Real talk, what is the real barrier to somebody creating a competing publishing firm for these things.
I’m not a scientist, but I always hear about how expensive it is to either publish or get access to scientific papers without contacting the author directly. Why does that reputation exist? Why does it seem like the scientific community is so dependent on stuff like this?
I’m no expert on the topic, but Nature is an exception rather than the rule, given its history and prestige.
Academic journals were around well before the Internet. Real capital investment was required to review applications, provide editing advice, typesetting, printing, and distribution. All of those are still things, now with additional online publishing, which also has its own technology costs.
What’s wild and out of whack, of course, is that peer reviewers generally aren’t paid, submitters pay to get published, and readers also pay for access. Other than the relatively minimal office staff to keep things running, there’s very little overhead. So why is it so damn expensive?
I think the answer is that they can get away with it. You can publish in an open source journal for free, of course, but there may or may not be quality control. Plus, it’s an attention economy. If you publish in Science or Nature, you’re almost certainly getting prestige that can turbo boost your career because that many people will see and likely cite your work.
And on and on it goes. I think we would pretty strong regulations to stop this system.
In a free market society, over time, every seller would charge for their service as much as they can. And the service they themselves use, will in turn charge them as much as they can.
This would be an optimal system, if only humans were rational creatures. When prices for a service increase too much, we should stop using it and go for alternatives, which would create more incentives for competition to grow and prices to come down etc.
But i think, we don’t think rationally. Sometimes, even when we know something is bad for us, we still do it cuz of lack of self control or other reasons.
Real talk, what is the real barrier to somebody creating a competing publishing firm for these things.
I’m not a scientist, but I always hear about how expensive it is to either publish or get access to scientific papers without contacting the author directly. Why does that reputation exist? Why does it seem like the scientific community is so dependent on stuff like this?
I’m no expert on the topic, but Nature is an exception rather than the rule, given its history and prestige.
Academic journals were around well before the Internet. Real capital investment was required to review applications, provide editing advice, typesetting, printing, and distribution. All of those are still things, now with additional online publishing, which also has its own technology costs.
What’s wild and out of whack, of course, is that peer reviewers generally aren’t paid, submitters pay to get published, and readers also pay for access. Other than the relatively minimal office staff to keep things running, there’s very little overhead. So why is it so damn expensive?
I think the answer is that they can get away with it. You can publish in an open source journal for free, of course, but there may or may not be quality control. Plus, it’s an attention economy. If you publish in Science or Nature, you’re almost certainly getting prestige that can turbo boost your career because that many people will see and likely cite your work.
And on and on it goes. I think we would pretty strong regulations to stop this system.
I think it is because we humans are not rational.
In a free market society, over time, every seller would charge for their service as much as they can. And the service they themselves use, will in turn charge them as much as they can.
This would be an optimal system, if only humans were rational creatures. When prices for a service increase too much, we should stop using it and go for alternatives, which would create more incentives for competition to grow and prices to come down etc.
But i think, we don’t think rationally. Sometimes, even when we know something is bad for us, we still do it cuz of lack of self control or other reasons.