11 ms·

“You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous”

237 points by feelthepain 11y ago

bruceb 11y ago
The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you already pay for it. A lot of people don't even go to the parks now. Making them free will mean more tax money from people who don't go to them. How many people read this research? 1% of America? If it is free then tax payers will have to pay more to make sure it is available. 99% percent will pay to provide things they will never read. To be clear I think it should be free but want to at least provide some counter point (even if it is paper thin...)
- privong 11y ago
  > If it is free then tax payers will have to pay more to make sure it is available. That's necessarily true. It's true that universities pay for journal subscriptions, but I guess a significant portion (or even all) of that expense is covered by the overheads universities charge grants. Given that a significant number of grants are taxpayer-paid, it's likely that tax payers are already paying for the journal subscriptions. So making them open access will shift the costs around, but it isn't immediately obvious that it will cost the taxpayers more than it currently does.
  - FussyZeus 11y ago
    It's also a much greater undertaking for any individual person to purchase one of those subscriptions, I don't think I've ever heard of a single person doing so where they didn't have some portion of it covered by an employer where the field is relevant, or a university. Anyone have any rough numbers on what this would cost Joe Schmo to buy?
    - privong 11y ago
      > Anyone have any rough numbers on what this would cost Joe Schmo to buy? There's a huge variety. An individual subscription to Nature is $200/year[0], but they often charge $30 for electronic access to individual articles. An institutional subscription to the Astrophysical Journal is $2000/year[1], though if you're a member of a professional society, you can buy an individual, electronic subscription for $25[e.g., 2]. As a point of comparison within astronomy, a similarly prestigious journal, the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society institutional subscription is $9400/year[in the csv link in 3]. [0] http://www.nature.com/ecommerce/subscribe.action?productId=nature http://www.nature.com/ecommerce/subscribe.action?productId=n... [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0004-637X/page/Pricing%20and%20ordering https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0004-637X/page/Pricing%20... [2] https://aas.org/individual-membership/dues-subscription-fees https://aas.org/individual-membership/dues-subscription-fees [3] http://www.oxfordjournals.org/en/access-purchase/pricing-and-ordering/institutional-pricing.html http://www.oxfordjournals.org/en/access-purchase/pricing-and...
- silverlight 11y ago
  I think there's a difference. Going to a National Park requires additional resources above just having a National Park. People to assist you, additional infrastructure like bathrooms and campsites, etc. So I think it makes sense you pay extra to actually use the park and tax payers are paying just enough to keep the park established. However, what's the extra cost in distributing the journal article? Hosting fees? A simple website where the paper author uploads a PDF? It seems like those costs are pretty small
- d33 11y ago
  I'd argue that it's not having to pay that is the problem alone; instead - the way they charge you an insane amount of money per paper. I wouldn't mind paying, say $1 monthly on entrance to have my park clean. Charging $10 per entry is crazy though.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  >How many people read this research? 1% of America? If anything, it's 1% of the world. The problem is not limited to the US. And it's a very significant 1% which is one of the biggest - if not literally the biggest - drivers of the world economy. >The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you already pay for it. Parks have huge continuing expenses. They're also owned in trust for the public. Journal publishing has almost no expenses at all. It's pure privatised oligoply. It provides no useful public or private service of any kind. There is nothing academic publishers do that couldn't be done better in other ways.
  - x1798DE 11y ago
    > If anything, it's 1% of the world. The problem is not limited to the US. Probably it's not worth making this point, but I think that would almost certainly be a bigger, not smaller fraction of Americans, since I think Americans are more, not less, likely to read scientific research than the rest of the world.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    >Journal publishing has almost no expenses at all. If their expenses of 60-80% of revenue is "almost nothing", surely their revenue is also "almost nothing", and therefore we shouldn't care about it.
    - acidflask 11y ago
      To cite just one example, Elsevier consistently reports over $1b/yr profit on $3b/yr revenue. Not exactly "almost nothing". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-access-at-mit/mit-open-access-policy/publishers-and-the-mit-faculty-open-access-policy/elsevier-fact-sheet/ https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-acc...
      - ikeboy 11y ago
        If $2b of costs is almost no expenses, then surely $1b of profit is as well. You can't have it both ways, downplaying their costs and complaining about their profit.
- frobozz 11y ago
  I certainly don't have a problem with the users of a service paying something to use that service, in order to save the rest of us a bit of money. That is how the postal system and a lot of public transport works (and, as you say, National Parks). What's actually ludicrous is that you pay private, profit making companies to allow you to read taxpayer-funded research. Moreover, taxpayer-funded bodies have to pay these companies to allow them to read taxpayer-funded research from other taxpayer-funded bodies. That is the epitome of private sector wastefulness spreading its tentacles into the public sector.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    You haven't given any distinction. Do you not consider publishing a service?
    - frobozz 11y ago
      What do you mean? Of course publishing is a service. At what point did I claim otherwise? The point is that taxes pay for people produce the content, and to allow people to read the content. If the publication of the content were also a public service, then no-one would be syphoning off profit in the middle. All of the money taken by that service from the consumers would be rolled back into saving taxpayer money at some stage in the process.
      - ikeboy 11y ago
        So your problem is with for profit businesses being involved at any stage in the process? Suppose a park contracts with a company to provide food, and that company makes a profit; is that bad? We could also consider workers "making a profit" from their labor, and decree that government workers must make only as much money as the minimum to feed themselves; any more would be "syphoning off profit". I just don't see how you can make a principled distinction that says publishing margins of 30% are bad, but allows for subcontracting to private companies.
        frobozz 11y ago
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Protohedgehog 11y ago
  It's not necessarily about reading articles. It's about giving everyone the freedom and opportunity to do so if they wish. You might not want to read them now, but what if you became interested in physics, or a friend of family member became ill? You'd want to know more about these things from the research literature, and the current system denies the vast majority of people that opportunity. You don't even know if articles are any good or useful until you've paid. We recently published a paper that attempts to convey different needs for open access to research here: http://f1000research.com/articles/5-632/v1 http://f1000research.com/articles/5-632/v1
