Governments support this nonsense by not attaching publishing requirements to research grants.
Scientific Exposure
Submitted 3 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/f00319b1-d780-4d5c-9a46-18defad80bdc.png
Comments
Fedizen@lemmy.world 3 months ago
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 3 months ago
deczzz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
Experienced this first hand. Don’t understand why something better has come up. Everyone agrees that this system is broken
architect@thelemmy.club 3 months ago
Not just science. I own a small art business. The magazines in my world all do this. I see my competitors paying hundreds of dollars for “interviews” in them. The entire magazine is an ad masquerading as some type of journalism. I don’t even pay for ads and I’m buried in work. So it’s not needed, at all (who reads this stuff? At least a science journal makes sense).
Honestly it’s shameful across the board. Anyone participating should feel bad about it.
ToiletFlushShowerScream@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Elsevier has a 3 billion dollar income, while most of its research is publicly funded. You are paying for the research, then paying again to access the results of the research that you already paid for. The executives can hang.
Ibaudia@lemmy.world 3 months ago
They have bonkers profit margins too. 38% in 2023. They’re in the same category as Microsoft or Google when it comes to profitability. Absolutely insane for a company that’s supposed to disseminate scientific information.
Friendlybirdseggs@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
Behold nothing! >⠀<
mineralfellow@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It is so much worse than that.
I spend my time researching the literature on a topic so that I can spend my time and energy writing a grant. It probably won’t get funded.
If it does, I get to do a bunch of work. It might involve travel, where I will do everything at minimum expense to save enough money for the coming lab work.
I will spend significant time getting the samples analyzed, spending most of the grant money. Then I will come up with a logical way to interpret the data.
I will spend more time sending a document around to coauthors. This may take months, or even years if the coauthors fight.
We eventually submit to a journal. It gets rejected.
We rewrite and submit again. A few months later, congratulations, you get to publish. Money please.
I work for the money to do the work, I work for the writeup, I fight for the acceptance, and I have to pay to publish.
It’s a stupid system.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 months ago
as a PI/researcher they are spending thier careers fighting to get published/grants. i can see why alot of them left thier fields.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
“and for the hours of peer review, we pay nothing.”
Soapbox@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
You can thank Ghislaine Maxwell’s dad for that shit.
ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 3 months ago
Once again Scientists (do science for exposure and pay us) and Artists (get paid in exposure) being screwed over the MBAs.
Matriks404@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Why not create open-source online “scientific jorunal” with service provided by donations then? Am I missing something?
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
This idea has been around over 20 years. It dies every time because major lab PIs, usually in US, HATE the idea of not being able to gatekeep research publications in journals of “high impact”. This impacts how institutions are assessed, because, God forbid people actually have to read the papers. This feeds back to Editors, so the number one factor that influences Editors now is zip code.
If we went to a simple repository archive, with transparent peer review, then no one could imply their research is more important because of where it was published. We would let citations determine impact. Science publishing has always pushed the idea that if Einstein drove a Honda, everyone who drives a Honda is a genius.
Meanhile, The Lancet (JIF 105) took 12 years to retract a paper linking autism to vaccines, when it was clearly fraudulent from day one. Nature, Science, CELL, just stopped retractions, at best, they have “statements of Editorial Concern”. This high JIF model is why Alzheimers research has stalled behind a flawed hypothesis only reinforced by fraudulent work not retracted for 25 years. Some people, like the President of Stanford, rose to the top tier on fraud and journal gatekeeping.
2020 saw the world arguing over ivermectin based off a paper “reviewed” overnight, with the journal Editor as an author. The journal 5 years later refuses to prove the paper was peer reviewed at all. 3,400 citations.
Then we have predatory journals that will pusblish literally anything for page charges. Examples:
Get me off your fucking mailing list.
and
Chicken, chicken chicken chicken, Chicken? chicken. (Cited 35 times)
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I appreciate this comment, especially the cited papers.
Chicken, chicken, chicken…
Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
What does PI mean (first sentence of your post)?
Sibshops@lemmy.myserv.one 3 months ago
The difference is the peer-review process. Without a good peer-review process, those journals won’t have a strong cite score and so they will be considered unreliable.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Without a good peer-review process, those journals won’t have a strong cite score
So why do they charge $6000 to publish, and pay $0 to reviewers?
The top JIF journals also lead with the most retractions.
FundMECFS@anarchist.nexus 3 months ago
more Open Access non-profit journals please
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 3 months ago
IHMO: All science should be freely accessible, free as in freedom and price.
