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When I was in school we had to travel to the library of a different University to work on some of our projects because the one we went to didn't pay for the jou

When I was in school we had to travel to the library of a different University to work on some of our projects because the one we went to didn't pay for the journals we needed to access to do our work and buying access to a single article would have been ridiculous. We cited over 100 papers in our final project many of those we couldn't access from our school. Paying for them would have cost anywhere from $20 to over $100 per article, not issue, article. A good majority of the studies we cited were funded either directly through government or through universities funded by government. It's entirely a way to keep knowledge out of the hands of the poor. Publicly funded studies should be made freely available to everyone. Even the project I worked on when I finished school. We were funded by government grants and our results were intended to be posted publicly, it was written in our proposal. Instead, once we started posting our data online we were told that we were no longer allowed to and our data must now be submitted to a government database. Otherwise we would recieve no more funding.This database of course had access fees that needed to be paid. It felt really shitty to have to lock everything away. I'd worked on an online database and map I was really excited about and it all had to be taken down.

rdtsc 9y ago
A friend was working for the EPA and she didn't have access to all the journals to do her work so she had to ask me to fetch them for her from the university library. Remember seeing the prices for each article and each subscription and thinking - they are making some nice profits charging $30 per paper.
- bluenose69 9y ago
  I've been in academia for three decades, and have yet to pay a cent to download a paper. I don't know any colleagues or students who have done so, either. I doubt that they make much money from per-article fees. I think they set them high so that universities will be forced to subscribe. My funding councils want people to publish in open-access journals, but they don't provide extra funds for the doubling of cost that's involved. The money has to come from somewhere, and the main cost item tends to be student stipends, so professors tend to continue publishing in pay-access journals. I've been on both sides of the "fetch for a friend" process. I've had to ask friends to fetch copies of papers that I've written, for which I've paid page charges, because my university had to drop the journal in one or another waves of cost saving. And for all this money, the journals do very little in the way of contributing to the process, nowadays. Reviewers work for free, as do most academic editors. Technical editors seem to barely exist anymore, since authors do their own typesetting and journals rely on academic reviewers to help with English. Academics are caught in a narrowing vice as they move through the career process. Papers have to appear in high-reputation journals, or else. And those journals just happen to be expensive.
  - nspattak 9y ago
    I do not understand what exactly you are claiming in your first paragraph. You say that you have never had to pay for an article yet you "have been on both sides of the fetch for a friend" which strictly speaking (and despite how much I hate it) is illegal.
    - Vinnl 9y ago
      They didn't say they weren't asked to pay for an article - just that they did not. In other words, when confronted with a paywall, they either skipped the article or asked a friend with access. Note that asking for an article is not always illegal. For example, authors are often allowed to share the article, and there are often also provisions that allow institutions to "loan" access to each other (inter-library loan), although presumably that would have to go through the institution's librarian. That said, even if it's illegal, I'd worry about it about as much as worrying about pedestrians skipping the red light on deserted crossings.
      - grawprog 9y ago
        Tell that to the person that started sci hub https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/scientific-research-piracy-site-hit-with-15-million-fine/?amp=1 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/scientific-resea... I thought the music anti piracy people were bad.
        Vinnl 9y ago
        Starting Sci-Hub is something I'd worry about far earlier than I'd worry about asking a friend for an article, obviously, just like I'd worry more if I'd started the Pirate Bay than if I'd downloaded a song.
  - upvotinglurker 9y ago
    US college libraries do pay per-article fees. Most offer an "interlibrary loan" service where faculty and students can request a specific article from a journal the library doesn't subscribe to. Depending on the journal's licensing and the library's partnerships, the library may get a copy from another library for free, or purchase the article. If a purchase is made, part of the cost may or may not be passed on to the end user (at my library charges are rare and I doubt most end users even know a per-article fee was paid on their behalf). In cases where requests for articles from a particular journal are rare, this may be more cost effective for the library than subscribing to the journal. Of course this can happen only when the end user uses the formal interlibrary loan process, instead of alternatives like Sci-Hub (which may be faster and easier). As with the high subscription prices, the primary mark is not faculty/students but libraries, who are expected to provide the content and constrained from doing anything blatantly illegal to get it.
comstock 9y ago
It’s pretty clear that open access is the way things should be. Particularly as now publication and reproduction costs are essentially zero. It’s interesting to note how we got here, and how we remain here. Academics mostly universally complain about the current state of affairs, with reason. However, we’re here because academics gave up control. Because the journal system, which was originally run by academic volunteers was seen as a hassle and has given over to businesses to run. Slowly, the businesses became to extract more and more profit... The solution is probably to return to a less profit driven publishing model. But current publishers and academics pretty well locked in.

