
Universities spend millions on accessing results of publicly funded research - versteegen
https://theconversation.com/universities-spend-millions-on-accessing-results-of-publicly-funded-research-88392
======
grawprog
When I was in school we had to travel to the library of a different University
to work on some of our projects because the one we went to didn't pay for the
journals we needed to access to do our work and buying access to a single
article would have been ridiculous. We cited over 100 papers in our final
project many of those we couldn't access from our school. Paying for them
would have cost anywhere from $20 to over $100 per article, not issue,
article. A good majority of the studies we cited were funded either directly
through government or through universities funded by government. It's entirely
a way to keep knowledge out of the hands of the poor. Publicly funded studies
should be made freely available to everyone.

Even the project I worked on when I finished school. We were funded by
government grants and our results were intended to be posted publicly, it was
written in our proposal. Instead, once we started posting our data online we
were told that we were no longer allowed to and our data must now be submitted
to a government database. Otherwise we would recieve no more funding.This
database of course had access fees that needed to be paid. It felt really
shitty to have to lock everything away. I'd worked on an online database and
map I was really excited about and it all had to be taken down.

~~~
rdtsc
A friend was working for the EPA and she didn't have access to all the
journals to do her work so she had to ask me to fetch them for her from the
university library. Remember seeing the prices for each article and each
subscription and thinking - they are making some nice profits charging $30 per
paper.

~~~
bluenose69
I've been in academia for three decades, and have yet to pay a cent to
download a paper. I don't know any colleagues or students who have done so,
either. I doubt that they make much money from per-article fees. I think they
set them high so that universities will be forced to subscribe.

My funding councils want people to publish in open-access journals, but they
don't provide extra funds for the doubling of cost that's involved. The money
has to come from somewhere, and the main cost item tends to be student
stipends, so professors tend to continue publishing in pay-access journals.

I've been on both sides of the "fetch for a friend" process. I've had to ask
friends to fetch copies of papers that I've written, for which I've paid page
charges, because my university had to drop the journal in one or another waves
of cost saving.

And for all this money, the journals do very little in the way of contributing
to the process, nowadays. Reviewers work for free, as do most academic
editors. Technical editors seem to barely exist anymore, since authors do
their own typesetting and journals rely on academic reviewers to help with
English.

Academics are caught in a narrowing vice as they move through the career
process. Papers have to appear in high-reputation journals, or else. And those
journals just happen to be expensive.

~~~
nspattak
I do not understand what exactly you are claiming in your first paragraph. You
say that you have never had to pay for an article yet you "have been on both
sides of the fetch for a friend" which strictly speaking (and despite how much
I hate it) is illegal.

~~~
Vinnl
They didn't say they weren't asked to pay for an article - just that they did
not. In other words, when confronted with a paywall, they either skipped the
article or asked a friend with access.

Note that asking for an article is not always illegal. For example, authors
are often allowed to share the article, and there are often also provisions
that allow institutions to "loan" access to each other (inter-library loan),
although presumably that would have to go through the institution's librarian.

That said, even if it's illegal, I'd worry about it about as much as worrying
about pedestrians skipping the red light on deserted crossings.

~~~
grawprog
Tell that to the person that started sci hub

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/scientific-
resea...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/scientific-research-
piracy-site-hit-with-15-million-fine/?amp=1)

I thought the music anti piracy people were bad.

~~~
Vinnl
Starting Sci-Hub is something I'd worry about far earlier than I'd worry about
asking a friend for an article, obviously, just like I'd worry more if I'd
started the Pirate Bay than if I'd downloaded a song.

------
avar
The most relevant quote in the article:

    
    
        > the research community uses historical journal reputation to
        > evaluate researchers, making it harder for new, better run
        > journals to enter the market.
    

This problem would be solved tomorrow if those allocating public money to
science made funding contingent on the research being published in open access
journals.

Scientists can't have their cake and eat it too. Either they fund their own
research and publish in prestigious expensive journals that cost the public
money, or they take public money and make the research available for all.

