"...The scandal exposes the windfall profits of scientific publishers, who in recent years have amassed
billions of dollars in earnings from public funds earmarked for science....
Damià Barceló, 71, took over as editor of the journal in 2012. In just two years, he doubled the number of studies published. In a decade, he increased the number tenfold, with the journal reaching nearly 10,000 articles annually. As the number of articles increased, the quality declined, because there was a perverse incentive to accept mediocre work: to publish research in the journal, a scientist has to
pay $4,150 plus taxes..."
https://english.elpais.com/science-...-dollar-profits-of-scientific-publishing.html
That and cleaning the house of unethical scientists.
I dealt with this issue quite a lot as a long-time math department chair (making tenure/promotion decisions at the department level) as well as being a member of the college tenure/promotion committee.
It's a real problem.
But also note that multi-thousand-dollar publication fees exist for all journals, in particular if you want open-access (which is important), which is also a real problem, and it's due to what I consider to be the parasitic journal ecosystem that fully includes all the legitimate, non-mill journals.
I am very anti-journal of any type. A complete anachronism in the modern era that needs to be done away with-- all of them.
You can trust science if it is followed by ethical scientists.
Problems such as those mentioned above only hurt good science and serious scientists trying to further our knowledge base.
It's not really as simple as "good, ethical scientists vs bad, unethical scientists." The whole system works against research faculty, and they have no choice but to play the game (if they want to stay employed).
The problem is there is a huge market for all these publishing mills. The market is not for readers, though. It's for two bit Stupid Studies professors who really need to publish in order to secure their jobs due to the silly aspects of Western academic culture.
The problem you lay out applies equally to hard and soft science, and there are plenty of BS papers published in both areas (and for the same reasons).
There was one professor in our department that published a paper every week. Of course this was thanks to the graduate students he advised.
That is normal, and not only is there nothing wrong with it, but it is also a strong positive.
I firmly believe that there are existential problems right now in higher education-- both in teaching and research. It's a multi-faceted problem with plenty causes.
Working class (migrant worker/longshoreman) aphorist Eric Hoffer made an observation that I don't think has ever been a truer statement:
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."
To my mind, this is one of the most profound insights I've ever run across, as it so powerfully explains so much of what we see in the world (including virtually every product complaint issue discussed here in BITOG).
And I would say that nowhere is it truer than when applied to higher education/research in the U.S., which has clearly transitioned through the "
movement" and "
business" phases, and is now firmly in the early parts of the "
racket" phase.
The mechanisms by which the transitions occur are complex, so there are no simple "blame this, get rid of that" answers. It's very complicated.
I retired (early) two years ago specifically in order to be a part of the group that are attempting reforms, so I'm "walking the walk" on it.
