4 ms·

I doubt any PhD student would consider that as a potential drawback when choosing an institution. I did my phd in an institution with very minimal access to so

I doubt any PhD student would consider that as a potential drawback when choosing an institution. I did my phd in an institution with very minimal access to some of these publishers and while it was annoying I would not take it among the top 50 problems I had in my academic life. I can always request an ILL, or ask one of my friends in other universities if I wanted a paper badly. If however the paper is fairly replaceable as a citation I'd just get some other paper that's sufficient and cite that.

gerdesj 8y ago
"I doubt any PhD student would consider that as a potential drawback when choosing an institution." Absolutely. I would be rather unimpressed if someone studying to that level was unable to find alternative routes to the "source". It should be at worse a bit of a pain and at best helping to fix a sodding great travesty that has afflicted publication for decades.
- exergy 8y ago
  You guys must exist in some alternative universe. In mechanical engineering, no access to journals is definitely a top 5 problem, not top 50. How do you guys do goose chase research if only one out of five paper titles that catch your interest are immediately available. Inter library loan is bullshit that takes at least one full day to appear. What do you do until then?
  - sterlind 8y ago
    Sci-hub. You use sci-hub. That's what I've been doing for years; I'm not affiliated with an institution so I can't afford subscriptions, and I need the articles so I can treat my illness. When the system's broken beyond repair and the stakes are high, there's no point playing by the rules. That's why sci-hub was founded in the first place.
    - exergy 8y ago
      That's exactly the thing though. My field is niche enough, and it's applied science anyway, meaning that even the seminal papers are missing from scihub, let alone more modern and less-cited research papers. And no way for me to upload my stash.
      - betterunix2 8y ago
        Let's say your school's subscription ended. Would you throw your hands in the air and give up, or would you and others in your field work out a way to get the papers you need? Maybe you would just email each other asking for papers at first (at least in my field it is not uncommon for papers to be passed around by email despite the ease with which papers are accessed), and eventually someone with the time would just create some kind of unauthorized archive for your niche field (which new grad students would learn about from more senior grad students). There are plenty of other ways it might play out, but I doubt your ability to publish research would be seriously impacted by a lack of subscriptions to journals.
        exergy 8y ago
        The question isn't so much whether life will move on. I agree with you that it will. The point is that it will be a top 5 problem. All the stuff that you say will almost undoubtedly be a massive impediment in the face of the kind of "I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but I'll know it when I see it" types of research that PhD often involves.
  - ramraj07 8y ago
    I was always fascinated how people used to get access to articles from uncommon journals back in the days before the internet. In fact I asked a researcher in India that question. He said that they will write a letter to the biggest library in India and attach a check for 10 rupees (like ten cents today) and they will eventually mail a copy of the article after a month. We are all super used to having instant gratification access to whatever article we need that it can be quite surprising how people used to do (arguably better) research in older days. For a year or two my University library was particularly bad at getting access to articles and in that time while it was annoying that I couldn't instantly check references I just learned to read the abstract very carefully and only request articles that I really need to read fully. Besides, if the university is truly trying to be ranked among the best I'm sure they will at least make sure that alternative options are smoother. That's what my uni did - it made ILLs free. I'm in no way saying that the older days were better. Of course, scientists should have ready access to all the literature they can consume. I'm just saying again that reform in the Grant and tenure process, discrimination, overworking, the graduate student system, lack of mental health support for stressful jobs, lack of permanent jobs other than professorship, shitty metrics by which researchers are evaluated, research misconduct, impact factor based dick measurements, etc are far more important problems for me than journal access.
fyrabanks 8y ago
> ask one of my friends in other universities if I wanted a paper badly Surely, you see the problem here?
- Larrikin 8y ago
  That would only be a problem if sci-hub also didn't exist
  - fyrabanks 8y ago
    First of all, piracy is a workaround and not a legitimate solution to any problem. Second, it doesn't solve the root issue here--somebody has to have paid the inflated cost of an Elsevier subscription. Sci-hub doesn't exist in a vacuum.
    - stickfigure 8y ago
      piracy is a workaround and not a legitimate solution Why not? Piracy is a problem for content generation because somebody needs to get paid to generate the content. Elsevier does not generate content, it's a (parasitic?) gatekeeper using network effects to extract rents. If content generation would be healthier and more vibrant without Elsevier, then piracy seems an appropriate and just solution. I don't see content creators lining up to defend Elsevier; quite the opposite. (It's possible that someone could argue that Elsevier adds significant value for their cut, but I haven't heard anyone make that claim)
    - betterunix2 8y ago
      Why is it not a legitimate solution? Sometimes laws fail to catch up with technology, and copyright is a good example of that. Copyright law is based on the assumption that mass distribution is an industrial activity; today mass distribution can be done by ordinary people using common tools that we carry in our pockets. I get the idea that skirting the law is not something we should generally encourage as the solution, but let's not get carried away and act like copyrights are some divine commandment and grad students using scihub are a bunch of evildoers.
- 8y ago
ixacto 8y ago
This is what scihub & libgen are for.