But it's not easy to migrate to that because scientist aren't just using
journals as a publication platform, but as a reputation platform as a function
of their exclusivity and reputation.

~~~
etrautmann
blaming scientists is misplaced. This is a policy-level question, for which
the policy IS evolving fairly rapidly. The scientists are also rapidly
updating and most papers have pre-prints available via arxiv or bioRxiv, etc
and the NIH and many other funding agencies require open access soon after
publication. Lastly, many scientists end-run the publishers and make the print
copy PDFs available on their lab websites.

In no way can I imagine how blaming scientists for working within the
established incentive structure to advance their careers helps advance this
issue.

~~~
tikhonj
Blaming _individual_ scientists is largely misplaced, but you can definitely
blame then collectively. The root cause of a lot of these problems is that
academia has an almost farcical obsession with prestige, and that's largely a
bottom-up function of the culture. The inability to collectively move to
different publishing venues is merely one consequence of this culture.

~~~
noobermin
If you want to blame anyone, blame publishers, not scientists. Open Access
fees assessed by publishers are astronomical, and fall to the scientists
seeking to publish them.

I haven't published in Nature yet, but my group has to fork over thousands per
open access article above the usual cost. There is a disincentive to publish
open access given that.

~~~
jononor
Blaming the publishers is not very useful, they are just acting according to
their self interest. Their interests are not well aligned with those of the
public or scientific community, but they won't care about that until they have
to. Have to focus on building up the alternatives, so that the publishers lose
the power to dictate the terms. It's happening though, slowly...

~~~
noobermin
As a publishing scientist, let me tell you, science publishing is _not_ a free
market. We can't just "build up the alternatives" because that is not
conducive to anyone's scientific career. If it's some no name journal where
you will publish along side free energy and cold fusion articles, no one will
do it.

The mistake is giving journals a profit incentive in the first place in a
system that inherently doesn't work well in a market system. You can't have
"competition" between journals, it just doesn't work that way. A handful of
journals have high impact factors and so get most of the submissions, that's
how it is, and they then can crank up their publishing fees because they can.

Perhaps you shouldn't "blame the publishers" given they are "acting according
to their self interest." I did say "If you want to blame anyone[...],"
implying I don't really care to blame anyone. I admit I am more inclined to
blame the publishers, but the whole system is fundamentally broken.

~~~
ngold
Blame the taxpayer. We as a nation should demand we get access to what we pay
for. At this point we are funding publishers to make free money off of what
was already paid for.

~~~
ryanianian
That's effectively what this article does.

------
singhrac
Recently, I tried to access a paper I had written in the past to put in my
grad school application, and couldn't get it. My current university doesn't
have access to it. The irony is ridiculous.

~~~
rafiki6
Same issue, luckily i found a copy buried deep in my google drive

------
paulsutter
Everyone working for Elsevier should resign. The board is forced to pursue
this rapacious harvest strategy, but the employees are not. They should go
work for an honest, value-creating company.

~~~
torpfactory
Crowd fund a program to offer buy-outs of key employees in immoral
enterprises. How much would it take to get half of the employees to resign?

~~~
glitcher
Sounds like the Cobra Effect just waiting to happen.

Besides, if the positions pay well there will be plenty of other candidates
willing step in. There is no shortage of examples showing that morals are
often secondary to money.

~~~
choward
You didn't explain how it would make the situation worse.

~~~
zxcmx
GP was referencing:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect)

Some ways this could play out would be:

a) Found a startup that does $immoral_thing, wait for "payouts for everyone"
to start rolling in.

b) Like (a), but just invent fake employees and give them a linkedin and some
social media profile.

c) As an employee, keep joining immoral enterprises. I get a payday every
time! So sort of a reverse incentive actually.

------
hectorr1
The practice of charging for subscriptions to information that benefits the
public good seems silly. Publishing fees make sense, researchers would work
the costs into their grant proposals and taxpayers would ultimately bear the
cost there instead of in university departmental budgets.

