How can these businesses keep running? Storing and distributing documents isn’t exactly the most technically challenging product to build. I’m not in the field though so I’m absolutely certain I’m missing a lot of the nuances here. Can you shed some light on why you think nobody new comes along to our compete these folks?
There is a metric associated with scientific journals called impact factor. You can read up somewhere how its calculated but it is essentially a number that boils down how often a journal’s papers are cited.
The higher impact factor your paper gets from getting published the better you look. Its reputable.
This stuff is important when you apply for research grants or new positions within academia. If you have a candidate that published regular high impact versus one that doesn’t, there isn’t much reason to choose the one that doesn’t.
However, as you might have guessed, the system is flawed and one shouldn’t rely on impact factors as a measure. However, everyone keeps doing it because it is a simple 1 number metric and everything else is a lot more work to evaluate quality with.
Now a new journal cannot just come in and offer cheap prices because they start without or with low impact factor. They have to build that first over several years with fantastic papers cited by tons of people. You cannot achieve that easily.
Sounds great right? Scientific papers essentially reinvented printing money and now act as if there is no other way to handle this. Add to that, that they give no two craps about scientific integrity or misconduct and there is a small hope scientists might slowly get fed up with the system.
Well glad you beat me to it - one bit of unpaid writing I don’t need to do now!
You also have to recruit a free labor force to do the really important work - your reviewers. Reviewers are more inclined to work for higher impact journals and join their editorial boards.
It is messy and there are alternatives, but it is a culture of altruism that has become abused and engrained.
From that I would assume that there is need for a federated service that blatantly copies this technique. It is indestructible and not profit oriented which will make it a great alternative for people to just publish to on the side. The review process of course needs to be worked out so that it can have good reputation. As in stack overflow, senior authors review junior authors, etc. one could also start by using known accounts of the proprietary journals as base for peer reviews, etc.
I‘m not a scientist, I just create a lot of stuff and have a strong tendency towards open source and federated media.
How can these businesses keep running? Storing and distributing documents isn’t exactly the most technically challenging product to build. I’m not in the field though so I’m absolutely certain I’m missing a lot of the nuances here. Can you shed some light on why you think nobody new comes along to our compete these folks?
Because the system is rigged in more ways.
I will try and keep it short.
There is a metric associated with scientific journals called impact factor. You can read up somewhere how its calculated but it is essentially a number that boils down how often a journal’s papers are cited.
The higher impact factor your paper gets from getting published the better you look. Its reputable.
This stuff is important when you apply for research grants or new positions within academia. If you have a candidate that published regular high impact versus one that doesn’t, there isn’t much reason to choose the one that doesn’t.
However, as you might have guessed, the system is flawed and one shouldn’t rely on impact factors as a measure. However, everyone keeps doing it because it is a simple 1 number metric and everything else is a lot more work to evaluate quality with.
Now a new journal cannot just come in and offer cheap prices because they start without or with low impact factor. They have to build that first over several years with fantastic papers cited by tons of people. You cannot achieve that easily.
Sounds great right? Scientific papers essentially reinvented printing money and now act as if there is no other way to handle this. Add to that, that they give no two craps about scientific integrity or misconduct and there is a small hope scientists might slowly get fed up with the system.
Thanks so much for the explanation. As they say, when a measure becomes a target it stops being a good measure.
Relevant XKCD for good measure.
Well glad you beat me to it - one bit of unpaid writing I don’t need to do now! You also have to recruit a free labor force to do the really important work - your reviewers. Reviewers are more inclined to work for higher impact journals and join their editorial boards. It is messy and there are alternatives, but it is a culture of altruism that has become abused and engrained.
So you’re just like a high impact journal, eh?
My bank account argues otherwise
This is tremendously helpful! Thank you.
From that I would assume that there is need for a federated service that blatantly copies this technique. It is indestructible and not profit oriented which will make it a great alternative for people to just publish to on the side. The review process of course needs to be worked out so that it can have good reputation. As in stack overflow, senior authors review junior authors, etc. one could also start by using known accounts of the proprietary journals as base for peer reviews, etc.
I‘m not a scientist, I just create a lot of stuff and have a strong tendency towards open source and federated media.
Which can be further summarized: academics (🙋🏻) are basically a bunch of idiotic sheep, despite being in academia.
See also https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/16/the-public-sphere/#not-the-elsevier