Why Johnny Can't Speak: a Cost of Paywalled Research

theodp writes "That there's no easy way for her to get timely, affordable access to taxpayer-funded research that could help her patients leaves speech-language pathologist Cortney Grove, well, speechless. 'Cortney's frustration,' writes the EFF's Adi Kamdar, 'is not uncommon. Much of the research that guides health-related progress is funded by taxpayer dollars through government grants, and yet those who need this information most-practitioners and their patients-cannot afford to access it.' She says, 'In my field we are charged with using scientific evidence to make clinical decisions. Unfortunately, the most pertinent evidence is locked up in the world of academic publishing and I cannot access it without paying upwards of $40 an article. My current research project is not centered around one article, but rather a body of work on a given topic. Accessing all the articles I would like to read will cost me nearly a thousand dollars. So, the sad state of affairs is that I may have to wait 7-10 years for someone to read the information, integrate it with their clinical opinions (biases, agendas, and financial motivations) and publish it in a format I can buy on Amazon. By then, how will my clinical knowledge and skills have changed? How will my clients be served in the meantime? What would I do with the first-hand information that I will not be able to do with the processed, commercialized product that emerges from it in a decade?'"

Comments

Simple

[bondsbw]

Taxpayer-funded research should be accessible by taxpayers.

Re:Simple

[girlintraining]

Taxpayer-funded research should be accessible by taxpayers.

It is, technically. By technically I mean, it was published once, in a 'free' publication, sent to a few libraries, and thus the public access requirement was met. But since you'll never find it there because it isn't indexed, searchable, or in any way known... it's effectively useless. See, once again our shitty co(r)p-y(a)-right system fucks us; They make it so if you assemble a collection of works together into a database, that now counts as a unique and copyrightable work unto itself. So... although the study is 'free' to the public... the "doesn't have to drive 500 miles to a library in the boon docks and find it on a shelf" convenience is what they charge for access.

What we need is a 'google' of science/medical studies. Unfortunately our government's archaic and purposefully not updated methods of publication mean that if you want to get a digital copy... you have to contribute the labor to re-digitalization. Of course, you can get a digital copy... for a small additional processing fee. -_-

NIH has addressed this

[TXISDude]

NIH funded research must be put into PubMed Central, the NIH public portal, within 12 months of publishing in a journal.

Re:NIH has addressed this

[nbauman]

That's right. The journal that Cortney Grove gave as an example, Topics in Language Disorders http://journals.lww.com/topicsinlanguagedisorders/pages/default.aspx , does provide free access to papers funded by NIH, Wellcome Trust and Howard Hughes http://journals.lww.com/topicsinlanguagedisorders/_layouts/oaks.journals/nih.aspx

I feel for her. I've been in the same situation as her and I've made the same arguments. Years ago it was even worse.

That said, I think she's exaggerating the situation somewhat. I think she should have a talk with a good reference librarian in her field.

(I do similar research, not in speech pathology but often in visual pathology, orthopedic handicaps, etc. She may have different needs, but I track down a lot of papers, with varying degrees of success.)

You might want to have access to 100 journals, but nobody reads 100 journals cover to cover. I read a half dozen core journals every week, and I got access to a good database and a few journals through a couple of professional organizations. The New York Public Library has a few good databases online free to its cardholders, and the EBSCO Academic (or whatever they call it) has some good journals too. Every week or so I come across a journal that isn't included, so I email the author, or ask my friends. It used to be easy to get into an academic library, but now that universities are monetizing, it's getting difficult (but not impossible). The public library has all kinds of arrangements for ordering papers from other libraries.

I think I know what Grove is doing. She's reading journal articles, looking at 200 footnotes, and she wants to read the ones that look interesting. I've done it myself. It's the sign (or maybe the vice) of a good scholar.

