Current practices of commercial scientific publishers and their implications for the scientific ethos

There seems to be emerging, in recent years, a growing concern about the manner in which the commercial scientific publishers of today have helped distort the basic spirit of science by introducing essentially commercial ethos into scientific publishing. By attaching to their journals the rather dubious-valued index of 'impact factor' (IF), they have sought to enhance the perceptional value of their journals, making the authors go on a merry-go-round seeking to have their publication tagged by the high IF of the concerned journal. Furthermore, it has been noted that while the scientists provide the main research material for their publication and other services, like refereeing and serving on editorial boards, all for free, they are constrained to buy their own published product at exhorbitant prices, which the journals have been charging at ever escalating scales, in terms of their price. This note seeks to analyse the situation and underscore the danger of scientists being exploited by the scientific publishers, and to forewarn of the dangers in the use of false-valued index like IF for the purpose of evaluation of a scientist's work and its deleterious effects on the spirit and ethos of science.