Anyone doing academic writing, from students at university to scientists, nurses, doctors, engineers, math teachers, vets, all need to read and reference many, many of these academic texts to do any sort of research.

Now imagine every time you want to cite anything, you can only read the synopsis at best because every source wants you to spend $50.

It's normal to need like 50 references for a research paper by the way (although students can get away with 10-20)

I'm sure locking the culmination of human knowledge behind a paywall and limiting the amount of people that can contribute to that knowledge will end well for the species.

  • ReadFanon [any, any]
    ·
    2 days ago

    Wanna learn something that's really gonna boil your piss?

    The entire scientific journal/paywall industry was pioneered by none other than arch-Zionist, Mossad asset, and Epstein-associate Robert Maxwell.

    • dkr567 [comrade/them, he/him]
      ·
      2 days ago

      My hatred for Robert Maxwell has reached a level that I didn't know existed. (I was doing a PHD but had to quit due to multiple things which included dealing with these corporate journal industry).

  • Lerios [hy/hym]
    ·
    2 days ago

    to do a phd and go into a job that actually helps the world i'm gonna have to take a 50%+ paycut jokerfied

    • vovchik_ilich [he/him]
      ·
      2 days ago

      I'm morally crushed by this. I'm Spanish, if I wanted to pursue a post-doc here (I'm finishing my thesis), I wouldn't be able to find anything paying even 2000€/month (some friend doing their PhD in the most expensive city of Spain was earning 1400€/month), but the worst part isn't that. It's knowing that your research won't do anything to save the world so long as we live in capitalism. You may very well invent energy sources that don't contribute to climate change (ehem nuclear ehem), that so long as they fight fossils fuels for profit, they simply won't be adopted, just look at Germany phasing out their nuclear reactors... and opening up coal plants 🤡

      • Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 days ago

        I think Nordstream was the medium term plan. Did they put the cart before the horse a bit - yeah.

        I don't think they ever expected the US or it's proxies to blow up the main energy line to Germany / EU. It was a work around from problematic Ukraine so I can see the win-win from that deal. Why they didn't see the fascists cooking under their nose idk. They misjudged their own so called friends. And they still won't call out the US for what they did - a deliberate act of eco terrorism, and now demanding they drain their coffers to blow up Ukraine to become complicit in a proxy war that isn't theirs.

        • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          2 days ago

          Genuinely I don’t understand how all of Europe is so fucking cucked that they won’t call out their biggest “ally” for actually completely destroying their fucking energy markets.

          Like hey guys you might want to make that a big incident and publicly align more with Russia. Between the United States and Russia, which one has bombed your infrastructure? Like, it should’ve been considered an act of war by the EU, it should’ve been a “shoot any American soldier you see on this continent or in our waters to make sure this doesn’t happen again” situation.

          • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml
            ·
            edit-2
            13 hours ago

            The EU is completely dependent on America and is under the NATO umbrella. It will not rebel against the US until the US becomes too weak to keep the Europeans in line.

    • barrbaric [he/him]
      ·
      1 day ago

      In my experience, the more benefit a given job brings to society, the less it pays. David Graeber touches on this in Bullshit Jobs, where IIRC he claims that the employers of those jobs treat being able to feel good about your work as part of the benefits package.

      • mbt2402 [none/use name]
        ·
        2 days ago

        ime old papers missing on sci-hub are on libgen.is/scimag, and the newer papers since sci-hub stopped uploading might be available on annas-archive.org/scidb.

          • mbt2402 [none/use name]
            ·
            2 days ago

            to comply with a court order in india, because apparently they think that they can win. the case is ongoing. i'm not up to speed on their actual chances, but they thought it was worth it edgeworth-shrug

            • 187_Invitation [he/him]
              ·
              1 day ago

              Well I hope it goes well for them. I still use it quite a bit for someone who isn't in school anymore.

  • Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    Imagine how many otherwise good, smart, inventive people are denied their ideas form becoming real because of this - and all of corporate academia.

    So many walls - paywalls, social walls, ideological walls, investment walls that rob the future from it's youth. Remember the stories of Masters degrees being forced to work menial labor because no one would hire them? Few decades of that and you have generations of inspiration and creativity neutered. In porky speak - prevent competition from even realizing itself.

