Even if the money alone isn’t enough to warrant the scientist to publish in a no-name journal, the journal would soon stop being a no-name journal because scientists would expect that their colleges want to publish in the journal to get the money. That expectation makes the journal more prestigious. The expectations that other people expect the journal to get more prestigious in-turn will increase it’s prestige.
I’m inclined to dispute this point. Setting quite aside the difficulty of setting up such a project, supposing that the money came ex nihilo and we magically caught the ear of prestigious scientists… it is my intuition that our journal would nevertheless fail to gain prestige. I believe that scientists who published with us would be seen as having been “bought”, and I expect that this scorn would overpower any demonstrable merit the research or our journal as a whole possessed. “I want to publish in this journal to get the prize money” is a different motivation than “I want to publish in this journal because it has prestige,” and I don’t think that gap is as easily crossed as you seem to think.
I imagine a possible funder like Zuckerberg who wants to advance medical science and is willing to put down 5 million dollar per year for a decade.
I assume that there’s a sizable number of prestigious scientists who dislike the traditional publishers enough that the currently consider publishing in the highly prestigious journals just because they have a high impact factor a bit like selling out.
If you can convince people that the standards of the new journal are actually better than the existing ones that further helps with making the decision to publish in the journal seem virtuous.
Finally I don’t see how taking money for publishing instead of taking money from a grant seems more like selling out.
If you can convince people that the standards of the new journal are actually beter than the existing ones that further helps with making the decision to publish in the journal seem virtuous.
I concur with the implication, but that’s a very big “if”. It’s possible that many scientists know that e.g. the CONSORT standards are good, but how many do you think would be able to differentiate between two sets of standards, and determine which one is “better”? In addition, I’m not sure that “virtue” really is much of a factor when deciding in which journal to publish one’s research, otherwise we wouldn’t see people following the incentive gradients they are.
Finally I don’t see how taking money for publishing instead of taking money from a grant seems more like selling out.
One is status quo, the other is novel. Sometimes that’s all it takes. I can easily imagine a conversation like the following:
“Hey Kit, in which journal did you publish your recent research paper?”
“Oh, I published it in The Journal of High Standards.”
“Huh, I’ve never heard of them. Why didn’t you submit it to The Prestigious Yet Unvirtuous Journal?”
“Well, The Journal of High Standards paid me a few thousand dollars.”
“Really? That sounds suspicious. You sure it isn’t a scam?”
The idea of money coming from the government to fund scientific research is already well-established (since it’s what we do), it naturally appeals to our democratic ideals, and everyone understands the incentive structure involved. The idea of money coming as a reward from a publisher is novel (and therefore weird), and the incentive structure is murkier (and therefore suspicious).
This all said, I’m speaking solely from my intuition regarding how people would react to this situation, and my intuition seems to differ substantially from yours. I’m not trying to convince you that you’re wrong and I’m right; rather, I’m trying to signal that there is a wide possibility space here, and I’m not sure why you’ve picked “offering money will lead to greater prestige” out of it when other possibilities seem to be just as likely, if not more so.
I would argue that this model can also used by governments. If the US government funds the journal, they could limit the money donation to US scientists.
But even today not all grant money comes from government bodies. There are likely researchers who only use government funding and who might be weary of third party funding but today most researchers do take some third party funding so I don’t see the big difference to taking a grant from a nongovernment source.
I’m inclined to dispute this point. Setting quite aside the difficulty of setting up such a project, supposing that the money came ex nihilo and we magically caught the ear of prestigious scientists… it is my intuition that our journal would nevertheless fail to gain prestige. I believe that scientists who published with us would be seen as having been “bought”, and I expect that this scorn would overpower any demonstrable merit the research or our journal as a whole possessed. “I want to publish in this journal to get the prize money” is a different motivation than “I want to publish in this journal because it has prestige,” and I don’t think that gap is as easily crossed as you seem to think.
I imagine a possible funder like Zuckerberg who wants to advance medical science and is willing to put down 5 million dollar per year for a decade.
I assume that there’s a sizable number of prestigious scientists who dislike the traditional publishers enough that the currently consider publishing in the highly prestigious journals just because they have a high impact factor a bit like selling out.
If you can convince people that the standards of the new journal are actually better than the existing ones that further helps with making the decision to publish in the journal seem virtuous.
Finally I don’t see how taking money for publishing instead of taking money from a grant seems more like selling out.
I concur with the implication, but that’s a very big “if”. It’s possible that many scientists know that e.g. the CONSORT standards are good, but how many do you think would be able to differentiate between two sets of standards, and determine which one is “better”? In addition, I’m not sure that “virtue” really is much of a factor when deciding in which journal to publish one’s research, otherwise we wouldn’t see people following the incentive gradients they are.
One is status quo, the other is novel. Sometimes that’s all it takes. I can easily imagine a conversation like the following:
The idea of money coming from the government to fund scientific research is already well-established (since it’s what we do), it naturally appeals to our democratic ideals, and everyone understands the incentive structure involved. The idea of money coming as a reward from a publisher is novel (and therefore weird), and the incentive structure is murkier (and therefore suspicious).
This all said, I’m speaking solely from my intuition regarding how people would react to this situation, and my intuition seems to differ substantially from yours. I’m not trying to convince you that you’re wrong and I’m right; rather, I’m trying to signal that there is a wide possibility space here, and I’m not sure why you’ve picked “offering money will lead to greater prestige” out of it when other possibilities seem to be just as likely, if not more so.
I would argue that this model can also used by governments. If the US government funds the journal, they could limit the money donation to US scientists.
But even today not all grant money comes from government bodies. There are likely researchers who only use government funding and who might be weary of third party funding but today most researchers do take some third party funding so I don’t see the big difference to taking a grant from a nongovernment source.