Half of All Research Papers Published In 2011 Already Free To Read

Author's Personal Websites by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 01:37 · Score: 0

Many journals seem to allow authors to publish on their own personal websites, and this is how many papers can be downloaded 'around the paywall', but unlike the repositories, there is no guarantee that the author's personal webpage doesn't break, move or disappear (say, when moving from institution to institution). I wonder when publishers will crack down on this ...

Re:Author's Personal Websites by barlevg · 2013-08-21 02:00 · Score: 4, Informative

Journals also typically allow you to put your article on arXiv. In general, I'm pretty sure you retain the rights to your own article. As an example: the American Institute of Physics' Transfer of Copyright Agreement [pdf] allows the author

to give permission to third parties to republish print versions of the Article or a translation thereof, or excerpts therefrom, without obtaining permission from AIP Publishing LLC, provided the Publisher-prepared version is not used for this purpose, the Article is not published in another conference proceedings or journal, and the third party does not charge a fee.
In other words, as long as you're not using the corrections you get back from AIP's peer review process, you can put your article anywhere that doesn't charge a fee and isn't a journal. The agreement goes on to EXPLICITLY grant you the right to the journal-edited version on your own personal webpage or on arXiv.
Re:Author's Personal Websites by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 04:28 · Score: 0

In other words, as long as you're not using the corrections you get back from AIP's peer review process, you can put your article anywhere that doesn't charge a fee and isn't a journal.
It is less stringent than that. You can include the corrections you make due to the peer review process. You just can't use the version that includes the editing and formatting done by their staff. Pretty much any part of the draft process that the document is still created by you, even if others gave input, is ok. It is only after you hand it off and others directly started editing the document.
Re:Author's Personal Websites by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 04:59 · Score: 0

Publishers DO crack down on this.
Elsevier flats out disallow all forms parallel publishing of any version of the manuscript. Not even the pre-print. Not even after 6-12 months. This applies to anyone who has some form of requirement to open access, like a university policy or mandate from the funding agency, which applies doubly for me.
I'm having to pay for the Open Access alternative, which cost a staggering $3300.
Re:Author's Personal Websites by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 05:50 · Score: 0

Elsevier allows various postings with a few caveats. You can post pre-prints anywhere noncommercial, with the caveat that two of their journals won't accept manuscripts that were already posted, but would allow posting after being accepted for publication. Manuscripts that include peer review work are more tightly controlled than other publishers I've worked with, but can still be posted to ArXiv, personal & institute websites, and distribution through direct contact. They have issue with "systematic distribution," any system that distrubtes and accumulates automatically by subject area, which in large part seems to come down to a spat with Pubmed, while still allowing ArXiv explicitly.
Re:Author's Personal Websites by excelsior_gr · 2013-08-21 08:29 · Score: 1

This is rather the norm in many journals (even those of the much-hated Elsevier). You don't even have to leave the peer review corrections out! "Publisher-prepared version" means the formatted version with all the graphs, logos, layout etc. that will be found verbatim in the published version. The text of the "preprint" is still owned by the author.
Re:Author's Personal Websites by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 08:39 · Score: 0

if you retained the rights there'd be no need for Elsevier (or whoever) to give permission, since everyone is going 'Elsevier does allow...' I'm gonna take a wild stab and say Elsevier has the rights
Re:Author's Personal Websites by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 10:54 · Score: 0

The copyright agreements I've seen before all transferred copyright to the journal. So in that sense, the preprint is not owned by the author, but the journal does give them permission to post the preprint with a few exceptions (e.g. no posting it for a fee, sometimes no posting it in other journals or proceedings).
Re:Author's Personal Websites by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 11:15 · Score: 0

Elsevier doesn't even allow preprints to be parallel published if you have any form of mandate or policy to do so, which means more or less everyone that has any form of public funding, and most big universities which have some form of open access policy.
Read the fine-print on Elseviers retained author rights. They have these amendments to their rights because they are actively fighting back against this, which is clearly hurting their bloated profit margins.
Re:Author's Personal Websites by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 14:14 · Score: 0

This was posted above by just a few posts and followed up to a direct link to Elsevier's policy that shows it is wrong for preprints. If your open access policy applies to something other than preprints, you might have a problem, but as stated, you seem to directly contradict their website.

