71–80 of 91 posts
perhaps it should have magnet links and torrent files like archive.org and an API to upload, .bib-s and RDF-s in the url bar for the likes of zotero. http://arxiv.org/help/api/index http://archive.org/about/faqs.php#Archive_BitTorrents
With the exception of old and obscure papers (i.e., 15 years or more and not cited in the last 5 years), I don't really see what the big problem is. I have yet to mail an author and not receive a pdf of the paper, usually within days, sometimes within minutes. When you have a reference and Google, you're seconds away from finding that author's current affiliation & email address. I once emailed the author of a book t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I'm right in saying that by emailing you a copy of the PDF, many authors are breaking their contract with the publisher. It's a few years since I published an academic paper but I've certain signed over my rights more times that I care to recall. So while you can get a copy of the paper from the author officially that is not allowed. Thankfully most academics are not dickheads about this. The key problem with…
"breaking their contract with the publisher" I don't believe this is true, generally. of course, it depends exactly what they email you, but if it is a pre-print , that is, the PDF you compiled with LaTeX on your laptop, then there is normally no problem. The publishers only own the copyright to the particular typesetting of the paper (which was originally the useful service they provided academics) and as such, with…
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But, again, those that can ask on the mailing list, also have the university subscription to go through pay walls. People outside investigation groups are left outside the party. You are not making a convincing argument that papers are already "free enough". Unless you assume all interested parties are from the academic world, that is...
"Unless you assume all interested parties are from the academic world, that is.." But seriously, how many people aren't? Yes yes there is always that one guy in his attic or log cabin... Most university libraries offer subscriptions to externals, too (mine does for less than 50 USD a year). So it's really only for people who are interested in academic materials, who are outside of any reach of a university (because r…
Can you show me one that does? You're saying as a non-institutionally affiliated individual, I can pay a university library $50/year and get access to papers? Please, which school offers this, or what search terms should I be using? please. times a googleplexamonium.
Very good. But I'd love to have just seen the pirate bay duplicate itself and to create a site exclusively for academic papers. Seeding of obscure papers might be an issue, but I'm sure that it would work quite well.
When you download a paper from JSTOR or ScienceDirect, it is quite easy for them to add various watermarks to the PDF, and they already do (mildly). It might make it harder to scale this concept if the provider can track down who initially downloaded the paper (and presumably shared it).
> When you download a paper from JSTOR or ScienceDirect, it
> is quite easy for them to add various watermarks to the
> PDF, and they already do (mildly).
https://github.com/kanzure/pdfparanoia
disclaimer: I wrote pdfparanoia because watermarks.
First request and got the paper already!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"breaking their contract with the publisher" I don't believe this is true, generally. of course, it depends exactly what they email you, but if it is a pre-print , that is, the PDF you compiled with LaTeX on your laptop, then there is normally no problem. The publishers only own the copyright to the particular typesetting of the paper (which was originally the useful service they provided academics) and as such, with…
So why don't we make an effort to publish these sorts of pre-prints?
And Google Scholar often turns up pre-prints, making them much easier to find:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Unless you assume all interested parties are from the academic world, that is.." But seriously, how many people aren't? Yes yes there is always that one guy in his attic or log cabin... Most university libraries offer subscriptions to externals, too (mine does for less than 50 USD a year). So it's really only for people who are interested in academic materials, who are outside of any reach of a university (because r…
> Most university libraries offer subscriptions to externals, too (mine does for less than 50 USD a year). Can you show me one that does? You're saying as a non-institutionally affiliated individual, I can pay a university library $50/year and get access to papers? Please, which school offers this, or what search terms should I be using? please. times a googleplexamonium.
So, if you, for example, went and paid the UNC-CH library your $25.00 fee for a "borrower's card"[1], you don't get the ability to access all the various digital databases and what-not from your home, but you can drive down to the library, use the computer there, and access basically everything anyone else can. Or you can go down and ask the reference librarian to hunt down a paper for you and get you a paper copy.
On a semi-related note... I'm not sure what other states and jurisdictions have something like this, but here in NC we have something called "NC Live"[2], which is a portal that provides access to all sorts of online digital resources (including many which would otherwise be fairly expensive) to anyone with a library card from pretty much any county/city library in the whole state.