Inside arXiv—the Most Transformative Platform in All of Science

Academic publishing is dominated by for-profit giants like Elsevier and Springer. Calling their practice a form of thuggery isn’t so much an insult as an economic observation. Imagine if a book publisher demanded that authors write books for free and, instead of employing in-house editors, relied on other authors to edit those books, also for free. And not only that: The final product was then sold at prohibitively expensive prices to ordinary readers, and institutions were forced to pay exorbitant fees for access.

I've seen academics complain about AI training being Fair Use, while being completely aware of this. I can't fathom how ideologically brainwashed someone has to be to support that system. They know it's an entirely parasitic industry that makes fantastic profits by plundering research budgets. And yet, "ethics" demands that property owners be paid off.

I think sci-hub is a healthy contender to arXiv, but they are both pretty amazing and just need a better system for engaging accredited peer review/public review comments to replace predatory for-profit journals.