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By restricting access to the material whose copyright is owned by a journal publisher, this is what Germany is doing, to a degree.
by carbocation 10y ago
By restricting access to the material whose copyright is owned by a journal publisher, this is what Germany is doing, to a degree.
- robotresearcher 10y agoIt's the publisher who restricts access by charging a fee and taking a profit, not the university for choosing not to pay it. The author and reviewers gave their work for free. Journals should charge enough to cover costs and be sustainable, and no more.
- carbocation 10y agoI'm fine with that characterization, too. I'm just saying that any barrier to access will shift the degree to which articles get cited away from what they (perhaps) "should" be based on their scientific value.
- rsfern 10y agoThis is a really interesting point. I've definitely passed on reading papers that seemed potentially relevant because my institution didn't have a subscription to the journal.
- PeterisP 10y agoPerhaps this is field-dependant, but I have never failed to find the full text of a recent paper I'm interested in even if the original paper is closed access - the paper is inevitably available on the webpage of the author, or their university/research group, or arxiv, or something like that. For classic papers from the 1980s I have to bother with getting the VPN required for my university subscription access to work properly which is a pain, but I don't recall having any issues with publications from this millenium.