Advocating for free-to-read and free-to-publish science journals amid a need to change a broken evaluation system

Abstract

Publishing is an important step for the work of any scientist. Unfortunately, academia has been using publication metrics, particularly the journal impact factor, as one of the main criteria for assessing researchers CVs when hiring and promoting researchers and evaluating grant proposals, among others. This goes against the advice of several researchers and institutions who notice a harmful effect of focusing on such publication-based metrics for the development of science itself. In addition, most journals with high impact factor have been moving to a highly commercialized form of open access publication, where readers do not pay to access those papers, but the authors do. Journals ranked high in those publication-based metrics also charge very high publications fees. Thus, those journals have become too expensive for most scientists, creating a too-large financial gap between those who can afford publishing in high-ranked journals and those who cannot. Science ranking based on publication metrics is thus no longer a question of science quality, impact, or relevance, but of the researchers’ financial conditions to publish their science. Luckly, there are thousands of journals that offer the so-called diamond (or platinum) alternative that do not charge any fees from readers and writers alike. Here, I advocate that scientists should focus on those non-commercialized forms of science publication while working to change the criteria for evaluating science production currently at place in academia.