Academic publishing

Now that I have come closer to getting my degree I start realizing how the game is played in academia. You see, there is an enormous push to get the research work published. And get published, is not often enough, it should be a high impact factor journal.

And the really sad thing is, that it comes to a point that the quality of the research you do is measured by how many top publications you have...not to mention that is the strongest factor in getting a promotion or a position in an University.

And how do we get our work published...You send your findings that you have put into a nicer scholarly paper and after giving copyright to the journal you proposed to get published in, then qualify to have your paper reviewed. After that, reviewers can either decide if is quality stuff or not, and you get published or not. Now the bad part about this whole process is that we give free information, which comes from research often supported by state agencies. This information is in turn reviewed in a volunteering basis by the so called  the experts on the  field, and get this....The journal charges costly subscriptions to universities all around the world, that are the ones feeding the journal papers in the first place.... its ridiculous

I leave you with a citation by Antonio Panizzi (1836) a librarian of the British Museum, ‘I want a poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity, … of consulting the same authorities, … as the richest man in the kingdoms,’

http://gigaom.com/2011/08/30/so-when-does-academic-publishing-get-disrupted/

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/free-science-one-paper-at-a-time-2/all/1