What about all the non-researchers? by Wycliffe · 2013-08-21 01:41 · Score: 3, Interesting

If I was a real researcher with a real budget, I would be happy to fork over a couple bucks to read an
article I needed to reference in my research but I would guess that there are alot more non-researchers
like typical slashdot reader than actual real researchers. I also turn to google when I hit a paywall
because it's usually more of a passing interest and I'm not going to pay $5 to $35 to read an article
that I might only understand half of anyways but it would sure be nice if there was a way to give
access to the non-professional general public as a way to pass on useful knowledge instead of hiding
it behind a paywall where only a select few people in the same field are willing to pay for it.

Re:What about all the non-researchers? by Wycliffe · 2013-08-21 01:46 · Score: 1

As a side note, I wonder how much of the money exchanging hands in these paywalls is just
going back and forth between different people in the same field. By eliminating paywalls, the
information is available to more people and researchers can stop trading money to read each
other's papers.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by 91degrees · 2013-08-21 01:48 · Score: 1, Insightful

There's a question of convenience.

I was doing some reasearch at work into computer vision systems. I could have asked for them to allocate a certain budget for buying the papers, but that would involved going through several laers of bureaucracy to authorise this. It was easier to seach for the authors.

There's also the fact that it's not always possible to tell whether this is going to be useful from the abstract, and most people have an aversion to wasting money.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by blueg3 · 2013-08-21 01:52 · Score: 3, Informative

Academic researchers rarely pay for articles (in my experience). However, their institutions often have access through subscriptions purchased by the library.
They also frequently use Google Scholar to find free copies of paywalled articles that the don't have access to. It's a great approach. Another solution is to find the contact e-mail of the lead author and politely ask him for a preprint copy.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by JoshuaZ · 2013-08-21 01:54 · Score: 5, Informative

Very little. You don't generally get paid for papers. The money from the journals in almost all fields goes to the publishers, not anyone in the field.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 01:55 · Score: 0

I wonder how much of the money exchanging hands in these paywalls is just
going back and forth between different people in the same field.
That's easy, none of it. It all flows from researchers to publishers, who do not produce anything.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by serviscope_minor · 2013-08-21 01:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

If I was a real researcher with a real budget, I would be happy to fork over a couple bucks to read an article
No, you wouldn't. You see, 80% of everything is crap. Actually it's more like 99%.
Given the wildly misleading titles and abstract, sometimes because they are just bizarrely off the wall, sometimes because thy overinterpret the results and sometimes because they are just optimistic or badly written, most papers you can dismiss before you read the whole thing.
Of the ones that remain and are actually genuinely relevant, 80% are crap.
Sure $2 for a useful paper wouldn't be too bad, but you have to read beyond the abstract in perhaps 10 or 20 papers. The cost rapidly mounts up. And the faff and annoyance.
You'd start to get really pissed off really fast if you kept spending $2 on utter wastes of time.
Actually, very many researchers want their work to be freely avaliable, and almost all of them stick the work somewhere it can be freely downloaded, such as on their website. If you don't, then you lose citations and that is important.

--
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by loufoque · 2013-08-21 02:26 · Score: 1

Most laboratories have yearly subscriptions that give them access to all relevant publications.
I've never seen a researcher fork over some of his own personal money to acquire a paper.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 02:34 · Score: 0