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Weird argument. If 1% of America is reading this research, then it is most likely because the research is locked behind paywalls where only those going to Universities can get access to the material. Of course, this whole argument implies that all the research produced is only being viewed by 1% of the population then much of it is worthless and never used, therefore the public funds put into using the research were largely wasted - which we know is definitely not true. And if only 1% of the population is viewing the material, then it seems a bit unlikely that it would be so highly profitable for people like Elsevier. I mean, this argument breaks down even further because if even only 1% more people were to use the research because it was free, the benefit to society would be worth many orders of magnitude more than the funds that would have been gained from selling the material. The final, fatal flaw in the argument, however is that the money paid into National Parks is given to the Government, who use it to pay for the upkeep of National Parks. The people who are charging to access research are doing so to make a profit and relying largely on research funded not by the publishers, but by the U.S. Government who give grants! They are hardly contributing their entire profits into research.
- leecarraher 11y ago
  The 1% that actually read stuff, are usually under some sort of group journal usage license like a university library, or large organization site license, so they usually aren't paying anyway. I think the biggest hurdle is that these decisions are usually only made (with the exception of the occasional individual $15 ieee article purchase ) by top level executives at the journal's and the "customer's" organizations, while the costs burden is pushed on to every one else at that organization. My fellow researchers firmly follow the, "citizens paid for it, we are gonna share it" mentality so all results and source material is made available for free online. if someone wants everything organized into a strict 10 page limit, they can have it, but they arent getting anything more than what everyone already has access too.
  - chatmasta 11y ago
    Maybe more than 1% would read the papers, if not for the paywall. The basis of your argument is likely due to simple confirmation bias. Sure, 1% read the papers, but only because 1% can read the papers. Who's to say nobody else would be interested if they could read them for free? Of course nobody will read something they know nothing about if they need to pay... But make it free, and they just might.
- jbmorgado 11y ago
  The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you already pay for it. This analogy is completely wrong. The money you pay in admission to the parks go towards the parks in order to maintain and improve the parks, even though you already do that with your taxes. The money you pay to scientific publications goes to the publisher alone, it does not, in any case, end up financing science.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    If nobody paid, publishers wouldn't have revenue from access, and so would need to charge authors directly, which would make science costs go up.
    - p4bl0 11y ago
      That is not true, because it is possible to get rid of the publishers entirely. The only thing that would be needed are people in charge of formatting and such, because some fields do not use LaTeX yet (this need concerns mostly biology, chemistry, and medicine). But that could be easily covered by small local businesses for a teeny tiny fraction of the costs of current subscriptions. The other thing that costs money already exists: archives that take care of making papers available and preserve them for the future. These services would need to be reinforced but that cost is also ridiculous compared to what is currently spent as subscription (the operational cost of arXiv for example are only a bit more than what a mid sized university pays for Elsevier subscription alone…).
      - ikeboy 11y ago
        The large open access journals that don't have independent funding charge rates within the same order of magnitude. What evidence do you have that an order of magnitude reduction is actually possible at scale? How do you explain the expenses of both traditional publishers and open access ones, and how would you eliminate them?
        p4bl0 11y ago
- SeanDav 11y ago
  > "The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you already pay for it." You would have a case if the publishers did not make huge profits from the research and contribute nothing back to the research. When you pay for access to a park, you know that money is going towards the running and improvement of the park.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    Revenue goes towards publishing expenses. Why don't you consider their subsidization of publishing a contribution to the research?
    - SeanDav 11y ago
      They could publish online for much lower cost, under a CC licence. Current profits are extortionate, to say nothing about the bullying tactics employed by Elsevier, who abuse a monopoly and force libraries and other institutions to take a lot of publications they do not want to access those they do want.
      - ikeboy 11y ago
        The distribution isn't where the cost comes from, it's editing, reviewing, and so on.
        p4bl0 11y ago
        That is false. Reviewing does not cost a cent to publishers, it is entirely the work of the scientific community.
        ikeboy 11y ago
        Someone paid by the publisher needs to look at every paper. Some journals calculate internal costs of up to $40,000 per paper (see http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science-publishing-1.12676 http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-scie...). You seem to be skeptical of such claims, but simply asserting that the expenses don't exist isn't enough.
- shade23 11y ago
  >How many people read this research? 1% of America? I disagree with this.You need to realise these numbers are because it is behind a fortified wall.There have been several times i've ended up on Elsevier/IEEE and could not read things because of the registration involved.Now i dont even bother looking at those urls(except if I am interested enough to go via SciHub). And I am quite sure there are several others like me too. People like to read articles,and I would prefer reading the actual paper than 10 other news articles describing the new technology too. Access to Information determines the number of people who access it.The numbers might be lesser earlier,but I assure you the growth would be exponential. Its just painful to see how delayed/selective interactions are in the "scientific papers world" when it would be possible for massive interaction which could lead to an "Academic Boom"(horrible pun but you should get the point).
- dougmccune 11y ago
  I think a closer argument is the textbook content that professors create. Writing a textbook is something that is often done on tenured professor's salaried time, essentially paid for by their university. And in the case of public universities that's public money just like research grant money. And yet you never hear the argument that all books academics write as part of their job as tenured professors should be free.
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  Paying for entry to national parks is a terrible idea too.
chris_wot 11y ago
Can someone get rid of the "?mbid=social_twitter" on this article? it's jumping folks to the middle of the article, quite unnecessarily.
Overtonwindow 11y ago
I think the article is oversimplifying the issue. This isn't about access, who reads it, or who pays for the research, it's about greed. Plain and simple. Corporations are making money off of the restricting of access to scientific research, and they are fighting to preserve that business model.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  > oversimplifying the issue >Plain and simple Huh?
thaw13579 11y ago
I think the most important point was brushed over in the article--that journals offer prestige. Scientists are entirely aware of the problems, yet they still volunteer to submit their work to them, because they significantly improve the chances of promotion and tenure. These things are already tremendously competitive, so most would rather not volunteer for a handicap by publishing in other venues.
- DarkContinent 11y ago
  So then the problem is the university tenure system, not the journals.
- jeffwass 11y ago
