I’m a tenured scientist working internationally (based in Japan). There is a lot going on in scientific publishing today, too much to write here, but what it boils down to is escaping a historical artifact, and commodification of science (i.e., rendered as an instrument of profit).
What is publishing? Basically, publishing is just the formal way for scientists to communicate their research results to one another. That’s all it is.
Why is it commodified? It has been commodified for centuries…just like all of publishing, historically, owning the rights to print material was an essential part of the business model of publishing, and helped to underwrite the cost of owning a printing press (and paying the huge staff to keep it going). Only the most powerful members of society (oligarchs) typically owned and controlled a printing press in the past.
How is it commodified? Publishers get editors, reviewers, and readers (all of whom are the same people) to donate their effort for little/no compensation. The peer review process is part of the commodification, because it adds value (like an endorsement) to the product. Scientific publishing is known to have some of the greatest profit margins in the business world, typically ~40% margin. Publishers have also pushed publishing statistics, which university administrations, government agencies, etc., have seized upon as a lazy way of measuring scientific output (by quantity, rather than quality).
How does commodification taint the process? Because the publisher uses peer review as an official endorsement of the copyrighted content, it is over-emphasized and misinterpreted by the public. It is wrongly perceived as some kind of official stamp of approval, rather than the truth that it is just a process for scientists to engage one another as a community, gathering collegial feedback, sometimes to help catch errors or just to help one another improve their science (and its explication).
With the internet, why can’t scientists take over their own communications? Because they’re busy being asked to serve on all kinds of BS committees, increasingly taking on administrative roles as their profession is downsized, etc., they don’t have the spare time. And funding/influence is consolidated among a smaller group who benefit from the status quo, inbreeding resistance to change. You won’t find many boatrockers among the top ranks today (sadly).
What is happening now? Scientists have begun to rebel against journals, refusing to review for some of the worst offenders (such as Elsevier). This puts strain on editors, who can’t find reviewers and they are starting to quit editing. At the same time, young scientists are moving things forward at the grassroots level, establishing new communications venues for science, including “diamond open access” (unfortunately, it makes a poor acronym) journals that are wholly controlled by the scientific community itself. I have been part of some of these myself, and we are planning to launch more in the future. For young people, these are heroic efforts, especially considering that young scientists do not earn any credit toward getting a tenured position by working on such community-building projects (they should be publishing papers in Nature, instead).
Times are changing…
experimentalhistory.substack.com
