cupholder comments on The Shabbos goy - Less Wrong

35 Post author: PhilGoetz 26 March 2010 04:16PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (85)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: cupholder 30 March 2010 05:20:45AM 0 points [-]

If, however, for-profit academic journals charge much more than it costs to produce them, I would expect to see for-profit startups competing with them.

Possible explanations for not seeing that:

  • There are for-profit startups competing with the big boys, but we just don't know what they are, because of course they're smaller and less visible than the big publishers
  • Startups get bought out by big publishers
  • Social barriers to entry like the impact factor issue you mention
  • Social barriers to entry amplified even further because startups are a bunch of entrepreneurs breaking into the field from outside, so they don't have the same connections as scientists working in the field (less of a problem for big publishers because they can buy existing publishers)