As Irreal old-timers know, I am interested in and a supporter of open access. The academic publishing industry is deeply exploitive of everyone they deal with. That includes members of the public who provide financial support for much of the research they publish but are nevertheless expected to pay hefty fees to see the results.
One of the changes that I and others have predicted was that the business model of the publishers would change to provide open access for all in exchange for a publishing fee paid by the researchers or their institutions. That seemed like a good solution but only because of my naivete. Here’s how Nature implemented that plan. The publishers will always try to game the system, whatever it is.
The TL;DR is nicely captured in this hilarious video mocking the plan. If you read the whole thread, you’ll note that Dr. Glaucomflecken says that everything in the video is accurate except for the 12 year old doing their formatting.
Nature does open access pic.twitter.com/j6kL1G3ZRX
— Dr. Glaucomflecken (@DGlaucomflecken) January 22, 2022
The video is devastating precisely because it is so true. If you weren’t already against the publishers this should do the trick. Perhaps whatever rises from the ashes of the rapidly self-immolating higher education industry will structure their tenure and promotion policies to make this sort of exploitation impossible.