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ScienceLeaks

scienceleaks.blogspot.com

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Re: ScienceLeaks

#21

Post by elvirs »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #18
elvirs wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you don't have to be a student or pay the university to use the library.

You have obviously never been to Harvard, where in fact you do. (You can also work at Harvard and get a library card as a perk. I often contemplate this fact.) The good news is that MIT has a much more awesome library and you can, in fact, turn up in person at MIT as a civilian and read copies of Nature . Of course, you have to make the time to do that. The parking is tricky, so you'd best ride the train. Even in the…

ok this is what you do: you go to the library only once, get a membership card and a username/password for electronic use. and use that username/password to access electronic resources of that library from anywhere. i hope this helps. edit:grammar.

Re: ScienceLeaks

#22

Post by djacobs »

Geee wrote: post #10
Alex3917 wrote: post #7

For what it's worth, reddit.com/r/scholar is a much better resource for exactly the same purpose.

Also if somebody isn't aware, Google Scholar finds all sources of articles and there's usually a PDF available somewhere.

Mm... I'm not sure about that. Google Scholar is a good resource, that's true. But there are hundreds of papers I've looked for that are simply not accessible without proper access.

That said, I don't support this site.

Re: ScienceLeaks

#23

Post by djacobs »

elvirs wrote: post #21
mechanical_fish wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have obviously never been to Harvard, where in fact you do. (You can also work at Harvard and get a library card as a perk. I often contemplate this fact.) The good news is that MIT has a much more awesome library and you can, in fact, turn up in person at MIT as a civilian and read copies of Nature . Of course, you have to make the time to do that. The parking is tricky, so you'd best ride the train. Even in the…

ok this is what you do: you go to the library only once, get a membership card and a username/password for electronic use. and use that username/password to access electronic resources of that library from anywhere. i hope this helps. edit:grammar.

Harvard, for one, doesn't let you do that. You can't even get into most of their library buildings without an ID.

Re: ScienceLeaks

#24

Post by forkandwait »

roadnottaken wrote: post #14

This is plain-old piracy and I'm a little surprised to see it getting up-voted on HN. There are plenty of open-access journals, but most scientists choose to publish in closed journals instead for a variety of reasons. I think the results of research funded by taxpayers should be free and, indeed, that is now required by the NIH and there's a huge resource available here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ However some…

For the most part, scientists publish in the highest prestige journal possible, because that counts the most toward tenure/ pay raises/ grant application chances; the most prestigous journals are -- for historical reasons -- still closed since they are profit centers for big for-profit publishing houses like Wiley.

On the other hand, all the scientists I know wish they could give their papers away for free because it builds their reputation to have people use and cite them, even undergrads at state colleges that can't afford the bigger database subscriptions.

Except for textbooks, scholars almost never make royalties, so the profit incentive isn't what you might think. A scholar makes more money by getting raises from the university, speaking and consulting fees, and publishing undergrad textbooks (sometimes). All of these are increased if their is a wider dissemination of their work.

Finally, .... in the US, almost all research is funded by taxpayers, directly or indirectly, it's just NIH funded stuff that must be free.

Finally, finally .... if it weren't for the fact that the prestigious journals are a ticket to tenure and promotion, there would be no reason to publish anywhere except for Arxiv: so called "peer review", to be honest, is a broken system...

Re: ScienceLeaks

#25

Post by btmorex »

djacobs wrote: post #22
Geee wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also if somebody isn't aware, Google Scholar finds all sources of articles and there's usually a PDF available somewhere.

Mm... I'm not sure about that. Google Scholar is a good resource, that's true. But there are hundreds of papers I've looked for that are simply not accessible without proper access. That said, I don't support this site.

Are you clicking through the "All x versions" link? There are often pdf versions that are mistakenly out in the open (i.e. on some random university web server).