The more eyes can actually see something and find flaws, the better. There is no such thing as institutional credibility. Everyone makes mistakes and it takes everyone to find them, even more so the more complex something is. Leech publishers are not only problematic because they prohibit access, but also because they make real science considerably harder.
stelelor@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Everyone makes mistakes
Except psychopaths who know their claim is garbage but lie through their teeth to get it published. That’s not a mistake, that’s corruption.
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Nah, real science starts with a conclusion and then works backwards to find evidence for said conclusion. I think it is a more modern approach. Instead of validating reality, we are validating feelings.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
IHMO: All science should be freely accessible, free as in freedom and price.
Taxpayers pay $6B/yr worldwide to the private publishing industry, for content they cannot read.
bananabenana@lemmy.world 3 months ago
This comic is partially right. If you pay, you get open access, so no cost for readers. If you go old-school you don’t pay and the article is paywalled. Terrible system either way, but open access is necessary nowadays, as otherwise you will get cited less
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 months ago
i try to look for workaround, sometimes they are freely given on Researchgate, and some on other sites.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
The readers are taxpayers, they are paying whether they like it for not. The solution is to post articles on preprint servers, like Arxiv or BioRxiv, which are open and free to read.
I refuse to pay open access fees and use BioRxiv for all my publications.
bananabenana@lemmy.world 3 months ago
💯 with you on this.
We also do preprints 100% of the time, but academic incentives are baked AF. Not ‘publishing’ means a large proportion of other academics simply won’t read or cite your work as they don’t believe in preprints. Additionally, funding bodies care about prestige publishing in top ranked journals, so if you don’t do this, the grant pool you have access to will be smaller.
The incentives need to change, where journal venue is irrelevant, or weighted far less than it is.
ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
You missed the part where like half the time they don’t actually do the peer review part
hayvan@feddit.nl 3 months ago
Peer review is often done by other PhD candidates for free.
minorkeys@lemmy.world 3 months ago
They control the means of distribution and accreditation of science publishing. Business should not be trusted to control anything.
A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl 3 months ago
In my univerity, they just told me how to pirate articles, straigt up, as if it was just normal and legal, very based but it was surprising.
Nobody cares anymore about leech capitalism, almost nobody defends this companies and i’m so so happy it is that way.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 months ago
when i was in state u, we just used google scholar which the school already pays “subscritions for” so you have acess to articles that arnt gatekeeped behind a paywall. if you were to use it without a faculty or student account.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
any article author will gladly send you a PDF.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I’ll just start my own journal with blackjack and hookers.
fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Isn’t that A’s Archive?
niktemadur@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Remember that 80s magazine OMNI?
Science, tech, sci-fi, Mensa-caliber games… by the very same Bob Guccione who published Penthouse!Every issue had an in-depth interview with a prominent and interesting scientist, figures like Alan Guth or Luc Montagnier or Morris Berman.
One issue was a little more off-beat, the interview was with an anthropologist, whose student life and career went like this:Attending the University Of Montana in Missoula, this student loved drinking every day, so he asked the question - “What’s a relatively easy major with little math, that will interfere the least with my drinking?” - and landed on Anthropology.
After graduation, the next question became - “What will I do my thesis about?” - a friend gave him the vague advice to do it on something he knew or was passionate about, and like a “eureka” moment, it hit him: “I’m gonna research drinking culture, bars!”
And so, he became one of the rarefied few for whom drinking on the job was basically a requirement!
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
OMNi was not a scientific journal.
GratefullyGodless@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Omni! I remember being a teenager, and eagerly getting my subscription copy every month in the mail. In fact, i think i still have them in a box in the garage.
I thought Omni was awesome, and that they did a good job of trying to make science more accessible to people. I just wish that they had succeeded.
GratefullyGodless@lemmy.world 3 months ago
A journal about the science of blackjack and hookers?
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 3 months ago
sure why not
lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 3 months ago
:::spoiler Needs text alternative. Images of text break much that text alternatives do not. Losses due to image of text lacking alternative such as link:
- usability
- we can’t quote the text without pointless bullshit like retyping it or OCR
- text search is unavailable
- the system can’t
- reflow text to varied screen sizes
- vary presentation (size, contrast)
- vary modality (audio, braille)
- accessibility
- lacks semantic structure (tags for titles, heading levels, sections, paragraphs, lists, emphasis, code, links, accessibility features, etc)
- some users can’t read this due to lack of alt text
- users can’t adapt the text for dyslexia or vision impairments
- systems can’t read the text to them or send it to braille devices
- web connectivity
- we have to do failure-prone bullshit to find the original source
- we can’t explore wider context of the original message
- authenticity: we don’t know the image hasn’t been tampered
- searchability: the “text” isn’t indexable by search engine in a meaningful way
- fault tolerance: no text fallback if
- image breaks
- image host is geoblocked due to insane regulations.