Look, only stupid people pay those individual paper prices. The prices are insane. Like an order of magnitude insane. Most researchers in a given field have access to journals already via subscriptions already paid for by their host institution (e.g., university), same for students. For papers where they don't, the usual approach is either to request an interlibrary loan (often handled electronically at no or low cost to the requester) or send a polite note to the authors asking them for a copy of their paper. Even for the general public, if you visit the reference section of most major university libraries, they have public terminals where you can browse to your heart's content at no cost, something I take advantage of all the time.
If people pay those ridiculous per-paper prices, it's only because they have money to burn and are too lazy to search for free or cheaper solutions. Sometimes they are students who are foolish enough not to realize that their library already subscribes to that journal, and when they land on some rip-off/gateway page as their first google hit, they whip out their credit card because their term paper is due in 2 hours.
I've seen this happen. The look on their faces is quite disturbing when I explain to them that the university already has a subscription to that journal, and they only had to go through the university web site to access it for free. I don't know what kind of scam some of these gateway services have with the publishers, but it is pretty pathetic when their web sites show up ahead of the actual publishers web sites in searches. Many of these sites don't automatically let you know that your institution already has access.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by Tsiangkun · 2013-08-21 02:59 · Score: 3, Informative

we generally pay to be published in the glossy covered journals. The direction of travel for the money is from the researchers to the journals.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by interkin3tic · 2013-08-21 03:00 · Score: 2

Researchers at universities generally have access through their host institution. This is still annoying as your university then has to waste millions of dollars subscribing to every crappy elsevier journal out there, using money from your grants. And there will still be an interesting-sounding article in a journal your university decided not to pay the toll for. And if you're at home, you have to log in via VPN to read it.

All because researchers prefer to focus on their research rather than shaking off parasites.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by Tsiangkun · 2013-08-21 03:01 · Score: 1

Most articles can be had in a few minutes for those who have even remedial social skills. FB post " Can someone send me this article ?" wait 10 minutes.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by serviscope_minor · 2013-08-21 03:16 · Score: 1

All good points, but:
All because researchers prefer to focus on their research rather than shaking off parasites.
Research is not an easy career. I tried it and it is amazingly stressful to try to build a career. You have to really care about it and to get a permenant job you have to work really, really, really long hours for very long periods.
The only reason you do this is because you are so fundementally interested in the work that it seems worthwhile and you are driven to keep pushing.
Not only that but if you don't keep pushing, your job will go to someone who does because they will have all the papers.
"shaking off parasites" isn't part of the job description, and while worthy it won't actually get you a job. Neither will it advance your very competitive career even once you have a job.
Sure it would be nice to have time to do such a thing, but most people aren't really interested in that (they're interested in research) and don't have time anyway.

--
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by interkin3tic · 2013-08-21 03:28 · Score: 1

I'm not suggesting we make it part of the job description, just that we avoid submitting to journals that are scummy, and demanding open access legislation.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by brillow · 2013-08-21 03:45 · Score: 1

Generally? How about ever.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 04:35 · Score: 0

$2?!
More like $40, not to mention the inconvenience in going about to buy it, so add another $20 for loss of productivity.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by mspohr · 2013-08-21 04:45 · Score: 1

You are right that those in the academic world generally have access via an institutional subscription.
However, the rest of the world doesn't generally have access.
It's not a good thing to exclude so many potential users and contributors of knowledge especially when you consider that academic worlds tend to be closed in a kind of "group think" and that real innovation tends to come from people who "think different".
As a physician without a current institutional sponsor, I am confronted with this problem daily. I would like to have access to the latest research in my areas of interest but am frequently blocked by paywalls. I do realize that I can often get the article through alternative means but the time it takes and the delay are a significant cost.

--
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 04:47 · Score: 1

publishers, who do not produce anything.
The publishers provide a useful service, which is surprisingly not obvious to most people who deal with them. It is much more obvious to those that have worked on the other side and tried organizing things like journals and proceedings. The fact that they way overcharge for what they provide is a big problem though, but claiming they offer nothing isn't going to help fix problems. Acknowledging what they do in terms of organizing, quality control (even if inadequate at times), and distributing is kind of fundamental to forming alternative, non-money-grubbing solutions that actually get stuff done.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 07:52 · Score: 0

But to be fair, we then turn around and ask for a promotion (or tenure, or a new job) based on getting in the glossy covered journals.
I'm not saying that it's good money, because most places it is not, but it's not like we pay because of the goodness of our hearts.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by hedwards · 2013-08-21 09:40 · Score: 1

