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Should All Research Papers Be Free?

nytimes.com

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Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#71

Post by platform »

Taxpayer funded research must be free to read.

Also, a research that has been at least partially tax-funded resulting in a publication, must not be usable as an necessary ingredient for a commercial patent.

That is, a patent can include this type of research, but it cannot be a 'necessity' for the patent to be viable. Or, if the particular research, is necessary for a given patent to be viable, the patent must grant no-fees, no-commercial-strings-attached use.

This allows a corporation to establish patents as means to protect itself, while allowing the tax funded research to be used by others without commercial strings attached

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#72

Post by lacker »

VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #60
mmmBacon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think code used to produce results should be published as well.

I agree with this in theory... but do you really want my garbage, ad hoc, messy code that I used to pipe output from one program to another?

Yes, because if it doesn't even compile then I will call BS on your results.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#73

Post by mrdrozdov »

This isn't the right question. The question is, "Who should be profiting from research papers?" The Journal performs quality control for the sake of consistency and prestige, but the papers and their reviews are put together by researchers, commonly at great cost for marginal personal gain. The article's hero doesn't really care. She needs to read papers, and needs other people to be able to read them, so she built sci-hub (demo: https://sci-hub.io/10.1038/nature16990).

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#74

Post by themartorana »

VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #60
mmmBacon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think code used to produce results should be published as well.

I agree with this in theory... but do you really want my garbage, ad hoc, messy code that I used to pipe output from one program to another?

I don't know... Did you do it right?

;)

But seriously.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#75

Post by [deleted] »

mirimir wrote: post #52
jordigh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about the same as everyone else: about 15 USD per paper, e.g. https://dl.acm.org/purchase.cfm?id=2756548&CFID=761526954&CF... They also have a somewhat restrictive licensing on their software: http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/softwarecrnotice This part is kind of weird, as they have a noncommercial clause on their copyrighted algorithms, which makes them non-free. On a slightly different note, I was some…

How the hell can that be "non-profit"? Where is the money going? Free conferences in Dubai?

[deleted]

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#77

Post by CompuHacker »

VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #60
mmmBacon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think code used to produce results should be published as well.

I agree with this in theory... but do you really want my garbage, ad hoc, messy code that I used to pipe output from one program to another?

It's better than nothing.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#78

Post by karmelapple »

mirimir wrote: post #28
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is the scientists who are writing the papers and editing them, the journals provide a valuable service as intermediaries between the scientists. Whether this service is best provided "for free" or for profit is another question. In some fields, the leading journals are already published by not-for-profit organizations such as the ACM, but I am not sure that they are doing a better job than Springer or Elsevi…

Does ACM sell individual papers? If so, what's the price?

Most definitely, here's a list of journals: http://dl.acm.org/pubs.cfm?CFID=591346815&CFTOKEN=85546644

And here's an article that, for instance, costs $15 to download: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=954342&CFID=591346815&CFTO...

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#79

Post by cube00 »

VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #60
mmmBacon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think code used to produce results should be published as well.

I agree with this in theory... but do you really want my garbage, ad hoc, messy code that I used to pipe output from one program to another?

Definitely yes, then I can see if somewhere in that garbage, ad hoc, messy code why I can't replicate the result myself.

Re: Should All Research Papers Be Free?

#80

Post by rfrey »

ikeboy wrote: post #57
rfrey wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From searching on the web it seems like the only open access journals who charge thousands are the traditional publishers (Wiley, Springer) with an "open access" option. They probably have internal conflicts around cannibalizing existing business. Exclusively open access journals seem to charge $USD500-1000. Happy to be corrected with other examples though.

https://www.plos.org/publications/publication-fees/ lists significantly more than that.

I stand corrected, thank you. Furthermore, the journals seem to have many more articles than I thought - I had estimated 20 per journal, but most PLOS journals seem to have 30-40 articles. In my original $ estimate I also assumed 10 issues a year, most PLOS journals seem to do 12.

So consider $2250/article as a representative price in the PLOS suite, by 35 articles by 12 issues - About $USD950,000/annum revenue per journal. I wonder how that compares to revenue/issue for the traditional subscription model augmented by online fees? I looked at Elsivier and Wiley's financial statements but there wasn't enough info broken out to guess.

EDIT: closer reading of Wiley's statements [1] suggest $1.385 billion revenue from journal subscriptions with 1600 "scientific and professional journals" in print, for revenue of $865,000 per journal.

[1] http://www.wiley.com/legacy/about/corpnews/fy15_10kFINAL.pdf

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