True, current publishers don't compensate peer reviewers, limit curation to the set of people who will pay their submission fee, force editing and typesetting back on the authors, and charge egregious fees disproportionate to the cost of distribution. But the concept of the business isn't invalid.
This isn't throwing the baby out with the bath water, this is people trying to stop this nasty ass bath water from being thrown out because there used to be a baby in it.
Prices are a different thing, but I'm definitely spending my day here adding value.
I suppose the general notion is that the only problem publishers solve is the distribution which is kinda non-value-adding nowadays, but don't think about the editorial process, which needs actual work.
Sure, I think you guys add value. My critique was towards the cost of old papers and the ownership which journals take for published work. You guys need to get paid but the world also needs it's open access to the scientific corpus.
The papers which have very little value adding editorial input do have a harder time legitimizing their slice of the pie, though.
But in theory it's possible, e.g. Facebook's Open Compute Project, it just needs the right kind of funding model.
It's just a matter of finding a way to do it that doesn't jeopardize the entire business.
> Peer review
Organized and performed by volunteers.
> curating for quality
Ditto.
> editing, typesetting
Done by authors (LaTeX isn't perfect, but it gets you "good enough" typesetting. And the last time a journal edited a paper of mine they mangled it because the person editing wasn't familiar with technical topics & jargon).
> creating physical copies
No one needs these any more; they just print the PDF if necessary.
Yes, they can. But they don't.
>Peer review,
Free. Volunteers.
>curating for quality, editing, typesetting,
They don't do this. You are expected to do it all. Your papers are sent back for revisions and/or rejected by peer review editors and reviewers, who again, work for free.
>and creating physical copies could be expensive.
Physical copies cost additional money to acquire anyway.
I don't think this is a good solution, because in reality reviewing these papers is complicated work for people who have spent years, often times decades, in their field. They do deserve to be paid.
I do think publishers provide tangible, real value, but often the value they provide is significantly outweighed by the problems that arise from the way they run their businesses.
I absolutely agree. But this is not how it works and suggestions to pay reviewers is usually met with haughty academic nonsense.
Publishers in academia (and in the normal book industry, to boot) add near zero value while extracting huge fees.
That's like saying that dictatorships can be a superior form of government, because they provide centralized planning and decision making at a much lower overall cost. True, current dictatorships don't do so... but the concept isn't invalid.
Lower impact journals are basically glorified FTP front ends. They don't create content, validate that content, editorialize that content, or even select that content. They just host and charge an enormous premium for it.