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Comment by dagenix | Hacker News Reader

> It takes work to produce human knowledge. Writing a book, creating educational materials, and writing research all takes time, just like it takes time to build a house.

My understanding is that most / all articles in academic journals are written by researchers who are not paid by the journal. Then, the articles are peer reviewed by another set of researchers - who are also not paid by the journal. Then, those same researchers are charged by the journal if they want to have access to the article. It's very unclear what value the journal actually brings - outside of slapping a particular well known name on the publication they don't do much. All of the people that actually do the hard work receive no direct compensation.

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Your basic assessment is correct, however, you're forgetting a key detail. Every journal I know of also charges the author a fee to submit papers. So the author pays to submit their work, volunteers review it, the author does corrections, and then it might get published behind a pay wall. For any university research, the work itself is paid for mostly via government and private company grants.

That sounds weird; all journals I know are paid either by readers or by the submitter (the latter is called gold open access).

The journals I'm familiar with require both.

The reader pays for access (or more commonly their university/research org/public library/employer pays for it), and often is only available in bundles, such as multiple unrelated journals or forcing a library to maintain print and digital access even if they only want digital access.

The submitter is usually required to pay a submission fee to cover/subsidize the cost of review. Some do allow you to pay a surcharge for open access, and in many cases (at least the grants I was working on) grants and funding cannot be used for these costs.

I am overjoyed to see that it's becoming more common to have fully open access journals, or that the open access fee is reduced. And the endorsement of more open access journals for fields that have historically had a dominant closed access journal (such as the American Astronomical Society and it's introduction of new journals like the Planetary Science Journal).

Look up Chesterson’s Fence. It’s always a good idea to figure out why the fence exists before tearing it down.

Researchers who publish in these journals can publish anywhere, but they choose to publish in these for-profit journals.

Do you know why?

A massive majority of the time it's because the name once held meaning and had a strong reputation. In plenty of cases this still holds, even if the pricing model has turned predatory. Plenty of people review for an article due to the prestige, and a journal can become well known for having quality reviewers.

When I was in Radio Astronomy, publishing in APJ meant something, but when someone would publish an article pertaining to Radio Astro in Nature or some other publication, it was often looked down on as having less merit since it wasn't in APJ.

Personally, I know of a lecturer in my undergrad university who published in a more well known journal because when they suggested publishing in a less well known journal that was more niche and in-line with the field of their research, the chair of the department leaned on them and "strongly advised" that publishing lesser journal could lead to loss of funding for their research group.

I'm a big fan of the Chesterson's Fence idea - maybe not applied slavishly, but as a general principle. And I have no idea where the journals came from. Nor do I have a suggestion for what to do about them. What I would be interested in reading about is any type of value that they bring to the process other than a name that was established long ago. I have yet to find much in the way that explains their current value for advancing academic knowledge.

Their value is very similar to that offered by Ivy League schools - prestige. The journals have the reputation for only publishing the highest quality, high impact papers. They act a filter.

Getting a paper in Nature will help you get tenure or win you that grant you need. Publishing in a no name journal is barely better than not publishing at all.

Because these journals are so prestigious, they can charge a lot for access. Every top school will buy access because it would be embarrassing if they didn't.

There is nothing stopping researchers from publishing in their favorite open access journal. In fact, they'd probably have a better chance of getting it published. However, they don't want to - those journals aren't prestigious enough. And without enough prestigious papers, they'll never make tenure.

All knowledge should not be free. The comment above mine wrote knowledge should be free and easily accessible. They are talking about all knowledge, not just academic journals, and that makes no sense.

It does make sense. You're just misreading what they said.

They did not say information should be unfunded or creators demonitized. They said information should be "free" as in liberated, as in freedom.

Valuable information is virtually costless to copy and yet you can be locked away in a cage by men with guns for accessing it. It's not far off from how North Korea handles people found with Western media. That's what the commenter above is advocating against.

Have some perspective.

Please don't reply to every one of my comments with the same points, you are spamming.

I'm simply countering disinformation spam with correct information.

Have a moment of self awareness for one second and consider this: if I had to make the same rebuttal multiple times to counter act the same argument then who is the spammer and who is just setting the record straight? Hmmmm

This is the equivalent of “If you want this conversation to end, why don’t YOU stop talking?” You already know the solution to the problem you’re having, which is to either make better points or stop inviting more replies.

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