In the grand scheme of things, the academia complex is funded by taxpayers to produce academic work. It used to be that journals would at least do good editorial work, help with editing, formatting, and perhaps even graphics. All of this work is now on the author, so the question increasingly becomes, why does a taxpayer not only pay for the lab to produce research, but also the $3,000 to 5,000 or more fee to have something published, depending on the journal. Furthermore, once the research was paid for by the taxpayer, the scientist's time wasted to format the research, and the journal paid for the privilege to publish the paper- these institutions have to pay once again for access to these papers once published. In a way, journals in the 21st century are double or triple dipping on citizens, all so we can share our work.
There’s a book from 1970 by Paul Goodman called New Reformation that I recently started reading that’s all about the issues surrounding government funding of science. It’s pretty interesting. Apparently there were walkouts at institutions like MIT, CalTech etc in the 60s protesting government intrusion into the sciences, but it seems to have had little effect: government funds science to get the research it thinks is important, and as you write, taxpayers pay for it many times over.
> government funds science to get the research it thinks is important
How is this anything special about funding from governments specifically? This is part of "funding", period. Unless you setup an open bank account for free withdrawals from anyone who wants to do some science, no questions asked. Somebody decides what gets funded, unless those doing the research use their own money.
The somebody matters though, what a ridiculous statement. In the UK most funding is protected via funding councils and royal charters so that it's never directly the incumbent government deciding what is and is not researched. There are still things like ministry of defence funding though, especially in areas like engineering. I was always quite uncomfortable when the MoD guy would visit the robotics lab and decide what could and could not be useful for military purpose. In part because he lacked the imagination to realise all of it could.
I on the other hand find your statement to be the ridiculous one. You fail to add any followable logic (not even an attempt) why someone working for the government makes worse suggestions for research than someone else.
Government sponsored research won WWII and laid the foundation for Silicon Valley (https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo). Government sponsored research goes back for far longer and was the basis for much of what we have now, just thinking of all the things e.g. the UK government sponsored to get ahead on the seas (navigation, ship types, etc.).
"It used to be that journals would at least do good editorial work, help with editing, formatting, and perhaps even graphics. All of this work is now on the author"
All academics do. You don't actually get directly paid for publishing journal articles. You get zero cut of the sales. Books are a different story, although most academic books don't actually make a profit.
As an academic, you get paid for teaching and to carry out research grants to support a particular project. The teaching and grants pay for your salary and expenses through the university. You do need to keep publishing at the end if you ever want to get a grant again. But when you publish in a traditional journal article, you have to hand over the copyright to the publisher that owns the brand and trademark to "Nature" or "Science" or "The New England Journal of Medicine" for free. You don't get a cut of the profits, you get the prestige of the privately-owned systems, which matters to your employer and grant funding agencies.
In fact, now you actually have to pay to publish if you want anyone on the internet to be able to read it for free. For Nature, the open access "article processing charge" is $11,390. It has become the norm to now budget in these fees in your research grants, which makes it more difficult for those who don't get big grants to publish.
Yes it is bullshit. That is why so many academics support sci-hub.
You do not, in fact, need to hand over copyright to Nature, NEJM, etc.
They do their best to make it look like you do, but you can go all the way through the approval process without committing. At the end, all they need is license from you to publish.
Never sign over copyright to a journal. It is never necessary, it is never sensible, it is never wise.
Your original argument doesn't make sense though. The point is that at the time of publication the papers have already been paid for (and yes, this includes the salaries of the researchers/authors). Researchers/authors don't actually need to make any money off of the papers. And even when Elsevier does sell a paper, the author does not receive a royalty [1].
From a business point of view, this seems like a fine, philosophical, argumentative distinction: If we say part of the process of research is preparing the paper, then the researcher is paid for preparing it. (And that seems like a strong argument - unpublished research has little value, like unpublished software.)
If we say the process of research doesn't include preparing the paper, going to the bathroom, going to a conference, watering the plants in the break room, etc. - the researcher is unpaid.
The real question is, should researchers have the resources to delegate such non-specialized work, and the answer is yes. Serious question: Isn't this a good job for noob research assistants? They'll learn about the topic, learn the tools and ways of the industry and lab, and you weed out those who lack commitment, motivation, attention to detail.
