出版与作家生涯2021pluralistic.net
学术与科学出版有多坑，怎么形容都不为过
It's hard to overstate what a scam academic and scientific publishing is
导读
这篇文章批评学术与科学出版业是「骗局」：公共资金资助的研究，成果却由商业期刊垄断、向读者收费，而同行评审等劳动又由学者免费提供。对写作者来说值得一读，因为它讲的不只是出版业，也是所有内容行业的底层问题：谁在为内容付出劳动、谁靠稀缺性赚钱、平台与把关人如何影响写作生态。评论区的分歧也很有启发：一方認為学者本可以自己颠覆这套体系，另一方指出结构性激励才是关键。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
论证「某个行业是骗局」时，先拆解它的成本与劳动由谁承担，再指出收益流向谁，比直接下道德判断更有说服力。
- 02
引用「他们明明可以改，却选择不改」这类说法前，先想清楚结构性的激励与代价，否则容易被反驳成「何不食肉糜」。
- 03
用类比增强论证时（例如拿新闻业从纸媒到门户网站的质量滑坡作对比），要让类比落在同一个机制上，而不是只比表面现象。
- 04
写批评性文章时，承认对方「存在的合理性」（例如稀缺带来的筛选功能），再提出替代方案，文章会更可信。
HN 评论精选
学者有能力也有条件自己办开放出版，缺少的是动力，所以应把公共出版写进资助条件。
这确实是个骗局，但学者们本可以轻易打破它，而他们（大多数人）选择不这么做。更准确地说，是纳税人被整个学术界（研究—资助—出版这条完整链条）榨走了几十亿美元，因为学者没有动力去替纳税人省钱、自己办出版。正如 Doctorow 所说，审稿本来就是学者在做，期刊编辑部剩下要做的只是选个主编，然后迁移到任何一个开放免费的科研出版平台上。政府资助研究，应该把「公共领域出版」作为附加条件。
civilized查看英文原文
It would be a scam, except academics could easily disrupt it and they (mostly) choose not to. It's more that the taxpayer is fleeced by academia in general (the whole research-funding-publishing complex) for many billions because there's no incentive for academics to save the taxpayer money by handling publishing themselves. (As Doctorow notes, they already review the manuscripts, so all that's left for an existing journal's editorial team to do is vote for a chief editor and switch to any one of many open, free research publication services.) Public domain publishing should be a condition of government funding for research.
用亲身经历具象化「免费劳动」的荒诞感，比抽象抱怨更有力。
我最近给一家顶级期刊审了一篇投稿（综述类），花了大量时间，写了七页建议、意见和修改。我的建议是把它转到同一出版社旗下更专业的期刊。事后我在想：「我为什么要免费干这个，而我的朋友却在发财？」
dbcooper查看英文原文
I reviewed a submission (review paper) to a top journal recently. It took a lot of time, and I responded with seven pages of recommendations, comments, and corrections. My recommendation was to transfer it to a more specialist journal from the same publisher. Afterwards I was wondering "why the hell am I doing this for free when my friends are getting rich?"
「他们选择不改」忽略了个人在结构中的处境，是一种廉价指责。
「软件开发者本可以轻松解决隐私问题——只要不去 Facebook 或 Google 上班，他们只是选择不去，因为他们不在乎。」这种观点太荒谬了。学术界的对应说法同样荒谬。
rscho查看英文原文
"software devs could easily correct the privacy problem by not working at Facebook or Google, only they choose not to because they don't care." This pov is ridiculous. The same goes for the academic equivalent.
稀缺性承担着筛选功能，取消付费墙的同时要设计好替代的质量把关机制与资金流向。
虽然我很讨厌科学期刊的版权模式，但它们确实有一个站得住脚的存在理由：在产能有限的前提下做优先级筛选。如果你人为把每月发表数量限制在 X 篇，你就被迫挑出最好的 X 篇（按你选的任何指标）。如果只是把审稿分数过得去的都发出来，你就会遇到互投圈子、批量生成的论文和各种垃圾。有人注意到新闻业从纸质版（隐含文章数量上限）转向网络「门户」（被激励去尽可能多地生产点击诱饵）后，质量是如何暴跌的吗？话虽如此，钱应该反向流动：交一笔不可退的评审费来获得发表资格，但如果研究是纳税人资助的，成果就必须进入公共领域。
john_moscow查看英文原文
As much as I hate the copyright model used by the scientific journals, they do have a valid raison-d-etre. It's about prioritization due to limited capacity. If you artificially limit the number of published articles to X per month, you are forced to pick X best ones (according to whichever metric you choose). If you just publish anything that gets a decent peer review score, you'll get voting rings, generated articles, and all sorts of junk. Has anybody noticed how the quality of journalism plummeted with the transition from physical copies (that had an implied limit on the number of articles) to the online "portals" (that are incentivized to churn out as much clickbait as possible)? That said, the financial streams should go the other way. Pay a non-refundable fee to get considered for publishing, but otherwise if it's a tax-funded research, it must be public domain.
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