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Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

latimes.com

231–240 of 313 posts

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#231
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elsevier requires that authors do not do that - they can only provide copies of their papers in response to requests.

Does that include HTTP requests? :)

This could be an extremely interesting legal argument, but I suppose the language used requires a request in 'writing' of some sort, which I suppose HTTP requests would fail.

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction: you do not need to publish in closed access journals to get a PhD. However, getting a tenure-track faculty position in the life sciences at a major US university is almost impossible without publishing in Science, Nature, or Cell (an Elsevier journal), none of which is open-access (without paying an exorbitant fee).

PLOS is a top-tier indexed refereed open-access journal.

The impact factor of PLOS is 2.8

Not awful, but certainly not top tier

My boss would prefer to hold a project for six months and add significance versus publishing in something <4

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that include HTTP requests? :)

This could be an extremely interesting legal argument, but I suppose the language used requires a request in 'writing' of some sort, which I suppose HTTP requests would fail.

They write your a nice letter with “GET /paper.pdf HTTP/1.1” ;)

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#234
post #87

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/…

UC is big enough they could actually start their own journal.

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge difference between "collective management on the tribal level" and abolishing the profit incentive in an advanced industrial economy. People who've never known anything other than prosperity have a tendency to idealize pre-modern societies - they vastly underestimate how miserable life was for most people, and how much violence was involved in organizing these societies. Imagine a typical homeless cam…

You and I have very different ideas about both what is possible in the future and what is acceptable today. It’s funny that you mention homeless camps, which would not be needed in a socialist society.

Getting rid of homeless camps does not require getting rid of the profit motive; most capitalist countries manage to not look like the Tenderloin. I'd even argue that the modern Western welfare state requires capitalism to generate the surplus wealth required to pay for it. Applying totalitarian social engineering to the problem is just overkill.

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that include HTTP requests? :)

This could be an extremely interesting legal argument, but I suppose the language used requires a request in 'writing' of some sort, which I suppose HTTP requests would fail.

how about a request form that ostensibly takes an email address and a name, and an optional text field and then automates the process of sending the paper (or a hidden (unique) link to that paper) to that email address. it need not store those details anywhere, except that it optionally sends an email to the author (if there is a message). the only concern is spam.

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that include HTTP requests? :)

This could be an extremely interesting legal argument, but I suppose the language used requires a request in 'writing' of some sort, which I suppose HTTP requests would fail.

> This could be an extremely interesting legal argument, but I suppose the language used requires a request in 'writing' of some sort, which I suppose HTTP requests would fail.

Are emails not considered communications "in writing"?

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#239
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the bootcamp graduates really believe they'll be Senior Architect 10 years down the line? They'll be in for a surprise.

Why? What makes a bootcamp graduate any less qualified than a university graduate? After 10 years experience gained in the field would vastly surpass any differences in fundamentals in my experience.

> After 10 years experience gained in the field would vastly surpass any differences in fundamentals in my experience.

Yes and no.

If your colleagues are Peter Norvig and Richard Gabriel and you are programming editors and compilers, then you will probably get a Masters (and more useful than most) in CS simply by talking to them on a daily basis and coding your ass off inside a codebase that they're working on, too.

The problem is that very few companies have people that good or problems that challenging. If you go to work for an insurance company after a bootcamp, are you going to learn how to build a compiler? (And, call that esoteric and scoff if you will, but I have built a "compiler" several times in my career because it was the best way to transition from a legacy system.)

Now, to be fair, maybe nobody cares. If you're rewriting a CRUD app for the umpteenth time in "YetAnotherFrameworkItsBetterThisTimeWePromiseHaHaHa", then it's not going to matter. Knowledge about the current system and all its tendrils is far more valuable than pedantic graph theory.

However, that's local system knowledge and has no value outside your current company. The only knowledge that has value to your next employer is domain knowledge--at that includes your baseline CS and programming skill.

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#240
post #87

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/…

Do you have any pointers to great communities on pubpub? I’ve explored a bit and it seems like a really great idea, but I’m not sure how to find the most robust communities on there...
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