Journal: takes three months to come up with proof with messed up typesetting and dozens of appalling mistakes
Also, the journal in the same email: Return the proof to us within two working days.
What the heck? They require me to use a terrible #TeXLaTeX template and then they don't use it internally and mess up our carefully drafted text so that we have to check the proof word by word? Yes, I am looking at you, #springernature
I am mad here.
I was reviewing a big paper for "Journal of Mathematical Chemistry"/ #SpringerNature due for March 4th - I make a nice and complete survey, try to post it (reject !) to discover that the decision is done and the review closed 😬.
Worse, I am asked for my experience with the review (awful you guess), I want to complain with the proposed form, WHICH IS A SINGLE FUCKING LINE ! 😬😬😬
These guys don't care for their reviewers, only for money.
I'll try to avoid them !
"All journal articles will now feature a Code Availability section and authors will be encouraged to share code publicly, using permanent identifiers, and citing code they have used."
New study: "The current level of implementation of transformative agreements is insufficient to bring about a large-scale transition to fully #OpenAccess. A key finding…is that TAs maintain market concentration…The three largest commercial publishers #Elsevier, #SpringerNature & #Wiley dominate, particularly with regard to OA provided through TAs. Together, the 3 publishers accounted for 3/4 of OA articles through TAs." https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.18255
Your trusted scientific #publisher: All links in my #SpringerNature email do not link to the publisher's website (despite pretending so in the link text), but to a click #tracking proxy called "Klaviyo". And of course without asking the recipient for consent for getting their data processed by a third party.
“Some people might see the use of ChatGPT in writing grant proposals as cheating, but it actually highlights a much bigger problem: what is the point of asking scientists to write documents that can be easily created with AI? What value are we adding? Perhaps it is time for funding bodies to rethink their application processes.”
PS: As far as I can tell, the authors didn't distinguish #APCs paid by authors out of pocket from APCs paid by their employers or funders. The $17m is the total from all sources. I'd love to see a breakdown. https://suber.pubpub.org/pub/j1jk6hu9
I have made it a personal policy not to do unpaid work for commercial, for-profit publishers any more. So, #SpringerNature, #Elsevier et al., if you'd like me to review your papers, you'll have to pay me. Otherwise, no deal.
Though SN (or the article author) is careful not to say so explicitly, SN seems to want India to have a fund to pay #APCs.
If so, note Recommendation 3.3 from the Budapest Open Access Initiative 20th anniversary statement [#BOAI20], 2022: "We recommend that institutions spend new money on alternatives to APCs rather than APCs themselves." https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai20/
For some of the serious objections to them, see e.g. the Budapest Open Access Initiative 20th anniversary statement, esp Recommendation 4 ("move away from read-and-publish agreements"). Disclosure: I helped write these objections. https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai20/