<story><title>Universities spend millions on accessing results of publicly funded research</title><url>https://theconversation.com/universities-spend-millions-on-accessing-results-of-publicly-funded-research-88392</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>avar</author><text>The most relevant quote in the article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    &amp;gt; the research community uses historical journal reputation to
    &amp;gt; evaluate researchers, making it harder for new, better run
    &amp;gt; journals to enter the market.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
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.&lt;p&gt;Scientists can&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;But it&amp;#x27;s not easy to migrate to that because scientist aren&amp;#x27;t just
using journals as a publication platform, but as a reputation platform
as a function of their exclusivity and reputation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dm319</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re misplacing the blame here.  Researchers need to publish in high impact journals, or they lose their funding.&lt;p&gt;Some funding already comes with the requirement to publish open access.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;intranet.birmingham.ac.uk&amp;#x2F;as&amp;#x2F;libraryservices&amp;#x2F;library&amp;#x2F;research&amp;#x2F;open-access&amp;#x2F;how-can-i-publish-my-work-as-oa.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;intranet.birmingham.ac.uk&amp;#x2F;as&amp;#x2F;libraryservices&amp;#x2F;library...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Universities spend millions on accessing results of publicly funded research</title><url>https://theconversation.com/universities-spend-millions-on-accessing-results-of-publicly-funded-research-88392</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>avar</author><text>The most relevant quote in the article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    &amp;gt; the research community uses historical journal reputation to
    &amp;gt; evaluate researchers, making it harder for new, better run
    &amp;gt; journals to enter the market.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
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.&lt;p&gt;Scientists can&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;But it&amp;#x27;s not easy to migrate to that because scientist aren&amp;#x27;t just
using journals as a publication platform, but as a reputation platform
as a function of their exclusivity and reputation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aaavl2821</author><text>I second others that blaming scientists isn&amp;#x27;t the right thing, and punishing them certainly isn&amp;#x27;t. The life of a scientist is incredibly stressful and poorly paid. The average salary for a postdoc is like $45,000. These people have graduate degrees from the top schools in the nation, are often in their early to mid thirties, are doing research that can lead to blockbuster drugs that massively improve human health, are incredibly passionate about and good at their work, yet make little more than minimum wage&lt;p&gt;A better solution, counterintuitive as it sounds, is to increas public funding for more research. If scientists can make a reasonable wage that doesn&amp;#x27;t force them to pursue tenure by living and dying by the whim of a few top journals, it will be much easier for them to stomach the financial, and possibly career, hit of publishing open source&lt;p&gt;I wonder how robust the open source movement would be if engineers only made $45k &amp;#x2F; year</text></comment>