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Re:Universities spend millions on accessing results of publi... by Vinnl on Wednesday December 13, 2017 @02:57PM (#15917086)
It's not that publishers do little (there's a lot that you don't usually see, but it's not the peer review), just that not all of it is that necessary, and that it still pales in comparison to the prices they charge.
Re:Universities spend millions on accessing results of publi... by monob on Wednesday December 13, 2017 @04:18PM (#15917749)
In physics at least you need to write and typeset your own papers for the most part.

Look at arxiv.org, that papers there are made purely by academics from start to finish and are already publication grade (if not better).

Re:Universities spend millions on accessing results of publi... by Vinnl on Wednesday December 13, 2017 @04:22PM (#15917793)
Yes, physics (and most disciplines on arXiv) is relatively special. Although for some reason physicists still mostly submit there work to the journals in addition to placing them on arXiv...

(That said, typesetting and writing are more and more often offloaded to academics, but there's also things like e.g. making HTML versions and system-readable versions [1] available, which is a cumbersome manual process.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_for_Metadata_Harvesti...

Re:Universities spend millions on accessing results of publi... by noobermin on Wednesday December 13, 2017 @05:20PM (#15918231)
It depends on the field, but you're forgetting that arXiv does not do peer-review. Just because publishing is broken and yes peer-review has issues doesn't mean peer-review isn't needed.
Re:Universities spend millions on accessing results of publi... by Vinnl on Thursday December 14, 2017 @02:14AM (#15920496)
On the one hand that's an important point, but on the other hand, the formal process of peer review as currently arranged by journals has many flaws, and the reason arXiv is so popular in fields like physics is that they want their results "out there" for others to use as soon as possible - i.e. people start to use it before it's been peer reviewed. In fact, the comments one receives after publishing it in arXiv often make its way into the submitted manuscript.

So yes, peer review is useful, but it also often happens after publication at arXiv, outside of the journal submission.