  You've hit the nail on the head. Journals like Nature and Science are usually considered the top (at least for physics, which I studied). Getting even one article published in these is a big deal. As a grad student you've got it made for when you apply for a post doc. The irony is that most (probably all) of the researchers would gladly want their articles shared widely, and I couldn't see any researcher in favour of restricting access to an interested party wanting to see their work. That said, if you're not in academia, you may have good luck emailing professors directly asking if they can share a copy of their paper. I've been out of school for several years now, but professors sometimes even included such PDFs on their webpages for general public consumption. Not sure if that violates any terms of the publishing journal though.
  - praseodym 11y ago
    Usually you can publish a draft version of your paper, but not the version that is edited by the journal. They should be mostly the same, though.
    - jeffwass 11y ago
      Often people post to the Arxiv as well, clearly not formatted the same way as the journal publication. But in many cases the exact same text. I'm not sure if some journals like Nature prevent or discourage you from doing this.
jcizzle 11y ago
By this notion, I should get free tickets to all college football games. And my driver's license registration should also be free, don't my taxes already go to paying for the DMV? Wait, should anything that is even remotely funded by taxpayer dollars now be free for everyone that pays taxes?
- biehl 11y ago
  Yes, if all of those things were non-rivalrous, and had neglible marginal cost.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    So no tolls on non full roads?
    - aeorgnoieang 11y ago
      There are expenses involved in using a road even when it's not full.
      - ikeboy 11y ago
        Like what? What costs more if the road has a single additional car?
        monocasa 11y ago
        The additional wear on the road.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - unfamiliar 11y ago
      In the UK we have only a few toll roads, and they are optional. So yes, it is entirely possible to have a road system functioning without tolls.
dahart 11y ago
I agree that publicly funded research should be publicly available, and that for-profit publishers have an entrenched commercial interest that feeds on free access to research. But it's worth keeping in mind that the value of public funding for research is primarily for the participants, not for the output to the public. Public research funding is an education model that occasionally has the nice byproduct of useful results. I got a Master's degree on public funding, I've published papers in prominent journals in my field, and I'm pretty sure nobody would read my papers if they had them for free. The real value of the public dollars spent on me was my education. I'm not saying research shouldn't be publicly available. It should. I am saying there are other ways we're getting our money's worth out of research funding. A print publication with a distribution channel has been historically important. Universities don't want to be in the business of printing & distributing. Many journals also put on conferences. The need for print & distribution is the reason publishers got entrenched, but it's changing as the importance of print declines. I do wonder if the real crime by publishers isn't locking research away from the public, but charging universities for journals, effectively using public dollars to buy the research that was publicly funded. * edited. removed points I regret & speculate were being downvoted.
- themartorana 11y ago
  It's not about who would read your work, but who can. I don't read much the FBI/NSA/rest of government produces but I'm pretty frustrated every time the suggestion of exempting troves of content from the FOIA comes up. I also know that my access guarantees other researches access to the same content, meaning the research that they do, that may one day benefit me down the road, has had free access to all of the knowledge available to make the best play at their own research. It's scary to me that scientific knowledge can be locked away. I am the kind of person that believes all pharmaceutical research should be freely published and publicly available as well. Patents provide all the monopoly protections necessary, and sunlight helps disinfect bogus science that sometimes leads to death in the pursuit of profits.
  - dahart 11y ago
    I agree with you, and I have the very same concerns, but you're talking about two different kinds of can. Government info that is FOIA exempt is not available for purchase. You can purchase most research, that is a kind of access. And if you're at a university doing research, chances are you already have access without paying personally. The knowledge we're talking about in this thread isn't being locked away, it's being charged for. I'm with you, and I don't like it, but we can't claim there's no access.
joering2 11y ago
... meanwhile Wired told me "The thing about AdBlock..." and prevent me from reading this "free" article. Funny thing - I don't even have AdBlock.
- vic-traill 11y ago
  I expect there are a number of observable events or non-events that can be used to infer the use of an ad blocker. They don't necessarily work well ... I've been presented with a "We see you're using an ad blocker ... please turn it off" message (I can't recall where, perhaps Bloomberg or the WSJ?) when I've just had a Hosts file in play.
ikeboy 11y ago
>Publishers acquire this research free of charge Except of course they don't. They provide publishing services, which cost them between 60-80% of the revenue each paper bring in (based on profit margins between 20-40%). Authors sign over their copyright in exchange for this consideration. (If they didn't get anything, the copyright assignment wouldn't be valid.) > leading journals have stepped forward to make new findings free to all. By charging authors upfront. >Publishers do add value, but that value doesn’t justify the cost or the lost opportunities for those who can’t (or can’t fully) access the research. This doesn't make sense. "Groceries do add value, but that doesn't justify the cost or lost opportunities for those that can't afford food". The solution to people not being able to access essentials is not outlawing anyone charging for it. It's subsidizing the cost for everyone to buy it, or making a government-run version that provides it for free. If you want everyone to be able to eat, you give them food stamps (or make sure they have enough money by raising the minimum wage, whatever), don't get upset at companies that provide value but also make a profit. If you can do it for less, go ahead.
- p4bl0 11y ago
  Have you ever published a paper in an academic venue? What publishers offered was delivering paper versions of articles to your local research library. Now they only host PDFs online. Apart from that their added-value work is negligible. The biggest improvement I've seen by a publisher of one of my papers was changing "Sec." to "Sect." when I was referencing section, and putting page number in blue rather than black (true story). Anyway nowadays when a paper is accessible directly from a public repository, it is that version which will be used most often, and it includes literally zero work from the publisher. All the real work is done by the authors, and by the reviewers, who are other researchers doing their normal job (i.e., they're not paid specifically to review papers, and more importantly not paid by publishers). The only thing that publishers provide is reputation/prestige, and that's only because of inertia, and it's difficult to change because they own the titles of journals they publish. That's one of the numerous reasons why bibliometrics is an entirely bad idea and is counter-productive for science. Also, not all open access journal are charging author, that is a lie installed by publishers lobbying (and this is how they actually spend money). You can research "diamond open access" or "overlay journal" for some examples of economical models where journal are high quality, open access and free to submit to.
grondilu 11y ago
But if scientific papers were free, how could nations avoid a free-rider issue regarding other nations? For instance, a major part of scientific research is done in US, isn't it? Does that mean that the US tax payer should be the major contributor to an hypothetical worldwide scientific activity?
