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by __rito__
743 days ago
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Companies like Elsevier are a force of the old world. They rely on prestige, connections, name, etc. to leech people off. And, the system, due to inertia, and their efforts, make it difficult for people to get grants, name, etc. if they don't publish in big-name journals. Elsevier also spent tens of millions of dollars in lobbying in the US [0]. I am glad that AI research in the highest levels have mostly gotten rid of the parasites like Elsevier. Can't imagine charging thousands of dollars of a PDF hosting service. [0]: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary... |
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The biggest reason publishing houses still continue is not that they hold PDFs, but they provide peer reviews as a service. It's what it provides their prestige and inertia.
The bad thing is many open access journals keep the bar pretty low, allowing Elsevier, Springer, et. al to amplify their power. Moreover, if you are not aware, every big publishing house loves to allow ArXiV submissions even in intermediate revisions because they reduce the editorial load on themselves while raising the quality bar.
You can already cite blog posts, etc. in your publications. It's not something frown upon as long as what you cite is sound.
At the end of the day, FAIR & Open research, institutional federated and peer reviewed data warehouses and (high quality) open access publications will kill these big houses, and they already bent pretty hard with forced open access subscriptions and submission agreements done by countries.
Disclaimer: My institution also manages these subscriptions for universities country-wide.