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As a former professor I don't see much of an issue with this. Every research institution on the planet will have access to the articles. Even if you don't hav

As a former professor I don't see much of an issue with this. Every research institution on the planet will have access to the articles. Even if you don't have an affiliation (or your school doesn't subscribe to a particular journal), if you use Google Scholar to search for an article you can easily find pre-prints which are essentially the same thing. Additionally, if that still fails then the next option is to just email the author - they actually want you to read their work and will just send it out. The real issue is that the societies are essentially extorting universities for hundreds of thousands of dollars per year when the writers have to pay to submit and readers have to pay to read. Many of the newer journals are becoming open access, but few of them have been able to make enough in roads to be considered "good journals." This is a completely separate topic than the one from the above article.

forapurpose 9y ago
> Even if you don't have an affiliation A very tiny number of people have affiliations; this isn't a realistic option. > if you use Google Scholar to search for an article you can easily find pre-prints which are essentially the same thing That hasn't been my experience. Lots of things I can't read.
folli 9y ago
I personally do see an issue if we make knowledge only accessible to a minority of people. In my field (microbiology/bioinformatics), it's almost impossible to find pre-prints of pay walled papers and emailing the authors and hoping that they will respond at all also doesn't seem an extremely efficient process for literature research.
- chasedehan 9y ago
  Maybe I am biased by my field - economics - in which even having "access" doesn't mean they are "accessible." There are very very few people without a PhD who are able to understand most of the good papers. There is an even smaller number who would be able to contribute to scientific discourse, which is the main reason these papers are made available. The other thing that may only be localised to my field is that every author recognizes this problem and makes a copy available on their website or university's working paper site. I would only rarely resort to going to an actual journal because Google Scholar was way easier to find a copy of the article. This is, of course, going to differ for a number of fields and there is a growing trend for authors and journals to open up their articles.
MarkMMullin 9y ago
As an independent researcher in machine vision, I take strong issue with your first statement - the gateways to science controlled by a beauty contest/club membership is fundamentally horrible science. However with your third paragraph you completely redeemed yourself - I'd argue if you've published, I'd guess you'd be quite happy with anyone reading the paper, it's just the emails from cranks that are a pain :-) Practically I find that any paper I want can be found by tracking down the authors institutional home page - they always seem to find some way to make it available :-) Yay them!

forapurpose 9y ago

> Even if you don't have an affiliation A very tiny number of people have affiliations; this isn't a realistic option. > if you use Google Scholar to search for an article you can easily find pre-prints which are essentially the same thing That hasn't been my experience. Lots of things I can't read.

folli 9y ago

I personally do see an issue if we make knowledge only accessible to a minority of people. In my field (microbiology/bioinformatics), it's almost impossible to find pre-prints of pay walled papers and emailing the authors and hoping that they will respond at all also doesn't seem an extremely efficient process for literature research.

chasedehan 9y ago
Maybe I am biased by my field - economics - in which even having "access" doesn't mean they are "accessible." There are very very few people without a PhD who are able to understand most of the good papers. There is an even smaller number who would be able to contribute to scientific discourse, which is the main reason these papers are made available. The other thing that may only be localised to my field is that every author recognizes this problem and makes a copy available on their website or university's working paper site. I would only rarely resort to going to an actual journal because Google Scholar was way easier to find a copy of the article. This is, of course, going to differ for a number of fields and there is a growing trend for authors and journals to open up their articles.

MarkMMullin 9y ago

As an independent researcher in machine vision, I take strong issue with your first statement - the gateways to science controlled by a beauty contest/club membership is fundamentally horrible science. However with your third paragraph you completely redeemed yourself - I'd argue if you've published, I'd guess you'd be quite happy with anyone reading the paper, it's just the emails from cranks that are a pain :-) Practically I find that any paper I want can be found by tracking down the authors institutional home page - they always seem to find some way to make it available :-) Yay them!