Ask HN: Why are a lot of research papers behind paywalls?

3 pointsmrburton4 comments

I always wondered why there were so many research papers placed behind paywalls? It seems to counter productive to research?

View on HN

It is. There's a lot of money in it!

That's why there's SciHub, e.g.

http://libgen.io/scimag/index.php

Who makes the money? The scientists who publish the papers? It reminds me a lot of how software development use to be "back in the day".

Elsevier ($25 billion a year) etc.

100% The publishers. Neither the reviewers, nor the authors get compensation. The only thing they get is to claim they review/publish in <insert relevant journal>.

The process is deeply flawed and there is a movement called open access to fight this.

Edit: The saddest thing is, that a lot of research behind paywalls is publicly funded

Reply on news.ycombinator.com