That's not fair, that's a post hoc justification for it. The research is what's supposed to get you the job, not the journal that your publishing in. If a college is interested in hiring you, they're going to review the articles anyways. Failing to do so is just plain negligent.
Sure, it might be a useful filter, but it's not the journal that dictates the quality of the research, it's the research. Institutions that just look at that are liable to wind up hiring up a frauds before too long as the people caught committing academic fraud usually have signs in their research.
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 11:04 · Score: 0

I received a typeset "quality control" version to approve from Elsevier last week. It had over 300 errors (introduced by them of course) in the equations. It was just 9 pages, and little over 100 equations. Unacceptably awful. I've gone through 3 revisions now and finally gotten it down to just 1 error they still hadn't corrected.
Thanks Elsevier India for that "quality control"!
Even worse, I wrote it in LaTex, using their templates, and submitted the source files themselves. And they had clearly copied everything by hand. That is how fucking awful they are at their job, and I'm going to have to pay $3300 in their Open Access fee for this?
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 14:17 · Score: 0

I once got a burger at a restaurant that was completely burned on the outside while still raw on the inside. Therefore restaurants are useless...
Re:What about all the non-researchers? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 23:37 · Score: 0

The money pays for the journals' contribution to the paper - any formatting/editing they perform, distribution/hosting/archiving. The alternative to the paywall/high journal prices is to charge submitting authors submission or page fees. The ones I've seen are generally in the $2-3k range and while a different type of barrier, are still a barrier to the dissemination of knowledge. For lab sciences open access makes a lot of sense - $2-3k is a round off on the costs of doing the research. For math or some of the humanities, it represents a much larger relative cost, and so I still go back and forth on the trade offs.

tax payers money? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 01:42 · Score: 0

they must be hosted on the HiggsOS running SchroedingsCat webserver.

The Free Copy Bay by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 01:42 · Score: 0

Free copies of copyrighted material online helps researchers? Go piracy!

Free copies? by Beorytis · 2013-08-21 01:43 · Score: 1

Now how many of the "free" copies crawled by Google are actually free, and how many are just "pirated", e.g. posted by an instructor as reading material for a class, without permission from publishers?

Will this finding lead to some DMCA takedown notices?

Re:Free copies? by blueg3 · 2013-08-21 01:53 · Score: 4, Informative

A very large fraction of them are preprints posted by the authors. Usually legally.
Re:Free copies? by loufoque · 2013-08-21 02:29 · Score: 1

It is legal for the author to post his article on his website as long as it does not include the publisher's editing.
It is considered a working copy, a draft or a preprint.
Re:Free copies? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 02:48 · Score: 0

Quick, get some lawyers on this, and remove all benefit to the public in a hurry!
Re:Free copies? by godrik · 2013-08-21 03:34 · Score: 1

Most of it is true. Thought I must say that I never really understood all the legalese associated with paper publications. Most of the time, I am not sure whether it is ok to post a preprint or not. What I usually do is post a technical report on arxiv before I submit a journal paper.
Re:Free copies? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 04:33 · Score: 0

Maybe it is different for other fields, but pretty much every journal I've worked with in physics had a rather clear and explicit 1-2 sentence part of the copyright agreement that said you can share your paper as long as it is not the version edited & formatted by them, and you don't charge money for it.
Re:Free copies? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 10:52 · Score: 0

It isn't by default legal in general. The only reason that is legal for the vast majority of journals you hand over copyright to is because their agreements give such permissions to the author. In principle a journal could choose not to do so, but I haven't seen it happen in any fields close to the ones I've worked in.

Not the same... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 01:44 · Score: 0

What Peter says 'When researchers hit a paywall online, they turn to Google to search for free copies — and, increasingly, they are finding them,' it sounds like he's including distribution sources that may not have legal rights to do so--i.e. copies placed on file sharing sites by individuals with access to paywalled documents... That isn't really the same thing as "openly available" IMHO....

