V akademskem svetu je precej perverznosti. Ena izmed večjih perverznosti, vendar ne največja, se nanaša na način objavljanja. V akademskem svetu se vse vrti okrog znanstvenih objav. Doktorski študenti in bodoči akademiki potijo krvavi pot pri delu na raziskavah, promoviranju raziskav prek seminarjev in konferenc, pošiljanju člankov v objavo in popravljanju člankov. Vmes je ogromno zavrnitev objave. Včasih tudi po 10-krat. Od začetka dela na raziskavi do objave znanstvenega članka mine nekaj let. Toda bodoči akademiki nimajo druge možnosti, kot da so v tem procesu. Kajti samo prek dobrih objav lahko dobijo službo. Tri dobre objave v indeksiranih revijah so običajno potrebne za vstop na mesto docenta. In za vsako napredovanje spet po 3 oziroma 6 novih objav. Boljša kot je univerza, višje je določen prag kvalitete revije, kjer mora biti članek objavljen (na najboljših univerzah so potrebne objave v top-5 revijah s področja).

Zdaj pa o perverziji. Večina ljudi izven akademskega sveta misli, da so objave člankov plačane. Niso. Objave člankov omogočajo zgolj vstop v klub – zaposlitev na univerzi oziroma napredovanje. Velja nasprotno, če želiš objaviti, moraš plačati. Bodisi neposredno, da je članek “odprt”, prosto dostopen vsem na internetu, za kar založniki običajno zahtevajo APC v višini 3,000 dolarjev (to za raziskovalca običajno pokrije univerza). Drugi način plačila za objavo pa je, da drugi plačajo za dostop do tvojega članka (običajno okrog 35 dolarjev za članek) in da bi to omogočili imajo univerze posebne aranžmaje z največjimi založniki (Elsevier, Springer Nature itd.), kjer založnikom plačujejo bajne pavšalne vsote za prost dostop njihovim raziskovalcem do člankov, objavljenih v revijah. Torej univerze plačujejo za objavo člankov.

Vendar zgodbe še ni konec. Vsak članek gre skozi recenzentsko sito (2 do 3 raziskovalci s področja ga preberejo in komentirajo ter na koncu dajo zeleno ali rdečo luč glede objave). To delo ni plačano. Zakaj razsikovalci to počnemo? Najprej zaradi etike, ker je to pač del našega poslanstva. Drugič pa tudi zaradi tega, ker smo ali morda še bomo v dotični reviji, od katere smo dobili povabilo k recenziji nekega članka, kdaj objavili kak članek. Če zavrneš recenziranje, pač greš na črno listo pri urednikih.

Perverzija cele zgodbe je v tem, da raziskovalci pišejo članke, nato univerze plačujejo za objavo teh člankov, vmes pa raziskovalci pišejo članke zastonj in zastonj recenzirajo članke drugih. Služijo pa založniki. Elsevier ima običajno nekaj milijard dolarjev dobička letno. Dober biznis. Toda akademski trg je zelo specifičen, zato takšne anomalije.

No, izgleda, da je ta poslovni model postal zelo moteč za velike institucije, ki financirajo založnike. Glejte spodaj.

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Academic publishing is perhaps the only industry where customers provide the product, perform quality control, then pay to buy back what they created. Scientists write the papers and review them for journals, then their universities pay thousands of dollars in subscription fees for access to the research their faculty produced.

It’s a racket so audacious that if you pitched it as a business model, investors would laugh you out of the room. Yet for decades this scheme has siphoned billions from research budgets.

Now the National Institutes of Health is asking whether it should keep paying. The NIH is exploring options ranging from capping publication fees at $2,000 per article to eliminating them. With $47 billion in research funding under its control, NIH holds enough leverage to reshape the academic publishing ecosystem.

Publishers Springer Nature and Elsevier report profit margins of 28% and 38%, respectively. They charge scientists thousands to publish work funded by taxpayers, then charge the taxpayers for access. NIH grants alone hemorrhage $240 million to $280 million annually to these gatekeepers. Nonprofit scientific societies have become addicted to the scheme, defending paywalls that fund their conferences while denying millions of people access to research.

The scandal runs deeper than money. Academia has engineered its own absurdity: tens of thousands of journals peddle “peer reviewed” stamps, yet careers live or die by Nature and Science. These prestige journals manufacture scarcity like luxury brands—limiting slots, not predicting impact. Science becomes a lottery where tenure is the prize, truth an afterthought.

Scientists aren’t merely victims, they’re accomplices. They desperately feed the machine, trading replication for reputation, discovery for job security. The credential “peer reviewed” matters more than the reviews themselves. Editorial benediction has replaced the scientific method. Papers become “truth” by masthead, not by surviving scrutiny.

Which makes academic publishers’ cynicism almost perfect: They monetize a dysfunction they didn’t invent. Their defense—that they ensure quality through peer review—adds insult to injury. Scientists review free; publishers forward emails. For this service, they extract enough from NIH to fund thousands of postdocs.

The system is so broken that science often advances faster without it. In 2023, when researchers claimed they had achieved room-temperature superconductivity—a potential revolution in computing and energy—they posted findings on public servers. Within hours, physicists worldwide were testing. Labs from Berkeley to Beijing shared data in real time. What would have taken years under traditional publishing unfolded with radical transparency. The claims were debunked in three weeks, not three years.

That’s the difference between science as discovery and science as credentialing. When knowledge flows freely, errors die quickly and breakthroughs spread instantly.

Some of us have already made the leap. At Arcadia Science, a biotechnology company, we publish everything immediately, openly. Real peer review happens in public, where any expert can contribute. Our work gets tested, challenged, and built on in real time.

The NIH can make this the norm, not the exception. Its inquiry represents the first serious threat to the status quo. But capping fees isn’t enough. The institutes should demand zero tolerance for publication fees on taxpayer-funded research. Alternatives exist: preprint servers, public peer review, data repositories. Redirect the millions from publishers to these systems.

Half-measures won’t break this cartel. The NIH should end the shakedown. Science depends on it.

Vir: Prachee Avasthi, Wall Street Journal

* Prachee Avasthi is chief science officer of Arcadia Science.