Comment on Millions of research papers at risk of disappearing from the Internet
theluddite@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
I cannot handle the fucking irony of that article being on nature, one of the organizations most responsible for fucking it up in the first place. Nature is a peer-reviewed journal that charges people thousands upon thousands of dollars to publish (that’s right, charges, not pays), asks peer reviewers to volunteer their time, and then charges rent the very institutions that produced the knowledge rent to access it. It’s all upside. Because they’re the most prestigious journal (or maybe one of two or three), they can charge rent on that prestige, then leverage it to buy and start other subsidiary journals. Now they have this beast of an academic publishing empire that is a complete fucking mess.
braxy29@lemmy.world 6 months ago
jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
neurosnail@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Nb. Nature News Team is editorially independent from the Journal title “Nature”.
theluddite@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
I’m suspicious of this concept of editorial independence. I think it’s a smoke screen that lets companies have their cake and eat it too. As far as I’m concerned, whoever cashes the checks also gets the blame, because either ownership means something, in which case the concept exists to obfuscate that, or it doesn’t, in which case why is nature buying up other journals?
b3an@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well by posting this they give the appearance of being on the good side.
GrymEdm@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Wow, I never knew about that and it’s not just a small fee either. This 2020 article has it at 9,500 Euro/10,300 USD. “Some observers worry Nature’s €9500 publishing fee is so high that it threatens to divide authors into two tiers—those at wealthy institutions or with access to funds to pay, and everyone else.”
Definitely sounds like you’re right to call them out on the hypocrisy of this article.
theluddite@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
Yeah, it’s grotesque. Doubly so when you consider that it’s often public money that funds the research that they get to paywall. I’ve been really ragging on them lately for their role in the AI hype, too, which you can read about here and here if that sort of thing interests you.