Most people are unaware that one of the most lucrative businesses in the world is scientific publishing. This industry is composed of companies that periodically publish scientific articles in academic journals that cover all disciplines of science. From Sociology and Oncology to Astrobiology, these journals are aimed at a narrow audience of scientists, physicians, and science enthusiasts. The scientific articles in these journals are written in a very formal and scientific language, which may explain why most people have not heard of such journals. However, make no mistake — scientific publishing is a big business, grossing over $10 billion per year.
The way scientific publishers such as Nature, Science or Elsevier publishing groups make money is by selling scientific articles. Universities and research institutes around the world pay high sums in yearly subscriptions to access these journals. Those without a subscription need to pay to access individual articles. On one of the most prestigious journals, the price for one article is $32 to buy or $8.99 to rent for 48 hours.
Yet, unlike other types of publishers such as magazines or newspapers, scientific journals do not write their own articles. They do not hire writers to create the article’s content. Instead, researchers and scientists do this job. Through their career, scientists aim to publish their work in peer-reviewed scientific articles, because this is how science is presented to the world. But more crucially for the researcher, it is the product of their work. As such, publishing allows them to move forward in their career or obtain funding for future projects.
A scientific article, or simply called a ‘paper’, is the result of scientific research which is a lengthy and rigorous process that requires substantial economic resources to be carried out. Research laboratories around the world rely mainly on public funding in the form of grants, which allow them to buy resources to conduct research, pay stipends for trainees, salaries for scientists and finally fund the publishing process. As it currently stands, scientists design and conduct the research. They ponder the questions, gather the funds, perform the experiments, write the results, review the articles of other scientists (for free), and pay to publish.
After doing the hard job of researching, scientists are compensated with a publication but no monetary retribution from those publications. Meanwhile the publishing groups that distribute the results of research make profits superior to any other publishing business. In the academic scene there is a popular phrase: “publish or die”. Without publishing a paper, researchers have nothing to show for their work. Accordingly, scientists are immensely motivated to write and submit their articles, thus scientific publishers have no shortage of products to be sold.
The precision and accuracy required in science makes it important for scientific articles to be constructed using rigid structures and technical language. Yet, despite the need for science popularization, the current structure of scientific publishing is not favoring the democratization of science. Determining who has access to the result of publicly funded research is largely dictated by who can pay for this access. Moreover, the content of these articles is not aimed at the public but at specialists. In a society hungry for facts and knowledge, currently, the results of scientific research are difficult to find and difficult to understand. Academic papers have an important purpose in the progress of science, and it is time to think creatively of supplementary ways to communicate research to non-specialists while giving value to the people who actually do the work: scientists.
