Hacker News Reader

Scholars actually pay journals to publish their papers. No, this isn't vanity press or a bribe. Scholars must work very hard to reach the point where they can pay those fees.

For example, say you submit a paper to Nature. Odds are it will be rejected, because Nature has a high impact factor. Say your paper is both accepted and passes the review process. Now you have to pay Nature to publish your paper. Depending on the options you ask for (e.g. making it free to download costs extra) you can wind up paying thousands.

No university is going to say to one of their researchers, "Hey, could you maybe not get accepted by Nature quite so much? It's expensive!". Nature knows this.

Also, the format of submission varies by field. While word files may be standard in some fields, in others latex is expected. Obviously, typesetting a latex document is pretty gosh-darned easy for a script to do.

> Scholars actually pay journals to publish their papers.

Depends on the journal and the field, really.

The fact that it's a thing at all is outrageous enough.

Indeed, and as further commentary to the previous two posters -- Nature doesn't charge publishing fees, because its popularity allows for high funding revenues.

This is not true for the vast majority of journals in the biomedical scienecs.

I think this is very different. Nature has created a strong brand and they can charge whatever they please. I understand why publicly funded institutions would want to pay to have their research papers published in Nature, it could be part of their marketing budget, like billboards.

It's just that publicly funded institutions should be forced to make their papers widely available free of charge.

> It's just that publicly funded institutions should be forced to make their papers widely available free of charge.

Exactly. This problem needs a big push from outside the system, from government and people, because the publisher-academic careerist marriage is, unfortunately, working well for both.

It seems the real BS is paying to publish in "big name journal" because the Cabal will place a high value in said "big name journals"

It makes just as much sense as wearing a fashion accessory. "This person must be important because of his fancy watch"

I mean, not really. It's a big name because the best research is published there. Therefore, if you are published there it's because you are doing some of the best research.

> It's a big name because the best research is published there.

The fact they charge the author to be in the journal immediately brings into question if it is truly the best research.

I mean, maybe there is better stuff somewhere. Nonetheless, its position as an selective and influential journal with excellent research is pretty secure, which is precisely why they can charge. I still don't see it as quite analogous to an expensive handbag.

You see my point though. Charging to be in the journal means that there may be amazing research that simply refused to pay. Charging to be published in the journal is at odds with it always containing the best research.

Exactly that

Papers published there are certainly at a high quality level, in predicate logic:

A - Published on Nature

B - Good Research

A -> B is true, which does not imply !A -> !B

Sure, but the claim I disagreed with was the claim that big-name journals were nothing more than a brand with cachet. That is not true; research in one of them is almost certainly of the highest standard.

Of course the publishers say they create immense value by typesetting said PDFs, but as technologists, we can clearly see that this is bunk.

Amusingly, when I was a grad student, some friends showed me how they could use LaTeX to produce a manuscript that looked like a spitting image of a Physical Review article.

That was in 1992.

Well Phys.Rev. makes their LaTeX style file freely available, so it's not surprising. But yeah, it lifts quite an amount of burden from their editors if you already use their style for typesetting.

https://journals.aps.org/revtex

In maths everyone typesets their own papers. Good publishers let you use their (La)TeX styles beforehand to make sure it will compile finely, after that they do little else.

Check out Overleaf - here's a referral link that gives you and me more disk space: https://www.overleaf.com/signup?ref=64cf3f9ff138

Web based LaTeX editing, makes it very easy to collaborate. But also they have many standard journal and university templates, and direct submission links to lots of journals to make the whole process of formatting and submitting a paper much simpler.

Yes, this of course raises the question of why some journals charge so much.

I still believe publishers have value, but recently some of them have figured out how to do as little work as possible while making the most money.

Who can blame them in a capitalist society. Anyway, I'm glad to see people respond via places like Arxiv. Sci-Hub is more like civil disobedience. Great that it happened for all the learners out there, but it's going to make some people very angry because they have bet their careers or invested based on the idea that the government protects and enforces copyright agreements.