But I also know nothing about running a journal. Can someone explain the cost
structure of an academic journal, and why a model like publishing fees
wouldn't work?

~~~
lorenzhs
Most of the work is done by academics who receive no compensation from the
publisher. Most importantly, it is expected that one participate in peer
review. Fundamentally, there's nothing wrong with a reciprocal model of
review, but why should publishers get to enjoy enormous profit margins on said
work when they're not the ones doing it? Authors don't receive any money from
subscriptions or access fees, either. Editors sometimes receive some
compensation, but very little. There's just not a lot that the publishers do.
It seems unfair that they should be the only ones to profit monetarily from
academics' work.

~~~
pishpash
Reviewers certainly shouldn't be the ones profiting from it, that would be an
absurd conflict-of-interest. Publishers do some work, but I think it's mostly
the long-tail problem. The popular stuff is subsidizing the large number of
very very esoteric. Unbundling might help.

~~~
anbende
You're mistaken. Paying reviewers would only cause a conflict of interest if
it biases reviewers in a particular direction. Which direction would that be?

Paying the reviewer doesn't incentivise them to accept or reject only to
actually do the review. As it stands, in many fields reviewers are far from
experts in the area they're reviewing but only in the same general discipline.
Papers sail through review without proper statistical oversight, because what
statistics expert is going to spend their time reviewing psych or bio articles
when that's not their discipline?

Well if we paid people to do what amounts to some of the most important work
in science, maybe we'd get actual experts to do it!

~~~
pishpash
Or, you get charlatans who review for money.

~~~
anbende
That's a danger, for sure, but once you're paying people you can generally be
more choosy. CVs can be reviewed as can previous review work.

No one suggests that paying programmers to program results in shoddier work.
There just needs to be an accountability and feedback system just like in any
other industry.

------
js8
And it's gonna cost even more money, because some are trying to actively block
access to Scihub. For example: [https://sciencebusiness.net/news/court-tells-
internet-compan...](https://sciencebusiness.net/news/court-tells-internet-
companies-block-access-pirate-research-site-sci-hub)

------
hyperion2010
Something on the order of 50% of all research funding goes to the academic
publishing industry.

edit: Downvote if you want, but it is true, maybe not at every institution,
but some Latin American countries the budget for access to the literature is
greater than what they spend on supporting basic research [0].

0\. [https://www.slideshare.net/biodiego88/force2017-ppt-
diegogom...](https://www.slideshare.net/biodiego88/force2017-ppt-
diegogomez-81175547)

~~~
Kalium
For such a strong statement as that, some context is critical. Many readers
are doing mental math based on American pay rates, and concluding that this
can't possibly be true. Indeed, the access cost cited won't be anything even
slightly approaching 50% in a first world context.

In less well off developing countries, you are absolutely and completely
correct in every way, shape, form, and manner. The cost for access to
literature can be greater than that of the salaries a department pays its
basic research faculty.

~~~
deerpig
I am charged with the task of returning a university that used to be a
research school before the Khmer Rouge to be a national research university.
Professors are paid a little over US$500 a month by the government. Staff
often have to buy their own office supplies, computers and even light bulbs.
We're finally getting some foreign grants from China to rebuild some of the
laboratories, but there is no budget for paying subscriptions to journals.
JSTOR provides reasonable discounts for developing countries, as does APNIC
(for IP blocks) but it's difficult to try to build something when US45,000 a
year is considered to be a low paying job and used as a baseline for access to
information.

Thankfully there is lib-gen and sci-hub. Sadly, the United States is trying to
force developing countries to support copyright measures that will lock us out
if we adopt them.

------
lorenzhs
There's currently a push in Germany to negotiate more reasonable licensing
agreements nationwide, and to publish all research by authors in Germany under
a CC-BY licence: [https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-
deal/](https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/). There's a long list of
universities that have decided not to renew their contracts with Elsevier for
future publications. I recently got an email from my university's
administration that "numerous scientists have pledged their support in the
negotiations with Elsevier by not reviewing for or acting as editor of
Elsevier publications until a mutual agreement has been reached".

