Academic Publishing is An Exploitative Farce

Access to peer-reviewed publications costs thousands of dollars, but the authors aren’t paid. Why not?

In order to succeed in academia, you must succeed in academic publishing. The length of the published works section of your CV (the academic equivalent of a resume) determines whether you can get a full-time job, the prestigiousness of the institution you get to work at, whether you get grants, and whether you get tenure. If you do not publish, your chance of having a traditional academic career will die.

Different schools have different expectations for what an “adequate” amount of publications is, of course. A school that is not focused on research might expect to hire someone who has published 1–2 things per year; a more demanding school might expect far more. These publications, at least in the social sciences, must be empirical and novel, and should be in journals that are very well-regarded. If you publish theoretical articles, or reviews, you won’t be seen as contributing novel information to the literature to the same extent as someone publishing new work. Book reviews, in particular, are next to useless.

Along with securing empirical publications in high-tier journals, you are also expected to present your work at numerous conferences, in…