Reflections - Part 3: On Scientific Publishing

On 2022-06-05

reflexions is a series of (hopefully) short articles on stuff that doesn't have enough material to be a full article, but is longer than a note. Let me know what you think via email.

Have you ever tried using Google Scholar to search for papers, only to find that the one you want to read is behind a paywall? Maybe you have, and if you do you'll know that you can use a Sci-Hub mirror like https://sci-hub.ee/ to bypass them.

Isn't it curious that no one ever, not even the authors of a paper, said that Sci-Hub is bad? Most authors will even send you a copy of the paper if you email them. They want you to read their work! You know who doesn't want you to have access to these people's work?

Journals.

Authors have to pay thousands of dollars just to get the journal to upload it to their fucking website. And of course, most of them don't even pay the people who perform the peer review! Isn't it hilarious? But wait, there is more. Most journals don't even allow you to submit the same paper while yours is being reviewed by them, a process that can take fucking months.

Anyone who doesn't see the problem here is either retarded or an Elsevier executive.

Why we keep allowing this affronts to education and knowledge in such racketeer terms is beyond my understanding. Had I been President, one of my first decrees would be to create a public journal, FREE of paywalls, for all the people. What does it fucking cost? Hosting is cheap as fuck. Curating is cheap as fuck. The reviewers would be paid with tax money. Why hasn't any country done this already? The cost to run a journal is negligible at the scale of a country.