Slashdot Mirror
Should All Research Papers Be Free? (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader points us to an article at The New York Times: There's a battle raging over whether all academic research papers should be made free to all. These academic papers are typically locked behind paywalls, and only those who have access to the university network and pay a premium subscription fee get to read these papers. "Realistically only scientists at really big, well-funded universities in the developed world have full access to published research," said Michael Eisen, a professor of genetics, genomics and development at the University of California, Berkeley, and a longtime champion of open access. "The current system slows science by slowing communication of work, slows it by limiting the number of people who can access information and quashes the ability to do the kind of data analysis" that is possible when articles aren't "sitting on various siloed databases."
Most academic papers are published with financial support from federal funding agencies. Too bad publishing academic papers is a private industry with a profit motive to keep you from accessing them. Swartz died over this.
Most? Almost every one in the country. Schools are funded by tuition and tuition is primary sponsored by MASSIVE government loans that basically allow schools to set tuition for students at any price, on government credit. Part of the school budget should be used to fund journals.
I recently did a paper on Albert Michelson -- who died in 1931, so all of his papers have actually been in the public domain for more than a decade.
Despite this, I had to do some hunting to find copies that weren't paywalled, even back into the 1880s. Props where due, though -- the Harvard University library collection is excellent, high-resolution, and wide open.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Amen to that!
There is absolutely no reason for "scientifc journals" to perform this hold-up on scientific papers. Especially when you consider that scientists doing the reviews are not paid most of the time! The whole scientific community should really learn from the IT open-source movement.
The worst part of it is there might be an easy to use solution and nobody seems to care! It is called "Self journal of science" and is available here: http://www.sjscience.org/
Think about "Github, but for scientfic papers!"
It features the possibility for any scientist to publish a paper (in Latex because this is what scientists use). The document can be viewed online and each paragraph can be discussed online, using a revision system where pears can review your article (think about a star-based system on steroids, for scientists).
Disclaimer: I know the developers who work on this project. They definitively need some help to spread the word, and more than anything, I know they need papers published on the website. If you happen to know scientists who might be interested, please let them know the "Self Journal of Science" exists! These guys are really trying to make things change and they need your help!
1) Universities
2) Universities
3) Universities
Seriously, why the fuck is this even an issue?
Ah, because profit.