I have to laugh at alot of academics who think publishing in journals is the be-all and end-all.

Think again. Publishing companies *love* academics who write things, because they submit them for free, and when they’re accepted the publishing company owns the copyright, and makes money from selling the journals. Yes, you’ll say, the journal publisher does it as a service to academics. *Big laugh* Are you joking! If it wasn;t a viable business model they wouldn’t do it. Not to single any one publisher out, but Elsevier publishes over 2000 journals, and in 2005 made revenues of 2,097 million Euros. What academics are doing is creating free content for a commercial enterprise which makes a nice pile of money by formatting the articles and “publishing” them. Nice way to make a living.

Academics would be better off concentrating on doing real research to help the world, not stuck writing articles that few people read.