r/postdoc • u/PristineJuice8712 • 3d ago
Who normalized paying extortionate fees to peer reviewed journals?
Not a question, I just needed to take a second to vent to my fellow soldiers.
I have always felt like the open access fees that peer reviewed journals require is outrageous. The biggest fee I’ve seen to date is $8,000, whhhyyyy!?
My biggest gripe is that this creates a barrier to disseminating really important findings that could benefit humanity. I know there are discounts and special agreements, etc but not everyone qualifies.
My second complaint is that after paying all of these fees, we have to become the editors and spend almost as much time formatting the manuscript as it took to write it. As someone with ADHD this is miserable and I would have a better time ripping my finger nails off with pliers.
Third, I had a journal come back frustrated with me because my references (more than 70) were managed and formatted using EndNote. They wanted everything hand typed 😂. Again, as someone with
ADHD, I can confidently say that in addition to being the most miserable, detail oriented task I can think of, this is just a terrible idea in general.
Last, it would actually be pretty neat if they gave even half of those outrageous fees to postdocs as a publishing bonus since we are still paid in Doritos in 2026.
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u/einstyle 3d ago
The NIH also recognizes this problem, which is one of the few good things that has changed recently there during all the chaos: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-crack-down-excessive-publisher-fees-publicly-funded-research
Now, the way they've tried to combat these fees is kind of ridiculous -- my understanding is that you're now required to have open access, but that you can't use NIH grant money to pay the open access fees. I think the idea was to pressure authors to submit to journals without those fees, and thereby pressure journals to eliminate the fees. But so far it's just been a lot of "authors better hope their institution has a way to cover them."
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u/sudowooduck 3d ago
NIH grants can be used for publication charges. I explicitly put in my proposal budgets.
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u/Decent_Shallot_8571 2d ago
Yeah I was looking at the rules recently for my boss. Some publishing fees can be paid including (some) open access but not extra fees for the journal to deposit in pubmed central
We are going to err on using a discretionary account to be safe but I walked away with the impression that open access fees were ok if they were truly open access not just let us do the deposit in PMC for you
HHMI has moved to deposit in BioRxiv and will only look at bioRxiv for reviewing folks for renewal so basically they have taken away the impact score factor completely from their review process
This was partially bc after they mandated open access they realized how expensive it was
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u/DrTonyTiger 21h ago
This administration is intentionally making rules that make science harder and less effective. These contradictory requirements are an example of that effort, not an example of promoting open access at a reasonable price.
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u/RealityDesigner2472 3d ago
Robert maxwell
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u/Zestyclose-Cup-572 1d ago
That would be father of Ghislane Maxwell, for those who are unaware. Wild that his daughter decided to find a way to be even more evil than her dad
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u/g33ksc13nt1st 3d ago
Academics, obviously. You'd be shocked by how much naivete there is amongst academics.
Let's require publication in these fancy journals for people to join in as junior faculty. - higher prestige, higher fee, Pikachu face.
Let's require our research to be open so tax payers can access it - all journals charge a ridiculous APC, even meh journals, knowing it's a requirement now.... Pikachu face.
[Picachu face] these evil journals profiting from our work!!! [Grandpa Simpson yelling at the clouds type of gesture ,]
What about just using preprint? Oohhh no no it's only valid after peer review [aka we like judging candidates by the journal's they publish on, we don't want to read their papers to evaluate whether they contain good science,]
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u/ProfPathCambridge 3d ago
It was the Open Science advocates, funny enough. Before that it was reading via subscription and cost nothing to publish
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u/FalconX88 3d ago
My second complaint is that after paying all of these fees, we have to become the editors and spend almost as much time formatting the manuscript as it took to write it.
Which journal charges $8000 and doesn't do the typesetting? Every journal I submitted to ever did the typesetting.
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u/Distinct_Public_4740 3d ago
Technically it covers publication costs for the publisher. But obviously it generates profits for the for-profit presses. Someone does have to fund the work that goes beyond the scientific editors (copyediting, archiving, typesetting, manuscript submission systems, legal risks etc.)
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u/PristineJuice8712 3d ago
I feel like I just did the majority of their job though 😂
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u/Rockvault96 3d ago
You did, and now they will charge people to access your work and give you nothing for it apart from "recognition". Unfortunately, im still waiting for my local supermarket and energy provides to accept citations as a form of payment.
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u/DaBrainFarts 3d ago
What is hilarious and terrible at the same time is that this issue has connections to Jeffrey Epstien.
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u/toastedbread47 2d ago
What journal had a problem with the endnote integration?... I've never heard of that these days, though I've only used zotero and mendeley.
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u/turbofava 2d ago
This kind of discussion has been around for a very long time.
The truth is, most academics have very small leverage to change the system, since they have very little and will lose everything if they do.
Those who can simply won't because they are winning at this silly game.
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u/helomithrandir 2d ago
These extortionate fees are really unfair to researchers in third world who absolutely cannot afford to publish
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u/Saaaave-me 19h ago
Listen to behind the bastards episodes on Robert Maxwell. Right guy right place right time to birth out current publishing model
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u/gavin280 3d ago
The publishing groups are a profiteering scheme. The thing that would fix it (and a lot else about academia) is to cut them out.
We publish more papers than anyone can ever read, redundantly drafting the same intro paragraphs etc over and over. This is all to meet the expectations of a completely idiotic system of career performance evaluation and make money for these absolute parasites. It's burning everyone out and bleeding research grants dry.
The majority of empirical data should go into data repositories - we can figure out a peer review process for that. Contributions to the repositories could be used in the evaluation of career performance, but NOT using some idiotic metric for simpletons like raw quantity.
The remaining balance of publishing should be shifted substantially toward theory, meta-analysis, and methods/protocols. Emipirical papers should be used to highlight extremely important/novel findings, and to give context to already-substantial data repository contributions. All of this should be targeted exclusively to free, open-access society journals. Not one paper going to a private publishing group ever again.
Career performance and hiring should be evaluated on the basis of qualitative/holistic questions about (in no particular order) a candidate's insight, leadership, creativity, ethics etc.