~~~
manol74
I work at a German research center and we recently also got informed by our
library that all contracts with Elsevier will end at the end of year. However,
and this is the fun part, it was also noted that it has been reported by other
institutions that Elsevier did not actually cancel the access permissions for
them after the contracts ended. Seems to me we could finally got into a good
position for negotiations about fair access to our own work.

------
exar0815
Its not only the journals. Another thing that costs shittons of money are
standards. A single two-dozen page ISO, DIN or comparable standard can easily
amount to a couple thousand Euros. And it's not like you need one. You might
need a second or third or fourth one because they just chain their references.
"Test Devices can be found in ISO-123" In ISO-123:"The devices listed here
have to be configured analogue to the devices mentioned in DIN-2153" And so
on. And don't get me started about versioning. A couple of same-number
standards in parallel because they are from different months or years or just
small amendments (Single Sentences). And there is only one company selling em.
It's laughable. Oh, and it's not as if anyone gets paid to write standards.
Standards are written for free by engineers and scientists in their free time.
It's a money-printing machine.

------
Vinnl
I got so fed up with this that I quit my job a few months ago to work on this
issue [1]. I've researched it quite a bit and have written about that (which
I've been linking to where relevant in the comments here), and I'm gearing up
to launch a non-profit to combat this in January. If you're interested, you
can leave your email address at
[https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic](https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic)

(And of course, any questions and remarks are welcome!)

[1] [https://medium.com/flockademic/dear-scientists-help-me-
help-...](https://medium.com/flockademic/dear-scientists-help-me-help-you-
help-me-fix-academic-publishing-fe31004b8de7)

------
diziet
In the meantime, Reed Elsevier stock is at an all time high
[https://www.nyse.com/quote/XXXX:RELX](https://www.nyse.com/quote/XXXX:RELX)

~~~
Vinnl
Obviously - they've so far managed to stave off threats to their subscription
business model, __and __managed to make good money off of the open access
movement (through charging publishing fees for opening up articles).

That said, they do definitely feel the pressure as well, given their moving in
the direction of a research analytics company rather than a publisher.

------
ajoy
One entity not mentioned in the article : [https://www.plos.org/who-we-
are](https://www.plos.org/who-we-are)

------
zitterbewegung
I posted a commenton how I read mathematics [1] I would be able to not jump
through so many hoops if universities got what they contributed.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15911888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15911888)

~~~
Vinnl
Now imagine that, but for reading up on experimental treatments for a rare
disease that you or a relative got.

------
thg
This reminds me that the EU had a proposal last year about mandating all
publicly-funded research to be open access. I'm curious to see what will
become of that.

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/dramatic-
statement-e...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/dramatic-statement-
european-leaders-call-immediate-open-access-all-scientific-papers)

[https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=opena...](https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=openaccess)

~~~
r3bl
Somewhat related, there's also small advocacy towards releasing publicly
funded code under the open source licenses:

[https://publiccode.eu/](https://publiccode.eu/)

------
subcosmos
Ugh. Why are we still having this conversation after so many years? Everyone
knows the system is broken but no one will fix it.

~~~
revelation
In Germany universities have joined efforts to at least bargain with Elsevier
& others for overall cost reductions:

[https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/](https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-
deal/)

Of course in the US with basically unlimited student loan money, no one seems
to be in a particular hurry to cut costs.

~~~
Vinnl
> Of course in the US with basically unlimited student loan money, no one
> seems to be in a particular hurry to cut costs.

Well... [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-
univ...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-
journal-publishers-prices)

------
toomanybeersies
I'm not very well versed in academia, so correct me if I'm wrong.

The research in these journals isn't funded by the journals, and researchers
aren't payed royalties for people reading these journals (I assume they don't
get paid by the journal at all).

So why are these journals so expensive to access? Is it all just a rort?

~~~
Vinnl
Basically, yes. There is barely any market pressure on the publishers, so they
can keep asking ridiculous fees. More on why it doesn't change at [1], and how
it got this way at [2].

[1] [https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-
scholarl...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarly-
publishing-eef794937c9c) [2]
[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-
business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science)

------
Radim
I've had dealings with the publishing industry over the years and some of the
"Open Access to the rescue!" comments here badly underestimate the business
acumen of Elsevier & co.