Re:Not the same... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 01:53 · Score: 1

Also ironically, this study presumes (and confirms the opposite, IMHO) that research papers are a commodity that can be compared quantitatively and not qualitatively, which isn't true. Not all papers are created equal--have equal peer review, editing, data pools, important(expensive) topics..
Re:Not the same... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 04:36 · Score: 0

I can't give any statistics that cover the broad swath of research papers. But using that technique to get papers, I have never come across a illegal distribution source in the fields I've worked in. It was always one of three things: a preprint repository like ArXiv, one of the authors' personal webpages, or the department/project's webpage.

Already? by Opportunist · 2013-08-21 01:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

Considering that in the EU a nontrivial amount of research grants are paid by taxpayer money, I'd say "already" is not the term I was thinking of. "only" would be more the qualifier that qualifies.

--
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.

Re:Already? by buchner.johannes · 2013-08-21 02:33 · Score: 1

How about you and your mods RTFA?
"The first report measures the availability of scholarly publications in 22 fields of knowledge across the European Research Area, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and the United States, between 2004 and 2011."
Just because the survey was done by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation does not mean they considered only EU-funded research. And yes, there is a large push for open access for EU-funded research, but they have not made it a requirement yet.

--
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Re:Already? by interkin3tic · 2013-08-21 03:22 · Score: 1

I think "already" was used in the sense of "the transition is further along than we thought it was."
Re:Already? by Opportunist · 2013-08-21 04:03 · Score: 1

If it's not a requirement yet, than "already" is even more off than I thought. In other words, if it's not ALREADY a requirement to tell ME the results of what MY money funded, something is really wrong here.

--
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Re:Already? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 04:23 · Score: 0

You are looking for something this article is not about. Stop complaining about the article for that and start using google.

Re:Necessary Amendments by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 01:52 · Score: 0

"just interprets the laws"

I don't even know what that means,

"If there is a congressional supermajority, they can pass a new law."

I don't think you understood #3 there genius.

Wrong by golden+age+villain · 2013-08-21 02:03 · Score: 1

Sadly, half of them are also probably wrong (yes, I work in the life sciences).

Re:Wrong by oldhack · 2013-08-21 02:08 · Score: 1

Most of them will be wrong. Half of them will be "not even wrong".

--
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.

quality vs quantity by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 02:05 · Score: 0

what if it's only the crappy half that's free?

Re:quality vs quantity by jones_supa · 2013-08-21 02:23 · Score: 1

Interesting point.

citing paywalled versions and impact factor by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 02:15 · Score: 0

I wonder how many citations in papers reference the nominally paywalled paper, but are actually the result of reading a non-paywalled version on Arxiv or the author's website? That is, if Journal of Excellent Results claims that its average paper is cited 142.3 times within the following year, and they use that to justify the $1000/yr subscription, does that mean that 200 (at least) people paid the $1000? Or did most of those 142.3 folks read it somewhere else, then copy the citation info from the JER website (since author copies often don't have the right pagination or publication date)

Which half? by TentativeFate · 2013-08-21 02:22 · Score: 3, Insightful

Half of all research papers are not worth the paper they will never be printed on.
How many peer-reviewed papers are free to read?

Re:Which half? by tlhIngan · 2013-08-21 03:38 · Score: 2

Half of all research papers are not worth the paper they will never be printed on.
How many peer-reviewed papers are free to read?
My thoughts exactly. Or not even that - how about the papers you want to read? It doesn't matter if 99% of the papers are available for free if the one you want is paywalled only!
And it assumes that it's an even distribution - that in all fields, a paper you want has a 50% chance of being free (or you can find an equivalent for free). Depending on the field and the article, this assuming is not true at all.
Re:Which half? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 05:31 · Score: 0

I'd say that even 80% of peer-reviewed papers are worthless. Pushing out Ph.Ds (who need to publish to graduate) means mountains of papers making extremely or marginally incremental progress in a field.
I recently went through 500 papers on OLAP and data mining through the ACM's Digital Library. Less than 10 were useful. Two of the useful papers were (a) the seminal OLAP paper and (b) materialized view optimization for OLAP. The other 200-300 papers on OLAP were on incrementally tiny optimizations to the first two papers, published by legions of Ph.D students trying to graduate, and ultimately worthless.

