Editing Science Publishing DAO (section)

=== Boycotts ===
The current system is compromising the scientific method as we know it. This compromise is felt within science: numerous Nobel Laureates and Fields Medalists have used their position to boycott the state of publishing and use of bibliometrics. An example of these boycotts is the Cost of Knowledge<ref>The Cost of Knowledge: See Wikipedia < <nowiki>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cost_of_Knowledge</nowiki>> and the organization’s website <<nowiki>http://thecostofknowledge.com/</nowiki>>.</ref> protest of Elsevier, the largest for-profit journal in the world, which was initiated in 2012 by Fields Medalist Timothy Gowers of the University of Oxford. Over 80% of the nearly 16,000 signatories pledged not to publish in Elsevier. However, four years after the signing of the Cost of Knowledge, only 38% of the original signatories maintain their commitments to their pledge, an indication of how difficult it is for even established scientists and institutions to reform the system. Despite the difficulties, attempts continue to be made to combat the problems with Big Publishing: in 2019, the entire University of California (UC) system cancelled their subscriptions to Elsevier, followed by MIT, University of North Carolina, and the State University of New York (SUNY) system. This push-and-pull is characteristic of the current landscape. Many scientists and research institutions want reform, but cannot maintain their momentum against the forces of Big Publishing. In the meantime, the quality of research has lowered, public trust in science has faltered, and scientific careers are full of painful moral compromises simply to exist. ''In its current state, the primary winners in the ecosystem are the publishers and university administrators.''

The major ways that publishing companies exert a negative influence are:

·      Paywalls – restrictions that require payment for access i.e., subscriptions - that prevent access to the papers that Publishers did not produce.

·      Poor management of the reputation structure via inappropriate use of indicators like IF and h-index

The problem with paywalls has been widely recognized and re-spawned the Open Science Movement (Figure 2) – which includes the Open Access Movement and Guerilla Open Access Movement. Projects such as ArXiv (preprint journal), PLOS One (major Open Access journal), Allen Institute (privately-owned Open Science Center), and Sci-Hub (pirated access to journals) are examples of non-traditional ways of publishing and accessing knowledge.