rdtsc 9y ago

A friend was working for the EPA and she didn't have access to all the journals to do her work so she had to ask me to fetch them for her from the university library. Remember seeing the prices for each article and each subscription and thinking - they are making some nice profits charging $30 per paper.

bluenose69 9y ago
I've been in academia for three decades, and have yet to pay a cent to download a paper. I don't know any colleagues or students who have done so, either. I doubt that they make much money from per-article fees. I think they set them high so that universities will be forced to subscribe. My funding councils want people to publish in open-access journals, but they don't provide extra funds for the doubling of cost that's involved. The money has to come from somewhere, and the main cost item tends to be student stipends, so professors tend to continue publishing in pay-access journals. I've been on both sides of the "fetch for a friend" process. I've had to ask friends to fetch copies of papers that I've written, for which I've paid page charges, because my university had to drop the journal in one or another waves of cost saving. And for all this money, the journals do very little in the way of contributing to the process, nowadays. Reviewers work for free, as do most academic editors. Technical editors seem to barely exist anymore, since authors do their own typesetting and journals rely on academic reviewers to help with English. Academics are caught in a narrowing vice as they move through the career process. Papers have to appear in high-reputation journals, or else. And those journals just happen to be expensive.
- nspattak 9y ago
  I do not understand what exactly you are claiming in your first paragraph. You say that you have never had to pay for an article yet you "have been on both sides of the fetch for a friend" which strictly speaking (and despite how much I hate it) is illegal.
  - Vinnl 9y ago
    They didn't say they weren't asked to pay for an article - just that they did not. In other words, when confronted with a paywall, they either skipped the article or asked a friend with access. Note that asking for an article is not always illegal. For example, authors are often allowed to share the article, and there are often also provisions that allow institutions to "loan" access to each other (inter-library loan), although presumably that would have to go through the institution's librarian. That said, even if it's illegal, I'd worry about it about as much as worrying about pedestrians skipping the red light on deserted crossings.
    - grawprog 9y ago
      Tell that to the person that started sci hub https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/scientific-research-piracy-site-hit-with-15-million-fine/?amp=1 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/scientific-resea... I thought the music anti piracy people were bad.
      - Vinnl 9y ago
        Starting Sci-Hub is something I'd worry about far earlier than I'd worry about asking a friend for an article, obviously, just like I'd worry more if I'd started the Pirate Bay than if I'd downloaded a song.
- upvotinglurker 9y ago
  US college libraries do pay per-article fees. Most offer an "interlibrary loan" service where faculty and students can request a specific article from a journal the library doesn't subscribe to. Depending on the journal's licensing and the library's partnerships, the library may get a copy from another library for free, or purchase the article. If a purchase is made, part of the cost may or may not be passed on to the end user (at my library charges are rare and I doubt most end users even know a per-article fee was paid on their behalf). In cases where requests for articles from a particular journal are rare, this may be more cost effective for the library than subscribing to the journal. Of course this can happen only when the end user uses the formal interlibrary loan process, instead of alternatives like Sci-Hub (which may be faster and easier). As with the high subscription prices, the primary mark is not faculty/students but libraries, who are expected to provide the content and constrained from doing anything blatantly illegal to get it.

comstock 9y ago

It’s pretty clear that open access is the way things should be. Particularly as now publication and reproduction costs are essentially zero. It’s interesting to note how we got here, and how we remain here. Academics mostly universally complain about the current state of affairs, with reason. However, we’re here because academics gave up control. Because the journal system, which was originally run by academic volunteers was seen as a hassle and has given over to businesses to run. Slowly, the businesses became to extract more and more profit... The solution is probably to return to a less profit driven publishing model. But current publishers and academics pretty well locked in.