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Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

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Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#51
post #11

The only "online piracy" I see here is when Elsevier demands US$30 from you to get a copy of a paper written by scientists paid for by your tax dollars, who paid Elsevier page fees to publish it . Elsevier and similar companies are the thieves here, and they have a hell of a lot of nerve to be accusing scientists of "stealing" and "piracy" for working to create the very knowledge Elsevier shamelessly exploits. (Even…

Maybe ResearchGate is a way to change that?

(Not affiliated with. Just discovered it recently and found out, that 2 of my papers very cited without my knowledge.)

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#52
post #46

I also don't like it but the paper needs be printed and reviewed. This is not free. Perhaps we should agree that the publishing group pays for the entire cost of the article so that it can be free after the process of publishing it? Or boycot paywalled publishers, maybe go for PLOS? If you have ever complained about paywalls, don't ever publish in a paywalled journal yourself. I'm all for free papers by the way, noth…

> but the paper needs be printed and reviewed. This is not free

The reviewers work for free. Printing is almost free, and dispensable - nobody actually uses the printed journals and everyone prefers to print out PDFs themselves.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#53
I've had over 100% luck emailing papers' authors directly asking for a copy of a particular paper I've been interested in reading. I typically get a PDF emailed back to me.

I say "over 100%" because several times I've had hard copies sent for whatever reason with hand-written letters thanking me for expressing interest in their research and letting me know they'd be happy to answer any questions, etc.

I've generally found that some researchers, especially in relatively arcane areas are very pleased to find people who are genuinely interested in their work.

I only appeal to authors directly if I'm unable to access a paper online through my library's JSTOR access which is fairly extensive.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#54
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but in the area of education and science, limiting access is holding back the progress of the entire human race. Although I doubt Adobe and Microsoft did this out of altruism: By allowing piracy of their software for private use, it became widely used, and at work people wanted to continue using the software they knew -- this time paying for it.

Not only that, but in the case of MSVC/Visual Studio you have a talent feedback loop as well as a financial one. They need people to be pirating it or they'll have no windows developers in the future.

Visual Studio 2015 Professional is available in the meantime for free (as beer) under the name "Visual Studio Community 2015" for private developers and small companies:

> https://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-communit...

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#55
post #53

I've had over 100% luck emailing papers' authors directly asking for a copy of a particular paper I've been interested in reading. I typically get a PDF emailed back to me. I say "over 100%" because several times I've had hard copies sent for whatever reason with hand-written letters thanking me for expressing interest in their research and letting me know they'd be happy to answer any questions, etc. I've generally…

That's great, but it is not the universal experience (at a minimum, many past authors are now dead). And of course many scientists need to read a lot of papers. Having to go through the rigmarole of emailing authors, waiting for a response, is a pointless waste of everybody's time. #icanhazpdf is valuable because it's usually very fast. Sci-Hub and libgen are even more valuable because they are even faster and allow search+discovery without waiting for a third person to act.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#56
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a cheaper solution for foundational papers. Go to your library and use interlibrary loan. Some libraries also have copying services. I've been trying track down a paper for the Tanimoto similarity. Quoting Wikipedia, "many sources[3] cite an unavailable IBM Technical Report [4] as the seminal reference", where [4] is: Tanimoto, T. (17 Nov 1957). "An Elementary Mathematical theory of Classification and Predict…

> There's a cheaper solution for foundational papers. Go to your library and use interlibrary loan. Not sure that's really an option when not in the US.

I can't claim to know across the world, but in much of Europe you can get a 'visitor' subscription to university libraries for some nominal fee (50 euros or so in my nearest library; hell, enrolling in a Belgian university as a student costs 70 euros per year, which gives you access to the library, e-journals, email, Eduroam, the whole shebang).

