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.
That was one of the biggest cultural shocks when I did my PhD. What do you mean I need a super expensive subscription (it was paid by university luckily) to access other publications? what do you also mean I have to pay a large fee to also publish? if I want others to access my publications for free I need to pay even more? oh and you don’t pay reviewers, they do it for free all? then where all this money of charging both ways goes? your block storage is probably costing you 0.01 usd per year for my paper…
The entire thing seemed like an aggressive business model making some people super rich at the expense of poor students for the most time who are required to publish.
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.
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.
Capitalism is essentially about inserting non essential middlemen into every supply chain and increasing profits of these “people” who do the least work.