• ArcticDagger
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    3 months ago

    You will transfer the economic copyright to most journals upon publication of the typeset manuscript meaning that you’re not allowed to publish that particular PDF anywhere. However, a lot of journals are okay with you publishing the pre-peer reviewed article or even sometimes the peer-reviewed, but NOT typeset article (sometimes called post-print article). Scientific publishing is weird :-)

    • Rolando@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The last couple journals I published in let you put the post-print PDF on your web page after an “embargo period”. I’ve never personally seen a journal forbid you from submitting articles whose preprints had been posted in sites like arxiv.org.

      But I think scientific publishing isn’t “weird”, more like “predatory”, “exploitative”, or at least “antiquated.”

    • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      or even sometimes the peer-reviewed, but NOT typeset article

      What does that mean? The LaTeX source?

      • ArcticDagger
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        3 months ago

        The typeset article is what you’d see if you download the .pdf from, e.g., Nature. See here.

        It’s the manuscript with all the stuff that distinguishes an article from one journal to another (where is the abstract, what font type, is there a divider between some sections, etc.). Articles that have not been typeset yet can be seen from Arxiv, for example this one: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.04391

        • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          So basically the article you are allowed to release can have its typesetting - it just can’t have the journal’s preamble/theme?

          • ArcticDagger
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            3 months ago

            If I understand you correctly: Yes, the article can have a typesetting like whatever you get out-of-the-box from Latex and that article can then be published anywhere. What is typically not allowed is to openly publish the article that have been typeset by the journal where you’ve sent in your article. This is probably what you mean by “preamble/theme”

            • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Yup that’s what I mean.

              Seems like a reasonable limitation then (not that the entire business model of scientific journals is reasonable in the 21st century is reasonable - just this specific limitation). The journal’s theme is proprietary, but the paper’s authors still have the LaTeX source so they can just slap a free preamble on it and publish it with that.

    • refalo@programming.dev
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      3 months ago

      Just leak it before publishing it. Also most authors will give you the pdf for free if you just email them and ask for it nicely.

    • Comment105@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Why publish through a journal at all? What do they do that WordPress doesn’t? Are they the source of your credibility? Do they pay the peer reviewers. Or are you all just whipped?

      • ArcticDagger
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        3 months ago

        There are several benefits, but compared to WordPress, I guess the biggest one is outreach: no one will actually see an article if it’s published by a young researcher that hasn’t made a name for themselves yet. It will also not be catalogued and will therefore be more difficult to find when searching for articles.

        Also, calling researchers “whipped” is a bit dismissive to the huge inertia there is in the realm of scientific publication. The scientific journal of Nature was founded in 1869, but general open-access publishing has only really taken off in the last decade or so.

        • Comment105@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          So they are the source of your credibility. And you continue to agree to have it that way.

          • ArcticDagger
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            3 months ago

            No, that’s not what I said. You’re right that journals, to some extent, also lends credibility to the publication, but it’s not the source of credibility. What I said was that an article published in Nature will have many more views than an article published on a random WordPress blog.

            Again, saying that researchers “agree to have it that way” ignores the structural difficulty of changing the system by the individual. The ones who benefit the most from changing the system are also the ones most dependent on external funding - that is, young researchers. Publishing in low-impact journals (ones that has a small outreach such as most open-access journals) makes it much harder to apply for funding

            • Comment105@lemm.ee
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              3 months ago

              It’s not what you wanted to say, but it is what the words you wrote effectively meant.

              Nature doesn’t lend you credibility. You and your colleagues read Nature because it’s how you filter out the trash.
              Researchers agree to have it that way. I will not yield on that argument. You do, you agree to it by majority to this day.

              • kevin@mander.xyz
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                3 months ago

                By this logic, you and everyone else agree to climate change. Everyone in Venezuela agrees to Maduro.

                It has nothing to do with majority, it’s a collective action and balance of power.

              • ArcticDagger
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                3 months ago

                That’s okay. If you view the journals as glorified blogs, I agree that they’re unnecessary. They aren’t and do more than that even though they’re also doing a lot of bad stuff with sky high profit margins. If you’re not open for changing your views, I don’t see the point of discussing any more. Appreciate the back and forth, tho!

      • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Publications in peer-reviewed journals are how a career in science is built. It’s impossible to measure the productivity of a scientist. What is done, is that one looks at their publications. How many publications do they have? How often are they cited? What is the quality of the journal?

        This creates very bad incentives, leading to things like publication bias. It also means that you must publish in prestigious journals. You don’t have a choice but to accept their terms. Libraries don’t have a choice but to stock these journals. It’s a straight-forward monopoly racket. These publishers make fantastical profits.

        All that money can be used for PR campaigns and lobbying to keep the good times rolling.