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Comment by buhics | Hacker News Reader

Yes, most of the time. Publishers should be blamed because they ask money for a service which is no longer needed. But who gives them the money, nevertheless? Academic management. Researchers have very little to say about this, except if you look at their real behavior (arXiv, sci-hub, etc). However, in management land everything is designed to support the publishers.

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> who gives them the money, nevertheless?

When it comes to subscriptions: academic libraries, under pressure of academics. (And in this case, a group of German libraries finally refused to do so.)

When it comes to disproportionally high publishing fees, however, academics do have something to say, because they can often choose to publish somewhere with lower fees. However, that's not really an option as long as their career progression is determined by which journals they publish in. Thus, I think part of the cause there is those who use journal names as a criterion when judging e.g. grant applicants.

> When it comes to subscriptions: academic libraries, under pressure of academics.

Where are these researchers who pressure the academic libraries to buy subscriptions? I never saw them, except if they are in the management.

If we were to speak in market terms, well, publishers are private entities driven by the market forces, right? So in market terms the clients (researchers) manifest a strong preference for other products than those offered by the publishers. Why do they still exist? Does not make any sense, except if we recognize also that the market is perturbed by the fact that somebody still buys their product and forces the clients to consume and to produce it.

> Researchers have very little to say about this, except if you look at their real behavior (arXiv, sci-hub, etc).

If powerful researchers cared, they wouldn’t review for journals they don’t like. Obviously the benefit from doing the reviews is bigger than their preference of Open Access.

> Obviously the benefit from doing the reviews is bigger than their preference of Open Access.

Researchers don't usually benefit from doing peer review: they don't get paid for it, and it eats time they could spend doing research. It's more of a sense of duty they have that they're "supposed" to do those reviews, and I can't really fault them for that.

(Though I would very much encourage them to only review for fully Open Access journals, and respond to review requests with invitations to submit the work to those journals.)

The benefit to reviewing is that it's frowned upon to publish in a conference/journal if you don't review for them. So academics are not just motivated by a "sense of duty": if they don't accept to review then it can become harder for them to publish (which has significant career benefits).

So if you don't review for closed-access venues (which I try to do), you are pressured into not publishing there: and not publishing in closed-access venues is difficult as most papers are collaborations, and usually your co-authors do not share your convictions.

At least in my experience, I don't see any pressure to not submit if you don't review (I'm in ML though, so could be different in other fields).

I think why people review is: -You should be reading more papers anyway and we like doing it, so why not take it as an obligation? -I assume that eventually it helps one to get selected to be an area chair or something along those lines.

Yes, I guess that's true, too. But even researchers who do boycott some journals sometimes indicate that they still review for those journals for the above reasons.

> most papers are collaborations, and usually your co-authors do not share your convictions.

Can't you just publish in two journals then?

Most journals have as a condition of publication that the article is not submitted or published anywhere else, if that's what you're thinking about.

Researches benefit from doing peer review so that quality research is maintained. Its part of their job. I don't get "paid" to put in expense reports for trips on the job, but I have to do them because its a job responsibility.

Right, as I said in response to a sibling comment: "a sense of duty, it's considered part of their job." The sense of duty part is that they could theoretically get away with it if they didn't do it.

If they don’t benefit in some way why do they review?

Edit: - sorry, I missed the sense of duty. Thanks for pointing it out below. - added don’t

Again: a sense of duty, it's considered part of their job. They can certainly choose not to do it, or not to do it for paywalled journals. However, when I suggest that, I often get the reply that that's not fair to those who submit to those journals - often early-career researchers whose career could be greatly helped by publishing there.

And again, I can't fault them for that.

(I assume you meant to say "don't benefit"?)

I don't buy the sense of duty argument. It's good for the career.

Until the appearance of the notion of open peer-review, the reviews were not public and thrown away by the editor after the publishing decision.

Concerning the sense of duty, nobody stops anybody to review a work and post it somewhere publicly accessible. However, that's rare to see.

Yes, many of them follow the path of least resistance, but not all of them. Even the usual researcher from the middle of the herd votes against publishers with the reading behaviors.

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