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Comment by failwhaleshark | Hacker News Reader

Publishing papers in journals isn't about scientific development, it's about publish-persish. The issue is the journals suck-in the papers and then walled-garden them like they were their original research when they are simply the publisher.

Academia needs to throw away for-profit journal publishers and leave it with social co-ops and nonprofits.

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No. This is an example of “have your cake and eat it too”.

Scientists want to publicize in a prestigious journal. Elsevier is prestigious. Elsevier charges a subscription fee. Other scientists can’t access it.

So what scientists want is to be able to publish in the most prestigious journals and have free access to them.

It’s like if I said “i want to be able to attend the most prestigious school but I don’t want to pay for it”.

Except in this case, what makes a journal prestigious is not the subscription fees that the school has to pay, but the free work of editors and peer reviewers that perform selection from the submitted papers.

There are free-access journals out there that charge virtually no fees, and still have excellent quality / reputation. One such example is Quantum: https://quantum-journal.org/

Then maybe scientists should stop donating their time? Or do they get something out of it?

And it's certainly not the peer review that makes it prestigious since those are anonymous.

Scientists are indeed moving slowly in that direction. It seems you are under the mistaken belief that they complain without doing anything about it. The fact that someone is vocally unhappy with a flawed status quo, does not mean they are not doing something about it. However, the issue with status quos is that it takes time to change them. Why are you ranting even after being shown examples of scientists doing exactly what you want them to do?

Also, it is indeed the presence of very selective peer review that is a big part of "prestige". This is why free community driven open access journals are slowly overtaking the old journals. The price of a journal publication does not correlate much with the prestige. There are even examples of reverse correlation.

When Elsevier is trying to strong arm universities with high fees and threatening copyright lawsuits, seems like a good time to stop helping them entirely? Why on earth would you keep donating your time to them?

Oh yeah, you want those juicy prestigious papers still.

Your premise is a fantasy. Yes, many people for long time have boycotted Elsevier.

I am really confused, why are you assuming people that are vocal about this continue reviewing for Elsevier (or assuming this about me in particular)? This is simply not happening. Is it really that surprising to you that only part of a community is working on the social problems in the community, while the rest is focusing on their main work: science.

This is a general attitude among every naysayer against progress: "you can not demand that society changes for the better if you are active part of society". Do you not see how ridiculous that is?

And you were already given examples of prestigious journals that have transitioned to the open access model. And universities that boycott elsevier. And grant agencies that demand work to be published open access. What more do you want? For this to have happened last decade? Well, things take time.

Some people have boycotted Elsevier. The vast majority of scientists have not - they continue to get their papers published by Elsevier journals, donate their time as editors and donate their time for peer review.

Let me be more direct - why? If Elsevier is clearly the "bad guy" here?

And if. as your put it, "as decade later" scientists are still donating their time for free, why do you think it will change? How long does it take?

The answer is trivial: because of inertia, they have much more important and interesting work to do, so the activism is left for the few. But again, in every single comment of yours you are neglecting the monumental progress that has already happened: open access is a fairly standard requirement for top institutions and becoming more common. The world you are imagining in your complaints does not exist.

Open access is not fairly standard. In my area (chemistry) there is no requirement and people stick to the paid journals. Why? Because of the prestige, which was my point all along.

Despite all the complaints of being "predatory", people still submit to those journals and volunteer their time. Why? Stockholm Syndrome? No. "Inertia"? No.

It's because they get something they can't get out of open source journals - a publication in a highly prestigious journal.

My point is everyone likes to say Elsevier offers "nothing" yet, what you call "inertia" (I call it "wanting what Elsevier has to offer") keeps them coming back to you point - maybe for decades?

OK, so you are both negatively affected by the bad status quo and at the same time rant against the people that try to change it. What is the point of that behavior? Why are you yourself not trying to help these people change the status quo?

No, my point is: 1) the journals aren't the problem, the requirement to publish in them is and 2) until the incentives change, scientists won't move away from those journals.

As a scientist who does not need extra brownie points, this is exactly what I'm doing: every single review request coming from an Elsevier publication is ignored.

And, yes, it is the quality of peer review (i.e. the work done by unpaid editors and reviewers) that makes a certain publication prestigious or not.

Elsevier does typesetting and distribution, both of which can easily be done otherwise (see LaTeX and Sci-Hub). It sure as hell does not do peer review.

> It’s like if I said “i want to be able to attend the most prestigious school but I don’t want to pay for it”.

I think it's interesting to note that in many European countries the top schools are free to attend.

Sure, but it's because the gov't subsidizes the cost of schools. Are you suggesting they subsidize the cost of journal subscriptions to the point they are free?

That is what has occurred in Uruguay and Egypt. If that grants universal access to the people, then it is a solution. The problem with that model, though, is that governments are then double-paying in many cases. First by paying for the research that birthed the paper and then by paying for access to the paper that resulted from the research the government paid for.

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