Biden administration apparently already moved to an open access mandate, but without closing the "gold open access" AKA pay2publish loophole. Effective 2025. Great timing.
Mandating open access is the first step. The only other thing the federal government needs to do is disallow federal funds from paying open access fees. Yes, in theory the money for those fees could be sourced from somewhere else, but in practice they mostly won’t be; as someone who has done federally funded research, when the feds are paying for something it’s treated as free, but when they’re not it’s heavily scrutinized.
All these proposals strike me as needling around the edges, while avoiding the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that the academic promotion system is broken.
The journal Cartel is merely one symptom of the problem.
Since we're dreaming...... a few of the people involved in those "Best College" rankings getting randomly chosen for public execution. Thomas SoSowell has some great writing about the subject that could be used in announcing the program.😊
The most obvious thing the federal government can do to reduce journal costs is to stop making research grants. The point of publishing in an expensive journal is to look good in front of third parties. Specifically, in front of granting agencies.
I've finished a string of research that could potentially shake up Economics forever. Journals have not been kind to say the least. A fren of an acquaintance is even trying to squeeze money out of me to let me attach his name so the journals will revere his name (and profit reputation wise I guess too from my work, so scummy of him).
It took me learning Rosicrucian magic to get even to the review stage. Only one journal has completely rejected a work so far (Finance Research Letters; the reviewer told me to "write a real paper" instead of 7 pages of theorems which "should be in the appendix"; meanwhile the desk reject in Review of Financial Markets adored the work but could not incorporate it because of topic inappropriateness)
when I get the John Bates Clark medal (maybe even the Fields with my more theoretical stochastic processes work) there *will* be a reckoning
Hey could I ask you about something I saw this organization called the liberal project and they made a bunch of claims and about immigration could I ask you to take a look and see if they're valid or not
As a Scientific Editor for a major academic journal, I can say that we are operating at basically break-even... no significant profits as such. As for your "Government Journal" suggestion... Yes, that's a horrible idea.
Biden administration apparently already moved to an open access mandate, but without closing the "gold open access" AKA pay2publish loophole. Effective 2025. Great timing.
https://www.science.org/content/article/white-house-requires-immediate-public-access-all-u-s--funded-research-papers-2025
Mandating open access is the first step. The only other thing the federal government needs to do is disallow federal funds from paying open access fees. Yes, in theory the money for those fees could be sourced from somewhere else, but in practice they mostly won’t be; as someone who has done federally funded research, when the feds are paying for something it’s treated as free, but when they’re not it’s heavily scrutinized.
China, the research leader, is already hard at work on this, with the world's #3 journal run by young volunteer scientists.
All these proposals strike me as needling around the edges, while avoiding the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that the academic promotion system is broken.
The journal Cartel is merely one symptom of the problem.
Since we're dreaming...... a few of the people involved in those "Best College" rankings getting randomly chosen for public execution. Thomas SoSowell has some great writing about the subject that could be used in announcing the program.😊
The most obvious thing the federal government can do to reduce journal costs is to stop making research grants. The point of publishing in an expensive journal is to look good in front of third parties. Specifically, in front of granting agencies.
I've finished a string of research that could potentially shake up Economics forever. Journals have not been kind to say the least. A fren of an acquaintance is even trying to squeeze money out of me to let me attach his name so the journals will revere his name (and profit reputation wise I guess too from my work, so scummy of him).
It took me learning Rosicrucian magic to get even to the review stage. Only one journal has completely rejected a work so far (Finance Research Letters; the reviewer told me to "write a real paper" instead of 7 pages of theorems which "should be in the appendix"; meanwhile the desk reject in Review of Financial Markets adored the work but could not incorporate it because of topic inappropriateness)
when I get the John Bates Clark medal (maybe even the Fields with my more theoretical stochastic processes work) there *will* be a reckoning
Hey could I ask you about something I saw this organization called the liberal project and they made a bunch of claims and about immigration could I ask you to take a look and see if they're valid or not
As a Scientific Editor for a major academic journal, I can say that we are operating at basically break-even... no significant profits as such. As for your "Government Journal" suggestion... Yes, that's a horrible idea.
Thanks for explaining the process. It currently sounds like it was designed and executed by the Deep State. I think your stated solutions have merit,