We want people to invest in research. Academia has been very lucky in this regard as higher level institutions have continually grown in America. Should people begin to feel that investing in research has no return value, there might not be so many tenureships around in the future. I don't think this is happening I'm just conjecturing and suggesting that while a correction is definitely needed, I'm not sure leaping to the "all free" model is going to work for every scientific community. I could be 100% wrong though. I like the direction in which we are headed. It's more trusting, and I think that means growth for a society.

The returns that we expect and want from research have nothing to do with publishing models, though. And most of the people profiting from the current publication system aren't what we would call great scientists, so much as opportunistic capitalists. They aren't advancing society; they're just pulling in a paycheck, extracting rent from people trying to make actual scientific impacts, or figure out how to transform those advances into productive realities.

From the kitchen link,

    "A PDF is a weapons-grade tool for piracy"

...

    "This is despite the fact that the publishers’
    action directly addressed a very real
    economic problem."

This "very real economic problem" that the author describes is not making enough of money off of textbooks. The publishers have lost all relevance by having contorted themselves over the years to fit into a model which no longer makes sense.

Journals can run themselves (with proper software) and historical impact factor needs to be abolished.

> Can you believe it? Paywalling. PDFs. For billions.

Wow, I'm amazed that a scientists of all people would tolerate such a scam. Why don't they come together, and en masse leave these pay-walled journals, and switch to free open ones?

In politics, you hear about how uneducated voters are tricked by politicians, but this is far more worse. Here you've got some of the most intelligent and creative people on the planet knowingly allow themselves to be screwed over. Wow.

Here's a hint: some perfectly qualified scientists pursue work outside academia because they're unwilling to put up with publishers and journals. The ones who stick around base their career advancement almost entirely on publication-derived credentials, so it isn't in their best interest to rock the boat. There's a strong selection bias at play.

To be fair, many perfectly qualified scientists pursue work outside of academia because they couldn't get a permanent job in academia. Which is another sort of selection bias at play, particularly wrt their commentary on academic practice.

Publish or Perish is a highly accurate description of the career. Improving the publishing experience is not the same as publishing, so while you and a couple of your colleagues band together to improve the process, another colleague continues to publish and now looks better than you on paper.

Hmm.. If only governments required that any research it funds be published in open access journals. If enough people around the world are made aware of this issue, they could petition their government to enact such a policy...

Why are you under the impression scholars write the papers for free? That is what researchers are employed at universities to do ... Yes, it is not like publishing a book but these papers are not really like books anyway.

They're not getting paid by the publisher.

No we don't get paid by the publisher but we are paid to write papers. I can be downvoted for being correct but it doesn't change anything. Researchers are paid by research institution to do research for which product are papers.

You're totally right. He does make some other great points in his comment which could be acknowledged in a measured response...

You’re being downvoted because this technicality / POV has no real bearing on the main question and doesn’t add to the discussion.

The point is that publishers make immense profits from publishing the work of others whom they don't compensate. Do you think it is 'fine' that the output of publicly funded research is locked away and rented out to other scientists by 3rd parties who contribute very little?

> Why are you under the impression scholars write the papers for free? That is what researchers are employed at universities to do ...

Researchers are employed to drumroll please research. (inc. teach, and mentor, and advise, and admin, etc.)

Disseminating your research, that requires writing it up, yes. So, no, they don't technically write up the research for free, but those who benefit (the publishers) are not the same entities who pay the researchers salaries so it's as if they are getting something for practically nothing, i.e. "free".

> Yes, it is not like publishing a book but these papers are not really like books anyway.

Nobody is making that comparison.

---

It's very simple, the internet has shone a strong light on a very profitable business model and people don't like what they see.

The majority of scientific research in the U.S. and elsewhere is funded by tax-payers money in the form of research grants. The outcome of this research (the paper) should be free.