March 4, 2026
Open access? More like open season
The one science reform we can all agree on, but we're too cowardly to do
Taxpayers pay 3x for science—comments demand we ditch greedy journal gatekeepers
TLDR: The piece argues we should scrap for‑profit scientific journals that sell taxpayer‑funded research back to us. Commenters blast the system as a “loose tiger,” debate whether peer review is broken, and say arXiv is a fix—except prestige and citations keep the old gatekeepers in power.
The article throws a flamethrower at the strange world of academic publishing, where taxpayers fund research, publishers paywall it, and universities buy it back—again. The comment section? Pure chaos and comedy. One top reply paints it like a zoo disaster: “It’s like a lion escaped the zoo” while officials argue about adding a Dippin’ Dots stand. Translation: everyone knows for‑profit journals are the loose tiger, but no one wants to open the gate.
Cue the “why don’t you just” crowd, with bjackman baffled that academics won’t simply stop playing the publisher game. Meanwhile, MarkusQ detonates the sacred cow, arguing peer review (the check by other scientists) isn’t a truth stamp at all—just a vibe—and people are acting like it’s gospel. On the practical side, glitchc says the solution already exists: toss papers on arXiv (a free online paper library). The snag? Prestige and citations. Technical Program Committees (the folks who pick conference papers) and grant agencies don’t treat arXiv as “official,” so careers still depend on paywalled journals.
Amid the fire, scottndecker drops a jokey sigh, guessing the “one reform” was finally switching the U.S. to the metric system. The mood: pitchforks out, memes deployed, and a collective “why are we paying three times for science?”
Key Points
- •Universities fund teaching, while research compensation often depends on external grants, primarily from the US federal government.
- •Editors and reviewers in peer‑reviewed journals are typically unpaid, while accepted papers transfer copyright to publishers.
- •Authors may pay article processing charges, and publishers then paywall the work and sell access to universities.
- •Universities cover journal subscriptions and fees via indirect costs on grants, supporting infrastructure rather than research itself.
- •The article advocates eliminating for‑profit scientific publishers and explains their post‑WWII rise due to printing and distribution burdens.