- DarkLinkXXXX 11y ago
  Wouldn't that benefit everyone?
  - grondilu 11y ago
    You end up in a situation where a minority is coerced to pay for everyone. It's morally wrong.
    - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
      No, the minority pay si that can benefit, it just happens that others who haven't paid benefit too. Like when a country act to reduce their industrial impact on the atmosphere, their citizens benefit with cleaner air/water or whatever but there's a benefit to the rest of the world too. Being altruistic leads to greater overall benefit. Being miserly leads to global detriment. Applying Kant's Imperative as the moral measure leads to say it's morally wrong not to pay as if no-one were to pay we all lose out.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - grondilu 11y ago
        It's not so much about altruism or the moral validity of taxation. It's about equality and fairness. If some people can take advantage from the expropriation of others, then who gets to say who can be expropriated and who can't? With taxation the justification comes more or less from the revenues and wealth differential, basically it is assumed that rich people can pay because they suffer less from the requisition of a small part of their wealth. But if the criteria is only nationality, I'm not sure they will accept it that easily.
harry8 11y ago
Article blocked me for using adblock. I don't use adblock. So I don't read wired and I'm confident I'm missing nothing.
- linuxhansl 11y ago
  Same here. I do use adblock, but I had nothing block on (or referenced from) the article's page. Shame, guess I won't be readying Wired anymore.
- bcg1 11y ago
  Disable javascript, problem solved.
- ultramancool 11y ago
  https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer
sremani 11y ago
Reputation and Credential-ism, right or wrong are the pillars of Academic Science. Unless we address some of these aspects, it will provide you with copious amounts of "recreational outrage".
Houshalter 11y ago
I hate how copyright now lasts indefinitely. There are many papers from the 50's by people who are dead, and these companies are still claiming ownership over them. Copyright should last a relatively short time, and maybe be even shorter if you don't pay a fee to get it extended. Perhaps even a special exemption for scientific research. If you could read all papers published 10 years ago for free, that would be incredible, even if it still cost $35 to read a new paper. See the science section here: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976 https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976 >1959 was another noteworthy year for science. C. P. Snow presented The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, an influential lecture about the gulf between the sciences and the humanities. The programming language COBOL was developed. Martin Gardner published the Three Prisoners Problem, a probability theory paradox, in his “Mathematical Games” column in Scientific American. Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison published Searching for Interstellar Communications, a foundational work for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, in the journal Nature. >If you follow the link from Nature above (and you do not have a subscription or institutional access), you will see that this 1959 article is behind a paywall. You can purchase it for $32. A distressing number of scientific articles from 1959 require payment or a subscription or account, including those in major journals such as Science and JAMA. And the institutional access that many top scientists enjoy is not guaranteed—even institutions such as Harvard have considered canceling their subscriptions because they could no longer afford the escalating prices of major journal subscriptions.
- Paul-ish 11y ago
  Although copyright technically is limited in term [1], it is practically forever, as in I will never see a work created today go into the public domain. Next time a bill is introduced to extend copyright term, I think the community should speak out against it. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Copyright_term.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_St...
  - godzillabrennus 11y ago
    I'm helping a startup in the grassroots lobbying space to improve how citizens can effect change. Turns out elected officials really do care a lot about their constituents, more so on average than lobbyists. Unfortunately it's hard to get the contact information for the staffers of these elected officials and it's hard to know if the supporters of a cause live in the right district that the elected representative represents. Anyway, the platform makes this all easy and is going live this summer. If anyone does represent a special interest and wants to help beta test for free email hn (at) strapr (dot) com
lutusp 11y ago
Here's the thing with Wired: http://i.imgur.com/ONOt88S.png http://i.imgur.com/ONOt88S.png Fight Internet coercion -- boycott Wired. Don't link to their articles, don't visit their site, don't accept their coercive behavior. Ad blocking is not a crime, it's a right.
mindcrime 11y ago
I have to say, I'm a little surprised at how many people in this thread seem to be taking the side of the publishers. If not completely, at least to some extent. I look at this as being pretty cut and dried "if research is paid for by tax dollars, it should be freely available to the public." I don't even see how that's controversial. That said, I understand the arguments that academics are sort of in a catch-22 situation since funding, tenure, etc. are based on journal publications, impact factor, etc. But I'd like to think that we can all (mostly) agree that the current system is broken, and at least start talking about what it would take to revise it. At least some progress actually does seem to be happening organically. New open access journals based on the arXiv overlay model are starting to appear, like Discrete Analysis[1]. Hopefully over time this problem may correct itself. [1]: http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/articles http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/articles
- mrdrozdov 11y ago
  To play devil's advocate for a moment, surely there are other things paid for by tax dollars where the benefit is indirect like it is in research?
  - karmelapple 11y ago
    The national interstate system might be one of those things. Sure, it's directly helpful to people going on long drives in their car between cities... but people could fly or train it, too. However, the indirect benefits are that produce and other goods can be shipped via semi trucks quickly (ignoring the environmental and road quality impact they make). So there's both direct and indirect benefits to taxpayers there.
  - mindcrime 11y ago
    To play devil's advocate for a moment, surely there are other things paid for by tax dollars where the benefit is indirect like it is in research? No doubt. And there are all sorts of discussions one could get into about what should and shouldn't be publicly funded. As a Libertarian, I'm usually in the minority on those discussions, so let's not even go into that. My take on this is basically "if they're going to take my money and spend it, I at least want the system to be fair" (as I perceive it). And at least in my world-view, I think it's ridiculous to have to pay again just to read the research, especially now that we're in the Internet age where distribution costs are dramatically lower. If I wanted a paper journal mailed to me, sure, I'd be fine paying for that (up to a point). But as cheap as it is to create a PDF and slap it on a website, and then looking at how much journals are charging per article, it just feels like a complete abuse.
darkinvisible 11y ago
Narrowing it a bit, how about paying to read research I WROTE? I tried to access a paper of mine I didn't have handy and sure enough the fee was $35. Turned to sci-hub, of course. I pirated myself. --Anonymous, just in case
darkinvisible 11y ago
Narrowing it a bit, how about paying to read research I WROTE? I tried to access a paper of mine I didn't have handy and sure enough the fee was $35. Turned to sci-hub, of course. I pirated myself. --Anonymous, just in case

