3 ms·

Why don't all universities just make all their professors papers available online. No journals, etc, just put the damn pdfs online and let people cite by hyperl

Why don't all universities just make all their professors papers available online. No journals, etc, just put the damn pdfs online and let people cite by hyperlink and normal inline citations. To hell with the publishers.

Maken 11y ago
Most people do that, and most publishers allow authors to publish preprints of their works. Google Scholar is the usual place for looking for citations. But all this rely on the good faith of the editor and universities preserving the author personal pages forever. And the entire system lacks any standardization or interoperability.
- aswanson 11y ago
  Sounds like a startup opportunity then, if for nothing else than the preservation and forwarding of human knowledge.
  - grayclhn 11y ago
    It's pretty much the opposite of a startup opportunity, unless you want to have "preserved human knowledge" suddenly unavailable after an acquihire.
PeterisP 11y ago
The people generally already do make the papers available, but that's still not a replacement for journals or indexed conferences; if I just put the paper online without it also being in a reputable publication, then from the point of carreer and future funding I might just as well thrown it in garbage. The same goes with low-ranked open access publication venues - publishing in them is worse than not publishing at all; since it prevents me from publishing that research in some place that matters.
- aswanson 11y ago
  What seems to be broken, though, is the question of why that place matters; it seems to be cabal-driven and to some extent corrupted. The results of research should be able to matter purely on their own merit, not because of a tag some committee put on it. Idealistic? Of course, but that doesnt mean that is not worth pursuing.
mnw21cam 11y ago
Why just the professors' papers? You have lecturers, postdocs, PhD students, and other researchers all churning out papers too.

Maken 11y ago

Most people do that, and most publishers allow authors to publish preprints of their works. Google Scholar is the usual place for looking for citations. But all this rely on the good faith of the editor and universities preserving the author personal pages forever. And the entire system lacks any standardization or interoperability.

aswanson 11y ago
Sounds like a startup opportunity then, if for nothing else than the preservation and forwarding of human knowledge.
- grayclhn 11y ago
  It's pretty much the opposite of a startup opportunity, unless you want to have "preserved human knowledge" suddenly unavailable after an acquihire.

PeterisP 11y ago

The people generally already do make the papers available, but that's still not a replacement for journals or indexed conferences; if I just put the paper online without it also being in a reputable publication, then from the point of carreer and future funding I might just as well thrown it in garbage. The same goes with low-ranked open access publication venues - publishing in them is worse than not publishing at all; since it prevents me from publishing that research in some place that matters.

aswanson 11y ago
What seems to be broken, though, is the question of why that place matters; it seems to be cabal-driven and to some extent corrupted. The results of research should be able to matter purely on their own merit, not because of a tag some committee put on it. Idealistic? Of course, but that doesnt mean that is not worth pursuing.

mnw21cam 11y ago

Why just the professors' papers? You have lecturers, postdocs, PhD students, and other researchers all churning out papers too.