Free science

[dowie]

The whole point in my thread was to highlight the fact that an exceptional amount of knowledge is available to the lay person. I get your moral position, but personally, I feel that making the knowledge of the human race available to everyone is far more important than some pretendy economic internet joy day.

But if that's your point then you should be arguing for pirated text books rather than academic papers surely?

 

[dowie]

Is there any data to show the publishers of journals actually make 'excessive' profits above and beyond the cost of running those organisations?

 

[A.N.Other]

For the non-lay-person actually trying to publish things, an awful lot of funding bodies now insist on papers being open access. Most journals now support this, but you have to pay significantly more due to the ongoing 'losses' the journal accrues by not being able to sell re-prints of your submission.

It's lovely that people care about open access, but really the same money is involved at the end of the day, it's just paid upfront on behalf of the wider public by the authors themselves. If you're in a reasonably productive lab, the publication costs can be a substantial slice of the budget!

There is a large pressure to publish in renowned journals, although some fields are breaking with this to an extend now - submission to arXiv and the like.

 

[AHarvey]

Human nature is the biggest obstacle to human progress. Always has been.

Imagine how this world would be without greed, arrogance, egotism, desire for power and control, elitism, sectarianism, stupidity, apathy...

But we have all these in spades Especially me, in fairness. It's the "human condition". We are our own biggest enemy.

While I agree with the sentiment, do you not think that all those negative things that you mention are the reason we've advanced as much as we have?

One of the biggest reasons for scientific discovery, invention and progression? War.

 

[D.P.]

My view is that it's a good thing and it gets people debating how much of a scam scientific articles sites are.

£20+ to access a single paper, which they had no part in writing is beyond words. Especially when researching you don't just need one, you are looking at 10s and that is starting to get to a lot of money.

In effect all these site are doing is hosting and charging £20+ for the privilege as they do not even review the articles themselves.

But that is never how it works in reality. In the real world the university buys subscriptions to publishers like IEEE, Sage, elsevier. Then everyone within the institution has free access to all papers for effectively free.

 

[D.P.]

For the non-lay-person actually trying to publish things, an awful lot of funding bodies now insist on papers being open access. Most journals now support this, but you have to pay significantly more due to the ongoing 'losses' the journal accrues by not being able to sell re-prints of your submission.

It's lovely that people care about open access, but really the same money is involved at the end of the day, it's just paid upfront on behalf of the wider public by the authors themselves. If you're in a reasonably productive lab, the publication costs can be a substantial slice of the budget!

There is a large pressure to publish in renowned journals, although some fields are breaking with this to an extend now - submission to arXiv and the like.

I was going to say this. Open access journals basically mean that tax payers cover the costs though project funding, not research institutions (who derive money from taxes). It's a zero sum game. Costs are involved, someone has to pay them, most science is publicly funded.

 

[FishFluff]

But that is never how it works in reality. In the real world the university buys subscriptions to publishers like IEEE, Sage, elsevier. Then everyone within the institution has free access to all papers for effectively free.

But how do you think the publishers come up with a price for institutions wishing to access the papers? They'll take something like a £20 fee and estimate how many papers are going to be accessed and factor that into the price they charge. It may be free at the point of use, but it certainly isn't effectively free if places like Harvard are struggling to pay the costs. Harvard will undoubtedly be factoring the cost into college fees.

Personally I have no issue with the site, information like research papers should be freely available to anyone who wants it.

 

[dowie]

Personally I have no issue with the site, information like research papers should be freely available to anyone who wants it.

well someone needs to pay for it - otherwise you might as well just forget about having journals and have a free for all on sites like SSRN etc..

 

[spoffle]

it is still piracy - people are free to publish articles on SSRN etc.. if they want to - I don't really see your link as being any different to linking to a site with music or game download links

there are also plenty of arguments about music piracy and music companies not paying artists appropriate or getting them to sign ****** deals etc..

"It's still piracy" is a really poor argument, and is quite circular logic.

As you're essentially saying "It's bad because it's illegal". Just because something is legally classed as one thing, doesn't mean that itself is proof of its nature.

Being gay used to be illegal, for example... It's quite an intellectually devoid way of coming at a very intellectual topic.

 

[dowie]

"It's still piracy" is a really poor argument, and is quite circular logic.

As you're essentially saying "It's bad because it's illegal". Just because something is legally classed as one thing, doesn't mean that itself is proof of its nature.

Being gay used to be illegal, for example... It's quite an intellectually devoid way of coming at a very intellectual topic.

that's not my argument if you read my posts in this thread - but ignoring them and focusing on that line is as you put it 'quite an intellectually devoid way of coming at a very intellectual topic.'

not quite sure what makes this a 'very intellectual topic' though tbh... tis still basically just views on whether it is OK to ignore IP rights and distribute works you have no right to distribute

 

[spoffle]

The crazy thing about these journals making lots of money is we don't get paid to do the peer reviewing. It's just something that academics do for one another in the knowledge that their own paper submissions will get peer reviewed.

However things are starting to change with peer reviewed open journals such as PLoS One. Another question we should ask is should the general public have access to research papers anyway? It could be easy to misinterpret data for those that don't know the methodology etc.

It's better for lay people to have access and misinterpret them, than people who could do something meaningful with them, or even advance their own knowledge and understanding to not have access at all, just because they don't fit a specific criteria.

