You spend years on your work. You probably have loans. Your income is pitiful. And this is the structural thing that gets your name out. Now someone says “hey take a risk, don’t do it and break the system.”
Well…you first 🤷♂️ they publish on this garbage because it’s the only way to move up, and these garbage systems continue on because everyone has to participate. Hate the game. Don’t blame those who are by and large forced to participate.
It would require lot of effort from people with clout. It’s a big fight to pick. I am very much in favor of picking that fight, but we need to be a little sympathetic to what that entails.
decline to review for the big journals. why give them free labor? Do academic service in other ways.
if you’re organizing a workshop or conference, put the papers online for free. If you’re just participating and not organizing, then suggest they put the papers online for free. Here’s an example: https://aclanthology.org/ If that’s too time-consuming, use: https://arxiv.org/
Something else we can do: regulate. Like every other corrupt industry in the history of the world, we need the force of law to fix it–and for pretty much all the same reasons. People worked at Triangle Shirtwaist because they had to, not because they thought it was a great place to work.
100% ppl need stop thinking big changes can be made “by individuals”, this kind of stuff needs regulation and state alternatives made by popular pressure or is impossible to break as an average worker dealing with in the private sector.
applied for a grant last month, now to finalize grant you need to publish things in open access format. (EU country; there’s a push for all publicly funded research to be open access, with it being a requirement from year ??? on, not sure when, but soon) there’s some special funding set aside just for open access fees, which is still rotten because these leeches still stand to profit. then, if you miss that, then there’s an agreement where my uni pays a selection of publishers to let in certain number of articles per year open access, which is basically the same thing but with different source of funding (not from grant, but straight from ministry)
There are a lot of academics out there with a good amount of clout and who are relatively safe. I don’t think I’ve heard of anything remotely worthy on these topics from any researcher with clout, publicly at least. Even privately (I used to be in academia), my feeling was most don’t even know how to think and talk about it, in large part because I don’t think they do think and talk about it all.
And that’s because most academics are frankly shit at thinking and engaging on collective and systematic issues. Many just do not want to, and instead want to embrace the whole “I live and work in an ideal white tower disconnected from society because what I do is bigger than society”. Many get their dopamine kicks from the publication system and don’t think about how that’s not a good thing. Seriously, they don’t deserve as much sympathy as you might think … academia can be a surprisingly childish place. That the publication system came to be at all is proof of that frankly, where they were all duped by someone feeding them ego-dopamine hits. It’s honestly kinda sad.
Funding agencies have huge power here; demanding that research be published in OA journals is perhaps a good start (with limits on $ spent publishing, perhaps).
i hear you, but this leaves this massive gaping hole very quickly filled by predatory journals
the better solution would be journals created and maintained by universities or other institutions with national (or international, like from EU) funding
This is probably the avenue to shut this down. If funding is contingent on making the publication freely available to download, and that comes from a major government funding source, then this whole scam could die essentially overnight.
That would need to somehow get enough political support to pass muster in the first place and pass the inevitable legal challenge that follows, too. So, really, this is just another example of regulatory capture ruining everything.
It’s chicken/egg or “you first” problem.
You spend years on your work. You probably have loans. Your income is pitiful. And this is the structural thing that gets your name out. Now someone says “hey take a risk, don’t do it and break the system.”
Well…you first 🤷♂️ they publish on this garbage because it’s the only way to move up, and these garbage systems continue on because everyone has to participate. Hate the game. Don’t blame those who are by and large forced to participate.
It would require lot of effort from people with clout. It’s a big fight to pick. I am very much in favor of picking that fight, but we need to be a little sympathetic to what that entails.
There are a couple things we can do:
Fully agree but I can tell you about point 1 that there enough gullible scientists in the world that see nothing wrong with the current system.
They will gadly pick up free review when Nature comes knocking, since its “such an honour” for such a reputable paper.
Such a reputable paper that’s no doubt accepted dozens of ChatGPT papers by now. Wow, how prestigious!
Something else we can do: regulate. Like every other corrupt industry in the history of the world, we need the force of law to fix it–and for pretty much all the same reasons. People worked at Triangle Shirtwaist because they had to, not because they thought it was a great place to work.
Totally agree
100% ppl need stop thinking big changes can be made “by individuals”, this kind of stuff needs regulation and state alternatives made by popular pressure or is impossible to break as an average worker dealing with in the private sector.
Exactly. Asking some grad student to take on these ancient, corrupt publishing systems at the expense of their career and livelihood is ridiculous
applied for a grant last month, now to finalize grant you need to publish things in open access format. (EU country; there’s a push for all publicly funded research to be open access, with it being a requirement from year ??? on, not sure when, but soon) there’s some special funding set aside just for open access fees, which is still rotten because these leeches still stand to profit. then, if you miss that, then there’s an agreement where my uni pays a selection of publishers to let in certain number of articles per year open access, which is basically the same thing but with different source of funding (not from grant, but straight from ministry)
I’m sympathetic, but to a limit.
There are a lot of academics out there with a good amount of clout and who are relatively safe. I don’t think I’ve heard of anything remotely worthy on these topics from any researcher with clout, publicly at least. Even privately (I used to be in academia), my feeling was most don’t even know how to think and talk about it, in large part because I don’t think they do think and talk about it all.
And that’s because most academics are frankly shit at thinking and engaging on collective and systematic issues. Many just do not want to, and instead want to embrace the whole “I live and work in an ideal white tower disconnected from society because what I do is bigger than society”. Many get their dopamine kicks from the publication system and don’t think about how that’s not a good thing. Seriously, they don’t deserve as much sympathy as you might think … academia can be a surprisingly childish place. That the publication system came to be at all is proof of that frankly, where they were all duped by someone feeding them ego-dopamine hits. It’s honestly kinda sad.
That’s all I’m saying 🤷♂️
Funding agencies have huge power here; demanding that research be published in OA journals is perhaps a good start (with limits on $ spent publishing, perhaps).
i hear you, but this leaves this massive gaping hole very quickly filled by predatory journals
the better solution would be journals created and maintained by universities or other institutions with national (or international, like from EU) funding
This is probably the avenue to shut this down. If funding is contingent on making the publication freely available to download, and that comes from a major government funding source, then this whole scam could die essentially overnight.
That would need to somehow get enough political support to pass muster in the first place and pass the inevitable legal challenge that follows, too. So, really, this is just another example of regulatory capture ruining everything.