Sounds like everyone at UC is going to use SciHub now, and most likely won't switch back once access gets restored? This seems like a self-defeating move on Elsevier's part? Incidentally, I heard from someone who worked at Elsevier around four years ago that the working environment there was terrible, and she couldn't wait to leave. That doesn't seem surprising.
Sounds like everyone at UC is going to use SciHub now, and most likely won't switch back once access gets restored? This seems like a self-defeating move on Elsevier's part? Incidentally, I heard from someone who worked at Elsevier around four years ago that the working environment there was terrible, and she couldn't wait to leave. That doesn't seem surprising.
Or arXiv. Elsevier authors can post their papers on arXiv and/or their own website.
Not sure why you'd want to start making scientific papers non-copyrightable. The easiest solution is just have scientists publish in open-access journals. Easy right? Nope, they are judged by the impact of their papers and it's higher in better quality journals. That's the value these journals offer - exclusivity. Scientists and universities could solve this issue immediately. Scientists publish in open-access journa…
Because there is no reason they should be, so the decision can be handled at the legal level and not be as subject to the influence of the journals. They would have one chance to fight it before it was cemented into law.
Why should an author not have rights to their own work, just because it’s scientific in nature?
You’re also opening the door to unintended consequences - are scientific textbooks not copyrightable also? If not, why not?
What I've seen in tech is that a patent is a straw asset to make the bean counters feel more comfortable. The value of non-capital-intensive tech companies is almost entirely ephemeral. Even for capital intensive ones most of the value is usually not in the physical capital but in the brand, ideas, collective employee knowledge, and customer relationships. A patent looks like a physical asset on the books so it makes…
Copyright is what keeps billions of people from accessing every book ever written for free. Google really tried to do this but stopped digitizing books halfway through the worlds collection because of copyright law. It hurts to think of all the knowledge we could have shared if this had been permitted.
Copyright as an idea is fine - as in, how it was described in the Constitution: "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries", emphasis on "limited times". It's our current batarnak of an implementation that's causing all the problems.
Getting rid of copyright and instituting a copy-anarchy would mean that creatives would have no real incentive to publish (no matter how much you do for passion, you still need to keep the lights on and put food on the table) - but our current system, with lifetimes tied to the time since Walt Disney's death, is a bit of a mess too.
UC should consider using open platforms for publishing, like MIT's PubPub[1]. In fact, so much was discussed already, current publishing model (aside of the publishers) is a bad fit for modern science. We need better collaboration, interactivity, and reproducibility. See discussion[2] about this a few years ago. And a number of followups[3][4][5]. [1] https://www.pubpub.org/ [2] http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/16/…
Because there is no reason they should be, so the decision can be handled at the legal level and not be as subject to the influence of the journals. They would have one chance to fight it before it was cemented into law.
Why should an author not have rights to their own work, just because it’s scientific in nature? You’re also opening the door to unintended consequences - are scientific textbooks not copyrightable also? If not, why not?
You're making a big assumption that the author of a scientific paper gets to have any rights whatsoever. But that aside - these journals keep valuable research locked up from plenty of long-dead researchers. Their estates aren't getting the money when a grad student is grifted for $90 to view the paper.
Because there is no reason they should be, so the decision can be handled at the legal level and not be as subject to the influence of the journals. They would have one chance to fight it before it was cemented into law.
Why should an author not have rights to their own work, just because it’s scientific in nature? You’re also opening the door to unintended consequences - are scientific textbooks not copyrightable also? If not, why not?
I'd argue we'd be much better off if textbooks weren't eligible for copyright.
I am writing a review article these days which requires skimming through many many articles and this situation really is infuriating. What the hell is wrong with scientists today that they accept this situation? Why aren't all papers in 2019 hosted as HTML pages (the very thing for which HTML was invented) but instead hidden behind paywalls, behind a PDF file? Why can't i use annotations / search / crossreferences the way i use any website? Why do i have to end up copying-the title of the paper, googling the name of it and downloading another pdf, instead of clicking on an HREF link? Why am i forced to use godawful tools like Mendeley (brought to you by Elsevier now) to conform to ancient citation formats which were invented for (paper) libraries. Someone needs to pass a law that invalidates the copyrights of all publicly funded works, so people other than google scholar can have access to the world's scientific output and build proper services on top of it. And yeah, i 'm sure Elsevier, that pretentious club of high horses will be replaced in a day, by a digital peer-supported "uber for reviews". But first academics will have to remove the stick of elitism that is up their arse.