Also. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 02:33 · Score: 0

90% of research papers published in 2011 not worth reading.

wee! piracy rules! by martin-boundary · 2013-08-21 03:00 · Score: 1

In other words, 50% of papers are pirated copies downloaded by researchers. (*) This is not a good thing in the long run, because it doesn't help solve the journal problem.

(*) the pirates who distribute them are often the original authors (**)

(**) the original authors are not the copyright holders.

Re:wee! piracy rules! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 04:41 · Score: 0

Except when the copyright agreement explicitly gives the author permission to distribute, post, and make derivative works from the paper they submit.

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2013-08-21 03:06 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'm glad Aaron Swartz killed himself by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 03:06 · Score: 0

to bring us these free papers.

Short term versus long term by morinpatmorin · 2013-08-21 03:16 · Score: 1

Many of these papers are obtained from authors personal web pages. That's great for current papers but won't help in 10-20 years when those web pages are gone. The legal long-term solution is for authors to publish their papers in preprint repositories, like the arxiv, that will outlast them. Funding agencies should make this mandatory for all publicly-funded research.

Re:Short term versus long term by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 05:49 · Score: 0

Many of these papers are obtained from authors personal web pages. That's great for current papers but won't help in 10-20 years when those web pages are gone.
That's why publishers charging for access isn't the bad then you stupid people think it is.

The legal long-term solution is for authors to publish their papers in preprint repositories, like the arxiv, that will outlast them.
arxiv won't out last the journals.

Funding agencies should make this mandatory for all publicly-funded research.
No they shouldn't.
Re:Short term versus long term by morinpatmorin · 2013-08-21 06:33 · Score: 1

Troll much?
Re:Short term versus long term by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 23:48 · Score: 0

Different A/C here. The GP did a poor job presenting it, but the open-access argument is nowhere near as clear cut as advocates would have you believe. Journals may not seem to provide good value, but there are real costs to what they do and unfortunately, there is a limited market to support that work, so they charge high prices either for subscriptions or in publication fees. Heck, arxiv provides a fraction of what journals do and still requires a great deal of money via grants to operate. There is no free lunch here folks - you can either get the funds from the readers, the writers, or from some third party via grant/government funding. All have their cons - barrier to interested reader, perverse incentives on journal standards/barrier to publish, and censorship/national barrier concerns respectively

Email the author(s) by John+Bokma · 2013-08-21 03:27 · Score: 2

If Google with the title of the paper and filetype:pdf fails just email one of the authors. So far I have been able to get papers that way.

For example I am interested in scorpions and am in contact with several professionals who answered in the beginning my questions and helped me to ID species I encountered. Now, years later, I have found a few new species and we've been on field trips to collect those. But before that I was already on a mailing list to which new papers where mailed on a regular basis before official publication.

Possibly, not every researcher has the time or patience to deal with laymen / amateurs but so far my experience has been great. The arachnid researchers I've emailed with (and still am in contact with) and been on field trips have been extremely friendly and respectful to me. To me a very fresh breeze compared to the IT world where a lot of people who think they know something are constantly out there to stamp down on people thinking they look smarter that way :-( (Hello, Slashdot!)

--

Perl Programmer for hire

For how long? by brillow · 2013-08-21 03:47 · Score: 1

There are journals that let you see their current articles for free, and then lock them up after 6 mos or a year. Even at my school there are online subscriptions which only let us see things back to like 1996, then if we want to see past that we have to pay (or the university could pay for a more deluxe subscription).

In any case, there needs to be a concerted effort to download all this stuff and torrent it or something.

Re:For how long? by morinpatmorin · 2013-08-21 06:37 · Score: 1

In any case, there needs to be a concerted effort to download all this stuff and torrent it or something.
There are such efforts underway. Some sites have more useful collections of scientific articles than my own university's library.

