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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 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.
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
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.