Contrary to age & humble appearance, text is an advanced technology that provides all these capabilities absent from images. ::: They don’t do much: they’re obsolete middlemen.
It’s funny, because researchers at CERN invented the World Wide Web long ago to solve this problem: a web of hyperlinking[^hyperlink] dissertation articles. Then physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory who were building a central repository of electronic preprints seized on the web to create arΧiv for sharing those preprints, thus pioneering open access. The NIH, inspired by arΧiv to do similar for biomedical & life sciences, dreamt up E-biomed
The goal of E-biomed was to provide free access to all biomedical research. Papers submitted to E-biomed could take one of two routes: either immediately published as a preprint, or through a traditional peer review process. The peer review process was to resemble contemporary overlay journals, with an external editorial board retaining control over the process of reviewing, curating, and listing papers which would otherwise be freely accessible on the central E-biomed server. Varmus intended to realize the new possibilities presented by communicating scientific results digitally, imagining continuous conversation about published work, versioned documents, and enriched “layered” formats allowing for multiple levels of detail.
but capitulation to industry pressure led them to settle for almost none of that with PubMed Central
Under pressure from vigorous lobbying from commercial publishers and scientific societies who feared for lost profits, NIH officials announced a revised PubMed Central proposal in August 1999. PMC would receive submissions from publishers, rather than from authors as in E-biomed. Publications were allowed time-embargoed paywalls up to one year. PMC would only allow peer-reviewed work — no preprints.
So, the technology to solve this has existed since the web began, but parasitic special interests who are pretty much obsolete inhibit their realization.
[^hyperlink]: so hyperlinks could replace citations & references
- usability
Xerxos@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Ctrl+C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-P. Another hard workday done.
PixelPilgrim@lemmings.world 3 months ago
Do these researches even get paid for publishing their work
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 months ago
no, its property of the university/PI you are working under, you just get your name recognized on the paper, that translate as an entry in your CV/resume, scientist is willing to sacrifice that autonomy to have the CV being filled with published papers. apparently its quantity over quality, which is another topic as far as papers go. and i heard some people have to write dozens of papers just to get noticed by employers/universities on thier CV.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
That’s what research grants are for.
87Six@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
Yea and idk about other parts of the world, but in Romania, the publishing fee is paid in full by the university if the researcher is part of a doctorate or masters programme… So it’s just science institutions trading money between each other here…
InputZero@lemmy.world 3 months ago
In a roundabout way, yes a researcher does get paid for their publications but not directly. Universities exist on their reputation and their reputation is determined, in part, from the publications their researchers make. So a researcher who publishes a lot of high quality publications has a better chance of being offered a position at an institution with a good reputation, which can offer to pay them more.
PixelPilgrim@lemmings.world 3 months ago
Great so these publication are gate keepers
baltakatei@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
“Clearly something you want me to do because you keep on paying, lol.”
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
The subscription service/pay-to-play being everywhere has to stop eventually, right?
Like, eventually enough consumers will realize that they are bent over the barrel by their services.
I was darkly joking that Microsoft is like an abuser in another post yesterday, but the more I thought about it, the more the metaphor stuck. They take and take, make decisions on your behalf, cut you off from outsiders and make it increasingly difficult to escape the longer you let them get away with it. And that’s not Microsoft’s fault…that’s capitalism, baby!
FrankLaskey@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
This article in the Guardian is definitely worth a read if you’re not intimately familiar with just how it got this way… It’s 8 years old so it won’t cover recent history but does give you an idea of how/why it got this way.
And yes Robert Maxwell (father of Ghislaine) is mostly to blame.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
This article in the Guardian is definitely worth a read if you’re not intimately familiar with just how it got this way… It’s 8 years old so it won’t cover recent history but does give you an idea of how it started.
A very interesting read!
So, what i take form the article, is that Elsevier and other publishers are most similar to a search engine or index: They give you a list of all interesting articles in a field, so you don’t have to search through the millions of scientific articles produced each year yourself.
That makes it kinda similar to google, which is also very profitable, which also turns a profit by giving back user-supplied content to the users. Just that Elsevier charges for that “indexlist” functionality directly, while google takes the game one step further and harvests data, which it then uses to display targeted ads.
marcela@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
Maxwell insisted on grand titles – “International Journal of” was a favourite prefix. Peter Ashby, a former vice president at Pergamon, described this to me as a “PR trick”, but it also reflected a deep understanding of how science, and society’s attitude to science, had changed. Collaborating and getting your work seen on the international stage was becoming a new form of prestige for researchers, and in many cases Maxwell had the market cornered before anyone else realised it existed.
