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Nature saying the quiet part out loud.
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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
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Why publish through a journal at all? What do they do that WordPress doesn't? Are they the source of your credibility? Do they pay the peer reviewers. Or are you all just whipped?
There are several benefits, but compared to WordPress, I guess the biggest one is outreach: no one will actually see an article if it's published by a young researcher that hasn't made a name for themselves yet. It will also not be catalogued and will therefore be more difficult to find when searching for articles.
Also, calling researchers "whipped" is a bit dismissive to the huge inertia there is in the realm of scientific publication. The scientific journal of Nature was founded in 1869, but general open-access publishing has only really taken off in the last decade or so.
So they are the source of your credibility. And you continue to agree to have it that way.
No, that's not what I said. You're right that journals, to some extent, also lends credibility to the publication, but it's not the source of credibility. What I said was that an article published in Nature will have many more views than an article published on a random WordPress blog.
Again, saying that researchers "agree to have it that way" ignores the structural difficulty of changing the system by the individual. The ones who benefit the most from changing the system are also the ones most dependent on external funding - that is, young researchers. Publishing in low-impact journals (ones that has a small outreach such as most open-access journals) makes it much harder to apply for funding
It's not what you wanted to say, but it is what the words you wrote effectively meant.
Nature doesn't lend you credibility. You and your colleagues read Nature because it's how you filter out the trash.
Researchers agree to have it that way. I will not yield on that argument. You do, you agree to it by majority to this day.
By this logic, you and everyone else agree to climate change. Everyone in Venezuela agrees to Maduro.
It has nothing to do with majority, it's a collective action and balance of power.
That's okay. If you view the journals as glorified blogs, I agree that they're unnecessary. They aren't and do more than that even though they're also doing a lot of bad stuff with sky high profit margins. If you're not open for changing your views, I don't see the point of discussing any more. Appreciate the back and forth, tho!
Publications in peer-reviewed journals are how a career in science is built. It's impossible to measure the productivity of a scientist. What is done, is that one looks at their publications. How many publications do they have? How often are they cited? What is the quality of the journal?
This creates very bad incentives, leading to things like publication bias. It also means that you must publish in prestigious journals. You don't have a choice but to accept their terms. Libraries don't have a choice but to stock these journals. It's a straight-forward monopoly racket. These publishers make fantastical profits.
All that money can be used for PR campaigns and lobbying to keep the good times rolling.