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Why I don't really care: most of the people who benefit from academic research papers fall into one of the following categories: 1. Academic professionals.
by houseabsolute 17y ago
Why I don't really care: most of the people who benefit from academic research papers fall into one of the following categories:
1. Academic professionals.
2. Students.
3. Industry professionals.
4. Government professionals.
In all three cases, there is an entity that will gladly pay the paltry sum required to get you access to ACM papers should you have even the slightest realistic need for them. You have to work pretty hard to be in a category where the dues will be both a significant expense and not paid for by someone else.
That is, it's quite silly that the government pays for research which a private organization can then benefit from without similarly paying back for it. However, it'd be even more silly to get worked up over every minor injustice when there are so much greater ones in equally easy reach.
- eru 17y agoWhat about interested layman?
- houseabsolute 17y agoNot a whole lot of those doing groundbreaking work in the field. And there aren't many interested laymen. On the whole, it seems unlikely to cause any measurable harm to the future if said laymen cannot read academic papers for free.
- eru 17y agoContrast the obsession with simplifying sign-on forms, to lower the threshold for participation in web applications.
- houseabsolute 17y agoNow contrast the simplicity of interacting with the most complex web application and the comparative overwhelming depth and difficulty of making novel findings in computer science.
- eru 17y agoI don't see the analogy. People use quite simple tools for complex interactions with other human beings (e.g. facebook). Someone interested in research may use quite simple tools like evince to view the latest research papers.