From time to time I find a dive into the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy useful for refreshing my memory on some ideas and concepts.
Also the MDN Learning Area is really useful for getting a handle on some web development details.
What others are you fond of, whether esoteric or exoteric*?
*
one of my other favorites is any sort of thesaurus that provides antonyms, 'cause some antonyms just aren’t as commonly used!
🤞 this federates properly this time (sorry if the old post eventually emerges, I initially posted this shortly after the Lemmy update kinda threw a wrench in things across instances)
But surely the journals provide some sort of service for the researchers, right? Like paying for experts to review their scientific claims, or fact checking their citations, or even basic grammatical proofreading, right? If the journals are earning so much from research, then conducting academic research must be a lucrative field with so many publishers competing to be the first ones to publish a paper.
I see what you are asking: Why doesn’t market competition drive down prices?
People have to publish in prestigious journals to make a career in science. So, that’s the “service”. Their position in the system lets them extract payment for something that other people deliver.
Even if someone opens up a competing journal, they are not likely to get quality submissions, because publishing in some unknown journal does not help the CV.
At the same time, the cost is mostly born by other people. Librarians pay for the subscriptions. I’m not sure why there is not more pushback from that angle. Eventually, institutions need access to these journals.
The cost to scientific research is spread over all society. No one person feels it. No one can even be sure how much better things would be under a reformed system.
Progress happens only when someone goes too far and causes outrage in the academic community. There has been some progress to move to a better model. But all that money can pay for a lot of PR.
ETA: On second thought, I’m probably simply not aware of the efforts of librarians, etc.
I was being sarcastic. Many journals don’t provide any of those services. Some journals even charge researchers for the “prestige” of publishing a paper. Peer review is mostly unpaid work, and some reviewers act as gatekeepers.
Add a " /s " at the end to help people know that.
I thought you might be, but I’m sure it’s not common knowledge that it doesn’t work that way.
For some reason, Lemmy has a tendency to go all in on trickle-down on copyright. Some threads feel like they are overrun by right-wing libertarians, with their faith in absolute property rights. Except that even the more doctrinaire among those libertarians tend to be conflicted on intellectual property.
Often it’s a requirement of the workplace (typically acadaemia, e.g. R1 institutions), and it’s paid for in large part by various grants from the government. Or done for free in “spare time” as is the case where I work. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