 

[spoffle]

that's not my argument if you read my posts in this thread - but ignoring them and focusing on that line is as you put it 'quite an intellectually devoid way of coming at a very intellectual topic.'

not quite sure what makes this a 'very intellectual topic' though tbh... tis still basically just views on whether it is OK to ignore IP rights and distribute works you have no right to distribute

I commented on that specific post, that's why I quoted it then referenced what you said in that post.

Also, you are coming at this topic in an intellectually devoid manner by saying

tis still basically just views on whether it is OK to ignore IP rights and distribute works you have no right to distribute

Whilst that is a literal component, there is a lot more to it than that. The woman who founded the site isn't doing so as an exercise in testing the limits of IP rights and distribution.

 

[dowie]

I commented on that specific post, that's why I quoted it then referenced what you said in that post.

Also, you are coming at this topic in an intellectually devoid manner by saying

no you quoted part of a post then started saying it was equivalent to something I'd not said and then you attacked that statement that I'd not said...

so utterly pointless and not far off a straw man..

why not stick to the actual arguments put across instead of ridiculous comments on whether you think something is 'intellectual' or not

 

[D.P.]

But how do you think the publishers come up with a price for institutions wishing to access the papers? They'll take something like a £20 fee and estimate how many papers are going to be accessed and factor that into the price they charge. It may be free at the point of use, but it certainly isn't effectively free if places like Harvard are struggling to pay the costs. Harvard will undoubtedly be factoring the cost into college fees.

Personally I have no issue with the site, information like research papers should be freely available to anyone who wants it.

They don't take anything like£20 per view of a paper. They run a system like £150 per a researcher and £35 per student per year.

Of course nothing is free and someone somewhere is paying for it. Publishers aren't charities, they have real costs, there is a free market that keeps prices in line between competing publishers.

 

[D.P.]

It's better for lay people to have access and misinterpret them, than people who could do something meaningful with them, or even advance their own knowledge and understanding to not have access at all, just because they don't fit a specific criteria.

Lay people do have access though, they can go to the library and get most journals. They can also approach a university and ask to be affiliated, and moreover they can use google and just search for the article in question. Most researchers will have a pre-print copy of the article on their website for free. Most universities actively require that their researchers provide full copies of all their publications online, and will have their own publication webservice. Many researchers will also upload their publications to places like ResearchGate. Then there is always the possibility of asking the researcher for a copy of the paper, I've had this happen several times with researchers from china who don't have access to the journals.

The scientific community is they open to providing their publications for free to as many people as possible, not least their citation factor is critical to their evaluation. However, even more important is beings pushed and highly respected journals.

 

[IrishChr1s]

We're switching quiet soon to open access peer reviewed journals which will still cost us 1-2k per paper depending on journal

As a researcher myself finding papers by my research group at home can be a nightmare, and I have no issues using the website stated to access our research

A colleague of mine published in nature, he couldn't email me published journal as he didn't have access to it, instead had to email me the manuscript, odd system

 

[spoffle]

no you quoted part of a post then started saying it was equivalent to something I'd not said and then you attacked that statement that I'd not said...

so utterly pointless and not far off a straw man..

why not stick to the actual arguments put across instead of ridiculous comments on whether you think something is 'intellectual' or not

No, you said "But it's still piracy", and it's the law that states that piracy is "bad" (illegal). So your argument was essentially that it's wrong because it's illegal.

 

[dowie]

No, you said "But it's still piracy", and it's the law that states that piracy is "bad" (illegal). So your argument was essentially that it's wrong because it's illegal.

no that isn't my argument - you're extrapolating from what I've said then attacking something based on your own assumption... stick to what I've posted (which is more than the line you're focusing on). You're assuming I think piracy is bad simply because the law says its bad - I've not stated that at all.

Instead of trying to construct straw men why not add to the thread?

 

[sven256]

They don't take anything like£20 per view of a paper. They run a system like £150 per a researcher and £35 per student per year.

Of course nothing is free and someone somewhere is paying for it. Publishers aren't charities, they have real costs, there is a free market that keeps prices in line between competing publishers.

While they don't charge universities like that, they do charge around the £20+ per paper if you wanted to view them.

For me who has to travel around 2 hours if I wanted to access papers, the site is ideal.

Simple fact is they are not storing anything like the amount of data like netflix, hulu etc.

These are small <1Mb papers so the hosting costs will be minimal. They don't review the papers, they don't do any research into the papers . They are simply charging £20 to download someone else's <1Mb file multiple times. This then lets you create your own <1Mb file to charge someone else to download this new <1Mb file.

 

[KiNgPiN83]

Human nature is the biggest obstacle to human progress. Always has been.

Imagine how this world would be without greed, arrogance, egotism, desire for power and control, elitism, sectarianism, stupidity, apathy...

But we have all these in spades Especially me, in fairness. It's the "human condition". We are our own biggest enemy.

While I agree with the sentiment, do you not think that all those negative things that you mention are the reason we've advanced as much as we have?

One of the biggest reasons for scientific discovery, invention and progression? War.

I was thinking the same the other day FoxEye. I truly believe we would be so much more advanced if we didnt hold ourselves back with money, power and greed. All the while people can make some money out of something it will be held back by this. I'm not saying i have an answer to this problem, but i just find it a bit sad.