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Academics posting their papers online in tribute to Aaron Swartz

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Re: Academics posting their papers online in tribute to Aaron Swartz

#11

Post by anonymouz »

> Late last night, I noticed that Eva was opening access to her papers online in tribute to the memory of Aaron Swartz.

That's good, but why didn't she offer them on her webpage before that? At least in the natural sciences, that is quite common now. The ArXiv is also a very popular option by now that is accepted by most journals.

For a few months now, started by a blog post of Timothy Gowers, a large group of researchers has been pushing for reform too, and in particular has been pressuring Elsevier into making their content more accessible: http://thecostofknowledge.com/ .

Re: Academics posting their papers online in tribute to Aaron Swartz

#12

Post by trillionsflora »

denzil_correa wrote: post #5
timtadh wrote: post #2

Has anybody upvoting this actually read the article? It is just a database error for me. (originally tried to read it at around 9 points).

The article was just an elaborate summary on the title by @venturejessica It was working at the time I posted and even 2 minutes ago but I am getting a "Database Error" just like you. Here's another link which confirms the title of the article - - https://twitter.com/YourAnonNews/status/290387879602032640 . If appropriate, I can edit to change the link on the submission. Please advice, thanks.

We are working to bring it back up. Give me another 30 mins or so. If not, we can link to the cache.

Re: Academics posting their papers online in tribute to Aaron Swartz

#13

Post by return0 »

bendmorris wrote: post #9

It's a nice sentiment, but thanks to the Open Access movement, most recently published papers are already available online somewhere, and the people talking about #pdftribute are the people most likely to have already shared their papers. Important historical papers, even those that are now public domain, are still behind paywalls. As Aaron said, "even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things pu…

That is not true. I work in neuroscience and often find myself not having access to "just released" papers. Some of them may appear as preprints months later, if the author bothers to do so. I 've tried to email authors for copies a few times with no response. Even my institution doesn't provide access to all the journals we need (probably the situation is different in the US). There are actually underground websites for searching paywalled journals through proxies.

TBH, historic papers are not that interesting anymore, since the most important ones are cited in more recent research. It's the cutting edge research where it's more annoying. What's more important though is that closed-access is depriving science of the ability to use automated tools for textual analysis. I hope this unfortunate event will motivate more people to realize that having unrestricted access to scientific results is an extremely important issue.

Re: Academics posting their papers online in tribute to Aaron Swartz

#15

Post by trillionsflora »

trillionsflora wrote: post #12
denzil_correa wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article was just an elaborate summary on the title by @venturejessica It was working at the time I posted and even 2 minutes ago but I am getting a "Database Error" just like you. Here's another link which confirms the title of the article - - https://twitter.com/YourAnonNews/status/290387879602032640 . If appropriate, I can edit to change the link on the submission. Please advice, thanks.

We are working to bring it back up. Give me another 30 mins or so. If not, we can link to the cache.

Okay, reposted on my website at http://www.jessicarichman.com/science-citizen.html. Thanks for being patient.

Re: Academics posting their papers online in tribute to Aaron Swartz

#16

Post by brittonsmith »

return0 wrote: post #13
bendmorris wrote: post #9

It's a nice sentiment, but thanks to the Open Access movement, most recently published papers are already available online somewhere, and the people talking about #pdftribute are the people most likely to have already shared their papers. Important historical papers, even those that are now public domain, are still behind paywalls. As Aaron said, "even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things pu…

That is not true. I work in neuroscience and often find myself not having access to "just released" papers. Some of them may appear as preprints months later, if the author bothers to do so. I 've tried to email authors for copies a few times with no response. Even my institution doesn't provide access to all the journals we need (probably the situation is different in the US). There are actually underground websites…

I am in astronomy and it is common practice to post papers on arxiv.org. Because of the need for journal subscriptions and the time it takes for papers to be published, this has become the primary way we keep up with the field. I would say this has revolutionized math and the physical sciences.

Perhaps one of the reasons for the difference between fields is that, at least in astronomy, our journals are supported by the professional societies, like the American Astronomical Society, and not run explicitly for profit.

I should also add that in astronomy, the authors pay a significant amount of to the journal when a paper is published. It is usually in the range of about $100 per page.

Re: Academics posting their papers online in tribute to Aaron Swartz

#17

Post by trillionsflora »

trillionsflora wrote: post #15
trillionsflora wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are working to bring it back up. Give me another 30 mins or so. If not, we can link to the cache.

Okay, reposted on my website at http://www.jessicarichman.com/science-citizen.html . Thanks for being patient.

Link should be back up. Thanks so much!

Re: Academics posting their papers online in tribute to Aaron Swartz

#18

Post by bendmorris »

brittonsmith wrote: post #16
return0 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not true. I work in neuroscience and often find myself not having access to "just released" papers. Some of them may appear as preprints months later, if the author bothers to do so. I 've tried to email authors for copies a few times with no response. Even my institution doesn't provide access to all the journals we need (probably the situation is different in the US). There are actually underground websites…

I am in astronomy and it is common practice to post papers on arxiv.org. Because of the need for journal subscriptions and the time it takes for papers to be published, this has become the primary way we keep up with the field. I would say this has revolutionized math and the physical sciences. Perhaps one of the reasons for the difference between fields is that, at least in astronomy, our journals are supported by t…

Ecology has a mix of for-profit and non-profit journals, but those run by the professional societies aren't always much better. We only recently (within the past few months) won the right to post preprints on arXiv.

Re: Academics posting their papers online in tribute to Aaron Swartz

#19

Post by return0 »

brittonsmith wrote: post #16
return0 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not true. I work in neuroscience and often find myself not having access to "just released" papers. Some of them may appear as preprints months later, if the author bothers to do so. I 've tried to email authors for copies a few times with no response. Even my institution doesn't provide access to all the journals we need (probably the situation is different in the US). There are actually underground websites…

I am in astronomy and it is common practice to post papers on arxiv.org. Because of the need for journal subscriptions and the time it takes for papers to be published, this has become the primary way we keep up with the field. I would say this has revolutionized math and the physical sciences. Perhaps one of the reasons for the difference between fields is that, at least in astronomy, our journals are supported by t…

Exactly. Arxiv is a revolutionary thing for math, physics, CS etc. Good luck getting life scientists to put their precious papers there. Most don't even pay the open access fee when the journal provides it.

Re: Academics posting their papers online in tribute to Aaron Swartz

#20

Post by tylerneylon »

bendmorris wrote: post #9

It's a nice sentiment, but thanks to the Open Access movement, most recently published papers are already available online somewhere, and the people talking about #pdftribute are the people most likely to have already shared their papers. Important historical papers, even those that are now public domain, are still behind paywalls. As Aaron said, "even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things pu…

There are still many papers left behind paywalls. It does depend on the field you're in, as reflected by other comments.

I left academia years ago but continue to (try to) do research. Resources like scholar.google.com can often help find a free-to-read version of a paper, which is great. But access to a single key paper can make or break your progress. I've personally dropped many, many hours of work because of this problem - I couldn't reasonably access key literature that I needed.

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