The BIGGEST culprit in academic publishing

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Exploring learning and theories of education.

I am an independent researcher currently based in the UK, sharing interesting trends and stories domestically and from around the globe.

Blending rigorous research with animation to create content that explains complex issues in relatable ways. I hold a BSc in Sports Coaching and an MSc in Strength and Conditioning from Brighton University.

Whether you are a teacher, student, parent, or interested learner, there is always another perspective that I think is worth exploring. If that sounds interesting, subscribe and follow along.

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Content has bias, and information can be interpreted in various ways.
Don't take these videos as fact.
Systems, ideas, and science changes over time.

[Danny.Hatcher]

Thank you for watching. Comments are welcomed and encouraged - what do you think?

I heart comments I have seen, and reply to those YouTube notifies me off.

FEEDBACK:
- Veritasium is in the title because I used his argument (seen at the end). Yes, it also improves views. My video structure should have been better!
- Maybe include more examples of Misconduct relating to Nobel Prize and long-lasting work in published literature. (Planned future video on this)
- 7:34 the paper was originally submitted in May 2023 with those numbers, but updated in Oct 2023 to 150, 000 rather than 300, 000. @EastBurningRed

KEY COMMENTS:
- Maybe a non-significant result journal
- Overemphasis on quantity over quality wrecked US and EU academia.
- Have the universities publish the papers @dovilacus
- Don't forget arXiv and bioRxiv for publishing @biggie_tea
- Have researchers/authors start a YouTube channel @carpballet @harmonylivingston3460
- Cryptography papers are mostly free. Publishers don't need to get paid. @debasishraychawdhuri

[pornpori]

As long as this predatory system lives on: Long live Sci-Hub!

[viinisaari]

Goodhart's law: _When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure._

[SpencerHHO]

The state of Academia broadly truly terrifies me. I dropped out of my science degree for a number of reasons, mostly personal but even as a drop-out the level of corruption is obvious. The worst outcome is that charlatans and cranks can point out this obvious problem and use it as a way to discredit legitimate science. You see this increasingly having a toxic impact on discourse and politics.

[dovilacus]

It could be simpler! Have the universities themselves publish the papers, except they have to publish through other universities to maintain peer review. Instead of private journals we could have institutions that do research themselves publish collections of papers!

This type of review already happens at extent of a phd/master thesis, members from other facultys are usually invited to jury and the work is posted to an online repository. Why not extend that to post graduate research with the caviat of the institution not being able to self-publish?

[Pancasikha]

As a materials science PhD student, I've realised how much of a racket many aspects of institutional science are, with publishers at its centre. Honestly, I live for the day when science is more decentralised and is contributed to by professionals, amateurs and lay communicators alike.

[biggie_tea]

I'm always a bit confused when there's videos about scientific publishing that don't mention places like arXiv and bioRxiv, where researches publish pre-print versions of their articles, freely accessible to anyone, and are expected to update them after every step of the review process. I can't speak for bioRxiv, but I know that in the fields of phyics and mathematics, it is standard practice to upload to arXiv and it is almost frowned upon when this doesn't happen. The articles of course also go through the peer review process before they can be reliably cited, keeping the role of publishers, and so I think it forms a great 'middle ground' option

[OctagonalSquare]

One major problem is that retractions are treated like failings as a scientists, not as part of the process. You can’t be right with your hypothesis, and you can have one experiment find wrong results because that’s how probability works. Retraction isn’t failure, it’s completion of the scientific method.

The other problem is that for major topics, many people will never see a retraction if one happens.

Imagine if someone discovered life on mars via telescope. Then when we get a rover there weeks later and find it was actually just some rocks that looked like aliens, everyone is already convinced the first article was right, so don’t ever check if a retraction happened.

[lucasfc]

I'm living in the uni, and proud my professors said all this. It deeply saddens me because they are ubiquotus, and so can't just disappear because of the important metric based upon them, something better needs to take all of it, and people need to be willing to publish in whatever that is

[dandan]

Universities around the world should fund a non-profit publication that has independent reviewers and editors to remove the middle man in research publication. Institutions no longer needs to pay for the profit of the publication, they just need to pay the cost. The new entity benefits from reputation of the supporting universities and gain momentum to move forward with the operation.

[ExistenceUniversity]

I was expecting this was a bigger channel. Nice work

[StripedJacket]

I thought this was going to be a pseudoscience or BS video attacking people to get views (Tbf your channel has a lot of video titles and thumbnails that point to a sort of drama-driven style)

But when I watched and figured out you’re talking about how unethical and profit driven scientific journals are I was already on board this train for a while now.

This is a kind of conversation that falls on deaf ears and I support you bringing awareness to this

[randoscience]

These problems led me to believe that probably I'm better publish my work on youtube as "researcher content creator" to gain recognition. Its free for everyone and also everyone can scrutinize my methodology and result, and have more fast paced, more flexible discussion.

[nicoskefalas]

As a former academic many of these points hit too close to home! Excellent video! So glad the algorithm recommended this!

[InversePacman]

This is very well done. Thank you for publishing your sources and bringing more awareness to this topic.

[vishalkumar]

And often a publication is silent about the shortcomings of the method discussed. I think a publication system that incentives people to write both good and bad aspects of their work will be helpful for the overall growth and dissemination of science.

[xibywei]

I don't agree that there's a fundamental problem with the journal-driven-publishing model. The problem is with the publishing *industry*, i.e. Elsevier, Springer-Nature, Wiley et al. There are some (usually smaller) journals, often run by academic societies, that are excellent. One of my favourite examples is Copernicus, the publisher for European Geoscience Union journals. Copernicus isn't even non-profit, yet it has an outstanding fully-open peer review system, genuinely high-quality editing, and APCs that are reasonable given the quality of service they provide (I have absolutely no affiliation with them).

The sheer quantity of research published in this day and age means that we need academic gatekeepers. The problem isn't the journal model, it's the profit-before-all-else motive that most academic publishers have.

[rflsms]

It is impossible to leave the mailing list of some publishers! That person may be doing academic misconduct but god they are right!

[aeschynanthus_sp]

Tangentially, there is a journal/website "Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis". The latest article there is "The Effect of Owl Feces on Rat Operant Responding: Can Rats Recognize a Conspecific-Eating Predator?" The answer to the question was "no".

[debasishraychawdhuri]

I am currently doing a PhD in cryptography, and almost all the papers in my field are free of charge. I rarely need to connect to my University account to download the papers. This proves that the publishers getting paid is not a prerequisite for scientific communication.