive. Once a panel has decided that my submission was at least fit for further consideration it was forwarded to three peer-reviewers who may and

I was very serious.The journals take works others have done (work often paid for with public money) and get unpaid volunteers to peer-review it. Next they require the authors to sign away their copyright to it. And then they turn right back around and sell it to very same universities where it came from for thousands of dollars a year.And for what? So they can have have profit margins rivaling big tech? (Their major expenses are lawyers and server costs for pdf documents…)And why

I think the debate is that the charges are not fair. Reviewers often donate their time to journal reviews. The research may often be paid for by government grants.researchgate.net & arxiv provide a away around this. Arxiv is well known, not sure how researchgate is doing. Scientists could setup their profiles and papers in arxiv or researchgate and then they can be accessed over google scholar.