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How Scientists Are Circumventing Journal Paywalls (bbc.co.uk)
Bruce66423 writes: Some academics are fighting back against publishers of academic journals by providing copies of papers to researchers who don't have access. For some reason, the publishers aren't happy! Cognitive scientist Andrea Kuszewski said, "Basically you tweet out a link to the paper that you need, with the hashtag and then your email address. And someone will respond to your email and send it to you." That begins the conversation, and then the scientists cover their tracks: "Once contact is made, all subsequent conversation is kept off of social media — instead, scientists correspond via email. The original tweet is deleted, so there's no public record of the paper changing hands. Kuszewski and others say the method is necessary to get up-to-date research in the hands of academics from developing countries, and her and other scientists say they consider the pirating 'civil disobedience' against a system that includes for-profit publishing companies."
I've worked at several research universities over the years. The "official" way to get articles for journals you don't subscribe to is usually to make an interlibrary loan (ILL) request. In theory it works similarly to what was just described, in that the request is out to a large pool of libraries and then one will (usually) reply fairly quickly with the article.
The problem though is the inconsistent quality. The optimal method is for the library to download the article themselves and then send along the PDF unaltered; some do this. Others see this as a violation of the subscription terms and will only respond by scanning a print journal if they have it, and sending the scan, this is slightly worse. Even worse yet I have had some where the library "loaning" the article will download it, print it, then scan it in grey scale on some awful scanner from the 80s, add their cover page, then send that as a PDF. (Note that the libraries never need the article to come back from "loan" as it is all digital.) This process usually takes 1-3 working days depending on availability, motivation, trade winds, phases of the moon, etc.
If this system worked better there would be less need for researchers to directly circumvent the system through twitter. Even better of course would be if fewer journals were paywalled at all.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I was under the understanding that, at least in the US, papers resulting from public funding should already be in the public domain.
This is only now starting to be mandated by funding agencies. Previously, even publicly funded research was routinely paywalled behind incredibly expensive journal subscriptions.
Depends on the field. Most journals are ok with making preprints available, but some are not. Here is a list of policy by journal.
I think the end of paywalled research is finally coming
Legislation is the last refuge of useless middlemen.
Libertarians don't oppose this. The companies publishing papers don't have a "right" to stay in business.
While the current system may have made sense in the days of physically published journals it doesn't anymore.
Authors aren't paid.
Authors provide articles in required format.
Reviewers aren't paid
There is no need for this industry to remain. There is no need for the government to subsidize them. And Libertarians don't support the subsidizing of companies.
The only reason to keep the information private is if the researchers (authors) of the article wanted to keep it behind closed doors. Which, of course, doesn't make much sense. Why would one publish something if one wanted to keep the research private.
The only libertarians who may argue for this are those who don't understand that the creators of the information and the reviewers of the information (the parties responsible for the intellectual content) want the information to be disseminated and they don't directly receive compensation for their research. (Of course the University system has the "publish or perish" concept. But that's a separate issue regarding compensation.)
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
In the Days Before Computers, you called (or wrote or faxed)
One day we were cleaning up some old office rooms and we found a stack of pre-formatted postcards for this purpose. The cards were formatted like this
_____(date)
Dear _____,
Would you please send me _____ (number) reprint[s] of your paper titled _____, published in _____(journal, volume, pages)? Thank you!
Sincerely yours,
_______
(Address, PO Box ____)
No wonder we've switched to something better than snail mail since then ;)
Mother Theresa is a poor choice if you're going for contrast, she was a fairly sadistic and hypocritical person who denied seriously ill people actual medical treatment in her "hospitals", denied the sick contact with their families, and got nothing but the best medical treatment for herself when illness reared its head.
>Information costs time and/or money to produce.
The information you speak of wasn't produced through the time or the money of the journals, but of the researchers that performed the studies. The "information creators" you speak of get zero compensation for their works being sold by the journals.
Instead of $200+ for a journal subscription
Hah! If only they cost $200...last year my current institution paid something like $4500 for two physical copies of Nature.
Most of the other subscriptions are actually provided in packages which cover a large number of journals (~50 - 100) and cost > ~$100,000 / yr.
Here's some info on UC's costs, the average cost for a life sciences journal is $1,700.
.: Semper Absurda