Re: ScienceLeaks

#26

Post by roadnottaken »

forkandwait wrote: post #24
roadnottaken wrote: post #14

This is plain-old piracy and I'm a little surprised to see it getting up-voted on HN. There are plenty of open-access journals, but most scientists choose to publish in closed journals instead for a variety of reasons. I think the results of research funded by taxpayers should be free and, indeed, that is now required by the NIH and there's a huge resource available here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ However some…

For the most part, scientists publish in the highest prestige journal possible, because that counts the most toward tenure/ pay raises/ grant application chances; the most prestigous journals are -- for historical reasons -- still closed since they are profit centers for big for-profit publishing houses like Wiley. On the other hand, all the scientists I know wish they could give their papers away for free because it…

"so called "peer review", to be honest, is a broken system..."

To misquote Churchill:

Peer review is the worst system for scientific publishing... except for all the others.

Re: ScienceLeaks

#27

Post by wvoq »

elvirs wrote: post #9

Most of the university students have to almost all scientific documents thanks to the library subscriptions of their universities. It will be really easy to fill the website with thousands of papers but is it worth it? is it right to do so? If you are doing academic work you can easily apply for membership to any of those libraries and get access to any paper you need without violating copyright.

A data point: I have actually tried this. As a student at No Name State, I often found myself travelling to nearby Prestigious Research University for books and journals which weren't in circulation at NNS. PRU only had reciprocity agreements with other PRUs, so I couldn't ILL materials or check them out in person with my NNS card. Indeed, without a PRU ID I couldn't even enter the library except at certain designated hours, for reasons that had no discernible relation to crowding or public safety.

PRU did offer a private membership, but its annual circulation fee was in the hundreds of dollars. It was 2008, and one of the richest universities in the country wanted to charge a student--who was already enrolled in NNS down the street, hardly any kind of flight risk--the equivalent of 20 hours of labor for the privilege of reading books.

Now PRU has one of the worst academic cultures I've ever experienced or heard of, and I would be glad to learn that the state of public access to academic libraries is not so dire in general. It remains, though, that it is not always so trivially easy to do academic work at university libraries, even if you're already in "the academy".

Re: ScienceLeaks

#28

Post by jls11 »

aedocw wrote: post #8

On the topic of journals, and what gets published, "Wrong" by David H. Freedman should be required reading. Fascinating book, he documents how hard it is for researches to get negative results published (i.e. 10 studies on a new drug, 9 studies show it does nothing, 1 study finds there might be something positive - only the positive study will be accepted.)

Huge problem. It affects more than just medicine. Negative results are not collected or disseminated in many fields. They never show the "messy kitchen." Succinct lists of failed paths would be more useful than a lot of positive results that get published.

Re: ScienceLeaks

#29

Post by archgoon »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #13
elvirs wrote: post #9

Most of the university students have to almost all scientific documents thanks to the library subscriptions of their universities. It will be really easy to fill the website with thousands of papers but is it worth it? is it right to do so? If you are doing academic work you can easily apply for membership to any of those libraries and get access to any paper you need without violating copyright.

If you are doing academic work you can easily apply for membership to any of those libraries Warning: Pet peeve alert . Scientists routinely complain that the public unfairly brands them as isolated ivory-tower eggheads whose work is too insular and rarefied to have any relevance to the real world. They also complain that the general public has a poor idea of how science actually works: People often view it as some k…

If you live in California (or ar visiting), all UC libraries are publicly available, and typically have guest login access, which allows you to access the online resources. You can access the journals there, with no affiliation with any university.

You'll have to actually physically walk into the libraries, which some campuses make it harder than necessary (mostly due to bad parking planning, see UCSC), but campuses like Berkeley are very easy to walk onto.

Re: ScienceLeaks

#30

Post by zeteo »

roadnottaken wrote: post #26
forkandwait wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the most part, scientists publish in the highest prestige journal possible, because that counts the most toward tenure/ pay raises/ grant application chances; the most prestigous journals are -- for historical reasons -- still closed since they are profit centers for big for-profit publishing houses like Wiley. On the other hand, all the scientists I know wish they could give their papers away for free because it…

"so called "peer review", to be honest, is a broken system... " To misquote Churchill: Peer review is the worst system for scientific publishing... except for all the others.

It's not misquote, it's paraphrase.
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