Like we’d expect.
Mike the Mad Biologist offers, via Buzzfeed
Instead of taking years to assess the fossils and publish reports on their features in a long series of studies, White complained that the discovery team had tried to publish a dozen papers on the find. But this effort led to their rejection by the prestigious journal Nature, a diss widely discussed in paleontology.
And adds,
I’m glad to see scientists pushing back on being forced by publishers to fit their writing to a structure that is driven by a business model, not the needs of scientists and their readers.
Note: The homo Naledi find.
Something about this story doesn’t sound quite right to me. Or rather, if it IS right, the landscape is changing. I (O’Leary for News) would not have expected a top tier journal to be so grubby about big news.
Either something is wrong with the find or something is wrong with science publishing.
I’ve placed my bet. What’s yours?
See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (human evolution)
Hat tip: Pos-Darwinista