Publishing Revenue
from fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz on 24 Aug 2024 12:06
https://mander.xyz/post/17130998
from fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz on 24 Aug 2024 12:06
https://mander.xyz/post/17130998
threaded - newest
but wait…
where meme part ?
Didn’t you know? Screenshots of social media posts are memes now 🙃
!politicalmemes@lemmy.world suffers from this but it’s 1000% worse there.
From Wikipedia’s “internet meme” article.
It’s a meme because it first makes you laugh, and then it makes you think.
This isn’t a meme, it’s a crime
There are literally tens of thousands of people in academia who could build a transparent, open-source, non-profit publishing system of their own.
Why don’t they?
Corruption - at the highest level.
Well I don’t know about “highest” level.
It’s in some ways worse than that. it’s institutional corruption and collusion across all levels of power within institutions. Not having access to pear review, journals, the gravitas, the funding sources:it creates a monopoly of power for all players in the system where they aren’t benefited by opening up access
There is a transitioning happening but progress churns slowly. I like to compare it to getting out of an abusive relationship.
sparcopen.org/our-work/…/mit-libraries/
tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/items
It’s happening in Germany as well. Universities are banding together to negotiate better deals with publishers - some subscriptions haven’t been renewed when the publishers weren’t forthcoming. It’s not a solution (that would be the wide establishment of independent, self organized/hosted Open Access journals - using Open Journal Systems for example) but it’s a start.
deal-konsortium.de/en/
I don’t know about other fields, but we did do this for AI. It’s all community-run, papers are freely available for everyone to read, and the cost of submission in a peer-reviewed venue is to review other papers. The publishers don’t actually provide anything of value except name recognition and being “reputable”, which they maintain through momentum.
Oh, could you share some links?
Links to what?
Sorry, I might have misunderstood - I thought there would be some journals employing that “review to submit” system you mentioned.
Ah, yes. I just wasn’t clear on whether you wanted to know more about the publication venues or about the value of publishers or something else.
In AI, we normally publish in conferences rather than journals. Some of the big ones are
There is a new journal I know of (TMLR) that’s becoming a bit more popular in these circles, but I believe they rely solely on volunteers to review rather than asking those who submit papers.
Thanks, I will be looking into this!
If you’re still interested in this, CVPR recently made the rule explicit for the upcoming conference.
https://cvpr.thecvf.com/Conferences/2025/CVPRChanges
The big issue is that the individuals who lead these institutions are those who are successful with the status quo; perhaps some recognize the importance of changing it but I perceive that most would be unwilling to dismantle a system that worked well for them.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/422e85a7-629b-47d1-a76b-f6acf6152aa5.gif">
And they wonder why…
TIL: In the PotC universe, The legs of the pier are
noclipunderwater.Remember folks, if you pirate scientific papers you’re stealing from the hard working…wait a minute…
You wouldn’t download a car
I would, actually
I’d 3D print that shit so hard on my shitty little Ender.
Why stop at one?
Lol you wouldn’t download knowledge.
Reviewers and writers actually do get a stipend, but it’s a token amount like 200 bucks a year. This industry is the most ass backward incentive structure we could possibly create, the only reason writers would provide articles to a journal is literally for the clout.
That’s not an incentive, they’re mocking you with money
Really? I’ve reviewed and published a good chunk of papers and never received any financial compensation.
Well, you received a token amount of 0 bucks an eternity.
They all got bought up by venture capitalists like a decade or more more ago, and this is the result.
They were already backward, but now they are backward, ruthless about cost cutting, and care about nothing but profits.
Clout and also many academic focused universities expect some set minimum of publications from their staff
.
I love a self perpetuating system of coerced labor!
I’ve never gotten a stipend or heard of someone getting a stipend for publishing or reviewing manuscripts. The only thing I’ve been offered is access to the journal.
Depends on the journal I guess, my wife worked at multiple publishers and there’s normally an insultingly small stipend for the editorial board members and writers
I’ve heard of some journals promising to pay their reviewers Amazon gift cards which they never end up sending out
That seems like a very lucrative market to interrupt
NGL if I was a college professor in this situation I’d be pirating my own work fuck these guys
Very frequently you can email the author of the paper and they will be super happy to send you a copy.
I do it all the time. Something something sci-hub. If you ask, the authors will almost always share a preprint.
I heard that, you are legally allowed to Email the Academic Authors, and request said articles, which they are allowed to provide for free.
Absolutely. Plus scientists love when people want to actually read their work so you make their day too!
New textbooks have disappearing ink that only lasts, about one semester, until a month before finals, and then in that month they trigger dynamic pricing increases due to a stronger than typical demand…
Don’t give them ideas for free.
Don’t give them ideas.
FAKE NEWS
This should be in the negatives. We have to pay to get papers published in these traditional journals.
And sometimes open access costs money for the author too.
