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Three ways science is being corrupted by money
9 Apr 2016
Researchers don’t get paid per article. They get paid a salary based on a kind of ‘level’ system. The more eminent you are, the higher your level, the more you get paid. Publishing an article actually costs a researcher money. Most publishers, even those of open access journals, will charge a fee for the author to publish the article (that links to a study of journals charging publishing fees. Academics will study bloody anything, it’s very cute). This is called an article processing charge and it’s the equivalent of that rubbish ‘service fee’ everyone tacks on to everything.
¶Scientists have to pay to get promoted
You’ll notice that I mentioned that the more eminent a researcher becomes, the higher their level and the more they get paid. To become more eminent, one must publish more articles. ‘Gotta spend money to make money’ never applied more accurately than here. But unlike the service fee you might pay for something like letting the bank make money off your money, article processing charges can cost you as much as $4,000 (according to that delightfully quaint study of the fees charged for studies) with the average hovering around $1,000.
¶Your school fees pay for research
It’s no secret that the money we spend on courses at university subsidises our research efforts. Usually, researchers will pay the fee from a grant given to them by the government, but not all research gets a grant. Universities are invested in high research output because that boosts their international reputation. So universities also give researchers grants that come straight from their own coffers. But research makes zero money unless it’s somehow commercialised (something that researchers are simply awful at doing). So the student pays for it instead.
¶It stops research from being published in the first place
But, hey, universities would probably just spend the money on other stuff if they didn’t have to spend it on research. The real problem lies with researchers who are with institutions that simply can’t afford break into the market.
So, this means when governments make cuts to education, all of a sudden the research output goes down as seen in the massive education cuts that happened in the U.K. a short while ago. But it also means dire straights for the developing world. This is of particular interest because as the world becomes more globalised, the need for cross-cultural research becomes more imperative. Most of the psychology I write about here only applies in the westernised world and even then only in communities that aren’t overly influenced by the values of other cultures. Why? Well, because research done in other cultures can’t get published!
¶Money might be the root of all evil, but it’s also the root of all knowledge
So, scholars can’t contribute to the knowledge pool because publishers demand too much cash. It’s almost like the money corrupted them. Who would have thought?
“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.” - Dorothy Parker
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