They're no idiot. Do you think these guys have been asleep at the wheel for
the _past 6 years_ , oblivious to the Open Access debate and the general
sentiment?

When it comes to Open Access, the new distribution and sales channels have
already been accounted for, new policies (and policy makers) worked out. Open
Access will be the second coming of Christ for that industry, a new golden
goose.

------
avs733
Lets narrow it a little bit for anyone who wants to try and argue that there
is nothing wrong here...

Universities pay publishing companies millions to access the results of
research their employees performed.

~~~
benstrumental
... and publishing companies use that money to lobby against free/cheaper
alternatives.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Chemical_Society#Cont...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Chemical_Society#Controversies)

------
RandomCSGeek
I am not a researcher, so I'd like to get some answers.

Why do people publish papers. Is it to get acknowledged for the work? Is it a
requirement for getting PhD? Or is it so that world could benefit from the
research?

Also, can someone simply use a paper, copy that idea to make a product, and
make money out of it, without giving anything back to the researchers?

If researchers publish out of necessity or to get acknowledged or so that the
"world knows", can't they just put it on Arxiv? Why spend money on costly
journals?

~~~
Vinnl
> Why do people publish papers. Is it to get acknowledged for the work? Is it
> a requirement for getting PhD? Or is it so that world could benefit from the
> research?

All three of those are correct.

> Also, can someone simply use a paper, copy that idea to make a product, and
> make money out of it, without giving anything back to the researchers?

Yes, although it's usually not that simple. The focus of research is usually
more fundamental in nature, that only leads to products far down the road.

But note that the researchers are funded using public money, so if there was
anything to give back, it would be to the public (which sort of happens
through new companies).

> If researchers publish out of necessity or to get acknowledged or so that
> the "world knows", can't they just put it on Arxiv? Why spend money on
> costly journals?

"Acknowledgement" goes beyond that - it needs to be considered good in order
to qualify for further academic positions. See
[https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-
ca...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-can-make-or-
break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a)

------
cosmic_ape
A good journal needs good reviewers.

The quality of peer-review at conferences for example is terrible, and that is
well known. Even at not very big conferences, and despite the usually hard
work of the organizers.

So establishing a good review process is not easy and perhaps that is what is
stopping the open access model rather than just the prestige issue mentioned
in other comments.

~~~
anbende
The review process at the "prestige" journals in many disciplines is garbage.
This is a known issue. Competent experts simply don't have time to do the
reviews, so they end up being farmed out to graduate students and post-docs if
they get done at all. I had one paper get rejected, because they couldn't find
anyone to review it! By the time a reviewer is found, you're often the action-
editor's last desperate pool of 5th-tier people who are sort of maybe vaguely
related to the topic area.

Add to that that the majority of papers in many disciplines receive virtually
zero statistical oversight from an actual statistical expert, and... well...
you begin to wonder what service the existing journals are actually adding.
Marketing and sales?

~~~
cosmic_ape
I know that in some journals it is good some of the time. But yeah, didn't
mean to imply thats always good. Maybe we should introduce a process of
reviewing the reviews, and some incentives accordingly. Not sure how to do
that.

~~~
aldanor
An example - as a 1st year grad student, I had to review a number of articles
in 'top-ranked' journals, just because my supervisor preferred to dump it on
me rather than bother to do it himself...

------
westurner
Are there good open source solutions for journal publishing? (HTML abstract,
PDFs, comments, ...)?

~~~
Vinnl
Yes, quite a few: [1], [2], [3], [4], to name a few. Maintain a server and
keeping software up to date is no small feat, however, so just making those
available does not seem to be enough (although it helps!).

