Thanks for this! I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this (see some previous posts) and there is a bit of an emerging EA/metascience community, would be happy to chat if you’re interested!
Some specific comments:
In consequence, a possible solution is some kind of coordinated action by scientists (or universities) to decline being referees for high-fee journals.
Could you elaborate the change in the system you envision as a result of something like this? My current thinking (but very open to being convinced otherwise) is that lower fees to access publications wouldn’t really change anything fundamental about what science is being done, which makes it seem like a lot of work for limited gains?
I agree with him that we need to split up work. Some people like, enjoy, and are better at teaching. Others, at doing research. I really don’t think one should be requested to do everything. In addition, dedicated science evaluators might help a lot with replication problems, referee quality, and speed…
I think there is something here—I think it could be valuable to have more diverse career paths that would allow people to build on their strengths, rather than just having tasks depending on seniority. It also seems like something where it’s not necessary to design one perfect system, but rather that different institutions could work with different models (just like different private companies work with different models of recruitment and internal career paths). I think it would be very interesting if someone would do (have done?) an overview of how this looks today globally, perhaps there are already some institutions that have quite different ways of allocating tasks?
My crux here would be that even though I think this has a potential to make research much more enjoyable to a broader group, it’s a bit unclear if it would actually lead to better science being done. I want to think that it would, but I can’t really make a strong argument for it. I do think efficiency would increase, but I’m not sure we’d work on more important questions or do work of higher quality because of it (though we might!).
this is probably a consequence of too many people enjoying doing science with respect to the number of available research jobs
You could be right, but it’s not obvious to me. I have the impression a lot of people doing science are finding it quite hard and not very enjoyable, especially on junior levels. It would be very interesting to know more about what attracts people to science careers, and what reasons for staying are—I think it’s very possible that status/being in a completely academic social context that makes other career paths abstract plays an important role. Anecdotally, I dropped out of a phd position after one year, and even though I really didn’t enjoy it dropping out felt like a huge failure at the time in a way that voluntarily quitting a “normal” job would not.
My current thinking (but very open to being convinced otherwise) is that lower fees to access publications wouldn’t really change anything fundamental about what science is being done, which makes it seem like a lot of work for limited gains?
My intuition is that forcing lower fees would make more money available for other parts of science. After all, most research is still done in universities and government agencies, and they usually have a limited budget to distribute each year. And honestly, I’m not sure if it so much works, it should be something that confederations of universities should be able to agree upon. I don’t know. To me seems much harder to try to force people not to publish in those reputable journals. In a sense, I feel they are extracting rents from the environment in a damaging way. In particular, it seems to be possible from a back-of-the-envelope calculation that ~10% of the cost of making science goes to these people.
My crux here would be that even though I think this has the potential to make research much more enjoyable to a broader group, it’s a bit unclear if it would actually lead to better science being done. I want to think that it would, but I can’t really make a strong argument for it.
It would be very interesting to know more about what attracts people to science careers, and what reasons for staying are—I think it’s very possible that status/being in a completely academic social context that makes other career paths abstract plays an important role.
I think that you are right in that social status can play some role, but I don’t think this is the leading reason. The leading reason, to me, seems to be that it gives people purpose in a way that other things don’t so much. In a way, people going into and sticking to academia seems more like a struggle to do work that advances human knowledge or their own knowledge; even if the environment is kind of shitty. That’s why it feels weird to drop out of academic research. Of course, this is very subjective and I might be wrong.
Thanks for this! I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this (see some previous posts) and there is a bit of an emerging EA/metascience community, would be happy to chat if you’re interested!
Some specific comments:
Could you elaborate the change in the system you envision as a result of something like this? My current thinking (but very open to being convinced otherwise) is that lower fees to access publications wouldn’t really change anything fundamental about what science is being done, which makes it seem like a lot of work for limited gains?
I think there is something here—I think it could be valuable to have more diverse career paths that would allow people to build on their strengths, rather than just having tasks depending on seniority. It also seems like something where it’s not necessary to design one perfect system, but rather that different institutions could work with different models (just like different private companies work with different models of recruitment and internal career paths). I think it would be very interesting if someone would do (have done?) an overview of how this looks today globally, perhaps there are already some institutions that have quite different ways of allocating tasks?
My crux here would be that even though I think this has a potential to make research much more enjoyable to a broader group, it’s a bit unclear if it would actually lead to better science being done. I want to think that it would, but I can’t really make a strong argument for it. I do think efficiency would increase, but I’m not sure we’d work on more important questions or do work of higher quality because of it (though we might!).
You could be right, but it’s not obvious to me. I have the impression a lot of people doing science are finding it quite hard and not very enjoyable, especially on junior levels. It would be very interesting to know more about what attracts people to science careers, and what reasons for staying are—I think it’s very possible that status/being in a completely academic social context that makes other career paths abstract plays an important role. Anecdotally, I dropped out of a phd position after one year, and even though I really didn’t enjoy it dropping out felt like a huge failure at the time in a way that voluntarily quitting a “normal” job would not.
Hey C Tilli, Thanks for commenting!
My intuition is that forcing lower fees would make more money available for other parts of science. After all, most research is still done in universities and government agencies, and they usually have a limited budget to distribute each year. And honestly, I’m not sure if it so much works, it should be something that confederations of universities should be able to agree upon. I don’t know. To me seems much harder to try to force people not to publish in those reputable journals. In a sense, I feel they are extracting rents from the environment in a damaging way. In particular, it seems to be possible from a back-of-the-envelope calculation that ~10% of the cost of making science goes to these people.
My intuition for this was that when you have a single kind of task, you are both able to specialize more but also allows you to concentrate more on the work you are doing, rather than having to jump between them, which I believe kills (my) productivity: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/cal-newport-industrial-revolution-for-office-work/. That being said, I might be wrong.
I think that you are right in that social status can play some role, but I don’t think this is the leading reason. The leading reason, to me, seems to be that it gives people purpose in a way that other things don’t so much. In a way, people going into and sticking to academia seems more like a struggle to do work that advances human knowledge or their own knowledge; even if the environment is kind of shitty. That’s why it feels weird to drop out of academic research. Of course, this is very subjective and I might be wrong.