237 points by feelthepain 11y ago

The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you already pay for it. A lot of people don't even go to the parks now. Making them free will mean more tax money from people who don't go to them. How many people read this research? 1% of America? If it is free then tax payers will have to pay more to make sure it is available. 99% percent will pay to provide things they will never read. To be clear I think it should be free but want to at least provide some counter point (even if it is paper thin...)

privong 11y ago
> If it is free then tax payers will have to pay more to make sure it is available. That's necessarily true. It's true that universities pay for journal subscriptions, but I guess a significant portion (or even all) of that expense is covered by the overheads universities charge grants. Given that a significant number of grants are taxpayer-paid, it's likely that tax payers are already paying for the journal subscriptions. So making them open access will shift the costs around, but it isn't immediately obvious that it will cost the taxpayers more than it currently does.
- FussyZeus 11y ago
  It's also a much greater undertaking for any individual person to purchase one of those subscriptions, I don't think I've ever heard of a single person doing so where they didn't have some portion of it covered by an employer where the field is relevant, or a university. Anyone have any rough numbers on what this would cost Joe Schmo to buy?
  - privong 11y ago
    > Anyone have any rough numbers on what this would cost Joe Schmo to buy? There's a huge variety. An individual subscription to Nature is $200/year[0], but they often charge $30 for electronic access to individual articles. An institutional subscription to the Astrophysical Journal is $2000/year[1], though if you're a member of a professional society, you can buy an individual, electronic subscription for $25[e.g., 2]. As a point of comparison within astronomy, a similarly prestigious journal, the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society institutional subscription is $9400/year[in the csv link in 3]. [0] http://www.nature.com/ecommerce/subscribe.action?productId=nature http://www.nature.com/ecommerce/subscribe.action?productId=n... [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0004-637X/page/Pricing%20and%20ordering https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0004-637X/page/Pricing%20... [2] https://aas.org/individual-membership/dues-subscription-fees https://aas.org/individual-membership/dues-subscription-fees [3] http://www.oxfordjournals.org/en/access-purchase/pricing-and-ordering/institutional-pricing.html http://www.oxfordjournals.org/en/access-purchase/pricing-and...
silverlight 11y ago
I think there's a difference. Going to a National Park requires additional resources above just having a National Park. People to assist you, additional infrastructure like bathrooms and campsites, etc. So I think it makes sense you pay extra to actually use the park and tax payers are paying just enough to keep the park established. However, what's the extra cost in distributing the journal article? Hosting fees? A simple website where the paper author uploads a PDF? It seems like those costs are pretty small
d33 11y ago
I'd argue that it's not having to pay that is the problem alone; instead - the way they charge you an insane amount of money per paper. I wouldn't mind paying, say $1 monthly on entrance to have my park clean. Charging $10 per entry is crazy though.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
>How many people read this research? 1% of America? If anything, it's 1% of the world. The problem is not limited to the US. And it's a very significant 1% which is one of the biggest - if not literally the biggest - drivers of the world economy. >The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you already pay for it. Parks have huge continuing expenses. They're also owned in trust for the public. Journal publishing has almost no expenses at all. It's pure privatised oligoply. It provides no useful public or private service of any kind. There is nothing academic publishers do that couldn't be done better in other ways.
- x1798DE 11y ago
  > If anything, it's 1% of the world. The problem is not limited to the US. Probably it's not worth making this point, but I think that would almost certainly be a bigger, not smaller fraction of Americans, since I think Americans are more, not less, likely to read scientific research than the rest of the world.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  >Journal publishing has almost no expenses at all. If their expenses of 60-80% of revenue is "almost nothing", surely their revenue is also "almost nothing", and therefore we shouldn't care about it.
  - acidflask 11y ago
    To cite just one example, Elsevier consistently reports over $1b/yr profit on $3b/yr revenue. Not exactly "almost nothing". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-access-at-mit/mit-open-access-policy/publishers-and-the-mit-faculty-open-access-policy/elsevier-fact-sheet/ https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-acc...
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      If $2b of costs is almost no expenses, then surely $1b of profit is as well. You can't have it both ways, downplaying their costs and complaining about their profit.
frobozz 11y ago
I certainly don't have a problem with the users of a service paying something to use that service, in order to save the rest of us a bit of money. That is how the postal system and a lot of public transport works (and, as you say, National Parks). What's actually ludicrous is that you pay private, profit making companies to allow you to read taxpayer-funded research. Moreover, taxpayer-funded bodies have to pay these companies to allow them to read taxpayer-funded research from other taxpayer-funded bodies. That is the epitome of private sector wastefulness spreading its tentacles into the public sector.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  You haven't given any distinction. Do you not consider publishing a service?
  - frobozz 11y ago
    What do you mean? Of course publishing is a service. At what point did I claim otherwise? The point is that taxes pay for people produce the content, and to allow people to read the content. If the publication of the content were also a public service, then no-one would be syphoning off profit in the middle. All of the money taken by that service from the consumers would be rolled back into saving taxpayer money at some stage in the process.
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      So your problem is with for profit businesses being involved at any stage in the process? Suppose a park contracts with a company to provide food, and that company makes a profit; is that bad? We could also consider workers "making a profit" from their labor, and decree that government workers must make only as much money as the minimum to feed themselves; any more would be "syphoning off profit". I just don't see how you can make a principled distinction that says publishing margins of 30% are bad, but allows for subcontracting to private companies.
      - frobozz 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
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Protohedgehog 11y ago
It's not necessarily about reading articles. It's about giving everyone the freedom and opportunity to do so if they wish. You might not want to read them now, but what if you became interested in physics, or a friend of family member became ill? You'd want to know more about these things from the research literature, and the current system denies the vast majority of people that opportunity. You don't even know if articles are any good or useful until you've paid. We recently published a paper that attempts to convey different needs for open access to research here: http://f1000research.com/articles/5-632/v1 http://f1000research.com/articles/5-632/v1
