zlacker

>>sixtyf+(OP)
The core issue is that journals offer standard. People don't like to bother with checking every paper's reputability with a magnifying glass, and the reputation of the journal gives a shortcut around that. It's editorial work which gives the competitive edge.

Now, of course scientists could run a reputable journal for free or on donations. However, once you have achieved a reputable status with your journal, it becomes something that can be milked for money. And generally people fail to resist that temptation.

Even if they resisted, they still have the entire academic publishing industry very scared, and as we can see, these are people who aren't afraid to use the dirtiest tactics to protect their position.

Even though the status quo is strong, it can be dismantled.

>>mach1n+Jt
The existence of many high quality open access journals would seem to contradict your theory.

>>OskarS+ju
These are in an extreme minority, although this may vary from discipline to discipline. In my area you can count fully open access journals on one hand and they play no notable role yet. All top journals are closed access with expensive "open access" publication fees (ca. 3,000 USD per article). Most of them are Springer and Oxford Journals, others are Elsevier.

>>jonath+gw
Can I guess, your area is experimental science/engineering? I notice that in the more theoretical fields (theoretical physics,math,CS,stats) the open access channels are on par with the paywalled ones. Curious as to why. Perhaps its more expensive to replicate results, perhaps the fees are nothing compared to what you pay for the labour and equipment..

>>balsam+kx
No, it's philosophy. I believe theoretical physics and math are special, as you recognize, because they need a lot of additional vetting. My work is mostly in formal philosophy, which does involve a bit of math, and I'm constantly worried the reviewers might not spot a mistake and send it to colleagues for additional checking. This must be a hundred times more pressing in math and physics, so they developed open archives. As for CS, the reason for more open access archives may be a bit different. My personal impression from reading many CS papers is that 90% of publications are garbage whose only purpose is to satisfy some publication requirements. There is also a lot of repetition by authors. That's in my view understandable since many funding authorities also expect fancy prototype systems and concrete implementations, and computer scientists have only 7 days a week to achieve all this. So in CS hurdles for publication are kept low by having a lot of proceedings and open access journals and archives.

>>jonath+my
Ah yes! Would you say that in the field of philosophy, practices around publication and exposition are in general more aligned with the humanities than the sciences? Hadn’t even thought in that direction yet, thank you for the heads up!