If you explain to any outsider that what we call science is a game of collecting and showing off units of prestige, they will be flabbergasted. Maxwell catered to the most superficial and vain aspects of the human psyche, and traded in a measure of righteousness. This is genius, I will grant him that, but opposite to the objectives of science. He made the worst possible metric about which to measure everything, and created a global system of narcissistic organizations selling their souls to publish to these journals.
And scientists are the least probable to rebel against this status quo. If anything, it will make them appear as big-time asses who are full of themselves. They are bound to project more legitimacy onto the system, similar to doomsday cultists.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
He made the worst possible metric about which to measure everything, and created a global system of narcissistic organizations selling their souls to publish to these journals.
In the words of Sydney Brenner (a biologist, it’s in the article): the system is “corrupt”.
marcela@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
Aspesi was not the first person to incorrectly predict the end of the scientific publishing boom, and he is unlikely to be the last. It is hard to believe that what is essentially a for-profit oligopoly functioning within an otherwise heavily regulated, government-funded enterprise can avoid extinction in the long run. But publishing has been deeply enmeshed in the science profession for decades. Today, every scientist knows that their career depends on being published, and professional success is especially determined by getting work into the most prestigious journals.
It is the departments’ choice to cancel subscriptions anytime and start publishing on their own terms. They are equally to blame when they esteem reputation above all, and measure reputation by publishing to these journals. Let’s not pretend that big-shot universities are simply taken hostage by a handful corrupt billionaires. They’re in on it.
marcela@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
It is as if the New Yorker or the Economist demanded that journalists write and edit each other’s work for free, and asked the government to foot the bill. Outside observers tend to fall into a sort of stunned disbelief when describing this setup. A 2004 parliamentary science and technology committee report on the industry drily observed that “in a traditional market suppliers are paid for the goods they provide”. A 2005 Deutsche Bank report referred to it as a “bizarre” “triple-pay” system, in which “the state funds most research, pays the salaries of most of those checking the quality of research, and then buys most of the published product”.
Racket.
zd9@lemmy.world 3 months ago
The scientific journal industrial complex is one of the highest profit margins in the world. It’s consistently at like 30-60% pure profit. Obviously not all journals are the same, some are reasonable, but some are insane. LOOKING AT YOU ELSEVIER
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 months ago
wonder whats natrues profit margin, they probably one of the most well renowned journal
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
The labor is in the peer review and they pay nothing. Then they setup a system where peer reviewers get “credits” not one cares about.
Fucking wooden nickels.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It’s like music. There’s a lot of value in the back catalogue.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Behind you, an executive encourages your participation in academia. *plap* *plap* *plap* *plap* get published get published get published
JokeDeity@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
I honestly don’t understand this. It’s not that expensive to just host a website where you publish your research to instead of using these scheisters.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 months ago
its complicated, if yuo try to publish yourself employers might see your research could be biased or fudged results. they want to see a legitimate publication. much like how a certain wealthy billionaire is doing “research” on himself and publishing it, its not legitimate and is considered pseudoscience.
LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 months ago
20 years ago we relied on printed books and libraries. I’ve noticed in real time this last decade [nearly] every paper gaining a PDF download button on some website.
sassymov@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
Well yes but you also need to hassle high profile researchers to give their opinion before you host research, and that can get really expens… wait, no, they do it for free as well.
LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 3 months ago
knowing literally nothing about the state of academic journalism in China I’m going to just confidently say, lol, lmao, China keep winning (and this is why it will) some-controversy
BertramDitore@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
In grad school I remember being encouraged to submit a paper to a journal that would have charged me a few hundred dollars to put it in for peer review, and I told my advisor no, I needed to buy groceries, I would not throw my money away for an extra line on my CV. He got all flustered and it was a great example of why higher education is so fucked. My advisor, who ostensibly understood my background and means, could not understand how such a relatively small fee would be so prohibitive. He was incapable of understanding that I was essentially unemployed while enrolled as his grad student, and every dollar of funding went to bare essentials so I could continue breathing. He had access to discretionary funds for this exact kind of issue (I found out later), and didn’t think to offer.
Without independent wealth and deep personal connections it’s incredibly difficult to succeed in academia, regardless of the quality of your research.
ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com 3 months ago
Fun (random shit I heard on the internet): the enshittification of journals mostly started with Pergamon Press which was founded by Ghislaine Maxwell’s father.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 3 months ago
What scientific publishing really needs is a cost-free publishing system that is run by the universities, and where the universities publish all their papers in.