Publishing Revenue

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?
  
  There is a transitioning happening but progress churns slowly. I like to compare it to getting out of an abusive relationship.
  https://sparcopen.org/our-work/big-deal-knowledge-base/unbundling-profiles/mit-libraries/
  https://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/items
  
  Corruption - at the highest level.
  
  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.
  
  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.

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
  
  Lol you wouldn't download knowledge.

Academic Authors: $0
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.

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
- dont ever use this, it has almost everything
- Also Nexus Search Telegram bots

but wait...
where meme part ?
- Internet memes come from the original concept of memes as an element of culture passed on from person to person.
  From Wikipedia's "internet meme" article.
- It's a meme because it first makes you laugh, and then it makes you think.
- Didn't you know? Screenshots of social media posts are memes now 🙃
  !politicalmemes@lemmy.world suffers from this but it's 1000% worse there.

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.
- Don't give them ideas for free.

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.

Just like the Olympics. The companies are vampire squids.
- That's unfair to both vampires and 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

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.

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.
- 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.
- 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
- That's not an incentive, they're mocking you with money
- 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've heard of some journals promising to pay their reviewers Amazon gift cards which they never end up sending out

Just here to say fuck Elsevier.

Or, publish to PLOS ONE, the open-access science journal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLOS_One
- As of April 2021, PLOS One charges a publication fee of $1,745 to publish an article.
  I mean, seriously, I would like to publish to one of these, but who has the money to do that?
  
  I mean, if you consider how much a study costs to get to the point of publication, the publication costs are peanuts in comparison.
  
  8|
  Thanks, I did not know that fee was added.
- There are many other open-access journals, for example these: https://freejournals.org/. But yes, open-access is the way.
  
  Thank you for these extra options. Great link.
- Another one, Frontiers:
  https://www.frontiersin.org/
  
  A Creative-Commons mega-journal that I did not know about. Thanks!
- 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?

And they wonder why...
- TIL: In the PotC universe, The legs of the pier are noclip underwater.

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!

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

That seems like a very lucrative market to interrupt

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

Okay, but what are the profits? That's what actually matters here.

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?
- 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

I did get paid for reviewing for a Springer journal though. Next to nothing, but it's not zero.

Before Roblox there was this...

That's money better spent on shutting down libraries.