3 ms·

(I really wanted to write a reasoned rebuttal, but the more I read your posts here the less I can figure out exactly what you've intended to say. Maybe some of

by aphyr 16y ago

(I really wanted to write a reasoned rebuttal, but the more I read your posts here the less I can figure out exactly what you've intended to say. Maybe some of this disagreement is due to a misunderstanding over writing.) There are quite literally thousands of relevant journals for a college to subscribe to, and institutional access is fantastically expensive. In fact, the cost of journal access here in the US has expanded year over year far faster than inflation or any other information resource, and now consumes the majority of library budgets at many colleges. That "free access" you were talking about for students? Physical Review alone runs from $17,000 to $32,000 annually. Now imagine maintaining a few hundred of those subscriptions. On the other side of things, I have published in Physical Review Letters, and was disillusioned with the editorial/peer review process. You're hopelessly constrained for length, but asked to remove key sentences while expanding abbreviations. Because it's extremely difficult to explain your work in such a short space, your reviewers can focus on details you know deserve explanation but simply can't include for brevity--or worse, misunderstand your research entirely. Let's face it: this is only a problem for dead-tree publishers. We could double the page limits for online articles at negligible cost, and I would argue, decreased difficulty for reviewers and referees. Some people have raised more political concerns about the review process, but I don't understand those as fully. [edit] I should make it clear that I greatly value the work being done by APS and journals in organizing, qualifying, and sharing high-value correspondence. I simply believe there may be a space for open-access journals as well.

Ardit20 16y ago
What I intended to say exactly is very simple. The post which I originally replied to states that the guy intends to basically copy journal articles behind pay walls and put them on some site where everyone can access them for free. I stated that such a thing would firstly be a breach of copyrights, secondly is unethical, thirdly there is no reason to do it and I tried to give my reasons which are summarised below. It is nice for sure to get stuff for free, but I suggested that someone would have to pay for it. If it would not be the current institutions and professionals which pay for it, then the money would either come from the research funding, or professor's pay, or higher university fees for students as professionals who work in that field need not buy such articles, but to publish such articles requires money which universities would need to find from somewhere. I do not know if an editor is paid for editing, or a peer reviewer for reviewing, but many of these journals are printed. You can find most of them online but even there there is much overhead, such as customer support, people to add the articles online, format them and all the rest. Currently, professionals pay for this infrastructure. If you are a lawyer for example, you would probably need access to these journals as the law changes all the time. So too if you are a doctor I would think, or a psychologist, or historian... Universities pay for it too, but students do not directly. You can argue that they charge too much, you can argue that the system needs to be reformed, but I was trying to argue that the journals do not need to be free. That is so because any given journal interests a very small number of people and the general public would not understand them or have any interest in them. If one is doing computer science, ok they might be interested to read one article or two in the field of medicine which might be of a general interest, such as the article in point, but generally, they wouldn't be interested to read articles from a field in which they do not operate. Therefore, to conclude, as the public would not really have any benefit from having all the journals for free, I would rather the professionals who have an interest in the journals provide the funding to support them.

by aphyr 16y ago

Ardit20 16y ago

What I intended to say exactly is very simple. The post which I originally replied to states that the guy intends to basically copy journal articles behind pay walls and put them on some site where everyone can access them for free. I stated that such a thing would firstly be a breach of copyrights, secondly is unethical, thirdly there is no reason to do it and I tried to give my reasons which are summarised below. It is nice for sure to get stuff for free, but I suggested that someone would have to pay for it. If it would not be the current institutions and professionals which pay for it, then the money would either come from the research funding, or professor's pay, or higher university fees for students as professionals who work in that field need not buy such articles, but to publish such articles requires money which universities would need to find from somewhere. I do not know if an editor is paid for editing, or a peer reviewer for reviewing, but many of these journals are printed. You can find most of them online but even there there is much overhead, such as customer support, people to add the articles online, format them and all the rest. Currently, professionals pay for this infrastructure. If you are a lawyer for example, you would probably need access to these journals as the law changes all the time. So too if you are a doctor I would think, or a psychologist, or historian... Universities pay for it too, but students do not directly. You can argue that they charge too much, you can argue that the system needs to be reformed, but I was trying to argue that the journals do not need to be free. That is so because any given journal interests a very small number of people and the general public would not understand them or have any interest in them. If one is doing computer science, ok they might be interested to read one article or two in the field of medicine which might be of a general interest, such as the article in point, but generally, they wouldn't be interested to read articles from a field in which they do not operate. Therefore, to conclude, as the public would not really have any benefit from having all the journals for free, I would rather the professionals who have an interest in the journals provide the funding to support them.