Don’t forget the university libraries. Yup, researchers are paid by the university, those researchers pay the publishers to place their articles, the peer reviewers are also paid by the university. And then the university has to shell out money to the publishers, so the articles can be accessed.
Not necessarily. A lot are paid by external research grants.
I must admit what I wrote was simplified.
If you take into account that a lot of research grants are financed by tax money though…
Just here to say fuck Elsevier.
Before Roblox there was this…
and don’t use Sci-hub people. I am warning ⚠️ you so you can avoid it 🫡
Thank you for the warning. I almost received free and convenient access to a large catalog of academic articles, and no one wants that.
I, too have seen the ability of Sci-Hub to give me free access to research papers.
It’s terrifying how easy it is to get access to scientific literature for free! Wouldn’t recommend to anyone.
these terrorists want to give free access to tax funded research, it is disgusting.
Annas Archives
Came here to post this. It’s so evil, it even has ebooks meant for entertainment.
Never visit downmagaz either!
o7
Also Nexus Search Telegram bots
dont ever use this, it has almost everything
I did get paid for reviewing for a Springer journal though. Next to nothing, but it’s not zero.
I’ve only ever published in open access journals (partially because I’ve only got 3 papers out, but also out of preference) is it just prestige that makes people go with pay-to-view journals? or are there other factors?
In part it’s prestige, which for some might matter for promotion purposes, and at least personally I’m more like to cite journals for which I know I trust their judgement in peer review and submission acceptance. There are predatory publishers which abuse the open access concept to make money, and if I’m reviewing literature I don’t want to have to also research if a journal can be trusted (unless of course the publication I want to include is novel or especially worthwhile).
Also, in many contexts open access requires payment by the authors; this may be fine if an author is in a large grant-funded lab or at an institution willing to fund the open access fee but for many of us non-research-track folks it’s kind of a deal breaker.
Depends strongly on the community. Every sub discipline has its own standards of respectability. Publishing outside of those constraints can cause articles to be ignored.
that makes a lot of sense! I’m very grateful to be part of an academic community that seems to value open access, as well of part of a university that pays for access and submission to most of the journals I need to use
Okay, but what are the profits? That’s what actually matters here.
I too want to open a business where both customers and suppliers pay me. Do you know any more gullible sectors? Academics are pretty extorted already it seems.
Real estate seems to be a popular place for seemingly unnecessary middlemen.
.
Or, publish to PLOS ONE, the open-access science journal.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLOS_One
There are many other open-access journals, for example these: freejournals.org. But yes, open-access is the way.
Thank you for these extra options. Great link.
I mean, seriously, I would like to publish to one of these, but who has the money to do that?
8|
Thanks, I did not know that fee was added.
I mean, if you consider how much a study costs to get to the point of publication, the publication costs are peanuts in comparison.
I have a stupid question but what are the costs of a journal like this? I mean, if they don’t pay the researchers and the reviewers, what do they do?
Another one, Frontiers:
www.frontiersin.org
A Creative-Commons mega-journal that I did not know about. Thanks!
Just like the Olympics. The companies are vampire squids.
vampire squid makes them sound cute, they are literally the scum of the earth: They are leeching billions from what is normally a tax funded sector and on the side heavily polarising publishing and access to science in favor of rich countries.
Yeah they are more like Humboldt squid. They live below most things, in the dark, and surface when it is dark. They will eat others, of their own kind, if they are injured, or otherwise inhibited, or because their group isn’t finding adequate feeding fast enough.
I thought you were a Biologist and were going on an actual rant about actual vampire squids lol
no I just imagined a small squid with tiny fangs
That’s unfair to both vampires and squids
As much as I’m against parasitic practices, I wonder how the inevitable corruption of money would (further) skew research if academia was well paid for their papers.
We’re not saying pay the authors a bunch, we’re saying make the papers free to read. Or at least don’t charge authors and readers both, while keeping all the money for yourself.
And I wonder how, not having the pressure to “succeed” research (to gain further grants), would increase the quality of said research.
I quit a physics phd path just under a decade ago because my experimental results were turning up negative and the uni I was at pushed me to doctor my results so we would keep getting funded. I also wonder about this
Why are we looking at revenue? We don’t know the operating costs. What are the profit margins?
According to Wikipedia, in 2022 Elsevier’s revenue was 2.909 billion pounds and their net income was 2.021 billion pounds.
Not going to bother looking up the rest.
There’s a much more accurate stat… and it’s disgusting
Alright but look at how much they pay the authors. What other business pays ZERO dollars for their core product?
None, but science isn’t a business. Treating it so creates perverse incentives where an articles is reviewed by merit of its financial gain and not its content. Some people already do this by prestige alone, but adding money to the mix won’t improve this imo
So it’s acceptable for Elselvier et al to milk academics blind? At the minimum, authors should not be charged.
No, but ideally all publishers should operate not-for-profit, and yep submission for open access should not cost ridiculous fees.
That’s money better spent on shutting down libraries.