[1] [https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/](https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/)

[2] [https://janeway.systems/](https://janeway.systems/)

[3] [https://coko.foundation/](https://coko.foundation/)

[4] [https://cos.io/](https://cos.io/)

~~~
neuromantik8086
I don't think that [4] can really be accurately characterized as producing
general-purpose journal management systems. The OSF is more for study
management and sharing results, although I imagine that you're referring to
OSF Preprints ([https://osf.io/preprints](https://osf.io/preprints)) which
serves a similar function for pre-peer review results sharing.

For [3], the actual platforms produced by Coko and its affiliates are more
readily discovered here: [https://pubsweet.org/](https://pubsweet.org/)
[http://substance.io/](http://substance.io/)

Hadn't heard of [2] before- looks neat.

We have [1] currently deployed for a couple of websites where I currently
work. We've found it to be a bit of a pain and are trying to phase it out to
some degree. It's basically a layer on top of WordPress to the best of my
understanding (I haven't dealt too much with it).

~~~
Vinnl
You're completely correct, thanks for the updated links!

Your final point is probably correct, but I'd add that when it comes to
wanting to take publishing out of the hands of the established publishers,
having to run software yourself is going to be painful anyway (though
hopefully not as painful as OJS, which has quite a history already).

------
ksk
What is stopping somebody from not publishing in a journal and simply putting
up a PDF on their own website?

Otherwise, if you ran a Journal, how would you setup a free system to curate
high-impact research? Or alternatively, how much would you charge to run such
a journal?

~~~
Vinnl
> What is stopping somebody from not publishing in a journal and simply
> putting up a PDF on their own website?

That they want to have a job in research, which are really, really scarce. I
explained this in more detail at [https://medium.com/flockademic/the-
ridiculous-number-that-ca...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-
number-that-can-make-or-break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a)

> Otherwise, if you ran a Journal, how would you setup a free system to curate
> high-impact research? Or alternatively, how much would you charge to run
> such a journal?

If you run a journal, you're most likely one of the big publishers that is
profiting heavily from the status quo.

Much of the actual academic work (finding reviewers, etc.) is done by actual
academics (mostly for free), but the rest of it, including promoting it to
potential readers, is done by the publishers. (There have been some success
stories of editorial boards leaving the publishers' journals to start their
own, e.g. Glossa (formerly Lingua), but those are few and far between.

~~~
ksk
Thanks for your comment. I enjoyed reading your article.

------
grrmx1
It's easy to be outraged by this, but the bottom line is that journals need to
make money to sustain their own operations. Research might be tax-funded, but
the publishing houses are privately-held entities with employees and payroll
(per their wiki page, for example, Nature employs 800 people).

Someone has to pay for expenses associated with maintaining these platforms.
Right now its either the tax payers or college students who pay for it
indirectly, when their institution buys library access.

~~~
Vinnl
Yes, but there are strong reasons to believe that the amount of money they are
currently charging is in no way proportionate to the amount they need to
sustain (+reasonable profits): [https://medium.com/flockademic/the-future-of-
open-access-sho...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-future-of-open-access-
should-not-be-left-to-the-legacy-publishers-634c188d28b9)

------
kayhi
Can’t wait for the day that universities are massively overpaying supplies,
chemicals and equipment comes to light.

~~~
michaelhoffman
Those are not comparable to research publications. The university does not
give corporations chemicals for free and then pay to get them back.

------
Avshalom
It's almost like everyone agrees capitalism is fucking terrible.

------
gech
Remember Aaron Swartz

------
bob_theslob646
How the hell is this even legal? And people say the government is efficient?
Is waste like this even preventable? Is it possible for people to have ethics?

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive rants to HN. I'm sure most of us agree with
you but one still has to bring thoughtful comments, not howls, into the
discussion.

If you can't or don't want to do that, please just don't post until you can
and do.

------
0xWilliam
Because it costs money to read the research that costs money to produce... How
is this controversial?

~~~
neuromantik8086
I would review the following articles for more context / so that you can
actually produce an informed (rather than lazy) opinion:

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-
business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science)
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-
publishing-monopoly-challenged) [https://www.the-
scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/31858...](https://www.the-
scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/31858/title/Opinion--Academic-
Publishing-Is-Broken/)
[http://thecostofknowledge.com/](http://thecostofknowledge.com/)

~~~
smn1234
the first thing I thought of when I came across this post is indeed
[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-
business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science)