    So much of our modern society is involved at a systemic level to forceably maintain the status quo.

    doomer I've given up on acedemia and my dreams after going through college and being denied denied denied through impossible entry level position requirements. So I went into the military to get experience and found out how much even more bullshit it all was. Especially western acedemia which was reduced to glorified grammar nazis who cared more about HOW things look and sound rather than WHAT the consequences were. More arrogant ass kissers and yes people of more arrogant ass kissers corrupted by promises of C-suite jobs and bonuses for participating in government level corruption. Even "retired" assholes kept coming back from their C-suite "retirement" jobs to carry on the corruption to it's next generation. Rotten to it's core.

    Edit

    Access to acedemia information is what got Aaron Swartz killed.

  • qocu [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 days ago

    "I like the idea of communism, and the idea that knowledge should be common and not intellectual property is very relevant. That is especially true for information. Research articles are used for communication in science. But the word 'communication' implies common ownership by itself." Said by my superheroine Alexandra Elbakyan.

  • ButtBidet [he/him]
    ·
    2 days ago

    I think that most libraries in universities have annual subscriptions to these journals, and researchers there can read for free. That said, it's just another thing making higher ed more expensive and unobtainable for those outside of the bourgeoisie.

  • DragonBallZinn [he/him]
    ·
    2 days ago

    This country will gladly run itself into irrelevance because of its cutthroat, dog-eat-dog ways.

    Employers that are so picky that they demand the 5+ years of experience for entry level jobs…if they even hire entry-level at all anymore and claim that all employees need to work more for less pay because “we gotta compete with China” will have no right to complain when they actually do lose to China.

  • GnastyGnuts [he/him]
    ·
    2 days ago

    In a few decades (maybe less) the only good research is going to be coming out of China and some of the other BRICS countries.

    • GlueBear [they/them, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 days ago

      That's exactly what it is now wdym? Most of the cutting edge scientific articles (both literature reviews and especially research papers) come from China/ Chinese researchers. Do you know how difficult it is to get funding for research in the US?

      In China it's probably easier AND more coordinated.

      • Sinister [none/use name, comrade/them]B
        ·
        2 days ago

        Because China is investing in the STEM fields. While in the west „Economic Engineers“ are focused on dismantling industrial machinery.

  • SadArtemis [she/her]
    ·
    2 days ago

    Honestly, while I wish I didn't live in it and hate the human toll, I'm fine with the western "garden" financializing itself into obsolescence and worse while the rest of humanity marches towards a brighter future. Whatever material gain occurs in the west, until the imperialist world system of the west dies off completely, will first be used to harm the rest of the world 1000x over before it is used for good, anyways.

    • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      Eat shit, racist. Chinese papers are leagues more professional and relavent to my ecology research than the American papers funded by 3M to lie about how dangerous their latest product is

    • robinnist
      ·
      2 days ago

      The issue of "paper mills" is not exclusive to China, this being an issue in the West as well. Your mentioning of this ultimately comes down to reddit-logo anti-China brainrot.

        • VILenin [he/him]
          ·
          2 days ago

          very-intelligent I am against both the colonizer and the colonized! Both the imperialist and the imperialized! Who cares about historical context and modern geopolitical dynamics when I can just pretend that they are all equal at the level of a platonic state!

          Every time the “but I’m against everyone” argument gets wheeled out, inevitably the critique of the US is that healthcare should be free and the “critique” of China is that the subversive oriental savages must be exterminated.

          Extremely typical western chauvinist “leftist” behavior. Completely unsurprising.

        • PointAndClique [they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          Being anti-intellectual in the process. This is research and education we're talking about so your swipe at Chinese 'paper mills' that you're passing off as principled anti-statism is indistinguishable from peddling tried and tired US State Department anti-China tropes. Nice going

        • Duży Szef [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          2 days ago

          Only someone woefully anti-intellectual would come to such a simple and "common sense" conclusion. I hope one day you look back and cringe at how confident in being wrong you now are.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          Fuck off, you "no veggies at dinner, no bedtimes" baby-brained pop-anarchist.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      So you're so burgerbrained that you think that all this paywalling shit is somehow... what? Quality control?

      At least brush your tongue after you lick boots that hard. I can smell the corpo boot polish on your breath from here, you sycophantic sinophobic bootlicker.

    • meth_dragon [none/use name]
      ·
      2 days ago

      chinese system is just the western system put into a much more highly competitive environment. the paper mills are symptoms of a (shittily designed and archaic) system operating in a cultural and socioeconomic environment it should not be operating in.