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Universities Spend Millions on Accessing Results of Publicly Funded Research (theconversation.com)
Mark C. Wilson, a senior lecturer at Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland, writing for The Conversation: University research is generally funded from the public purse. The results, however, are published in peer-reviewed academic journals, many of which charge subscription fees. I had to use freedom of information laws to determine how much universities in New Zealand spend on journal subscriptions to give researchers and students access to the latest research -- and I found they paid almost US$15 million last year to just four publishers. There are additional costs, too. Paywalls on research hold up scientific progress and limit the publicâ(TM)s access to the latest information.
That's why I use Sci-Hub when I need to find an old paper I wrote.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I don't see why there's an entitlement for universities in New Zealand to be given free access to work that was paid for with the tax money of people in other countries (and I'm sure the U.S. is #1 by a huge margin).
The story would have made a better point if the author actually figured out how much New Zealand universities pay to get access to papers paid for by New Zealand taxpayers.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
You read the first line of the summary!
Profits deserve to go to whoever can convince their victims to pay for the privilege of being fleeced.
This is the way of Almighty Prosperity Jesus, the man who preached the rule that whoever has the gold makes the rules.
The idea this article is based on isn't wrong, but you have to wonder how much of the "publicly funded" research these New Zealand universities were trying to access were actually funded by New Zealand. I'm not sure I can say that NZ academics deserve free access to research funded by the EU or US.
Yes, New Zealand is complaining about paying for access to research publicly funded by the US.
One more reason why this is so irritating, is that the publishers hardly have to pay anyone. The scientists writing the papers do so for free, and often have to do the final print formatting themselves. The paper is then sent to the peer reviewers, who perform the reviews for free. In the end, the publisher doesn't pay for content, layout or review, so the journals don't have good reasons to be expensive. Things will gradually change, but it's taking a long time simply because scientists want their name in a big name journal.
Am I wrong in saying that journals have staffs of experts that read numerous submitted papers, select the important ones, work with the authors to improve them a bit and then publish them? It's not as though journals aren't doing any work and are then charging people for their services.
Disclosure: My father is a professor at a public university and editor of a large not-for-profit journal.
brought to you by I Pity Inanimate Objects - Godley & Creme
To make faster progress, it is necessary to decouple the ownership of current journal titles from the provision of editorial and publication services, so that competition among publishers helps to control prices.
Yes, that's the solution, let's just make Twitter for academic research. There's no way that the "paywalls" do anything for reliability, integrity, verifiability, anything. The unanticipated problems with this would be zero.
Now, to publish my global-climate-change-denying paper on a vanity domain. It'll go right after the one where I debunk the moon landings and show that it's comet dust contaminating our vaccines that cause autism.
I'm betting that the research being accessed wasn't being funded by the NZ public though. Why should NZ researchers benefit from the largess of the American taxpayer? It's not as though each country in the world funds research to the same percentage of GDP. There's a difference between "Taxpayer funded" and "funded by taxpayers in another country" and there's no reason why people in country B should benefit from the taxes paid by citizens of country A.
In addition to subscriptions to new journals, universities are also paying to continue accessing old journals that were "paid for" decades ago. This is because many universities are removing the books in their libraries.
http://mercurynews.com/2016/12/24/montgomery-on-ucscs-outrageous-mass-destruction-of-books
As a result, the universities have to pay the publishers for online access to the old, archival journals that used to sit on the library shelves.
Private sector tax.
Like this with fafsa too
Research paper neutrality has been repelled.
"The vibrant and open research that Americans cherish isn't going anywhere."
"it's a better way of making money"
"[research paper neutrality] had slowed investment"
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Nothing is useless. Everything is the universe figuring itself out and all research is real in some dimension.
At least from my experience, in most fields in CS, researchers are not that different from software engineers. A better term would be 'article writer', since that is their main concern. They don't care whether these articles enrich human knowledge, let alone freely accessible. Some of them will probably fudge the data a bit to make the article look better. For them it is just a job, just like for the rest of us, in a culture where economic gain is the only thing that matters.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Most medical research is published in PubMed, and you can always read it.
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Depends. Sometimes a paper in our lab can have co-authors from Brazil, Germany, Russia, and France.
So it depends on what paid for each co-authors research. It might be a combination of public and private funding.
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However, even in this scenario, it's not the EU or US the ones who get the money.
The simple fact is that the essential quality control involved in scientific publication - vetting the scientific content and standardizing the presentation - is expensive to perform, and somebody has to pay for it. Traditionally, that work has been done by publishers who charge subscription fees for the service, and are periodically accused of price-gouging. Open-access journals which have attempted to bypass the commercial publishers have invariably discovered much to their dismay just how expensive it is. When they started, they predicted that vetting, copy-editing and maintaining an article online could easily be done for under $1000. But they now charge authors several thousand dollars to publish an article, money generally taken out of grant funds which otherwise would be used to support the actual research being reported. And still these open-access journals claim to be losing money. Is this a better system? I'm not so sure.
Why is this News for nerds?
And who cares anyway? As soon as those students graduate they look around at the NZ job listings for "scientist" and fuck off overseas for a job.
Is a bunch of politically correct black women with poofy hair who make a fuss about all kinds of perceived racial injustices and such, This is SO FUCKING ANNOYING.
If it weren't for women like them, Roy Moore would have won against Doug Jones
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I just had my very first citation of my paper according to google scholar. I have no idea what they said about my paper. I need to pay £100 to find out. My university (Oxford) doesn't have access to that journal. If Oxford doesn't have access, who the f*** is supposed to have access to that journal? I tried sci-hub, but the journal cunningly blacklisted ip addresses known to originate from sci-hub.
"All female black voters are sassy obnoxious whiners" - haruchai
Just contact the author of that paper. Most academics will share with you directly.
"All butthurt Anonymous Cowards are whiny obnoxious losers" - haruchai
Fixed that for you. You're welcome.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body