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Rusty Bertrand

@jillL @deborahh
I contacted scientists and documentarians on Twitter all the time. They let me pick their brains and always seemed happy to talk.

I would contact heads of research and libraries at fancy universities for information I couldnt find. They would point me in the right direction and sometimes even get all excited about it too.

People like to talk about their specialties.

7 July at 2:00 | Open on kolektiva.social
22 comments
JillL

@RustyBertrand Yes, you're probably right. And, I guess the worst thing they can do is say "no".

7 July at 2:02 | Open on theblower.au
Rusty Bertrand
Orion (he/him)

@RustyBertrand @jillL I already posted this elsewhere, but we love when people ask us about our research. We got into academia to spread knowledge, and we fucking adore explaining things at length. The thought that someone cares about what we have to say is intoxicating.

7 July at 16:30 | Open on writing.exchange
Thanasis Kinias

@orionkidder
I know there are a few ‘celebrity’ scholars who are different, but this totally describes almost all the academics I know...
@RustyBertrand @jillL

7 July at 21:28 | Open on historians.social
undead enby of the apocalypse

@jillL @tkinias @RustyBertrand @orionkidder I feel like there’s two archetypes of scientists, nerds who are motivated by a deep love for their field and nothing else, and are just really excited to talk about it, and weird elitists who are obsessed with status, their reputation, other people’s reputation, ect

8 July at 5:30 | Open on kolektiva.social
Rusty Bertrand
Orion (he/him)

@RustyBertrand @enby_of_the_apocalypse @jillL @tkinias I've known more than a few old white men who are also excited nerds, and I've known a couple of white women in academia who were awful. I'm just saying.

Edit: I should have phrased that much more carefully! Let me say: you are not wrong, as a generalization, but there are significant exceptions.

8 July at 13:36 | Open on writing.exchange
undead enby of the apocalypse replied to Orion

@orionkidder @tkinias @jillL @RustyBertrand old white people in general. Tho I feel like the women tend to be at least slightly more likely to not be awful. I guess the more privileged someone is, the more they tend to be obsessed with prestige

8 July at 15:25 | Open on kolektiva.social
Orion (he/him) replied to undead enby of the apocalypse

@enby_of_the_apocalypse @tkinias @jillL @RustyBertrand That's it exactly. Nobody is inherently good or bad based on their like demographic.

Proximity to systemic power, however, has a strong tendency to make people *terrible*.

8 July at 16:09 | Open on writing.exchange
Rusty Bertrand replied to Orion

@orionkidder @enby_of_the_apocalypse @tkinias @jillL

Yep. The thought stayed on my mind. It's the way they were brought up. Some are amazing.

Not all old white men are the absolute worst. But the absolute worst are all old white men.

8 July at 17:02 | Open on kolektiva.social
Alex McLean

@orionkidder @RustyBertrand @jillL Then why do academics prop up these hyper-profitable publishers? So many people in this thread pretending that this is all an external evil, but it is completely in the gift of academics to get together and stop throwing public money in the black hole of these publishers' astonishingly high profit margins.
And no, emailing authors directly asking for copies usually does not work.

8 July at 21:30 | Open on post.lurk.org
Rusty Bertrand
Alex McLean

@RustyBertrand @orionkidder @jillL It's possible for academics to get together and change the system they're working in - some fields are a lot better than others.

8 July at 21:35 | Open on post.lurk.org
Rusty Bertrand

@yaxu @orionkidder @jillL
One guy in the thread said his team had to pay $11k to publish without the paywall.

8 July at 21:38 | Open on kolektiva.social
Alex McLean replied to Rusty

@RustyBertrand @orionkidder @jillL Yes, it's a scam, academics know this, but still choose to support it, rather than join those organising against it.

8 July at 21:49 | Open on post.lurk.org
Tiota Sram

@RustyBertrand @jillL can confirm as a published researcher that I'd be happy to share copies of my papers. I've been lucky enough to have been able to use grant money or other institutional funds to pay "open access fees" so that the publisher will make copies available for free (typically ~$2000 or so). In at least one case I later checked the publisher's official page only to see a "buy this article link" on top (that was IEEE for the curious). As mentioned elsewhere, the reviewing work is uncompensated and even members of the program committee which manages the review process typically aren't compensated or are barely paid anything.

Plus, in scientific circles the norm is that the authors will do their own editing & typesetting, so it's not like the publishers are providing any of the editorial services they do in other genres. Sometimes if the primary author is not a native English speaker they'll require the author to pay an editor to review the language.

Academic publishing enrages me almost every time I think about it.

Please do pirate any and all academic material with an absolutely crystal-clear conscience, and/or send us emails asking for copies.

#AcademicChatter

@RustyBertrand @jillL can confirm as a published researcher that I'd be happy to share copies of my papers. I've been lucky enough to have been able to use grant money or other institutional funds to pay "open access fees" so that the publisher will make copies available for free (typically ~$2000 or so). In at least one case I later checked the publisher's official page only to see a "buy this article link" on top (that was IEEE for the curious). As mentioned elsewhere, the reviewing work is uncompensated...

7 July at 16:33 | Open on kolektiva.social
Shiri Bailem

@RustyBertrand @deborahh @jillL statistically odds are they're autistic and you just asked them to infodump...

You're not bothering them, you're bothering anyone who may be supervising them lol

7 July at 9:38 | Open on foggyminds.com
🇯🇴 Severian 🔬🔭📡📚

@RustyBertrand @jillL @deborahh

The Internet made the scientific publication system pointless.

Now it survives because evaluation of the scientific activity requires publication in peer reviewed international journals, and the editorial companies own the most prestigious journals.

It is parasitic: the govenements and universities pay the scientists and the grants, they write the articles which are then handled by generically unpaid editors (which are scientist working for governments and universities) to unpaid referees (which are again working for governments and universities). The articles are published and then sold to the same governments and universities which paid the whole process. Governments and universities require to their scientists to participate in this exploitation chain in order to contract and promote them.

I am not making this up. It is as ridiculous as it sounds, and it is not even working quite well in some areas, in which we are living a "retraction crisis", like behavioral science for example.

@RustyBertrand @jillL @deborahh

The Internet made the scientific publication system pointless.

Now it survives because evaluation of the scientific activity requires publication in peer reviewed international journals, and the editorial companies own the most prestigious journals.

It is parasitic: the govenements and universities pay the scientists and the grants, they write the articles which are then handled by generically unpaid editors (which are scientist working for governments and universities)...

7 July at 21:53 | Open on mastodon.la
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