Many papers are bad. Ideally scientists would spend years experimenting and mulling over and writing before publishing but unfortunately they pretty much much must write a public paper for every expriment they do.
That's giving him too much credit. The bigger players in the industry were already trending that direction - he was just in the right place at the right time to profit off the inevitable transition.
I feel that the paper publishing system of reporting results is obsolete. It was a good idea pre-internet since it was the best way to disseminate information of peer reviewed results to interested parties. Subscription fees paid for the infrastructure. Straightforward and effective for the time.
Nowadays, what do we have? There are 1000s of journals of varying quality existing in a system where distribution of results and their review could be essentially free, but now many of these journals are charging for access to these results by asking either the author or reader to pay. The fees often seem disproportionate to what the journals are offering in today's world.
What do the journals actually offer today that's still important? I'd argue its just their reputation. How important that is to the greater good of knowledge dissemination and result integrity is up for debate, but journals like Nature, Science, Cell, PNAS, etc all are considered prestigious and selective. Authors don't need to publish in those journals to disseminate their work, but they do anyway for the prestige. It's a self feeding cycle, but it seems largely unnecessary if you remove the motivations produced by academia.
I think we need to ask ourselves what the purpose of all this is today. What do we really need and do journals need to exist? I'd argue we just need two things, distribution of information to relevant parties and verification that said information is true and interpreted correctly. I feel like distribution is already done. We have the internet, databases, Wikipedia-style sites, and now with AI finding and sharing new information would be trivally easy. It should be publicly funded, whatever it is.
Verification would be harder. However the peer review system we have now seems to be working to a large extent. I think that could easily exist without journals, perhaps it could be even more rigorous and collaborative.
Lastly, I don't even like journal articles. Both reading and writing them. It feels inefficient. Does every paper need to stand on its own? That's how they're all written. Sometimes I appreciate it but often I don't. I am always tempted to have an AI bot summarize the key findings, but I don't know what would be a better format. Maybe AI is the better format.
Papers? No. Academia as a whole? Absolutely. It is entirely for profit with zero care about quality. ESPECIALLY in physics.
Many papers are bad. Ideally scientists would spend years experimenting and mulling over and writing before publishing but unfortunately they pretty much much must write a public paper for every expriment they do.
Yeah, "Publish or Perish" is very real
Only because Robert Maxwell capitalized them
That's giving him too much credit. The bigger players in the industry were already trending that direction - he was just in the right place at the right time to profit off the inevitable transition.
I feel that the paper publishing system of reporting results is obsolete. It was a good idea pre-internet since it was the best way to disseminate information of peer reviewed results to interested parties. Subscription fees paid for the infrastructure. Straightforward and effective for the time.
Nowadays, what do we have? There are 1000s of journals of varying quality existing in a system where distribution of results and their review could be essentially free, but now many of these journals are charging for access to these results by asking either the author or reader to pay. The fees often seem disproportionate to what the journals are offering in today's world.
What do the journals actually offer today that's still important? I'd argue its just their reputation. How important that is to the greater good of knowledge dissemination and result integrity is up for debate, but journals like Nature, Science, Cell, PNAS, etc all are considered prestigious and selective. Authors don't need to publish in those journals to disseminate their work, but they do anyway for the prestige. It's a self feeding cycle, but it seems largely unnecessary if you remove the motivations produced by academia.
I think we need to ask ourselves what the purpose of all this is today. What do we really need and do journals need to exist? I'd argue we just need two things, distribution of information to relevant parties and verification that said information is true and interpreted correctly. I feel like distribution is already done. We have the internet, databases, Wikipedia-style sites, and now with AI finding and sharing new information would be trivally easy. It should be publicly funded, whatever it is.
Verification would be harder. However the peer review system we have now seems to be working to a large extent. I think that could easily exist without journals, perhaps it could be even more rigorous and collaborative.
Lastly, I don't even like journal articles. Both reading and writing them. It feels inefficient. Does every paper need to stand on its own? That's how they're all written. Sometimes I appreciate it but often I don't. I am always tempted to have an AI bot summarize the key findings, but I don't know what would be a better format. Maybe AI is the better format.