chris_wot 11y ago
Weird argument. If 1% of America is reading this research, then it is most likely because the research is locked behind paywalls where only those going to Universities can get access to the material. Of course, this whole argument implies that all the research produced is only being viewed by 1% of the population then much of it is worthless and never used, therefore the public funds put into using the research were largely wasted - which we know is definitely not true. And if only 1% of the population is viewing the material, then it seems a bit unlikely that it would be so highly profitable for people like Elsevier. I mean, this argument breaks down even further because if even only 1% more people were to use the research because it was free, the benefit to society would be worth many orders of magnitude more than the funds that would have been gained from selling the material. The final, fatal flaw in the argument, however is that the money paid into National Parks is given to the Government, who use it to pay for the upkeep of National Parks. The people who are charging to access research are doing so to make a profit and relying largely on research funded not by the publishers, but by the U.S. Government who give grants! They are hardly contributing their entire profits into research.
leecarraher 11y ago
The 1% that actually read stuff, are usually under some sort of group journal usage license like a university library, or large organization site license, so they usually aren't paying anyway. I think the biggest hurdle is that these decisions are usually only made (with the exception of the occasional individual $15 ieee article purchase ) by top level executives at the journal's and the "customer's" organizations, while the costs burden is pushed on to every one else at that organization. My fellow researchers firmly follow the, "citizens paid for it, we are gonna share it" mentality so all results and source material is made available for free online. if someone wants everything organized into a strict 10 page limit, they can have it, but they arent getting anything more than what everyone already has access too.
- chatmasta 11y ago
  Maybe more than 1% would read the papers, if not for the paywall. The basis of your argument is likely due to simple confirmation bias. Sure, 1% read the papers, but only because 1% can read the papers. Who's to say nobody else would be interested if they could read them for free? Of course nobody will read something they know nothing about if they need to pay... But make it free, and they just might.
jbmorgado 11y ago
The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you already pay for it. This analogy is completely wrong. The money you pay in admission to the parks go towards the parks in order to maintain and improve the parks, even though you already do that with your taxes. The money you pay to scientific publications goes to the publisher alone, it does not, in any case, end up financing science.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  If nobody paid, publishers wouldn't have revenue from access, and so would need to charge authors directly, which would make science costs go up.
  - p4bl0 11y ago
    That is not true, because it is possible to get rid of the publishers entirely. The only thing that would be needed are people in charge of formatting and such, because some fields do not use LaTeX yet (this need concerns mostly biology, chemistry, and medicine). But that could be easily covered by small local businesses for a teeny tiny fraction of the costs of current subscriptions. The other thing that costs money already exists: archives that take care of making papers available and preserve them for the future. These services would need to be reinforced but that cost is also ridiculous compared to what is currently spent as subscription (the operational cost of arXiv for example are only a bit more than what a mid sized university pays for Elsevier subscription alone…).
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      The large open access journals that don't have independent funding charge rates within the same order of magnitude. What evidence do you have that an order of magnitude reduction is actually possible at scale? How do you explain the expenses of both traditional publishers and open access ones, and how would you eliminate them?
      - p4bl0 11y ago
SeanDav 11y ago
> "The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you already pay for it." You would have a case if the publishers did not make huge profits from the research and contribute nothing back to the research. When you pay for access to a park, you know that money is going towards the running and improvement of the park.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  Revenue goes towards publishing expenses. Why don't you consider their subsidization of publishing a contribution to the research?
  - SeanDav 11y ago
    They could publish online for much lower cost, under a CC licence. Current profits are extortionate, to say nothing about the bullying tactics employed by Elsevier, who abuse a monopoly and force libraries and other institutions to take a lot of publications they do not want to access those they do want.
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      The distribution isn't where the cost comes from, it's editing, reviewing, and so on.
      - p4bl0 11y ago
        That is false. Reviewing does not cost a cent to publishers, it is entirely the work of the scientific community.
        ikeboy 11y ago
        Someone paid by the publisher needs to look at every paper. Some journals calculate internal costs of up to $40,000 per paper (see http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science-publishing-1.12676 http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-scie...). You seem to be skeptical of such claims, but simply asserting that the expenses don't exist isn't enough.
shade23 11y ago
>How many people read this research? 1% of America? I disagree with this.You need to realise these numbers are because it is behind a fortified wall.There have been several times i've ended up on Elsevier/IEEE and could not read things because of the registration involved.Now i dont even bother looking at those urls(except if I am interested enough to go via SciHub). And I am quite sure there are several others like me too. People like to read articles,and I would prefer reading the actual paper than 10 other news articles describing the new technology too. Access to Information determines the number of people who access it.The numbers might be lesser earlier,but I assure you the growth would be exponential. Its just painful to see how delayed/selective interactions are in the "scientific papers world" when it would be possible for massive interaction which could lead to an "Academic Boom"(horrible pun but you should get the point).
dougmccune 11y ago
I think a closer argument is the textbook content that professors create. Writing a textbook is something that is often done on tenured professor's salaried time, essentially paid for by their university. And in the case of public universities that's public money just like research grant money. And yet you never hear the argument that all books academics write as part of their job as tenured professors should be free.
snowwrestler 11y ago
Paying for entry to national parks is a terrible idea too.

