The open access war in academia...

[Klaus]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00883-6

I find it remarkable that authors who want their papers published at Nature these days are supposed to dish out almost $10K.

I've never published at a venue that charges for publication, and I never will. It's one thing that authors aren't paid. But reversing the flow of money is just wrong.

[George K]

I didn't click on the link - too lazy.

But...what the actual fuck?

You have to pay to get published???

The extension of this is: "If I give you enough money, will you publish my paper?"

[Klaus]

Well, the publishers try to find new way to make money.

The old way used to be subscription fees. But more and more libraries cancel their journal subscriptions, and authors want "open access" to increase the visibility of their work.

So, the new way, at least in some domains, is to let the authors pay everything. The publishers do nothing for their money; all they do is put a PDF into their database. In the old times, the publishers used to take care of typesetting, proofreading, and stuff, but now this is all responsibility of the authors.

Right now some commercial journals still live from their reputation. A paper at Nature, say, carries such a prestige that authors happily pay the fee. But this gets less and less common. In my domain, it's already very standard to publish open access without any publication fees.