• Mojave@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I ask with genuine curiosity, as I am not an academic and come from a software development mindset

    Why is paid-for services the only “legit” way to get others to evaluate your research? Why is it not kosher to publicly publish your research, and simply invite peers to evaluate it? This idea is essentially the entire process behind Open Source Software, and is the backbone of most modern tools/programs/apps/software/linux development.

    What does paying a publishing company provide you, as a researcher, that makes it worth it?

    • Zo0@feddit.de
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      5 months ago

      I don’t know what to tell you man, sometimes even I wonder if it’s worth it at all. Publishing to a journal is such a difficult task. Before submitting your paper you need the approval of two other well-established individuals. Then you send in your paper to your selected journal and each one has some specific format and policies, which many are arbitrary and inthe end of the day depends on the person reviewing your paper. This can take weeks of back and forth.

      However if you think you did something noteworthy, as far as I know, this is how you get it in front of the eyes of your peers. Even then there’s a chance that your paper gets ignored lol.

      So like many others in this thread, I’m not a fan of this process because even though it’s strict, a lot of bs still passes through