chris_wot 11y ago

Can someone get rid of the "?mbid=social_twitter" on this article? it's jumping folks to the middle of the article, quite unnecessarily.

Overtonwindow 11y ago

I think the article is oversimplifying the issue. This isn't about access, who reads it, or who pays for the research, it's about greed. Plain and simple. Corporations are making money off of the restricting of access to scientific research, and they are fighting to preserve that business model.

ikeboy 11y ago
> oversimplifying the issue >Plain and simple Huh?

thaw13579 11y ago

I think the most important point was brushed over in the article--that journals offer prestige. Scientists are entirely aware of the problems, yet they still volunteer to submit their work to them, because they significantly improve the chances of promotion and tenure. These things are already tremendously competitive, so most would rather not volunteer for a handicap by publishing in other venues.

DarkContinent 11y ago
So then the problem is the university tenure system, not the journals.
jeffwass 11y ago
You've hit the nail on the head. Journals like Nature and Science are usually considered the top (at least for physics, which I studied). Getting even one article published in these is a big deal. As a grad student you've got it made for when you apply for a post doc. The irony is that most (probably all) of the researchers would gladly want their articles shared widely, and I couldn't see any researcher in favour of restricting access to an interested party wanting to see their work. That said, if you're not in academia, you may have good luck emailing professors directly asking if they can share a copy of their paper. I've been out of school for several years now, but professors sometimes even included such PDFs on their webpages for general public consumption. Not sure if that violates any terms of the publishing journal though.
- praseodym 11y ago
  Usually you can publish a draft version of your paper, but not the version that is edited by the journal. They should be mostly the same, though.
  - jeffwass 11y ago
    Often people post to the Arxiv as well, clearly not formatted the same way as the journal publication. But in many cases the exact same text. I'm not sure if some journals like Nature prevent or discourage you from doing this.

jcizzle 11y ago

By this notion, I should get free tickets to all college football games. And my driver's license registration should also be free, don't my taxes already go to paying for the DMV? Wait, should anything that is even remotely funded by taxpayer dollars now be free for everyone that pays taxes?

biehl 11y ago
Yes, if all of those things were non-rivalrous, and had neglible marginal cost.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  So no tolls on non full roads?
  - aeorgnoieang 11y ago
    There are expenses involved in using a road even when it's not full.
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      Like what? What costs more if the road has a single additional car?
      - monocasa 11y ago
        The additional wear on the road.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
  - unfamiliar 11y ago
    In the UK we have only a few toll roads, and they are optional. So yes, it is entirely possible to have a road system functioning without tolls.

dahart 11y ago

I agree that publicly funded research should be publicly available, and that for-profit publishers have an entrenched commercial interest that feeds on free access to research. But it's worth keeping in mind that the value of public funding for research is primarily for the participants, not for the output to the public. Public research funding is an education model that occasionally has the nice byproduct of useful results. I got a Master's degree on public funding, I've published papers in prominent journals in my field, and I'm pretty sure nobody would read my papers if they had them for free. The real value of the public dollars spent on me was my education. I'm not saying research shouldn't be publicly available. It should. I am saying there are other ways we're getting our money's worth out of research funding. A print publication with a distribution channel has been historically important. Universities don't want to be in the business of printing & distributing. Many journals also put on conferences. The need for print & distribution is the reason publishers got entrenched, but it's changing as the importance of print declines. I do wonder if the real crime by publishers isn't locking research away from the public, but charging universities for journals, effectively using public dollars to buy the research that was publicly funded. * edited. removed points I regret & speculate were being downvoted.

themartorana 11y ago
It's not about who would read your work, but who can. I don't read much the FBI/NSA/rest of government produces but I'm pretty frustrated every time the suggestion of exempting troves of content from the FOIA comes up. I also know that my access guarantees other researches access to the same content, meaning the research that they do, that may one day benefit me down the road, has had free access to all of the knowledge available to make the best play at their own research. It's scary to me that scientific knowledge can be locked away. I am the kind of person that believes all pharmaceutical research should be freely published and publicly available as well. Patents provide all the monopoly protections necessary, and sunlight helps disinfect bogus science that sometimes leads to death in the pursuit of profits.
- dahart 11y ago
  I agree with you, and I have the very same concerns, but you're talking about two different kinds of can. Government info that is FOIA exempt is not available for purchase. You can purchase most research, that is a kind of access. And if you're at a university doing research, chances are you already have access without paying personally. The knowledge we're talking about in this thread isn't being locked away, it's being charged for. I'm with you, and I don't like it, but we can't claim there's no access.

joering2 11y ago

... meanwhile Wired told me "The thing about AdBlock..." and prevent me from reading this "free" article. Funny thing - I don't even have AdBlock.

vic-traill 11y ago
I expect there are a number of observable events or non-events that can be used to infer the use of an ad blocker. They don't necessarily work well ... I've been presented with a "We see you're using an ad blocker ... please turn it off" message (I can't recall where, perhaps Bloomberg or the WSJ?) when I've just had a Hosts file in play.

ikeboy 11y ago

>Publishers acquire this research free of charge Except of course they don't. They provide publishing services, which cost them between 60-80% of the revenue each paper bring in (based on profit margins between 20-40%). Authors sign over their copyright in exchange for this consideration. (If they didn't get anything, the copyright assignment wouldn't be valid.) > leading journals have stepped forward to make new findings free to all. By charging authors upfront. >Publishers do add value, but that value doesn’t justify the cost or the lost opportunities for those who can’t (or can’t fully) access the research. This doesn't make sense. "Groceries do add value, but that doesn't justify the cost or lost opportunities for those that can't afford food". The solution to people not being able to access essentials is not outlawing anyone charging for it. It's subsidizing the cost for everyone to buy it, or making a government-run version that provides it for free. If you want everyone to be able to eat, you give them food stamps (or make sure they have enough money by raising the minimum wage, whatever), don't get upset at companies that provide value but also make a profit. If you can do it for less, go ahead.

p4bl0 11y ago
Have you ever published a paper in an academic venue? What publishers offered was delivering paper versions of articles to your local research library. Now they only host PDFs online. Apart from that their added-value work is negligible. The biggest improvement I've seen by a publisher of one of my papers was changing "Sec." to "Sect." when I was referencing section, and putting page number in blue rather than black (true story). Anyway nowadays when a paper is accessible directly from a public repository, it is that version which will be used most often, and it includes literally zero work from the publisher. All the real work is done by the authors, and by the reviewers, who are other researchers doing their normal job (i.e., they're not paid specifically to review papers, and more importantly not paid by publishers). The only thing that publishers provide is reputation/prestige, and that's only because of inertia, and it's difficult to change because they own the titles of journals they publish. That's one of the numerous reasons why bibliometrics is an entirely bad idea and is counter-productive for science. Also, not all open access journal are charging author, that is a lie installed by publishers lobbying (and this is how they actually spend money). You can research "diamond open access" or "overlay journal" for some examples of economical models where journal are high quality, open access and free to submit to.

grondilu 11y ago

But if scientific papers were free, how could nations avoid a free-rider issue regarding other nations? For instance, a major part of scientific research is done in US, isn't it? Does that mean that the US tax payer should be the major contributor to an hypothetical worldwide scientific activity?

