We had some fun on that site 😥

And that wraps up today's edition of "SCREAMING INTO THE ACADEMIC VOID."

I feel like it should be obvious that most academic publishers don't give a shit about anything except profit but it's still disappointing. Some of them (Nature 🤔) have been around for a very long time. You'd think they would be more interested in the actual dissemination of knowledge but nope. Sigh

I wish I could go back to when I still didn't know that because that is so infuriating BECAUSE SERIOUSLY NATURE IS CHARGING MORE TO DIGITALLY PUBLISH AN ARTICLE THAN I PAID AS A DOWNPAYMENT FOR MY HOUSE.

... just won't unclench for the half a second it would take to actually look at the entire situation. It's almost as if someone should do an entire podcast dissertation about his very thing... or at least finally do the epilogue episodes she promised... 🤔 ok, rant complete. Back to work. (7/7)

... in compliance with their hard-won grants. It's just pure, unadulterated, naked capitalism and I am very aware that I am just screaming into the void with this because it won't change. Universities have gotten themselves so convinced that non-traditional journals are the devil and they ... (6/7)

... academic journals and the people who are actually doing all of the research and all of the work. The entire system needs to be gutted, torn down, and rebuilt because researchers shouldn't be forced by SpringerNature or Taylor & Francis to shell out thousands of dollars in order to stay ... (5/7)

But the fancy, big-top academic publishers also charge these fees (and arguably need them way less then small, purely open access journals) and now they're actively extorting NIH grant money from researchers. It's gross and punitive and exemplifies the vast gulf between subscription... (4/ 7)

... just straight up refusing to accept an NIH-funded article if the thousand of dollars in fees aren't paid. Which is all feeling wildly ironic in light of the fact that Beall and so many others punched down at open access journals for so long, and the fact that they were charging the fees. (3/7)

... and insisting that paying the fees is the only way to make the article NIH compliant. Which is bullshit, of course, because it would be really easy for them to just send the accepted manuscript as usual, sans embargo. But they want a cut of that grant money, so some publishers are... (2/7)

When asked “What did you trip on?!” I had to reply “… my feet… I tripped over my own damnable feet.” My feet failed me, y’all. In front of the gods and everyone.