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Paywalls are bad, and fortunately many of us are working towards open access for our research. However, almost every paper I ever look for (published since 200
by samth 10y ago
Paywalls are bad, and fortunately many of us are working towards open access for our research.
However, almost every paper I ever look for (published since 2000, say) is available for free on the web, usually on the author's web site. Searching google scholar will find just about everything. So I disagree that "research done in academia is closed to working programmers". If that was the case, then something like Papers We Love would never have even started.
[Full disclosure: I co-authored the original blog post with Jean.]
- pgbovine 10y agoI'd go one step further and claim that good papers from reputable researchers (in our sub-fields, at least) are all freely available on the authors' websites. There's loads of shady journals behind paywalls that publish low-quality content, but the good stuff that research-active folks in academia use and refer to always seem to be available (N=1 anecdote over ~10 years of being in research). Again, this may be highly CS-specific; don't know how things work in other fields.
- samth 10y agoSadly this isn't true for old papers, but I agree about current ones.