4 ms·

To play the devil's advocate: you can find many articles as pre-prints, for example on biorxiv. And it stays there for free even after the article has been publ

by f6v 5y ago

To play the devil's advocate: you can find many articles as pre-prints, for example on biorxiv. And it stays there for free even after the article has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. So you CAN access the article without paying to the publisher.

bunje 5y ago
I think in the past journals prohibiting the use of preprint archives was more common.
jjoonathan 5y ago
100% true for some fields. 100% false for other fields.
- Fomite 5y ago
  This. The medical field is still struggling to fully adopt pre-prints.
dmix 5y ago
There hasn’t been a single paper I’ve looked for that wasn’t available on Scihub, even old ones. It’s like how every movie, even the rare no longer distributed ones are available on Torrent sites but you can’t find them even if you have access to a good online commercial libraries.
- vmception 5y ago
  (Sadly there are a bunch from major film festivals that never are screened again, I wish I could torrent some)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- gwern 5y ago
  "There hasn’t been a single paper I’ve looked for that wasn’t available on Scihub, even old ones." Let's not exaggerate here. I hit gaps in SH all the time. And I have to wonder how you haven't noticed that SH halted its 2021 paper uploads entirely because of the Indian court case. That's quite a gap.
Ar-Curunir 5y ago
Not all articles are available this way, even in fields like cryptography, which have a decades-long tradition of using preprint servers.
zarzavat 5y ago
It's not fair unless researchers in every country can access every paper. Not a subset, but every single one. Why should rich countries or rich institutions be granted the exclusive right to do research? It can do nothing but harm.
otherme123 5y ago
Careful, preprints are not peer reviewed. I had to change significant parts of papers in the peer reviewing process in almost all my papers, and also required changes when I'm reviewing. More often than not, the reviewer requires additional checks and tone down some claims, so a paper preprinted as "we ended world famines" ends up as "our soy requires 5% less water than the second best". What is infuriating is that Biorxiv is free and stores forever, but the final publisher gets more than $1,500 for the same service. And we have to do 98% of the edition (I've been required to change the font of a graph) so they can just feed your .docx into a program and it spits the Pdf ready.

by f6v 5y ago

bunje 5y ago

I think in the past journals prohibiting the use of preprint archives was more common.

jjoonathan 5y ago

100% true for some fields. 100% false for other fields.

Fomite 5y ago
This. The medical field is still struggling to fully adopt pre-prints.

dmix 5y ago

There hasn’t been a single paper I’ve looked for that wasn’t available on Scihub, even old ones. It’s like how every movie, even the rare no longer distributed ones are available on Torrent sites but you can’t find them even if you have access to a good online commercial libraries.

vmception 5y ago
(Sadly there are a bunch from major film festivals that never are screened again, I wish I could torrent some)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gwern 5y ago
"There hasn’t been a single paper I’ve looked for that wasn’t available on Scihub, even old ones." Let's not exaggerate here. I hit gaps in SH all the time. And I have to wonder how you haven't noticed that SH halted its 2021 paper uploads entirely because of the Indian court case. That's quite a gap.

Ar-Curunir 5y ago

Not all articles are available this way, even in fields like cryptography, which have a decades-long tradition of using preprint servers.

zarzavat 5y ago

It's not fair unless researchers in every country can access every paper. Not a subset, but every single one. Why should rich countries or rich institutions be granted the exclusive right to do research? It can do nothing but harm.

otherme123 5y ago

Careful, preprints are not peer reviewed. I had to change significant parts of papers in the peer reviewing process in almost all my papers, and also required changes when I'm reviewing. More often than not, the reviewer requires additional checks and tone down some claims, so a paper preprinted as "we ended world famines" ends up as "our soy requires 5% less water than the second best". What is infuriating is that Biorxiv is free and stores forever, but the final publisher gets more than $1,500 for the same service. And we have to do 98% of the edition (I've been required to change the font of a graph) so they can just feed your .docx into a program and it spits the Pdf ready.