this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
1735 points (99.1% liked)

Science Memes

11253 readers
3266 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
1735
internet points (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
100 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] merc 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not convinced that 3 full time staff is barebones given that the writing and formatting is being done by the authors, and that a solid chunk of what normally falls under the editing umbrella is being done by peer reviewers who are also unpaid.

Even if that is a fair representation of the cost to the journal to get the article published, that would mean they would break even, maybe even earn a profit purely on the submission fees. Never mind that multiple universities pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to subscribe to the journals.

[โ€“] RvTV95XBeo 1 points 1 year ago

Not trying to break down the exact specifics of the journal business model, just trying to show there's no such thing as a free ~~lunch~~ peer reviewed journal.

If you want anything of even the most mediocre of quality, there will be fees. Personally I'm fine with the fees being paid by the researchers as just a small part of the cost of doing research - it also incentivizes them to not try and publish utter garbage. One could try and crowd-fund a journal, but I don't really see how that's much better than putting the burden on the research teams.

What I'm not okay with and needs to be fixed is anyone having to pay to view the results of publicly funded research. If my tax dollars are supporting this effort, I deserve to know that was learned.