In a world, with dissemination of knowledge so easy, I question how health scientists, broadly an intelligent, hard-working, critically-thinking lot, have managed to accept to pay substantial sums of money to disseminate the fruits of their generally-valuable work, intended to improve life by adding to the human pool of knowledge. Similarly bewildering is that academic institution leaders, employed to facilitate those aims, are prepared to pay heavily for the privilege of having their scientists published in journals that tout for business using ego-massage tactics, as I receive relentlessly from open-access journals that I’d never previously encountered, followed by “invitations” from them to submit articles at “discounted fees.” I wonder what scientists from William Harvey to Anton van Leeuwenhoek to Einstein would have thought of this as progress.
I now use Linkedin and special interest group forums to attempt to achieve those aims, despite its limitations. I prefer to allocate hard-earned, precious funds made available to me, to support scientific enquiry directly for dissemination to readers who don’t feel the need to outsource critical thinking to paid strangers and leave you to evaluate my statements for yourself. Thankfully, at least I’m no longer pressured by “publish or perish” and research assessment exercises.
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