[dionyziz]

I'm a researcher. I write the articles in their books. They don't pay me for that. All of the articles are written by people like me. All of the articles are reviewed and edited by people like me. I even do the typesetting. I get paid by a tax-funded university. Publishers (such as Springer) use their money not to produce knowledge, but to sue people, market their conferences and journals, and pay their administrators and shareholders.

[czzr]

Hmm... so you get nothing for it, you do all the work and yet you continue to do it?

I presume you must be getting something out of the arrangement, else why on earth do you continue?

[ggrrhh_ta]

As many of us doing research, writing, reviewing, typesetting, checking proofs, organizing their dissemination conferences, administrative tasks, filling up IP forms, returning them, getting them checked by attorneys paid on our side, etc., etc., etc., do not get absolutely anything remotely in value to the price it costs to our institutions or peers to access our work.

We force ourselves though to do something so illogical and nonsensical because we are evaluated according to inefficient and silly performance bars that emerge from a herd of seemingly intelligent people each acting in their best interest (both those that seek showing their merit, and those that seek evaluating the merit of others), most of which do not have enough power and/or leadership to be the first ones to disrupt the current status quo. ['Tradegy of the Commons' theme]

Of course, I would not suggest any student to try to subvert it, as doing it "heroically" will only constitute an obstacle for themselves without doing anything to convince your rightly-so competitive peers to join your efforts rather than to overtake you. [edited: sentence corrected]

However, things are slowly changing, as people & institutions with the right amount of power and leadership are starting to take action.

[unityByFreedom]

> things are slowly changing, as people & institutions with the right amount of power and leadership are starting to take action.

Where exactly, what people and institutions?

[ajford]

The American Astronomical Society has taken a pretty powerful stance against the predatory journal publishing practice.

They are pushing their own field-recognized journals that are partially open-access (12mo blackout window, then fully open access) with the option to go full open access from the beginning for a surcharge, and are even working to provide publishing cost assistance for those in need of it (such as early-career scientists who may not have a lot of funding to lean on).

It's not ideal, given that there's still a somewhat high cost for a fully open-access publication (the "gold open access"), but at least it's there. Also, the fact that a paper "ages" into open access after 12 months means that the knowledge does eventually make it into public hands.

[pergadad]

See eg the various initiatives against Elsevier's pricing practices with all/most German universities and a number of American universities refusing to pay Elsevier's fee/ransom.

Similarly the whole 'open access'publishing movement which sadly has been somewhat coopted by the big publishers.

[antepodius]

Well, sci-hub's one.

[ggrrhh_ta]

You can check for yourself - on providing and dissemination, check Arxiv & Siblings. On institutions, check e.g., University of California, or search, e.g., "Elsevier's Paywall" using some internet search service to find names.

[xtracto]

I was gladly surprised that a "low quality" (data/experiments were fine, but terrible copywriting) paper I wrote while in academia which I uploaded to Arxiv actually got some good amounts of citations ( and is even indexed by google scholar).

[cyphar]

Having papers published in journals (especially prestigious ones like Nature) is how you attain status in the research community. Also most research institutions have some expectation that you will publish N papers a year on average (because it also enhances their status).

[dionyziz]

I'm a PhD student. To graduate, I need publications. The quality of my publications, and hence my possibility of graduation, is evaluated based on the reputation of the conferences I publish in. The same applies to a PhD graduate trying to get into a post-doc position, or a post-doc trying to get assistant professorship. For historical reasons, many of the reputable conferences are closed and ran by publishing houses that charge unfair money for them. We are trying to change that.

[einpoklum]

And if you approach Springer to try to publish something (e.g. a Book), and you have some draft of it online on your homepage or something - you'll be rejected outright. They won't publish unless they can monopolize it.

[unityByFreedom]

As I said, I understand the hatred for academic publishers. They aren't compensating authors like you, your university does that.

My comment was in response to the parent who said 'knowledge should be free'