Biologist Terry Van Raay typically spends his days in the lab running different foods through an artificial intestine, trying to uncover the links between gut health and the nervous system.
But like many scientists, the associate professor of cellular biology at the University of Guelph in southern Ontario has become irate with the business of academic publishing.
“Publishers are charging us to publish our work, then they turn around and ask you to do the peer review [for other researchers’ articles] for free,” said Van Raay. “There are really only five publishers that own [virtually] all the journals and they make billions of dollars. It has to change.”
Academic publishing is a
