Why thousands of researchers are boycotting nature’s upcoming AI journal

For-profit academic journals are absolute parasites that should be boycotted. Junior researchers have no option to do this, but any tenured professor should take their articles--and therefore prestige--elsewhere. It's absolutely astounding that the publishers 1) get free content 2) get free labor to edit that content 3) get studies paid for with government research money and 4) get libraries to pay thousands of dollars for subscription to that content. Numerous online alternatives have proven there are minimal costs to hosting articles that are free for everyone, so the only thing preventing researchers from moving is the chicken and egg problem that they need citations and that existing journals have prestige and will generate citations and therefore tenure. The cycle needs to end.

It’s time for the for-profit journals to die. More and more I only use open source options for literature searches.