gerdesj 8y ago

"I doubt any PhD student would consider that as a potential drawback when choosing an institution." Absolutely. I would be rather unimpressed if someone studying to that level was unable to find alternative routes to the "source". It should be at worse a bit of a pain and at best helping to fix a sodding great travesty that has afflicted publication for decades.

exergy 8y ago
You guys must exist in some alternative universe. In mechanical engineering, no access to journals is definitely a top 5 problem, not top 50. How do you guys do goose chase research if only one out of five paper titles that catch your interest are immediately available. Inter library loan is bullshit that takes at least one full day to appear. What do you do until then?
- sterlind 8y ago
  Sci-hub. You use sci-hub. That's what I've been doing for years; I'm not affiliated with an institution so I can't afford subscriptions, and I need the articles so I can treat my illness. When the system's broken beyond repair and the stakes are high, there's no point playing by the rules. That's why sci-hub was founded in the first place.
  - exergy 8y ago
    That's exactly the thing though. My field is niche enough, and it's applied science anyway, meaning that even the seminal papers are missing from scihub, let alone more modern and less-cited research papers. And no way for me to upload my stash.
    - betterunix2 8y ago
      Let's say your school's subscription ended. Would you throw your hands in the air and give up, or would you and others in your field work out a way to get the papers you need? Maybe you would just email each other asking for papers at first (at least in my field it is not uncommon for papers to be passed around by email despite the ease with which papers are accessed), and eventually someone with the time would just create some kind of unauthorized archive for your niche field (which new grad students would learn about from more senior grad students). There are plenty of other ways it might play out, but I doubt your ability to publish research would be seriously impacted by a lack of subscriptions to journals.
      - exergy 8y ago
        The question isn't so much whether life will move on. I agree with you that it will. The point is that it will be a top 5 problem. All the stuff that you say will almost undoubtedly be a massive impediment in the face of the kind of "I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but I'll know it when I see it" types of research that PhD often involves.
- ramraj07 8y ago
  I was always fascinated how people used to get access to articles from uncommon journals back in the days before the internet. In fact I asked a researcher in India that question. He said that they will write a letter to the biggest library in India and attach a check for 10 rupees (like ten cents today) and they will eventually mail a copy of the article after a month. We are all super used to having instant gratification access to whatever article we need that it can be quite surprising how people used to do (arguably better) research in older days. For a year or two my University library was particularly bad at getting access to articles and in that time while it was annoying that I couldn't instantly check references I just learned to read the abstract very carefully and only request articles that I really need to read fully. Besides, if the university is truly trying to be ranked among the best I'm sure they will at least make sure that alternative options are smoother. That's what my uni did - it made ILLs free. I'm in no way saying that the older days were better. Of course, scientists should have ready access to all the literature they can consume. I'm just saying again that reform in the Grant and tenure process, discrimination, overworking, the graduate student system, lack of mental health support for stressful jobs, lack of permanent jobs other than professorship, shitty metrics by which researchers are evaluated, research misconduct, impact factor based dick measurements, etc are far more important problems for me than journal access.

fyrabanks 8y ago

> ask one of my friends in other universities if I wanted a paper badly Surely, you see the problem here?

Larrikin 8y ago
That would only be a problem if sci-hub also didn't exist
- fyrabanks 8y ago
  First of all, piracy is a workaround and not a legitimate solution to any problem. Second, it doesn't solve the root issue here--somebody has to have paid the inflated cost of an Elsevier subscription. Sci-hub doesn't exist in a vacuum.
  - stickfigure 8y ago
    piracy is a workaround and not a legitimate solution Why not? Piracy is a problem for content generation because somebody needs to get paid to generate the content. Elsevier does not generate content, it's a (parasitic?) gatekeeper using network effects to extract rents. If content generation would be healthier and more vibrant without Elsevier, then piracy seems an appropriate and just solution. I don't see content creators lining up to defend Elsevier; quite the opposite. (It's possible that someone could argue that Elsevier adds significant value for their cut, but I haven't heard anyone make that claim)
  - betterunix2 8y ago
    Why is it not a legitimate solution? Sometimes laws fail to catch up with technology, and copyright is a good example of that. Copyright law is based on the assumption that mass distribution is an industrial activity; today mass distribution can be done by ordinary people using common tools that we carry in our pockets. I get the idea that skirting the law is not something we should generally encourage as the solution, but let's not get carried away and act like copyrights are some divine commandment and grad students using scihub are a bunch of evildoers.
8y ago

ixacto 8y ago

This is what scihub & libgen are for.