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Publish or Perish, the more publications the better you will be qualified and recognized.

In my previous post "So you wanted to be a scientist? Let me tell you what's happening in academia today!" I explained that for a Scientist and researcher, getting their work published is very important.

When at the beginning of my scientific career my first publication was accepted in a recognized journal I was very happy.
Of course my first impulse was to look for my name in the database to see my article and finally be able to boast of this, je je.
When I found my publication in the database and clicked the link to download it, the magazine replied that I had to pay 30$.
I tried again, thinking This must be a joke!!!
And again the payment page appeared to download the article.
For me it was a nasty surprise, so I went to the university library to solve the ERROR that I must be committing.

Mrs. Garcia, the librarian very kindly replied:
"Miss, the University does not pay the subscription of the magazine in which you published your article".
. - I would repeat: No... You don’t understand, I am the author! That is, the article is mine!

This patient Mrs. García asked me to sit down, and then she explained:
"The authors give up the rights to their works because they are supposedly rewarded by the recognition that comes with being published in a recognized magazine..."
With my puzzled face I said:
.- ¿Queeee? Can’t be!

While Mrs. Garcia lowered her voice as if it were a big secret said:
"The EDITORS control the system of peer review, which is a pay to play system, while AUTHORS are "forced" to publish their results in these journals because they need scientific recognition for the evaluation of their work. EVALUATORS confirm the value of authors and institutes they work for, through the consultation of databases (scientific production, the impact and the relative rankings of journals, generally measured by the number of citations received by the works). Finally, the LIBRARIES of scientific institutions and universities acquire the (very expensive) magazines to guarantee access to information.
But the growth in number and price of these magazines and journals is exponential so we can’t afford to buy all journals… "
.- So I have done my research thanks to my scholarship that is public money, if I want to validate myself as a scientist, I must give away my research to this magazine free of charge and they can sell it and benefit from my results. AND I DON’T OWN MY PUBLICATION ANYMORE!!!
Finally, I thanked Mrs. Garcia for her infinite patience in explaining the whole system to me.

From that moment I understood with disappointment that the system is abusive and we have accepted it as such from the beginning.

Is it stupid for the state to pay double, once to fund my research, and again to access the knowledge I generated! It's ridiculous!!!!

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While these magazines and publishers limit access to knowledge, they force you to sign abusive contracts, they speculate on prices to access information, and to top it all they publish results that are not reproducible and unreliable. It's scandalous!!!

In view of the above, the scientific research sector has evolved in recent years because of the factors mentioned and the progress of the technologies. Chronologically I present only some progress:

1. Open access

• In 2002, the Open Access Initiative was completed, through three declarations BBB: Budapest (BOAI, 2002), Berlin (2003) and Bethesda (2003), as an international movement whose aim is that anyone in the world, With an Internet connection, can freely access (without economic, technical or legal restrictions) the scientific, academic and cultural information.

Knowledge should be available to all.

2. Elsevier boycot

• Then in 2004 a group of 16757 researchers from prestigious universities such as Harvard, Cornell or California took a stand and issued communiqués inviting the boycott of Elsevier (the largest publisher of scientific publications). The movement was named: The cost of knowledge

After all, we are the scientists who must choose. Why cannot we simply tell Elsevier and other magazines that we no longer wish to publish with them? We cannot continue to offer our knowledge so that scientific journals and publishers can exploit it and enrich themselves from it without adding any significant value (not even the peer review system works, some journals have 50% of their publications that are not reproducible) .

3. Legislation to combat closed access.

• Many countries are already talking about it, there is legislation in the European Union to make all scientific publications funded with public money free to access by 2020.
  In Spain this is legislated at national level, so institutions are obliged to deposit in open publications derived from research funded with public money. Each university in Spain has its own repository. The University of Valencia for instance has an institutional repository, RODERIC, which houses the scientific production of professors, researchers and students. As an example, this link leads to the open thesis collection in RODERIC:

Of course the decision to publish in journals or not is up to each individual scientist. But the system is clearly abusive and it is not giving the scientific community the benefits that it is supposed to create. The influence of this publication game is perverting scientific investigation and the motivations to share knowledge.
I think we should evolve as scientists and move forward with trends that make information freely available.
What do you think about the topic?