More than 50% thanks to our Russian friends by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 03:50 · Score: 0

My institute subscription does not cover many respectable journals I sometimes use for my research, due to budget cuts and other excuses. If Google Scholar does not have a link to a free copy, then I use a well-known book and scientific articles search engine (no need to mention it here) presumably maintained by our Russian friends.

If a paper is informative, it will appear in my citations list, if not, it will find its way to my computer's recycle bin (thus less printing, and less dead trees). Unfortunately most of the published work is irrelevant or not helpful to a researchers' job. Reading such papers is part of the job. Free access just makes the job easier. Paywalls are beneficial only to the walls maintainers.

Piracy Proof by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 06:02 · Score: 0

This is just yet more proof that Google is an enabler of Piracy.

Why have they not been shut down?

Now we just sit back and wait by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 06:21 · Score: 0

Tons of useful products will flood the market and we'll all be amazed.... any second now

Re:Necessary Amendments by lgw · 2013-08-21 10:23 · Score: 1

1. Term limits, including for justices.

I'm a big fan of the idea of 18 year terms for SCOTUS justices, to give the benefits of lifetime appointment without the stupid "I'll retire when my team has the presidency" BS.

2. Repealing Amendment 17 and returning the election of senators to state legislatures

We changed that for a reason. Changing it back might give is a couple of years while the lobbyists set up shop in the state houses, but ultimately I think that will lead to more state-level corruption.

3. A congressional supermajority to override Supreme Court decisions (overruling what could be a stacked court)

The congress can impeach - that's enough.

4. Spending limit based on GDP

Yup. It'll never happen until the "we can print infinite money" bubble bursts, but bet idea in the list.

5. Taxation capped at 15%

Too low, I think, if that's a flat tax that everyone pays. Capping spending would solve the problem anyhow, but most business owners and other high earners are fine with paying 20% for the infrastructure the state provides.

6. Limiting the commerce clause, and strengthening private property rights

Now those amendments might actually pass! If only someone would propose them.

7. Power of states to override a federal statute by a three-fifths vote.

No thanks, we already fought that war once.

--
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.

ACM publishing rights criteria by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 11:37 · Score: 0

Here's an example of what an academic rights giveaway looks like in the computer security field:

Your submission, "" was accepted for publication in CCS'13 conference proceedings. You must assign publishing rights to ACM before ACM can proceed to production.

There are several ways you may now assign publishing rights to ACM. You may ask ACM to manage your rights for you (including pursuit of plagiarism and clearance of third-party re-use permissions) by transferring the requested rights to ACM using either the traditional ACM Copyright Transfer Agreement or the ACM Publishing License.

The community has also asked ACM to offer up-front OA fees should authors wish to make their works permanently open access (OA) in the ACM Digital Library.

Should you choose to pay the article fee guaranteeing permanent open access, you may still ask ACM to manage your publishing rights for you by copyright or license. But you will also have a third option: you may choose to manage all rights yourself, by selecting the Permission Form, granting ACM a non-exclusive permission to publish your work.

As of April 2013, ACM is offering authors the option of paying an Article Processing Charge in exchange for permanent OA (open access) for your article in the ACM Digital Library. Should you choose to pay the article fee guaranteeing permanent open access, you may still ask ACM to manage your publishing rights for you (including pursuit of plagiarism and allowing ACM to grant re-use permissions) by transferring the requested rights to ACM using either the traditional ACM Copyright Transfer Agreement or the ACM Publishing License. But you also have a third option: you may choose to manage all rights yourself, by selecting the Permission Form, granting ACM a non-exclusive permission to publish your work.

The Open Access option requires the payment of the APC (Article Processing Charge). The fee is $1,500 if you are not a member of ACM or $1,100 if you or any of your co-authors are ACM members. If you choose the Open Access option, ACM will invoice you separately. If you are not already a member of ACM, consider joining ACM now to take advantage of the member discount rate http://campus.acm.org/public/qj/quickjoin/interim.cfm?promo=PROSOA.

