Comment on He did though.
Sloogs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Surely there has to be a cost to the infrastructure of publishing and curation though. And possibly all the work of setting up and organizing the peer review profess. But perhaps we should treat it as a public good, like libraries, or have universities and institutions fund it for the public good.
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
But it’s mostly a scam. The costs don’t remotely compare to the revenue. Reviewers time is not paid, and there’s a price to both publish and access. It’s all about the prestige to publish. If you contact the author directly they’ll typically gladly send you the article for free.
AeonFelis@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Not to mention that system started about four centuries ago, long before the Internet was invented. I’d assume that back then, the costs and effort of operating a journal really did justify the prices they charged.
Sloogs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Oh absolutely. I agree. I don’t think anyone’s disputing that something about it needs to change.
GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 7 months ago
The issue is partly that, over time, private entities are going to price gouge or take similar measures (see: “enshittification”) in order to keep growing as profit falls over time. That’s just how the profit motive works, it eventually optimizes everything for profit, not just what you are comfortable with having turned into a vehicle aimed solely at making money.
So yes, this and many other important things should be treated as public goods.