- Joined
- Apr 17, 2019
- Messages
- 26,166
- Reaction score
- 10,566
- Gender
- Undisclosed
- Political Leaning
- Independent
They should face lower-cost competition, and since that's happening already we should just wait and see.
Thats what I do. Email is great for that.Just an FYI, if you can find the authors of the articles and email them, many of them will be happy to send you their papers free of charge.
When I was doing my college work on post-WWII Reconstruction I emailed two researchers who's studies were hidden behind a paywall, and they send me copies of their papers for free.
It's simple demand and supply. Scientific journals (and even college textbooks) have a very low reader base since their core audience is mostly other academics and students. They most probably use vanity publishers (or are themselves one) which spike up the costs considerably.It's no more costly than you saying whatever on this forum. Printed copies, and postal costs, are obsolete.
Wait, you're saying the scientists have to PAY to be published in a scientific journal?
And you don't see a problem with that?
"Most journals are unwilling to disclose their publishing costs" gee I wonder why.
The only worthwhile service provided by journals is Peer Review. Do they pay scientific peers to review the studies?
Lower cost means lower quality. Anyone can do a "study" and post their results on the web for free.
My evidence is the prices Elsevier and such charge, for online articles. Subscriptions are cheaper per article, fit to the purpose of universities, but we the taxpayers are paying for that too.
Elsevier is a Dutch-based company that publishes academic content from all over the world. If a scientist in Strasbourg is funded by a French Government research grant, then where is the incentive for Elsevier to give that scientist's work global exposure without charging for the content?
You do not have to pay to read peer-reviewed papers. You can always obtain a free preprint of the paper from a wide variety of different sources. For example, I will often start with https://arxiv.org/ at Cornell University when looking up a peer-reviewed paper. They are by no means alone. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and many other universities all have sources where you can read peer-reviewed papers for free.Particularly since the majority of scientists get public money to do their research?
Journals are profiteering, based on their reputation and on a captive audience of academics. They are leaching off government money both in the research itself, and in the universities and colleges which have to buy subscriptions to keep their own students and academics up to date.
There are free alternatives, and good luck to them. But tell me why pirates should not simply steal the ill-gotten gains of the FOR-PROFIT journals, and make them freely available.
The public has a right to knowledge it has already paid for!
They get subscription fees from universities around the world.
I'm just questioning why individual articles cost so much. Are they concerned that universities will stop paying subscription fees and academics would buy individual articles instead? Are they distrustful that academics will provide pirate copies to their students?
But why would the universities continue to pay subscription fees if there were no paywall?
I don't know what to tell you, Ug.... I just get individual subscriptions to the Journals I reference a lot and for that, I get unlimited access to their archives. It gives me a huge leg up in my work and it saves me a lot of time in not having to track down obscure scientific papers from all over the world. It's well worth the price. The way I figure it, the production of scientific knowledge - whether publicly funded or not - is an entirely different proposition than its dissemination. When I buy a car, I don't mind paying for both the engine and the transmission. It's a package deal.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?