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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 dou

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.
rmchugh 9y ago
Yeah, this thing about paying to publish papers in open access journals is really stupid. It seems to me like a compromise that governments have landed on with publishers in order to keep them in business. I would prefer a model whereby governments fund open access repositories and editorial workflows and simultaneously mandate publishing in open access repositories. The incumbent publishing corporations should not be a part of this new arrangement, their business model pulls in the opposite direction.
grawprog 9y ago
Unfortunately this is all true too. Not only that but the people that are allowed to do peer reviews, at least in biology, are people that have their Registered Professional Biologist ticket. I don't know what it's like for other sciences but for your RPBio you needed something like 5 years of professional experience, your own published, peer reviewed paper and to pay a yearly fee of $10000. Their the ones that get to sign off on projects. I really disliked working in science honestly. The work itself was really cool, but it's so full of politics and people fighting for scraps of money. You get people who manage to do absolutely nothing but sign their name on projects and review papers for a living. They make good money while doing nothing. I've seen prominent a biologist steal the grant money from a park he pretended to be working with, a government biologist straight up owned by a copper mine that was paid off to ignore any damage being caused by the mine and just a whole culture of money first. The science part of doing science was really the last thing anyone cared about.

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.

rmchugh 9y ago

Yeah, this thing about paying to publish papers in open access journals is really stupid. It seems to me like a compromise that governments have landed on with publishers in order to keep them in business. I would prefer a model whereby governments fund open access repositories and editorial workflows and simultaneously mandate publishing in open access repositories. The incumbent publishing corporations should not be a part of this new arrangement, their business model pulls in the opposite direction.

grawprog 9y ago

Unfortunately this is all true too. Not only that but the people that are allowed to do peer reviews, at least in biology, are people that have their Registered Professional Biologist ticket. I don't know what it's like for other sciences but for your RPBio you needed something like 5 years of professional experience, your own published, peer reviewed paper and to pay a yearly fee of $10000. Their the ones that get to sign off on projects. I really disliked working in science honestly. The work itself was really cool, but it's so full of politics and people fighting for scraps of money. You get people who manage to do absolutely nothing but sign their name on projects and review papers for a living. They make good money while doing nothing. I've seen prominent a biologist steal the grant money from a park he pretended to be working with, a government biologist straight up owned by a copper mine that was paid off to ignore any damage being caused by the mine and just a whole culture of money first. The science part of doing science was really the last thing anyone cared about.