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0 pointsarmchairhacker3y ago0 comments

Cost =/= quality on papers, almost all of the "best writings of all time" are public domain, and many of the best papers absolutely free.

And most researchers want their papers to be free, to the point where you can email them and they will give you a free copy, and they post the preprints on arXiv and their personal website to get around publishing requirements.

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contravariant3y ago· 1 in thread

The journals aren't there to help spread their content they're there to give the content a seal of authenticity. As long as they can show researchers/universities are willing to pay high fees they can claim that their contents must be worth that much.

Having free copies of the papers available doesn't actually hurt them much, provided they're still the source for 'authentic' copies.

(sidenote: not sure what field you're talking about where the best writings of all time are public domain but I've had to pluck quite a few famous papers of scihub instead)

2Gkashmiri3y ago

Why isn't academia a more social activity?

Think of this analogy.

You are interested in say a subset of research on morel mushrooms.

You know who the reputed people who publish are so you "follow" them and their profile. They did a new peer review of a newcomer and you get alerted. You check their work and are impressed so you follow them too.

Your favourite researcher Also curates "his" favorite researches and researchers on their blog so you are one click away from their opinions on what is good or bad.

Compare that with a "reputed journal". The way the system is designed, the journals work of sorting and filtering, the reader is expected to trust their research of choosing the work so you trust their judgment and you auto assume the work is good.

Why don't you democratize that work to domain experts itself and everyone helps everyone else. Isn't that the case with everything online?

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