Not peer reviewed though. Those are called preprints and not papers. Both would be research articles but the difference matters (to scientists at least).
Big grants and research money connections are typically only accessible because your paper got published in a “reputable” journal, which of course you only have a chance of getting if you publish with a “reputable” system.
To get and hold a job as an academic, you must continually produce “high quality research”. To get the job, in the first place, you must also be seen to do this.
“High quality” is often metriced by universities to mean “published in high impact journals” and “well cited”. This metric is known to be faulty, but universities really dislike change.
So, to get a job, you have to give up your rights to your research, and to keep your job, you have to do likewise.
Worse, in the current financial climate, academia is seeing unprecedented cuts, which further entrenches this issue.
Legitimate question here. What’s stopping researchers from creating their own federated publishing system for academic journals?
It’s not federated, but arXiv is free and volunteer supported:
https://info.arxiv.org/about/index.html
Not peer reviewed though. Those are called preprints and not papers. Both would be research articles but the difference matters (to scientists at least).
There’s JOSS which is reviewed. I love it!
Thank you for the clarification!
Nice! I’ll check it out!
Big grants and research money connections are typically only accessible because your paper got published in a “reputable” journal, which of course you only have a chance of getting if you publish with a “reputable” system.
spoiler
Reputable my ass
Short Answer - Universities
Long Answer:
To get and hold a job as an academic, you must continually produce “high quality research”. To get the job, in the first place, you must also be seen to do this.
“High quality” is often metriced by universities to mean “published in high impact journals” and “well cited”. This metric is known to be faulty, but universities really dislike change.
So, to get a job, you have to give up your rights to your research, and to keep your job, you have to do likewise.
Worse, in the current financial climate, academia is seeing unprecedented cuts, which further entrenches this issue.
Publishing is a racket. This should have been done decades ago.