Narrowing it a bit, how about paying to read research I WROTE? I tried to access a paper of mine I didn't have handy and sure enough the fee was $35. Turned to sci-hub, of course. I pirated myself. --Anonymous, just in case
“You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
141–150 of 165 posts
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#142Narrowing it a bit, how about paying to read research I WROTE? I tried to access a paper of mine I didn't have handy and sure enough the fee was $35. Turned to sci-hub, of course. I pirated myself. --Anonymous, just in case
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
You end up in a situation where a minority is coerced to pay for everyone. It's morally wrong.
No, the minority pay si that can benefit, it just happens that others who haven't paid benefit too. Like when a country act to reduce their industrial impact on the atmosphere, their citizens benefit with cleaner air/water or whatever but there's a benefit to the rest of the world too. Being altruistic leads to greater overall benefit. Being miserly leads to global detriment. Applying Kant's Imperative as the moral m…
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Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
You end up in a situation where a minority is coerced to pay for everyone. It's morally wrong.
No, the minority pay si that can benefit, it just happens that others who haven't paid benefit too. Like when a country act to reduce their industrial impact on the atmosphere, their citizens benefit with cleaner air/water or whatever but there's a benefit to the rest of the world too. Being altruistic leads to greater overall benefit. Being miserly leads to global detriment. Applying Kant's Imperative as the moral m…
It's not so much about altruism or the moral validity of taxation. It's about equality and fairness. If some people can take advantage from the expropriation of others, then who gets to say who can be expropriated and who can't? With taxation the justification comes more or less from the revenues and wealth differential, basically it is assumed that rich people can pay because they suffer less from the requisition of a small part of their wealth. But if the criteria is only nationality, I'm not sure they will accept it that easily.
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you stop faking to be an idiot, please? We already responded to that question and you know it.
ufo claimed above that "The only thing the publisher does is own the name of the prestigious journal." This is false. Why is calling them on it now "faking to be an idiot"? I pointed out that there's curation, and that imposes costs. Denying that it exists doesn't help.
Pfffffff.
Once again: the curation is not performed by the publisher, but by the editorial board and the reviewers, who are researchers, and are not paid by the publishers for this work.
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
You get promotions and tenure for doing successful grant work that brings in money to the University. You get the best grants by publishing in Science and Nature. The government (main source of grants) shares the blame here.
Grants are not judged by government bureaucrats, but by committees of peer researchers. (At least for NSF grants; not sure about NIH or others).
Working under the direction of a grant agency. I know, I worked at two such institutes that managed $10m/yr grant money for planetary and biological science. In this case (NASA) the selection was done based on recommendations from a peer committee, but under directions from civil servants who had the final say, and there was a definite culture of favoritism for the prestigious closed journals. It was good for the institute too -- Science and Nature publications and associated PR raised our image in the eyes of our managers at HQ in Washington.
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#147By 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?
It's more like a private company has bought the only access road to a public park and is now charging you to get there.
This sort of thing happens a lot in California -- all beach land is public property, but the private land that controls access to said beach can impose arbitrary restrictions.
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
ufo claimed above that "The only thing the publisher does is own the name of the prestigious journal." This is false. Why is calling them on it now "faking to be an idiot"? I pointed out that there's curation, and that imposes costs. Denying that it exists doesn't help.
Pfffffff. Once again: the curation is not performed by the publisher, but by the editorial board and the reviewers, who are researchers, and are not paid by the publishers for this work.
A cursory google search turns up plenty of counterexamples.
See http://blog.journals.cambridge.org/2012/06/14/recruiting-a-j... and http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2002/02/editorial-boards-s...
I'll note that even PLOS medicine wasn't able to get editors for free, as an open access journal http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/s/competing-interests-...
Re: “You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish they'd just acknowledge that Disney really, really wants to keep their IP forever, and just make a "Disney Exemption" -> if you're willing to pay all the money you would normally pay lobbyists to lobby to keep copyright perpetual, you get to keep your IP. Otherwise, you only get X number of years, period. That way we can stop artificially extending copyright terms just to make one corporation happy and ruining…
Maybe your pragmatic approach is right but I don't think I could settle for "we'll do this for this company because our politicians are easily bought". The real solution seems to be to get politicians with better ethics or create laws that force them to comply with good morals ... then of course you need a strong judiciary.
Ah yes, the "if only we voted in the right politicians". My Dad likes to make this argument till he's blue in the face, and those people never get elected (and it's a different set of people for every individual, I bet you'd disagree with most of his choices).
Of course it would fix things if all the right people got elected. But this is the real world, and that reality almost never, ever happens. It's much easier to get specific protections passed, especially ones that benefit one or more corporations, than it is to make sure "no one gets elected whose vote can be bought and believes in things different from me!"
The main reason I don't hold out much hope for my solution either is because most corporations don't believe they'd have much to gain from limited copyright, focusing too much on what they'd lose, rather than what they'd gain, from being able to use so many newer IP without paying licensing fees.