I get a little irked every time this topic comes up, and people go on and on about the $30 for every paper. Nobody pays that. Who pays sticker for a car? Yes yes publishers are evil, down with the system, bring out the pitchforks - in the mean time, nobody except a very tiny but very vocal minority in the research community gives a shit. If you'd ask 100 people in the offices around me which one they'd prefer: all journals in the world 'open access' and no more big publishers, or a less crap coffee machine in the staff room, 95 of them would go for the coffee machine.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists still love giving up their rights to Elsevier though. They're as much to blame as the publisher. Maybe something would start to happen if scientists preferentially avoided citing non-openly published papers. They won't though, because their work is too competitive, but it might help to put a damper on it.

> Scientists still love giving up their rights to Elsevier though. They're as much to blame as the publisher. Scientists don't love giving up their rights to Elsevier. Elsevier owns many high IF journals in a number of fields, and publishing in high IF journals is part of how you "prove your worth" and get grants. Scientists give up their rights to Elsevier because that's how the "scientific economy" of their field o…

Professors are "expected" to be published in these journals in large Universities. They basically will never advance their career without be published in a "major journal."

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#58
post #11

The only "online piracy" I see here is when Elsevier demands US$30 from you to get a copy of a paper written by scientists paid for by your tax dollars, who paid Elsevier page fees to publish it . Elsevier and similar companies are the thieves here, and they have a hell of a lot of nerve to be accusing scientists of "stealing" and "piracy" for working to create the very knowledge Elsevier shamelessly exploits. (Even…

Scientists still love giving up their rights to Elsevier though. They're as much to blame as the publisher. Maybe something would start to happen if scientists preferentially avoided citing non-openly published papers. They won't though, because their work is too competitive, but it might help to put a damper on it.

I think this is happening, if slowly. The impact of open publications is generally known to be much higher. It's only a matter of time until this is accepted as fact by everyone, even the conservative older types who believe that anonymous peer review is a helpful institution.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#59
#icanhazdf, Sci-Hub, libgen, etc. are all symptoms of the disease. Science is in something like turmoil as it adjusts to the internet. Of course, the rest of the world has already adjusted to the internet - science hasn't because publishers have used their monopoly over our scientific knowledgebase to systematically prevent progress.

Some food for thought: science is mostly funded by public money. A small portion of that money goes to paying scientists - the rest goes on products and services bought in the process of research. Some of these are necessary. But publishing takes a large chunk of that funding stream - they charge us thousands of dollars to put articles we write on their website. In almost all cases they add no value at all. Then, they charge us, and anybody else, to read what we wrote.

But maybe it just costs that much? There are two issues here: firstly, for-profit academic publishers have some of the highest profit margins of any large business (35-40%). Secondly, they are charging thousands of dollars for something that with modern technology should be nearly free. They are technically incompetent to the extreme - not capable of running an internet company that really serves the needs of science or scientists.

They systematically take money that was intended to pay for science, and they do it by a mixture of exploiting their historical position as knowledge curators and abusing intellectual property law. They also work very hard to keep the system working how it is (why wouldn't they? $_$) - by political pressure, by exploitative relationships with educations institutions, by FUD, and by engineering the incentive structure of professional science by aggressively promoting 'glamour' and 'impact' publications as a measure of success.

The biggest publishers are holding science back, preventing progress to maximise their profit. We need to cut them out, and cut them down. Take back our knowledge and rebuild the incentives and mechanisms of science without them being involved.

Re: Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

#60
post #49
post #46

I also don't like it but the paper needs be printed and reviewed. This is not free. Perhaps we should agree that the publishing group pays for the entire cost of the article so that it can be free after the process of publishing it? Or boycot paywalled publishers, maybe go for PLOS? If you have ever complained about paywalls, don't ever publish in a paywalled journal yourself. I'm all for free papers by the way, noth…

> I also don't like it but the paper needs be printed and reviewed. This is not free. I have peer reviewed various academic papers for Elsevier without receiving any monetary compensation. Moreover, quite small amount of academic papers is read in a printed form, at least among my colleagues. Where the money goes to?

You think the paper is free? You think the editors, typesetters etc are free? I'm not saying it should be as expensive as it is, I'm saying if you want to distribute for free, the publishing party (the research group) will have to pay more or the journal will have to take less profits.
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