Just to get an idea of the kind of articles we're talking about, here's one of the free articles in
http://journals.lww.com/topicsinlanguagedisorders/Fulltext/2013/01000/Morphological_Awareness_Intervention_in_School_Age.4.aspx?WT.mc_id=HPxADx20100319xMP

But there's a lot of redundancy. I used to collect a dozen articles, read them, and they all seemed to be saying about the same thing. A review article in the New England Journal of Medicine is about the same as a review article in The Lancet. If you've read one, you don't have to read the other (or the other six). If you can't read it in Topics in Language Disorders, you can probably read it in another dozen journals.

So (since she's not doing research in an academic institution) she probably doesn't need 100 articles. She needs a professor or librarian or somebody to steer her through the literature and give her a half dozen articles that she should read.

It's also an exaggeration to say that her clients won't get the benefit of the latest research. A practicing clinical speech therapist doesn't have to follow the basic research and theoretical arguments in the academic journals (although it's nice, and it's the sign of a good practitioner). You should be treating people according to consensus statements and guidelines. A lot of the latest stuff turns out to be wrong.

You should find everything you need for clinical practice in a half a dozen core journals and a few professional meetings. If you want to be up to date, you have to take continuing education -- no way out of it. And the people who give continuing education courses can guide you through the literature.

But if she takes the current research that seriously, she should have some academic affiliation, which would also give her library access. Admittedly, some charge exorbitant fees. But some universities used to give free library access to their alumnae, and even if they do charge

Corporations

[cphilo]

The United States has become a nation of public financing and private profits.

Could US Attorney Carmen Ortiz Help Her?

[theodp]

JSTOR an Entitlement For US DoJ's Ortiz & Holder: "If Aaron Swartz downloaded JSTOR documents without paying for them, it would presumably be considered a crime by the USDOJ. But if U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz or U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder did the same? Rather than a crime, it would be considered their entitlement, a perk of an elite education that's paid for by their alma maters."

Paywalls ... strangulation of scientific progresse

[Taco Cowboy]

Whether or not taxpayer-funded research should be accissible to the taxpayers for FREE is a matter to be acertained, but the fact is that it is no longer possible for anyone, including the professional researchers, to know where to find the result of the various facet of related research on a given field.

It is as if we are back to the pre-Internet days.

Before Internet, it was a Herculean task to find out if there had been a research carried out on any particular subject, simply because there was no one central database.

When Internet first arrived, the situation was greatly improved - although there were still no centralized database for all research results, at the very least we could search for it online.

Now ?

Not only the research papers are hidden behind paywalled, most of them don't even appear on search queries anymore.

Paywall does not only representing GREED that is retarding the progress of the human society, it is actually STRANGLING the progress of scientific research.

Academic co-dependency

[dstates]

The proprietary publishers have established an elaborate co-dependency relationship with academics. Academics depend on journal editorships and citations for promotion. Editors get many perks and prestige as a result of being an editor, but the selection of who becomes the editor is up to the publisher. Reviewers get pre-publication access to results. Yes, the reviewers are supposed to hold the information in confidence, but does pre-publication access help them in thinking about which directions to take in their own work? Absolutely. An extensive web of co-dependence has evolved between the proprietary publishers and the academic community.

Academics generally do not receive royalties from journal articles, but they do from book publications. Who publishes those books? The same publishers that publish the proprietary journals. Who selects which authors will be invited to publish books? The publishers.

Elite institutions and large university systems negotiate discounted and preferred subscription agreements giving their researchers free access to a wide range of journals, which in turn makes it more attractive for academic "stars" to go to those institutions. The faculty at those schools benefit from these favorable access agreements. Are we surprised that University of California faculty voted against open access?

It is also not just speech and language research. The majority of work in fields like cancer research is also published in paywalled journals. Cancer patients may not be able to wait a year before articles appear in open access archives.

The vast majority of academic work is supported by public funding, and charitable foundations support most of what is not government supported. High time to require open access. The academics are not going to do it themselves.