If you message the authors of research papers, 9 times out of 10, they'll be more than happy to share their papers with you for free.
They're just happy someone is taking an interest in their work, and they're not being paid to distribute it anyway.
this post was submitted on 23 May 2026
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A lot of authors also post archive versions of their papers just before they submit it for review too.
Yeah, capitalism has been "corporatizing" the fun out of science and I hate it very much. There is this tendency to force scientific work toward yielding some economic utility instead of it being a means for humans to explore nature.
There are efforts against it though. I remember SciHub came up with an open journal, I think it was called "Open Science", but I don't know what became of it.
Crazy we're still dealing with the same grifter class.
As for publishing, I don't know what the value of scientific societies are if they're not managing their own journals. Build up an Endowment use tech to keep prices low (there are already editorial pipelines - make them opensource), host the papers on a torrent network that university libraries participate in, and when you ask for free reviewers at least they'll know they're not being exploited. Publishing just isn't that expensive of a business.
Also, you want to know what keeps fraud down? Having reviewer names at the bottom of the paper. It's not like we don't actually know the reviewers anyway. Make people take mutual responsibility for the most egregious stuff and risk your reviewers taking it personally if you try to slip something by. Maybe we can add some rules like not having them all at the same university and/or having an outsider reviewer to prevent cultures from persisting.
Publishing just isn’t that expensive of a business.
Back in the day when it involved correspondence by mail and shipping out physical printed journals, maybe it was.
But, yes, in the era of the internet, scientific publishing does not need to be expensive.
... Come to think of it, what's to stop me from making my own free, open-source independent scientific journal right now? It would take time to build the reputation, of course ... but what would actually prevent such a thing?
Come to think of it, what's to stop me from making my own free, open-source independent scientific journal right now?
Technically, nothing. Practically, way more than you imagine. First and most important, you almost certainly wouldn't be indexed by large databases. These provide easy metrics for papers and journals that can be easily evauatrd by funding agencies. If you don't have an impact factor, sciencists cannot use a paper published with you to prove to the funders they produced results.
As for other issues you mention later, you usually confirm that the results shown in your published paper was not used in another paper, so exclusivity definitely exists (preprint servers are usually excluded from this).
Good luck finding reviewers in the age of AI. Nobody wants to do it and there are TONS of papers everywhere. Also, you'd need an editor to choose what is even worth sending for review.
Also, I'm not sure issuing DOIs is free, and you must have DOIs.
I'm waiting until I'm more established in my career. While starting early is good, being known by your community and associated with particular societies or organizations is important for credibility and early buy-in, otherwise you're just slowly posting your own papers online and it looks a little silly. That said, if you're a professor (especially a tenured professor) it's just a matter of hunting down the right software as far as I'm aware.
I'm not even a scientist, lol. And I've only got a bachelor's degree ... in English literature.
But I know how to build a website. ... I could start a website that accepts scientific article submissions and try to recruit experts to submit papers and peer review them... Definitely won't be very prestigious at first, but I think that over time and with careful control to avoid publishing bullshit, that prestige and respect could grow. And, of course, being both free to publish and free to read would be quite a draw, compared to the extortionate expense of other journals.
I think it'd be challenging to convince excellent scientists to publish with an unknown and challenging for someone without a scientific background to identify the more sophisticated forms of automated fraud we currently face.
I think it’d be challenging to convince excellent scientists to publish with an unknown
True. Do existing journals have exclusivity agreements preventing scientists from publishing the same article in more than one journal?
and challenging for someone without a scientific background to identify the more sophisticated forms of automated fraud we currently face
Hopefully, in theory, that's where the peer review comes in. But ... maybe volunteer peer reviewers can't really be trusted to put in the effort to see beyond superficial 'correct-looking' papers? I know some whoppers of obviously AI-generated slop have already made it past the reviewers of even established, prestigious journals.
No, there are no exclusivity agreements. It's a jungle, especially for prestige journals. A lot of scientists just push hard for prestigious journals, especially pre-tenure as prestigious journals supposedly impress tenure review panels. While I personally have my doubts that prestigious journals impress anyone, those who don't push for prestigious journals are often viewed as unable to publish high quality work, so at a minimum, most scientists submit to the most prestigious journal they think will accept them (i.e. mid-tier journals).
When they don't look for prestige, they're usually looking at social factors. Do my peers publish here? Is this associated with one of my societies? This is why some scientists associate more strongly with society journals, but it's certainly not exclusive. While there are free journals out there that will publish whatever you send them, they're mostly filled with trash that respectable scientists don't want to be associated with. A new cheap or free journal comes with that stigma attached -- whether they want it or not.
The problem with peer review is that there are often only a hand full of people in the whole world who have what's required to look at things carefully and ask the relevant questions. You need the technical background and niche familiarity - including having kept up the developments in the niche. Usually the journal editor only knows the field (the broad category of work), so journals ask the author to recommend reviewers. Fraudsters can pretty easily shuffle about reviewers and authors while sticking new names on papers as collaborators, citing previous fraud to boost citations, and publishing stuff that looks broadly like science -- even adding (meaningless, easily obtained) data. It's hard to catch because you don't really know any of the people and can't really tell if the science is uninteresting or part of a ring of fraud.
That's why I think it's better to be established in your community before you push too into strange or radical ideas. You don't have to chase prestige, but do enough to be a known quantity that does good work.
otherwise you're just slowly posting your own papers online and it looks a little silly.
Looking silly is fine, though.
I can't point to exactly when I crossed the line from some nobody who self publishes everything for easy sharing, to respected professional with a deep useful online archive of work.
Maybe that line is still upcoming, actually...lol.
Yeah, I don't know. I'm not willing to chase prestige for tenure, but I don't think I'd be able to get away with self published for career progression. Not that I'm even sure I'll make it that far, I'm struggling just to find a post-doc position.
The publishers, ofc.
Research MTX with prestige currency.
If you leave out the "funding" stage, nothing makes sense...
And I hope they're just confused about paying for peer review, but that's something the publisher should pay