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Academics posting their papers online in tribute to Aaron Swartz

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41–50 of 54 posts

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

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the detailed response. Just one clarification: I am not suggesting using just pure blog posts, but rather publishing properly formatted papers using a self-hosted publishing system a la Wordpress. Blog posts may or may not be added in order to promote the content. It seems like the real issue here is prestige, which then translates to funding. "Publish or die" is how most researchers seem to live. Thus I t…

Ah, I see. I would still prefer the papers to also be hosted on a more reliable system (for example, the ArXiV, or an electronic journals website), simply because they become easier to discover this way and there is a certain assurance that they will stay online. I think that Terrence Tao https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ ) has an interesting take on using blogs for math: He publishes in journals, but uses his blog to…

I think if the license was open enough a the paper could be hosted in multiple locations. Once again, there is already a precedent for this: when you publish anything on a blog you send a "ping" to Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. to re-crawl your site since you added new content. Your post ends up in the Google Cache, Coral Cache, etc. I think a system that would proactively tell ArXiv "hey a new paper is published!" or "hey a paper has been peer-reviewed and approved by X via their GPG signature!" could solve the issue you are seeing.

> But of course it differs for each author, and perhaps other fields have different conventions.

I think this is also spot on. The research lab where I worked was a collaboration between the Physics and Chemistry departments. The technology used by the two chief researchers was radically different, despite having worked together for decades. For example, my professor and his sub-group (Physics) used LaTex to typeset all his papers. The Chemistry professor and his sub-group, OTOH used Microsoft Word. From what I understood that was pretty common for the respective fields. So much opportunity here as well as so much resistance in just these types of issues...

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

#43

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…

Completely untrue in my field (biomechanics/kinesiology).

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

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I see. I would still prefer the papers to also be hosted on a more reliable system (for example, the ArXiV, or an electronic journals website), simply because they become easier to discover this way and there is a certain assurance that they will stay online. I think that Terrence Tao https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ ) has an interesting take on using blogs for math: He publishes in journals, but uses his blog to…

I think if the license was open enough a the paper could be hosted in multiple locations. Once again, there is already a precedent for this: when you publish anything on a blog you send a "ping" to Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. to re-crawl your site since you added new content. Your post ends up in the Google Cache, Coral Cache, etc. I think a system that would proactively tell ArXiv "hey a new paper is published!" or "h…

I like the gpg signature of peer reviewers part. It would both lend credibility to the paper, and leave a trail of reviewers. It would lessen the chance of a reviwer not taking their job seriously.

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

#45
post #38
post #30

You know what would (probably) really be a tribute to Aaron Swartz? Run a Tor exit node in an academic network that is blessed by JSTOR, Springer, etc. Make a website that surveys which exit nodes are in these blessed networks and turns any URL for a paywall into a rendering using that exit node to access the paywall. Let professors, students, and staff stand with Aaron by running exit nodes that are configured to on…

> Run a Tor exit node in an academic network that is > blessed by JSTOR, Springer, etc. I like this plan. But what should the school do when Elsevier cuts them off? Maybe we need moles in the publishing companies themselves.

> But what should the school do when Elsevier cuts them off?

Get more schools to do it. Get as many schools as possible to do it. How many schools would Elsevier be willing to cut off just to stop a few technically proficient users without university affiliations from accessing their stuff for free?

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

#46
post #30

You know what would (probably) really be a tribute to Aaron Swartz? Run a Tor exit node in an academic network that is blessed by JSTOR, Springer, etc. Make a website that surveys which exit nodes are in these blessed networks and turns any URL for a paywall into a rendering using that exit node to access the paywall. Let professors, students, and staff stand with Aaron by running exit nodes that are configured to on…

websites like this already exist.

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

#47
I think it is time for someone create an online repository where people can upload their scientific/research papers. Many top-scientist will continue to publish their manuscripts in closed-access journals to maintain their academic status. However, I also believe many of these same men & women would also quietly upload their papers to publicly available repositories.

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

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do! Or at least they are starting to. At least in physics/math in my experience most people have a personal homepage that they post their papers to, and also upload them on ArXiv. There is some complication with regards to copyright, because to publish in a journal you usually need to assign the exclusive rights to them. Nowadays most journals have realized the need for authors to post their papers on personal h…

Thanks for the detailed response. Just one clarification: I am not suggesting using just pure blog posts, but rather publishing properly formatted papers using a self-hosted publishing system a la Wordpress. Blog posts may or may not be added in order to promote the content. It seems like the real issue here is prestige, which then translates to funding. "Publish or die" is how most researchers seem to live. Thus I t…

  > It seems like the real issue here is prestige, which then
  > translates to funding. "Publish or die" is how most 
  > researchers seem to live. Thus I think if we are able to 
  > show that self-publishing/distributed publishing brings 
  > the money to the researcher and the academic institution 
  > then this idea would get traction.
That's basically right. Academic researchers are evaluated on the number and quality of their peer-reviewed journal articles. Blogging is a distant secondary concern for most researchers because it doesn't contribute, in a direct way, to tenure or grants. This is changing, but slowly.

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

#49
post #47

I think it is time for someone create an online repository where people can upload their scientific/research papers. Many top-scientist will continue to publish their manuscripts in closed-access journals to maintain their academic status. However, I also believe many of these same men & women would also quietly upload their papers to publicly available repositories.

This is the arXiv (arxiv.org). Science only, though.

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

#50
post #35
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…

> There are actually underground websites for searching > paywalled journals through proxies. Can you hook a brother up?

Yes, please.
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