3 ms·

> pdf copies of your published work Not wishing to sound facetious, but where would I get the PDFs, other than from - say - SciHub? I have the original bound

> pdf copies of your published work Not wishing to sound facetious, but where would I get the PDFs, other than from - say - SciHub? I have the original bound journal for one of them, but you can bet your bottom dollar it would be illegal for me to start making photocopies of my work and handing them out...

g_p 6y ago
A good point actually - from a legal perspective this is tricky. Generally the publisher claims copyright over the arrangement that is "published". Photocopying the printed version would therefore be problematic. With digital formats, the general approach is to export a PDF from LaTeX (or whatever is used to write the paper) as an author pre-print copy (i.e. not in the final form used by the journal), and publish that one. From a technical legal perspective you would likely need to look at what agreement you signed with the publisher at the time (if any), since that may restrict distribution of the text. This raises a good point though for works that were pre-open access, and the risk of them "rotting" behind paywalls out of being in a state of legal limbo. Newer science will be more accessible due to open access rules, but older science may end up effectively "lost" to those without access to these paywalled repositories. There's no real incentive for those publishers to open things up, as they rely on institutions paying large subscriptions to preserve access to the legacy archived content, and that keeps their many thousands of staff employed.
powersnail 6y ago
Can’t you export it to PDF with whatever software you used write the paper? It might not be pixel-perfect like a photocopy, but the words should all be there.
- statstutor 6y ago
  This might misunderstand how science authorship works. I was once congratulated for publishing a paper I had no idea existed, after I gave someone permission to use my research work in exchange for credit. It took me some effort to view a copy of what I had "written".

g_p 6y ago

A good point actually - from a legal perspective this is tricky. Generally the publisher claims copyright over the arrangement that is "published". Photocopying the printed version would therefore be problematic. With digital formats, the general approach is to export a PDF from LaTeX (or whatever is used to write the paper) as an author pre-print copy (i.e. not in the final form used by the journal), and publish that one. From a technical legal perspective you would likely need to look at what agreement you signed with the publisher at the time (if any), since that may restrict distribution of the text. This raises a good point though for works that were pre-open access, and the risk of them "rotting" behind paywalls out of being in a state of legal limbo. Newer science will be more accessible due to open access rules, but older science may end up effectively "lost" to those without access to these paywalled repositories. There's no real incentive for those publishers to open things up, as they rely on institutions paying large subscriptions to preserve access to the legacy archived content, and that keeps their many thousands of staff employed.

powersnail 6y ago

Can’t you export it to PDF with whatever software you used write the paper? It might not be pixel-perfect like a photocopy, but the words should all be there.

statstutor 6y ago
This might misunderstand how science authorship works. I was once congratulated for publishing a paper I had no idea existed, after I gave someone permission to use my research work in exchange for credit. It took me some effort to view a copy of what I had "written".