Saturday, March 03, 2018

Authors of academic papers are poor, but publishers do rake in profits!

It is well known that scientists and researchers who publish academic papers are not making much money in general. Occasionally, we may have a famous scientist able to publish a book and make it to the New York Times best seller. But that does not apply to most people in academia, who are publishing their papers in academic journals instead of writing books. These papers do not make much money for the authors, but cumulatively they are making profit for the publishers.

In recent years, various news media have reported the top 5 for-profit companies control the majority of academic publishing and their profit margins are even better then Google.

Guardian:
Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?

Quartz:

As one of the Guardian interviewees mentioned: Article 27 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, asserted the right “to share in scientific advancement and its benefits”. How can we all share it? 😃