We do the writing. We do the editing. We do the reviewing. We do the formatting (we typeset everything in LaTeX). We do the proofreading. We correct the mistakes introduced by proofreaders.
What do publishers do? They make us sign silly copyright forms, stamp their logo on our papers, and then proceed to charge us (either as authors or readers) ridiculous amounts.
People think academics/scientists are clever. We might be. But we are also stupid. And vain.
@NatureMC Yes. Also, academia works differently: your income is not a given share of what publishers sell of your work (as is the standard book market, I suppose) but a salary from a university or a research institute that has hired you (and will promote you, etc) if and only if you demonstrate your research is of good enough quality by publishing in specific prestigious journals, which more often than not are owned by greedy publishers. Hence the dilemma.
@jonny Don't get me wrong: I think journals, peer reviewing, also "gate keeping" are important institutions. I don't think that everything should be "published" or at least "published" with a stamp of quality. But there is no reason (apart from historical accidents and the greed of for-profit publishers) why journals couldn't be, now, run directly by societies funded by public money.
@jorgeapenas
Very true. And why stop there? Societies running journals gets us to what we could have had in 1995, and maybe even 1999 if they hadn't lined up on the other side of e-biomed. Why not dream further? If we're asking what they do, why dont we ask what the role of journals is in general, and design beyond that?
@jonny The role of journals is to aggregate information, highlight important research, and integrate it into disciplinary traditions; they also classify such research both thematically and in terms of intrinsic quality and importance. I don't think we're better off without journals and just having everything posted with no review nor critical comment in massive servers. There are people dreaming in that direction. I think they go too far. Their dreams are my nightmares.
@jorgeapenas
I hear what youre saying, but there are a lot of directions that are neither traditional journals as the sole means of review, curation, and organization vs. total disorganized chaos ;)
@jorgeapenas I completely agree. Yet, there are relatively few independent, non-profit Open Access journals around as an alternative. In my field, Sociological Science is one of the few.
@RenseC It is high time for scientific societies to leave for-profit publishers and convince governments to fund their diamond open-access journals. And it is high time for national agencies to stop burning public money into funding scientists funding greedy golden open-access publishers. This kafkaesque dystopic world of academic publishing needs to stop, quickly.
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