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Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#41

Post by TeMPOraL »

wolfgke wrote: post #34
TeMPOraL wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree completely with the idea of your comment, but I have to nitpick on one thing: > So did the Pope when he sentenced Galileo to life in prison for promoting heliocentrism. As far as we can tell, Galileo was persecuted by the Pope not because of science, but because Galileo was basically an asshole, who abused his friendship with the Pope and then kept venting out against him. The issue was strictly political. See…

An additional link on the Galileo Affair: > http://qr.ae/R4iSbs

Thanks for posting! This was the text I actually remember reading most recently, but I couldn't recall where it was posted so I found the LW one.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#42

Post by Brotkrumen »

Asbostos wrote: post #23
OlafLostViking wrote: post #2

I'm in the lucky position to have access to most publications legally. But I cannot imagine what to do if our library wouldn't have subscriptions. The prices most publishers are demanding are insanely high and simply not financable if you need just a dozen papers or so. Especially considering that the research and the the writing is done by scientists, the review is done by other scientists. For free. The writers eve…

Prices for anything don't have to be justified. The market decides them. It turns out that people really want to pay those publishers, so they can charge high fees. It also turns out scientists really want to publish their work in those closed-access journals. Whatever attracts them to do that is what justifies the high prices. What attracts them? Universities use them as a proxy to judge job applicants. Blame univer…

Ah, I cant criticise a marketstructure that is coinincidental for flaws because there are prices. I should criticise one market participant over another due to reasons. Got it.

Scientific journals used to haven an important role in distributing and coordinating scientific work. A large part of that reason is gone in the age of near instantaneous and free distribution.

The coordination of the process could be done cheaply and pay for a bunch more PhDs instead of a useless middleman.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#43

Post by TeMPOraL »

kragen wrote: post #32
stegosaurus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mmm. As a poor person growing up in Britain I hold the same viewpoint. The whole argument around piracy and copyright seems to revolve around this idea of being 'too cheap' or 'not wanting to support'. When 10GBP for some music or 100+GBP for some software package (Office, for example) is 50% or more of your monthly pay, or you have no income at all, none of those factors come in to the decision. It's the only realis…

Hopefully we will have an open-source car you can download and print soon!

We have some "open-source" electric car patterns, so there's a start.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#44

Post by alkonaut »

I don't see any problem with having Elsevier manage publications that prevent people from copying their content. Just as long as that content is also available elsewhere for free, if it's publicly funded research.

I assume the problem is that Elsevier doesn't much like when articles are also made available outside their publications? Well, then either starve them of all publicly funded content or just have them accept that all the publicly funded content will always be available outside their publications. It's as simple as that.

A proposal requiring that publicly funded research is publicly available would be how hard to pass in as law? Why aren't such proposals made? If they are, what has stopped it from already being law?

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#45

Post by gd1 »

Kristine1975 wrote: post #31
TeMPOraL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur. I owe my whole career to piracy[0]. Now that I earn money I am happy to buy stuff I need and give back to society, creators, etc. But to a teenager from a middle-class family of a developing country, piracy was strictly about access to otherwise unavailable educational material. It's an open secret that Adobe and Microsoft had a model of non-enforcing piracy for private use, and I think it's pretty good. It…

> but in the area of education and science, limiting access is holding back the progress of the entire human race. Although I doubt Adobe and Microsoft did this out of altruism: By allowing piracy of their software for private use, it became widely used, and at work people wanted to continue using the software they knew -- this time paying for it.

Not only that, but in the case of MSVC/Visual Studio you have a talent feedback loop as well as a financial one. They need people to be pirating it or they'll have no windows developers in the future.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#46

Post by teekert »

I also don't like it but the paper needs be printed and reviewed. This is not free. Perhaps we should agree that the publishing group pays for the entire cost of the article so that it can be free after the process of publishing it? Or boycot paywalled publishers, maybe go for PLOS? If you have ever complained about paywalls, don't ever publish in a paywalled journal yourself.

I'm all for free papers by the way, nothing is more annoying that researching things and hitting paywalls but someone has got to pay the people doing the publishing work.

Also: If I order a paper from our library or I download it myself, it often comes with an on the fly generated cover page with my IP address on it. One can remove that, certainly but there may be other mechanisms to tag papers. Amazon reportedly investigated (and implemented?) putting specific, unique errors in DRM free ebook copies to identify sources of piracy. So I wouldn't advice you to just send the PDF around unless you are the author maybe and have a PDF that did not go through the publishing process.

Still loving the initiative though ;)

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#47

Post by stefantalpalaru »

teekert wrote: post #46

I also don't like it but the paper needs be printed and reviewed. This is not free. Perhaps we should agree that the publishing group pays for the entire cost of the article so that it can be free after the process of publishing it? Or boycot paywalled publishers, maybe go for PLOS? If you have ever complained about paywalls, don't ever publish in a paywalled journal yourself. I'm all for free papers by the way, noth…

> I also don't like it but the paper needs be printed and reviewed. This is not free.

True, and in open access journals that cost is supported mostly by the authors: https://www.plos.org/publications/publication-fees/

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#48

Post by pfortuny »

Asbostos wrote: post #21
kragen wrote: post #11

The only "online piracy" I see here is when Elsevier demands US$30 from you to get a copy of a paper written by scientists paid for by your tax dollars, who paid Elsevier page fees to publish it . Elsevier and similar companies are the thieves here, and they have a hell of a lot of nerve to be accusing scientists of "stealing" and "piracy" for working to create the very knowledge Elsevier shamelessly exploits. (Even…

Scientists still love giving up their rights to Elsevier though. They're as much to blame as the publisher. Maybe something would start to happen if scientists preferentially avoided citing non-openly published papers. They won't though, because their work is too competitive, but it might help to put a damper on it.

It is easy to give your money to Elsevier when your future career depends to a great measure in having Elsevier publish your research.

You may be angry but the scientist needs a future.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#49

Post by knlje »

teekert wrote: post #46

I also don't like it but the paper needs be printed and reviewed. This is not free. Perhaps we should agree that the publishing group pays for the entire cost of the article so that it can be free after the process of publishing it? Or boycot paywalled publishers, maybe go for PLOS? If you have ever complained about paywalls, don't ever publish in a paywalled journal yourself. I'm all for free papers by the way, noth…

> I also don't like it but the paper needs be printed and reviewed. This is not free.

I have peer reviewed various academic papers for Elsevier without receiving any monetary compensation. Moreover, quite small amount of academic papers is read in a printed form, at least among my colleagues.

Where the money goes to?

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#50

Post by mtgx »

Asbostos wrote: post #21
kragen wrote: post #11

The only "online piracy" I see here is when Elsevier demands US$30 from you to get a copy of a paper written by scientists paid for by your tax dollars, who paid Elsevier page fees to publish it . Elsevier and similar companies are the thieves here, and they have a hell of a lot of nerve to be accusing scientists of "stealing" and "piracy" for working to create the very knowledge Elsevier shamelessly exploits. (Even…

Scientists still love giving up their rights to Elsevier though. They're as much to blame as the publisher. Maybe something would start to happen if scientists preferentially avoided citing non-openly published papers. They won't though, because their work is too competitive, but it might help to put a damper on it.

Are there good self-publishing platforms, where the scientists can go, though? If there are, then yeah, they have no excuse.
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