It seems that the publisher's value is curating studies that have gone through this process. If you were to find a study through Sci-Hub would you know that it had gone through editorial/review panel? How do you know that the study is trustworthy?

Surely that's the work of the editorial board? Again, they are largely unpaid as far as Im aware.

This makes interesting reading if you're interested in how a free (or at least very low cost) journal can work https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an...

> Which is almost universally done for free by the editorial/review panel for the given journal.

Is there good data on this? (I mean, I guess there is, but would someone present it to ignoramuses such as myself? Thanks.)

I'm not aware of any, though I haven't really looked. My understanding is that peer review is done for free because it's understood that it's a necessary part of science. That is, you review other peoples papers for free because they'll do the same for you.

I guess that falls down a bit because I bet there is a very uneven distribution of peer review work, but it's a nice sentiment at least!

Peer review has little to no financial impact..

Sounds like you should start your own free journal. That's the easiest and fastest way of getting these papers out for free.

Someone did. It's called Sci-Hub.

Sci-Hub is not a Journal itself. It is hosting other Journals' data. However https://www.plos.org/ does exist and it is a free to access Journal. Unfortunately it is pay to publish. I am unaware of any completely free Journal on both the reader and author end.

Isn't that what the World Wide Web was designed to do, before the web app? Why not just publish online on a university site, or a site for your specialty?

The difference is the peer review. If something is published in Nature, you can reasonably trust that it is legitimate science, and not a random person with no real credentials. Its an interesting cycle. People publish their best work in a prestigious journal because it is the most prestigious and trusted. Thus perpetuating what goes where. And this is also perpetuated by the grant system itself, you need to publish in prestigious journals to get grants to fund further research. You don't get funding to self publish on a university page. (I am not saying I think this is right, just stating the facts behind it)

Yes but why couldn't peer review be organised by a not-for-profit group? Perhaps a society attached to your specialty could provide a panel?

Traditionally journals have required that the author transfer copyright of the paper to the journal upon publication. They no longer have the right to publish a copy on their own university site; some journals allow it, but many stipulate that the full text cannot be available without a paywall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_policies_of_academic...

That's changing, and many journals are moving to open-access policies, but it's slow, and the most prestigious journals often have the least incentive to grant authors published in them copyright of the work.

(There's something fucked up about authors transferring copyright of publicly-funded research to private entities: if the public funded it, shouldn't it be owned by the public in the first place, i.e. public-domain? And if it's public domain, then this whole issue goes away and neither the journal nor the author has the right to restrict access to the research. But this is one example of the capture of public goods by private entities. Hell, maybe this is why a good swath of America wants to de-fund science any chance it gets, when the result of their funding just gets captured by private entities.)

I agree, publicly funded research should be public domain, where the authors cannot legally transfer the copyright to the publishers like that. However, most Journals do offer a way to publish open access, and I bet they would push things that direction. They just cost thousands of dollars, that most of the time is not affordable.

There a few. I published a paper in the Journal of Information Policy once, whose (small) expenses are covered by a grant, IIRC from libraries that would otherwise have to pay through a publisher. Very field specific, though.