- cross-posted to:
- piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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Before Roblox there was this…
I did get paid for reviewing for a Springer journal though. Next to nothing, but it’s not zero.
Just here to say fuck Elsevier.
Academic Authors: $0
FAKE NEWS
This should be in the negatives. We have to pay to get papers published in these traditional journals.
And sometimes open access costs money for the author too.
Don’t forget the university libraries. Yup, researchers are paid by the university, those researchers pay the publishers to place their articles, the peer reviewers are also paid by the university. And then the university has to shell out money to the publishers, so the articles can be accessed.
researchers are paid by the university
Not necessarily. A lot are paid by external research grants.
Why are we looking at revenue? We don’t know the operating costs. What are the profit margins?
Alright but look at how much they pay the authors. What other business pays ZERO dollars for their core product?
None, but science isn’t a business. Treating it so creates perverse incentives where an articles is reviewed by merit of its financial gain and not its content. Some people already do this by prestige alone, but adding money to the mix won’t improve this imo
So it’s acceptable for Elselvier et al to milk academics blind? At the minimum, authors should not be charged.
According to Wikipedia, in 2022 Elsevier’s revenue was 2.909 billion pounds and their net income was 2.021 billion pounds.
Not going to bother looking up the rest.
There’s a much more accurate stat… and it’s disgusting
Or, publish to PLOS ONE, the open-access science journal.
There are many other open-access journals, for example these: https://freejournals.org/. But yes, open-access is the way.
Thank you for these extra options. Great link.
Another one, Frontiers:
A Creative-Commons mega-journal that I did not know about. Thanks!
I have a stupid question but what are the costs of a journal like this? I mean, if they don’t pay the researchers and the reviewers, what do they do?
As of April 2021, PLOS One charges a publication fee of $1,745 to publish an article.
I mean, seriously, I would like to publish to one of these, but who has the money to do that?
I mean, if you consider how much a study costs to get to the point of publication, the publication costs are peanuts in comparison.
8|
Thanks, I did not know that fee was added.
I heard that, you are legally allowed to Email the Academic Authors, and request said articles, which they are allowed to provide for free.
Absolutely. Plus scientists love when people want to actually read their work so you make their day too!
Reviewers and writers actually do get a stipend, but it’s a token amount like 200 bucks a year. This industry is the most ass backward incentive structure we could possibly create, the only reason writers would provide articles to a journal is literally for the clout.
I’ve never gotten a stipend or heard of someone getting a stipend for publishing or reviewing manuscripts. The only thing I’ve been offered is access to the journal.
Depends on the journal I guess, my wife worked at multiple publishers and there’s normally an insultingly small stipend for the editorial board members and writers
Really? I’ve reviewed and published a good chunk of papers and never received any financial compensation.
Well, you received a token amount of 0 bucks an eternity.
They all got bought up by venture capitalists like a decade or more more ago, and this is the result.
They were already backward, but now they are backward, ruthless about cost cutting, and care about nothing but profits.
That’s not an incentive, they’re mocking you with money
Clout and also many academic focused universities expect some set minimum of publications from their staff
Publishing and winning grants are the lifeblood of most academic careers
To fund your research, you have to win grants - and to win grants, you have to have a proven history of publishing research and winning grants! Bonus points if you provide unpaid labor for granting and publishing agencies by reviewing applications and submissions.
I love a self perpetuating system of coerced labor!
Just like the Olympics. The companies are vampire squids.
That’s unfair to both vampires and squids
vampire squid makes them sound cute, they are literally the scum of the earth: They are leeching billions from what is normally a tax funded sector and on the side heavily polarising publishing and access to science in favor of rich countries.
I thought you were a Biologist and were going on an actual rant about actual vampire squids lol
no I just imagined a small squid with tiny fangs
Yeah they are more like Humboldt squid. They live below most things, in the dark, and surface when it is dark. They will eat others, of their own kind, if they are injured, or otherwise inhibited, or because their group isn’t finding adequate feeding fast enough.
NGL if I was a college professor in this situation I’d be pirating my own work fuck these guys
Very frequently you can email the author of the paper and they will be super happy to send you a copy.
I do it all the time. Something something sci-hub. If you ask, the authors will almost always share a preprint.
That seems like a very lucrative market to interrupt
This isn’t a meme, it’s a crime
There are literally tens of thousands of people in academia who could build a transparent, open-source, non-profit publishing system of their own.
Why don’t they?
The big issue is that the individuals who lead these institutions are those who are successful with the status quo; perhaps some recognize the importance of changing it but I perceive that most would be unwilling to dismantle a system that worked well for them.
I don’t know about other fields, but we did do this for AI. It’s all community-run, papers are freely available for everyone to read, and the cost of submission in a peer-reviewed venue is to review other papers. The publishers don’t actually provide anything of value except name recognition and being “reputable”, which they maintain through momentum.
Oh, could you share some links?
Links to what?
Sorry, I might have misunderstood - I thought there would be some journals employing that “review to submit” system you mentioned.
Ah, yes. I just wasn’t clear on whether you wanted to know more about the publication venues or about the value of publishers or something else.
In AI, we normally publish in conferences rather than journals. Some of the big ones are
There is a new journal I know of (TMLR) that’s becoming a bit more popular in these circles, but I believe they rely solely on volunteers to review rather than asking those who submit papers.
Thanks, I will be looking into this!
Corruption - at the highest level.
Well I don’t know about “highest” level.
It’s in some ways worse than that. it’s institutional corruption and collusion across all levels of power within institutions. Not having access to pear review, journals, the gravitas, the funding sources:it creates a monopoly of power for all players in the system where they aren’t benefited by opening up access
There is a transitioning happening but progress churns slowly. I like to compare it to getting out of an abusive relationship.
https://sparcopen.org/our-work/big-deal-knowledge-base/unbundling-profiles/mit-libraries/
It’s happening in Germany as well. Universities are banding together to negotiate better deals with publishers - some subscriptions haven’t been renewed when the publishers weren’t forthcoming. It’s not a solution (that would be the wide establishment of independent, self organized/hosted Open Access journals - using Open Journal Systems for example) but it’s a start.
but wait…
where meme part ?
Didn’t you know? Screenshots of social media posts are memes now 🙃
!politicalmemes@lemmy.world suffers from this but it’s 1000% worse there.
Internet memes come from the original concept of memes as an element of culture passed on from person to person.
From Wikipedia’s “internet meme” article.
Remember folks, if you pirate scientific papers you’re stealing from the hard working…wait a minute…
You wouldn’t download a car
Lol you wouldn’t download knowledge.
I would, actually
I’d 3D print that shit so hard on my shitty little Ender.
Why stop at one?
I too want to open a business where both customers and suppliers pay me. Do you know any more gullible sectors? Academics are pretty extorted already it seems.
Real estate seems to be a popular place for seemingly unnecessary middlemen.
Construction workers: I consent
Regular people wanting to not be homeless: I consent
Banks, landlords, real estate agents, investors, governments: isn’t there somebody you forgot to ask???
