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 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.