/sci/ - Science & Math

>>5690317
>some good scientific journals
Science, Nature

>chemistry major.jpg
lel-ing aside,
J. Am. Chem. Soc.
Angew. Chemie, Int. Ed.
protip: The ACS publishes a couple dozen journals (which are 'good' is open to debate), Wiley has a bunch of chemistry journals too.

>buy them
wow, fuck that the subscription rates are absurd

open access:
arxive.org (math, physics, some CS, astro)
plosone.org (bio)

>>5690467
>wow, fuck that the subscription rates are absurd
>tfw journals used to be affordable

>>5690467
*arxiv.org
fixed, sorry about that

>>5690468
I know that feel bro.
>tfw nobody reads anymore, so hundreds of newspapers and magazines have gone under
>tfw even the people who DO read have taken to doing so online or on ebooks, which has put even MORE newspapers and magazines under
>tfw it's always the really great ones that go under, while bullshit periodicals whose producers keep getting shittier and jacking their prices up

>>5690468
>used to be affordable
it's all relative though, both in terms of price and intended use

If one wants to subscribe to Science, well it's not out the range of reasonable for a lot of people.
If one wants individual (as opposed to institutional) access to most of the journals in a particular field, then the cost rapidly becomes prohibitive for many.

>>5690468
It's because they can. The worst part is the following:

I'm not sure if this applies to every field, but in my field, IEEE is the main editor and the main host for conferences. Basically everybody that I work with is an IEEE member for these reason (membership for students isn't too expensive, but it's more expensive for faculty, and it's really fucking expensive for engineers). You need to be an IEEE member to publish in their journals or conferences.

However, being an IEEE member doesn't mean that you get any of their papers for free. It only means that you can submit papers to their journals and conferences, and that you can access the most basic functions of their website (basically you can get the abstract and the .bib bibliography of any of their articles, but not the article itself). You still have to pay like $15 or something if you want to download the pdf of an article (the same as if you weren't a member).

So, okay, this is overcome by the fact that universities pay (a LOT) so that you have free access to most IEEE journals when you use their Internet. But wait, there's something else. Let's say you want to publish in an IEEE journal. You have written in pretty damn good article, but you're not an IEEE member. So you subscribe, of course (and cry at the yearly fee), and you submit your article. After several months, you get an answer telling you (in the best case scenario) that your article is accepted, and that you have minor revisions to make (you are forwarded with anonymous reviews, which can be pretty awesome and give a lot of insight when they are done well). So you make these changes, submit again, wait a few months again, and your paper is validated, they ask you to send yet another "Camera-ready" version, to sign a paper giving the exclusive copyright of your work to IEEE (*sigh*), and then you wait again until your article is finally published.

And that's it. When it's published, it's published, you don't (((comment too long)))

>>5690528
(((cont)))

And that's it. When it's published, it's published, you don't get the issue of the journal, you don't somehow get it for free online. If you want your article, you have to pay for it.

Also, publishing on a given topic means that you will get peer-review requests and end up working (for free) for IEEE to review the papers of your peers. You can of course decline all the review requests, but it is not going to help your carrier in the long run, because those that send the requests are working in your field too and they won't really like you if you don't contribute to the peer-review process.

Basically, IEEE exploits the researchers' need for high-quality editors in specific fields. You *have* to work with them, and they exploit it.