WARNING: This is a boring, informative perspective on scientific research and money.
Currently, the scientific publication industry relies mostly on institutional subscription services. Just like the absurd cost of healthcare in the U.S., the ridiculously high price points have been masked within a game between players with big pockets. If you are the average person who would like to read an article, you would pay $31–$47 to read that one article from their website, and some of them restrict access to it for only a couple of days for the price you pay. Most of us that read these take advantage of our university's subscriptions and interlibrary loaning systems to gain access. One of the practices, which is emailing a copy of the PDFs to each other, is considered copyright infringement, thus this common practice is illegal. This behavior is akin to the lunacy intelligent filesharers observe with the distribution of entertainment media.
There are costs associated with getting your research published, but these are covered by a small percentage from sizable grants that perpetuate major financial waste in scientific research. When you are awarded a grant, an extra 50% is tacked onto it in order to pay the university's "commission". These grants are managed on a year-to-year basis for 2, 3, 5 years, etc. In order to avoid having the awarded amount reduced in subsequent years, we blow through our remaining budget each fiscal grant year (because we cannot always predict what the financial needs of the following year may encompass). Basically, this means an awarded $500,000.00 grant ends up costing $750,000.00 when the research may have really only required $200,000.00—$300,000.00. This is across the entire spectrum of scientific disciplines.
In an effort to cash in, there have been many journals that have entered the fray that simply require you to pay and subject your research to mild peer review if any. There have been plenty of takers since getting published is goal #1. It may not bring the same credibility as publishing in an esteemed journal with higher impact factors, but most would not be able to identify which are legitimate when examining another's body of work.
I had initially intended to serve as an editor of one of these "esteemed journals", but I have since switched my ambitions to get involved with an up-and-coming yet respected open access journal. However, this attitude of mine does not even score the surface of the problems of financial waste in scientific research. It's sort of a hopeless situation, but I was sympathetic to Swartz's actions at the time (sort of still). I found it incredibly saddening when I heard of his suicide, especially since the cynic in me feels its meaning would not surpass selfish reprieve in the grand scheme.
Originally Posted by mjmacky
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