What’s the deal with how we review papers for venues (like conferences and journals) for free and then they go on to sell and restrict access to them? How about let’s only review for venues that freely distribute papers and stop reviewing for those that restrict access? We can also stop reviewing for those that charge high publishing charges, I believe over $100 per submission is unacceptable.

We have the power to put an end to closed access research. By only reviewing for venues that freely distribute papers, we will ensure they have the best publications and become the premier venues. It will then become in everyone’s best interest to publish in venues with freely accessible papers.

This attitude has transformed machine learning publishing after the editors of “Machine Learning Journal” (MLJ) quit to create JMLR. Without the ability to referee papers with good reviewers, a journal cannot function or will be forced to select from lower quality reviewers which is a negative feedback loop. In many fields (and growing in machine learning again) it appears that those in power of the venues which are thought of as “required for academic career advancement” do not share the ideal that all researchers should be able to access research whenever they want even if they are poor.