Context (for those who might not be in academia): many academic publishing companies (like Elsevier) charge exorbitant prices for researchers to get their papers published as open access. Meanwhile, none of these researchers actually get anything in return for it (except for major street cred if their papers get highly cited)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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If you are here asking: "Is this a science meme?"
Probably, yes. We use the Dawkins definition of meme: a replicating idea, not just an image macro with a fact on it. A good post here doesn't need to teach you something. It needs to make you ask something: who, what, where, when, and especially why or how.
Science isn't a filing cabinet of facts, it's a conversation. For example, a photo of an eel or other localized wildlife counts because most people never see one, and wonder is the first step of inquiry. A car meme counts if it makes you curious about what's under the bonnet. If you want to talk about something you noticed in the world, chances are someone else wants to talk about it too.
We moderate for vibe, not category. Pruning is light, especially where a post creates interesting discussion. Experimenting is encouraged.
See the pinned paper on Shitposting as Public Pedagogy if you want the academic case for why this works.
Fun fact! The current dismal state of scientific publishing is largely attributable to Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell.
Are you fucking kidding me? Why the hell do we even allow this shit.
You have to pay them money to publish your work so they can sell it to your peers. Oh and you have to work for free reviewing other potential work. It's the most broken business model ever.
And what's worse, when there were some big negotiations on open access a few years back, the agreements were wholly insufficient and still disproportionately enriched the journals at the expense of researchers; "Gold Open Access" journals will publish the research unpaywalled, so anyone can read them, but will charge absurd "article processing charges" that are often thousands of dollars, shutting out researchers with less financial means (such as those in the global South or independent researchers).
Fortunately there is a growing movement who gives a fuck about actual open access; Diamond Open Access research involves no fees to either the author or the reader. This is how it should be.
The future is here, it's just unevenly distributed
[1]: Source: the linked Wikipedia page
It's pretty impressive that they managed to trick a whole field of the smartest people into doing it too. What kind of crazy con artist thought this up? Lol
Until the world accepts that certain bloodlines should just be purged, progress is impossible.
I've been looking for a good write up ty.
Oh wow, he appeared as one of the bad guys in the movie Tetris. Didn't realize he was the father of ...
I feel like in the age of the Internet people should just publish their own stuff. The problem then is being able to find it though. I think a site for only research papers where you can vote links to them up or down and submit peer reviews would be awesome. I'm looking in from the outside though so maybe that already exists?