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Academic papers are hidden from the public. Here's some direct action.

badscience.net

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Re: Academic papers are hidden from the public. Here's some direct action.

#21

Post by halostatue »

brador wrote: post #17
keithpeter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I teach lower down in the academic chain. Dyslexic students often ask if they can record (audio) lessons. We teach in small groups and I encourage people to ask questions, and take over the whiteboard &c. The deal with students recording the session is that the recordings are for personal use only. Noone has broken that understanding as yet so far as I am aware...

Why personal use only? Why not allow it's free distribution so many people can benifit?

Because everyone in a participatory/discussion class would have to agree to have the distribution happen. Plus, you may not want certain discussions to go public, depending on the nature of the subject and the direction some discussions take.

EDIT: s/wild/public/ I was originally looking for 'viral', but I just remember some of my smaller college classes sometimes getting into intimate discussions that wouldn't have happened if there was a chance that the class would have been public.

Re: Academic papers are hidden from the public. Here's some direct action.

#24

Post by mechanical_fish »

The problem of publicly-funded-but-privately-owned scientific research is a pet peeve of mine, but this guerilla action is not the answer. Scientific research is a slow process of careful accumulation, sifting, and construction of links. What we need to build are permanent, publicly accessible webs built of reliable links, webs that are built up over years -- probably over the course of entire careers, and one's successors's careers. Not a pile of PDF files smuggled out of the academy and distributed via thumb drive and anonymous Bittorrent.

If I cannot simultaneously post my name, a pertinent comment, and a bunch of reliable direct links to the scientific literature on a public blog without risking legal repercussions, the discourse is still screwed. We're still trapped in the last century, when I could write a letter to my colleagues commenting on recent publications but nobody could properly understand and critique the letter without independently looking up those publications.

Re: Academic papers are hidden from the public. Here's some direct action.

#25

Post by Locke1689 »

Mizza wrote: post #2

Academic lectures are hidden from the public. Here's some direct action: http://lectureleaks.com

Woah, what? I understand how people could believe that papers should be public given that many were funded by public research grants, but I've taught a class for two years now and not only am I not funded through a public research grant, I'm not paid. I don't see how you could construe that my lectures are the property of anyone but me and my university (which is private).

Re: Academic papers are hidden from the public. Here's some direct action.

#26

Post by brador »

St-Clock wrote: post #18
Mizza wrote: post #2

Academic lectures are hidden from the public. Here's some direct action: http://lectureleaks.com

I am STRONGLY against this kind of service and I hope you will consider removing any recording that was not approved by the lecturer. Otherwise, I want a recording of everything you have said while working. Actually, I want a recording of everything everybody said while they were working so my BigBrother TM audio processing technology can highlight anything that was out of line, incorrect, inappropriate, whatever. I…

Could the lectures be anonymized? remove the school affiliation or even auto-tune to avoid voice recognition. Would that be acceptable?

Re: Academic papers are hidden from the public. Here's some direct action.

#28

Post by rmc »

brador wrote: post #26
St-Clock wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am STRONGLY against this kind of service and I hope you will consider removing any recording that was not approved by the lecturer. Otherwise, I want a recording of everything you have said while working. Actually, I want a recording of everything everybody said while they were working so my BigBrother TM audio processing technology can highlight anything that was out of line, incorrect, inappropriate, whatever. I…

Could the lectures be anonymized? remove the school affiliation or even auto-tune to avoid voice recognition. Would that be acceptable?

But people don't want anonymized recordings, they want to know that they are listening to a recording of a psychology lecture at Harvard, not a generic psychology lecture. If you anonymizing a Harvard lecture, someone else will go "There's no harvard lecture on this site, I'll record my own one and upload it"

Re: Academic papers are hidden from the public. Here's some direct action.

#29

Post by _delirium »

Mizza wrote: post #6
_delirium wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I like that idea, but only if it's limited to the big lecture-style courses. Having taught some smaller classes, I'd be sort of annoyed if one of my lectures showed up online, without me having really prepared for it to be polished or well-thought-out enough to be permanently archived for worldwide broadcast. Talking to a group of 20-30 people somewhat informally would be hard to do if I knew that it were being…

This is something we've heard a lot of from professors - not sure how it will play out in the long run (we only launched a week ago, although we already have submissions from ~60 schools - more audio than we can process!!) Perhaps the solution is to cut them off at the pass, as it were. Record your lectures yourself and make them available online, so students won't even be thinking about making bootlegs.

> Record your lectures yourself and make them available online

The point though is then it's not the same teaching--- if I'm recording something For Official Broadcast, it's a different kind of thing than if I'm having an informal seminar with 20 people in a room where we all (at least sort of) know each other. I'll be more formal and less chatty, students will be less free with their discussion too, etc.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a more formal, archival-intended lecture from the podium, like a keynote speech or a big auditorium lecture. But I don't think it should be the only kind of thing to exist, either. I think it should be possible for people to discuss and learn in smaller groups without anyone (teachers or students) worrying that every single thing they say is on-camera, 1984-style. I mean, apart from me; do my students want every single question they ask in class, some smarter-sounding than others, to end up on the internet?

I do support making the materials more widely (and ideally, freely) available--- course notes, slides, papers, tutorials, textbooks, etc. It's just actually recording people against their will in a setting where they should be able to feel free to discuss & ask questions that has the weird 1984-ish vibe.

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