Comment on Publisher Wants $2,500 To Allow Academics To Post Their Own Manuscript To Their Own Repository
emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 11 months agoI understand your concern, but I feel that free access will eventually erode the monopoly that journals have on conferring legitimacy. If only a few can read the actual text of a paper, the rest of us have to trust the journal’s quality control. But as papers become more accessible, they will start getting judged on their own merit, rather than based on the journal’s impact factor. This change could take years to happen completely, but at this point I feel that it will happen sooner or later.
magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh 11 months ago
I worked in academia. Everybody already has access to the texts (thanks to arxiv) where I did. And yet still publishing was the only way to gain legitimacy. This is the problem.
emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I think there are two different issues here. The first is how journals make money off publicly funded research. The second is how journals and impact factors act as a gatekeeper in academia. I think open access is solving the first issue pretty well. The second is a bit more complicated. The pressure to publish at any cost is bad, but what is the alternative. If we go by subjective criteria, we will probably end up with nepotism and corruption. Of course the current system needs reform, but I feel that it is a huge improvement on the previous system.
magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh 11 months ago
Nepotism still runs rampant in many academic fields, since the editors of those journals are also academics themselves, and not always the most ethical ones.
emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I guess a policy of transparent review could help. And pre-registering so papers do not get rejected for not being ‘exciting’ enough.