If you do not want to pay the OA fee, you will need to transfer publishing rights to ACM either by using the traditional ACM Copyright Transfer Agreement or choosing the new ACM Publishing License.

Please click on the following link to access and complete the required process of choosing publishing rights for your submission.

Please take a moment to review the form above for errors in the title and author listing. If corrections are needed, please PROCEED to the selected FORM and use the EDIT/tool function located at top of the form and make any necessary changes before submitting the form. The changes will automatically be sent to the PC or proceedings coordinator upon completion. We request that you attend to and complete the form above within 72 hours of the sending of this email.

If the link above does not contain your paper's information, please contact me at your earliest convenience.

Deborah Cotton
ACM Publications
rightsreview@acm.org

Re:ACM publishing rights criteria by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 14:26 · Score: 0

Maybe you should link to the actual ACM Copyright Transfer and ACM Publishing License, as they are the parts that actually talk about what and where you can post versions of your article.

ACM rights assignment by BIOS4breakfast · 2013-08-21 11:39 · Score: 1

(oops, just posted this as an AC. I thought I was logged in) Your submission, "" was accepted for publication in CCS'13 conference proceedings. You must assign publishing rights to ACM before ACM can proceed to production. There are several ways you may now assign publishing rights to ACM. You may ask ACM to manage your rights for you (including pursuit of plagiarism and clearance of third-party re-use permissions) by transferring the requested rights to ACM using either the traditional ACM Copyright Transfer Agreement or the ACM Publishing License. The community has also asked ACM to offer up-front OA fees should authors wish to make their works permanently open access (OA) in the ACM Digital Library. Should you choose to pay the article fee guaranteeing permanent open access, you may still ask ACM to manage your publishing rights for you by copyright or license. But you will also have a third option: you may choose to manage all rights yourself, by selecting the Permission Form, granting ACM a non-exclusive permission to publish your work. As of April 2013, ACM is offering authors the option of paying an Article Processing Charge in exchange for permanent OA (open access) for your article in the ACM Digital Library. Should you choose to pay the article fee guaranteeing permanent open access, you may still ask ACM to manage your publishing rights for you (including pursuit of plagiarism and allowing ACM to grant re-use permissions) by transferring the requested rights to ACM using either the traditional ACM Copyright Transfer Agreement or the ACM Publishing License. But you also have a third option: you may choose to manage all rights yourself, by selecting the Permission Form, granting ACM a non-exclusive permission to publish your work. The Open Access option requires the payment of the APC (Article Processing Charge). The fee is $1,500 if you are not a member of ACM or $1,100 if you or any of your co-authors are ACM members. If you choose the Open Access option, ACM will invoice you separately. If you are not already a member of ACM, consider joining ACM now to take advantage of the member discount rate http://campus.acm.org/public/qj/quickjoin/interim.cfm?promo=PROSOA. If you do not want to pay the OA fee, you will need to transfer publishing rights to ACM either by using the traditional ACM Copyright Transfer Agreement or choosing the new ACM Publishing License. Please click on the following link to access and complete the required process of choosing publishing rights for your submission. Please take a moment to review the form above for errors in the title and author listing. If corrections are needed, please PROCEED to the selected FORM and use the EDIT/tool function located at top of the form and make any necessary changes before submitting the form. The changes will automatically be sent to the PC or proceedings coordinator upon completion. We request that you attend to and complete the form above within 72 hours of the sending of this email. If the link above does not contain your paper's information, please contact me at your earliest convenience. Deborah Cotton ACM Publications rightsreview@acm.org

Re:Necessary Amendments by Anonymous Coward · 2013-08-21 23:26 · Score: 0

2 and 7 are linked - part of why the 20th and 21st centuries have seen such growth in the federal government is that the 17th Amendment removed a check by the states on its power - the taking of a state duty by the federal government (education for instance) would have been resisted by the senate if senators had still been responsible to state legislatures.

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