Link: https://open.substack.com/pub/experimentalhistory/p/the-one-science-reform-we-can-all

Of all the crazy parts of our crazy system, the craziest part is where taxpayers pay for the research, then pay private companies to publish it, and then pay again so scientists can read it. We may not agree on much, but we can all agree on this: it is time, finally and forever, to get rid of for-profit scientific publishers.

Everyone but Elsevier wants that.

Agreed. Honestly can't believe how this is even still a thing at this point.

leech parasites

And their service stinks

I think it’s a great lesson in hiw good people can create and tolerate bad systems …

… how a bunch of clever and thoughtful people (academics) can walk into creating a dumb system which they simultaneously hate or disagree with, and don’t know how to effectively change or fix.

Worth studying IMO as a case study on these general problems. My understanding is that it was a manipulative capitalist that kicked it off by appealing to academics’ egos by creating increasingly specialised and likely redundant Journals (IE more subscriptions). And of course most academics know it’s dumb, but have no sense of collective action. And so humanity just stumbles along doing dumb shit.

Fun fact Robert Maxwell established the for profit scientific publishing companies. If that name seems familiar he is the father of Ghislaine.

🤮

We need more profit in science, like we need to reward the most the greedy and unscrupulous people in capitalism.

Here's a bit of how it got started.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science

Father of Ghislaine Maxwell, yes the Epstein one, had quite a lot to do with it, which sure bears mentioning!

Fuck "The Guardian" (no shade to you, commenter), Behind The Bastards did a competent 4-piece or something (for those who enjoy such a format) on the guy, and to a degree, the topic. Interesting - mostly, but oddly not all - bad stuff.

I'm amazed and disgusted at how all roads lead to Mossad.

People should make their own papers available for free, either on Bittorrent or just upload it publicly in many places (ideally both). It's not like you get anything when people pay to access it from one of these journals.

"Economics" need a re-write too. They have elevated "profits" higher than "Truth-seeking", and their field are swamped in non-scientific claims and processes that cause 'Truth' to become second fiddle to "profits".

The profit motive compromises Scientific thinking/behavior on ALL levels of the Scientific system, is orthogonal to the truth incentive so only align/overlap in rare cases. Capitalism/free markets is a combative ideology - a belief-system - that generates a perpetual need for profits and kills good Science behavior.

This seems like it would be an easy thing for some doo gooders to set up for free. Maybe with a few ads to fund it.

That's just the ones on TV.

I'm an economist and many of us don't have much to do with currency economies and could be better described as "find the root cause experts."

Hell, I use my skills in the IT field.

They absolutely should, I agree, and I think many folks will email you a copy if you ask. Also, sometimes the journals have clauses when you agree to publish, like you can't upload to your website the same version that they published, at least for 1-5 years. I still think people should do it anyway, anonymously, but I wanted to add that point about the extra legal bullshit.

Good luck at P&T with only Publications in open journals. BTW, they are not "free". They still have page charges.

"Publishing" isn't necessary in 2026.

Anyone can put information out there for free. If it's genuinely worth reading, people will read it.

Every rich person is a piece of trash and deserves to be taken out.

Those same academics aren't the kinds of people that do well in a hostile environment. All it takes is some coordinated brow-beating and they will cave every time.