this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
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If they review papers for "free" is that not worth something?
I definitely don't think it should be for profit but it seems like there is value and costs to what they do. That money has to come from somewhere.
EDIT: I am unfamiliar with the process so I took OP's words at face value. Several others indicate this is inaccurate. So, seems like all they do it host/publish the papers. Which does cost money, but that just seems like something that should be funded by other means rather than users paying. Kinda weird to hide science behind an arbitrary paywall.
I could be wrong, but my understanding is the reviews are done by other academics for free, if at all... That's why getting published is kind of reputation based and circular because the cheapest review is just to look up whether they've been published before.
I have been the referee for two articles at an academic journal. It said in their agreement that for three or more papers per year you'd be compensated this and that much. But I guess I misunderstood because they emailed me and asked to pay me for just the two reviews. Anyhow, it basically no money. The time you put in to do a proper review is a lot more than what you are compensated for. Your uni still pays your salary, so this is just a bonus, but still, very little. This journal is hosted by a public entity, private ones may be very different.
I am unfamiliar with the process so I took OP's words at face value.
You misunderstood. The journals get the papers submitted for free (i.e. they don't pay the authors) and reviewed for free (i.e. they don't pay the reviewers).
AFAIK, peer reviewers are typically other academics in the field (peers) that are asked to voluntarily review a given article. The publisher doesn't pay peer reviewers.
I had the option for some compensation for my reviews. Very little, but still.
The journals dont review anything. Other scientists do the reviews for free. Scientific prominence is a key to promotion for scientists, so they publish and review to keep and advance their jobs. Journals were built to abuse this fact.
Scientists publish papers for free, other scientists reviews papers for free, journals charge billions/yr to publish this free work, now mostly in digital formats, a medium that is effectivly free when serving text files.
Scientific journals are a racket, bar none. There are attempts to open source the publishing of these journals, but often if you publish in an open source one, the for profit journals will not accept the piece.
Given that even peer review is a shit show, I'd say there's no value in these publishers reviewing anything.