Learned societies turn against scholarship and join publishers for profit

An article authored by a group of researchers takes learned societies to task for siding with for-profit publishers in opposition to a zero-embargo federal open access mandate. UVA professor Brian Nosek is a co-author. The piece observes, "What publishers provide today is not much more functional than paper, but it is much more expensive. They might as well be etching our research onto sheets of gold. The public suffers twice: First they are overcharged to read the results of science they themselves funded. Second, the system designed to protect publishers’ profits ends up slowing down scientific progress and lowering the quality of published research in myriad ways."