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By this notion, I should get free tickets to all college football games. And my driver's license registration should also be free, don't my taxes already go to paying for the DMV? Wait, should anything that is even remotely funded by taxpayer dollars now be free for everyone that pays taxes?
But it's worth keeping in mind that the value of public funding for research is primarily for the participants, not for the output to the public. Public research funding is an education model that occasionally has the nice byproduct of useful results. I got a Master's degree on public funding, I've published papers in prominent journals in my field, and I'm pretty sure nobody would read my papers if they had them for free. The real value of the public dollars spent on me was my education.
I'm not saying research shouldn't be publicly available. It should. I am saying there are other ways we're getting our money's worth out of research funding.
A print publication with a distribution channel has been historically important. Universities don't want to be in the business of printing & distributing. Many journals also put on conferences. The need for print & distribution is the reason publishers got entrenched, but it's changing as the importance of print declines.
I do wonder if the real crime by publishers isn't locking research away from the public, but charging universities for journals, effectively using public dollars to buy the research that was publicly funded.
* edited. removed points I regret & speculate were being downvoted.
I think the most important point was brushed over in the article--that journals offer prestige. Scientists are entirely aware of the problems, yet they still volunteer to submit their work to them, because they significantly improve the chances of promotion and tenure. These things are already tremendously competitive, so most would rather not volunteer for a handicap by publishing in other venues.
Journals like Nature and Science are usually considered the top (at least for physics, which I studied). Getting even one article published in these is a big deal. As a grad student you've got it made for when you apply for a post doc.
The irony is that most (probably all) of the researchers would gladly want their articles shared widely, and I couldn't see any researcher in favour of restricting access to an interested party wanting to see their work.
That said, if you're not in academia, you may have good luck emailing professors directly asking if they can share a copy of their paper. I've been out of school for several years now, but professors sometimes even included such PDFs on their webpages for general public consumption. Not sure if that violates any terms of the publishing journal though.
By this notion, I should get free tickets to all college football games. And my driver's license registration should also be free, don't my taxes already go to paying for the DMV? Wait, should anything that is even remotely funded by taxpayer dollars now be free for everyone that pays taxes?
I agree that publicly funded research should be publicly available, and that for-profit publishers have an entrenched commercial interest that feeds on free access to research. But it's worth keeping in mind that the value of public funding for research is primarily for the participants, not for the output to the public. Public research funding is an education model that occasionally has the nice byproduct of useful…
I also know that my access guarantees other researches access to the same content, meaning the research that they do, that may one day benefit me down the road, has had free access to all of the knowledge available to make the best play at their own research.
It's scary to me that scientific knowledge can be locked away. I am the kind of person that believes all pharmaceutical research should be freely published and publicly available as well. Patents provide all the monopoly protections necessary, and sunlight helps disinfect bogus science that sometimes leads to death in the pursuit of profits.
Funny thing - I don't even have AdBlock.
The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you already pay for it. A lot of people don't even go to the parks now. Making them free will mean more tax money from people who don't go to them. How many people read this research? 1% of America? If it is free then tax payers will have to pay more to make sure it is available. 99% percent will pay to provide things they will never read. To b…
>How many people read this research? 1% of America? If anything, it's 1% of the world. The problem is not limited to the US. And it's a very significant 1% which is one of the biggest - if not literally the biggest - drivers of the world economy. >The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you already pay for it. Parks have huge continuing expenses. They're also owned in trust for the p…
Probably it's not worth making this point, but I think that would almost certainly be a bigger, not smaller fraction of Americans, since I think Americans are more, not less, likely to read scientific research than the rest of the world.
The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you already pay for it. A lot of people don't even go to the parks now. Making them free will mean more tax money from people who don't go to them. How many people read this research? 1% of America? If it is free then tax payers will have to pay more to make sure it is available. 99% percent will pay to provide things they will never read. To b…
Except of course they don't. They provide publishing services, which cost them between 60-80% of the revenue each paper bring in (based on profit margins between 20-40%). Authors sign over their copyright in exchange for this consideration. (If they didn't get anything, the copyright assignment wouldn't be valid.)
> leading journals have stepped forward to make new findings free to all.
By charging authors upfront.
>Publishers do add value, but that value doesn’t justify the cost or the lost opportunities for those who can’t (or can’t fully) access the research.
This doesn't make sense. "Groceries do add value, but that doesn't justify the cost or lost opportunities for those that can't afford food".
The solution to people not being able to access essentials is not outlawing anyone charging for it. It's subsidizing the cost for everyone to buy it, or making a government-run version that provides it for free. If you want everyone to be able to eat, you give them food stamps (or make sure they have enough money by raising the minimum wage, whatever), don't get upset at companies that provide value but also make a profit. If you can do it for less, go ahead.
By this notion, I should get free tickets to all college football games. And my driver's license registration should also be free, don't my taxes already go to paying for the DMV? Wait, should anything that is even remotely funded by taxpayer dollars now be free for everyone that pays taxes?
Yes, if all of those things were non-rivalrous, and had neglible marginal cost.