DarkLinkXXXX 11y ago
Wouldn't that benefit everyone?
- grondilu 11y ago
  You end up in a situation where a minority is coerced to pay for everyone. It's morally wrong.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    No, the minority pay si that can benefit, it just happens that others who haven't paid benefit too. Like when a country act to reduce their industrial impact on the atmosphere, their citizens benefit with cleaner air/water or whatever but there's a benefit to the rest of the world too. Being altruistic leads to greater overall benefit. Being miserly leads to global detriment. Applying Kant's Imperative as the moral measure leads to say it's morally wrong not to pay as if no-one were to pay we all lose out.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - grondilu 11y ago
      It's not so much about altruism or the moral validity of taxation. It's about equality and fairness. If some people can take advantage from the expropriation of others, then who gets to say who can be expropriated and who can't? With taxation the justification comes more or less from the revenues and wealth differential, basically it is assumed that rich people can pay because they suffer less from the requisition of a small part of their wealth. But if the criteria is only nationality, I'm not sure they will accept it that easily.

harry8 11y ago

Article blocked me for using adblock. I don't use adblock. So I don't read wired and I'm confident I'm missing nothing.

linuxhansl 11y ago
Same here. I do use adblock, but I had nothing block on (or referenced from) the article's page. Shame, guess I won't be readying Wired anymore.
bcg1 11y ago
Disable javascript, problem solved.
ultramancool 11y ago
https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer

sremani 11y ago

Reputation and Credential-ism, right or wrong are the pillars of Academic Science. Unless we address some of these aspects, it will provide you with copious amounts of "recreational outrage".

Houshalter 11y ago

I hate how copyright now lasts indefinitely. There are many papers from the 50's by people who are dead, and these companies are still claiming ownership over them. Copyright should last a relatively short time, and maybe be even shorter if you don't pay a fee to get it extended. Perhaps even a special exemption for scientific research. If you could read all papers published 10 years ago for free, that would be incredible, even if it still cost $35 to read a new paper. See the science section here: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976 https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976 >1959 was another noteworthy year for science. C. P. Snow presented The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, an influential lecture about the gulf between the sciences and the humanities. The programming language COBOL was developed. Martin Gardner published the Three Prisoners Problem, a probability theory paradox, in his “Mathematical Games” column in Scientific American. Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison published Searching for Interstellar Communications, a foundational work for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, in the journal Nature. >If you follow the link from Nature above (and you do not have a subscription or institutional access), you will see that this 1959 article is behind a paywall. You can purchase it for $32. A distressing number of scientific articles from 1959 require payment or a subscription or account, including those in major journals such as Science and JAMA. And the institutional access that many top scientists enjoy is not guaranteed—even institutions such as Harvard have considered canceling their subscriptions because they could no longer afford the escalating prices of major journal subscriptions.

Paul-ish 11y ago
Although copyright technically is limited in term [1], it is practically forever, as in I will never see a work created today go into the public domain. Next time a bill is introduced to extend copyright term, I think the community should speak out against it. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Copyright_term.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_St...
- godzillabrennus 11y ago
  I'm helping a startup in the grassroots lobbying space to improve how citizens can effect change. Turns out elected officials really do care a lot about their constituents, more so on average than lobbyists. Unfortunately it's hard to get the contact information for the staffers of these elected officials and it's hard to know if the supporters of a cause live in the right district that the elected representative represents. Anyway, the platform makes this all easy and is going live this summer. If anyone does represent a special interest and wants to help beta test for free email hn (at) strapr (dot) com

lutusp 11y ago

Here's the thing with Wired: http://i.imgur.com/ONOt88S.png http://i.imgur.com/ONOt88S.png Fight Internet coercion -- boycott Wired. Don't link to their articles, don't visit their site, don't accept their coercive behavior. Ad blocking is not a crime, it's a right.

mindcrime 11y ago

I have to say, I'm a little surprised at how many people in this thread seem to be taking the side of the publishers. If not completely, at least to some extent. I look at this as being pretty cut and dried "if research is paid for by tax dollars, it should be freely available to the public." I don't even see how that's controversial. That said, I understand the arguments that academics are sort of in a catch-22 situation since funding, tenure, etc. are based on journal publications, impact factor, etc. But I'd like to think that we can all (mostly) agree that the current system is broken, and at least start talking about what it would take to revise it. At least some progress actually does seem to be happening organically. New open access journals based on the arXiv overlay model are starting to appear, like Discrete Analysis[1]. Hopefully over time this problem may correct itself. [1]: http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/articles http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/articles

mrdrozdov 11y ago
To play devil's advocate for a moment, surely there are other things paid for by tax dollars where the benefit is indirect like it is in research?
- karmelapple 11y ago
  The national interstate system might be one of those things. Sure, it's directly helpful to people going on long drives in their car between cities... but people could fly or train it, too. However, the indirect benefits are that produce and other goods can be shipped via semi trucks quickly (ignoring the environmental and road quality impact they make). So there's both direct and indirect benefits to taxpayers there.
- mindcrime 11y ago
  To play devil's advocate for a moment, surely there are other things paid for by tax dollars where the benefit is indirect like it is in research? No doubt. And there are all sorts of discussions one could get into about what should and shouldn't be publicly funded. As a Libertarian, I'm usually in the minority on those discussions, so let's not even go into that. My take on this is basically "if they're going to take my money and spend it, I at least want the system to be fair" (as I perceive it). And at least in my world-view, I think it's ridiculous to have to pay again just to read the research, especially now that we're in the Internet age where distribution costs are dramatically lower. If I wanted a paper journal mailed to me, sure, I'd be fine paying for that (up to a point). But as cheap as it is to create a PDF and slap it on a website, and then looking at how much journals are charging per article, it just feels like a complete abuse.

darkinvisible 11y ago

Narrowing it a bit, how about paying to read research I WROTE? I tried to access a paper of mine I didn't have handy and sure enough the fee was $35. Turned to sci-hub, of course. I pirated myself. --Anonymous, just in case

darkinvisible 11y ago