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by qft 3773 days ago
Instead of paying the publishers, who contribute nothing to the work at all (remember they also charge us researchers hundreds of dollars just to get our work published), I'd rather donate the same $30 to sci-hub.
1 comments

Another option: pay $5 to actual editors and designers, and $15 to reviewers. And save $10. Remember, the publisher typically doesn't even help with paper formatting, never mind copyediting.

Unpaid reviewers (who allegedly agree to work for some 'reputation' — BS, they're anonymous) delegate the actual scientific review to the least busy student of those capable to write a syntactic semblance of a positive review.

And then you're forced to pay $30 to have a chance to finally review it for yourself, as you're the only one interested in quality.

Please pay the reviewers, or everybody (in many applied areas at least) will self-publish in blogs and judge quality on HN votes. Like it has happened with most of software research.

Where do you get good editing and design work for $5?

Most reviewers don't want $15 from the author. Quoting http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/peer-review-survey-20... :

> Reviewers divided over incentives: Just over half of reviewers think receiving a payment in kind (e.g. subscription) would make them more likely to review; 41% wanted payment for reviewing, but this drops to just 2.5% if the author had to cover the cost. Acknowledgement in the journal is the most popular option.

I suspect the parent meant $5 per sale; if you were selling millions of copies of papers, you'd have a substantial editing and design budget.
Ahh, that makes sense - I missed the context.

When does it end? I'm reading papers from the 1960s and '70s - where should I send the $5? Do I adjust for inflation? And how do I send Deutsche Marks to West Germany?