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Isn't it a bit ridiculous for researchers to have to pay a publisher to publish the content that they themselves make money from?
They're double dipping, and also triple dipping with the peer reviews done on a volunteer basis.
A racket, I say.
Quadruple dipping because they publish both open access journals that authors pay extra for, plus the standard subscription journals where universities need to pay for access too. Subscription obviously never got cheaper, no matter if the amount of open access journals increased (didn't check that though, but fits well into the scheme)
The House of Elsevier has been gaming the scientific community since it was still called "natural philosophy".
I'm still not sure, what exactly the journals are actually doing.
Like, in all seriousness, what service do they provide? Just hosting the platform for anonymized reviews and basically a blog for the actual articles? That should cost maybe a few millions each year, yet this sector makes billions in revenue.
Name recognition. That's pretty much it.
Gatekeeping As A Service.
Eeeghh. Such parasites.
They offer reputation. Career advancement is highly dependent on publication history and impact. Getting into a prestigious publication means your work will more likely be read and cited. Because highly reputable journals can charge high publication fees (because it's in such high demand), they get to set the industry norm, which other less reputable journals/publishers get to follow. It does cost money to develop and maintain that reputation for rigour and impact (i.e. good science). But yeah it's exploitative AF. There are attempts for less profit-motivated publications... But making those rigorous while still being democratic is hard