Nature makes all articles free to view • Hacker News Board

Re: Nature makes all articles free to view

#61

Post by skosuri » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 5:29 AM UTC

untilHellbanned wrote: post #54

When you are feeling all touchy feely about this move, keep in mind the profit margins at academic publishers are higher than Apple. Yes, THAT Apple. Source: https://alexholcombe.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/scholarly-publ...

I've looked into these numbers and it's really hard to parse what revenues and expenses are coming from their journal publishing. The publishers listed are also have huge amounts of revenue in textbooks and other book markets (to be fair, another awful scam). It might be better to look at non-profit publishers such as ACS and AAAS, which are also mainly closed-access. For example, AAAS which has Science magazine and a few other journals brought in 48M w/ 42M in expenses [1]. That said, they bring in 11M as well in member dues, which more than anything else gets you subscription to AAAS journals. It's harder to tell with ACS, because it also includes revenues for CAS and other services [2]. PLoS, an open access publisher, seems to generally have lower costs based on an author pays model FWIW.

[1] pg 50 of http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/AAAS_2013-Annual-Rep...

[2] https://acswebcontent.acs.org/annualreport/financials_financ...

[3] http://www.plos.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2013-2014-Pro...

Re: Nature makes all articles free to view

#62

Post by gergles » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 5:34 AM UTC

chbrown wrote: post #60

My institution subscribes to Nature, and using my library's proxy to access the Nature website, I can use the "Share/bookmark" menu to generate links like http://rdcu.be/bKk4 , http://rdcu.be/bKlc , http://rdcu.be/bKld , and http://rdcu.be/bKli , which can be viewed in the browser (or maybe only because I also just installed the ReadCube app?). The articles linked to above span several months, but it's generating ser…

It is awful awful awful to show the "PDF download" button then go "Ha ha, no!" when you click it. Such a shitty UX.

Re: Nature makes all articles free to view

#63

Post by boie0025 » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 5:36 AM UTC

jmount wrote: post #31

Incorrect title. "Nature places all article in flakey peephole viewer."

My thoughts exactly. I was incredibly excited until I read the first line or so. One day perhaps.

Re: Nature makes all articles free to view

#64

Post by skosuri » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 5:39 AM UTC

alexqgb wrote: post #45

542458 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I paid for the [tank, aircraft carrier, nukes, Fort Knox, etc] with my tax payer money. Therefore... That's not a very good comparison, as those are all rival goods, and furthermore have obvious negative externalities (IE are dangerous). I can't think of a non-rival government-funded good (without harmful externalities) that would NOT make sense to to make freely available. Edit: Oh hey, I'm being downvoted for an…

Not sure why you're being down-voted. The comparison you were pointing out as being obviously idiotic is, in fact, obviously idiotic. There's a far better comparison to be made with IP produced by NASA, for instance, which is automatically released directly to the public domain on the grounds that the American public is who commissioned it in the first place (for the rest of the world, it's a gift - you're welcome).

Not all IP; just most copyrighted images that NASA themselves produce. Patents by NASA are licensed to companies [1].

[1] http://technology.nasa.gov/patents

edit: Most of the biggest high profile publications from NASA get published in Science/Nature, which are both closed access FWIW.

Re: Nature makes all articles free to view

#65

Post by lqdc13 » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 5:39 AM UTC

skosuri wrote: post #57

stephentmcm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how long until someone writes a web crawler that dumps all the links into a searchable public db?

This has already been done many times with regular pdfs [1-3]. There are mostly hosted illegally in places like Russia. I'm sure you can find more on TPB or similar. [1] http://sci-hub.org/ [2] http://booksc.org/ [3] http://www.freefullpdf.com/

Unfortunately, these don't host many of the articles I would love to have access to. If I didn't know anyone still in uni, I would probably have no way of doing good research. Looks like one of them is proxying through a university that has access though.

Re: Nature makes all articles free to view

#66

Post by jrockway » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 5:39 AM UTC

001sky wrote: post #58

s0rce wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peer review is not paid. I assume costs are for the staff editors (PhDs), copy editors, type setters, print and distribution costs, etc. Source: I have published in nature

Sounds like the NFL without paying the players or coaches.

So if you want to get rich and you chose academia as your field, I have bad news for you.

I like to think that people write and review papers because they care about their field and its future. I could be wrong.

Re: Nature makes all articles free to view

#67

Post by skosuri » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 5:45 AM UTC

lqdc13 wrote: post #65

skosuri wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has already been done many times with regular pdfs [1-3]. There are mostly hosted illegally in places like Russia. I'm sure you can find more on TPB or similar. [1] http://sci-hub.org/ [2] http://booksc.org/ [3] http://www.freefullpdf.com/

Unfortunately, these don't host many of the articles I would love to have access to. If I didn't know anyone still in uni, I would probably have no way of doing good research. Looks like one of them is proxying through a university that has access though.

You can also try /r/scholar; you usually get responses within a day or so [1].

[1]. http://www.reddit.com/r/scholar

Re: Nature makes all articles free to view

#68

Post by sanxiyn » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 5:48 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #44

mkonecny wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet doesn't exist solely in the US. It spans GMT -5 through GMT -8. There are countries that are up to 16 hours ahead in time..

> It spans GMT -5 through GMT -8. Please explain.

US mainland does span from GMT-5 to GMT-8.

Re: Nature makes all articles free to view

#69

Post by ynniv » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 5:57 AM UTC

chbrown wrote: post #60

My institution subscribes to Nature, and using my library's proxy to access the Nature website, I can use the "Share/bookmark" menu to generate links like http://rdcu.be/bKk4 , http://rdcu.be/bKlc , http://rdcu.be/bKld , and http://rdcu.be/bKli , which can be viewed in the browser (or maybe only because I also just installed the ReadCube app?). The articles linked to above span several months, but it's generating ser…

A trivial bookmarket or addon could strip their nonsense from the page. The examples you posted were all single page articles, though. Perhaps multiple pages are rendered on demand in a way that would be less trivial to strip.

Re: Nature makes all articles free to view

#70

Post by msutherl » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 6:02 AM UTC

skosuri wrote: post #57

stephentmcm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how long until someone writes a web crawler that dumps all the links into a searchable public db?

This has already been done many times with regular pdfs [1-3]. There are mostly hosted illegally in places like Russia. I'm sure you can find more on TPB or similar. [1] http://sci-hub.org/ [2] http://booksc.org/ [3] http://www.freefullpdf.com/