Scientific Freedom

[What Would Jesus Do?]

“Imagine that your local government built a nice green park—but when you tried to have a picnic, a private firm demanded payment for admission. That’s roughly how it works with scientific research…The journal system, which converts public research dollars into private publishing profits, has long been a source of discontent…” The publishers don’t end up paying anything for the research. They get it for free. They don’t pay the researchers anything. “So we pay for it, and then we have to pay again if we want to read it.” In this way, it can end up with science as a profit system, rather than science as knowledge.

[J]ournal publishers are raking in billions of dollars, charging institutions up to $35,000 a year per journal and charging individuals online per article. Imagine a family member is diagnosed with a disease, so you go online. You can read all sorts of internet drek, but if you want to see the actual science, it can get expensive—“10, $15, $20, even $30 for an individual view of an article.” And, you aren’t only paying to read the research; you likely paid for the research, too. Tax dollars pour in to fund research, but then you can’t get access to the research you paid for? “If it weren’t so well-established, the traditional model of academic publishing would be considered scandalous.”

The Trick to Access Research Articles for Free | NutritionFacts.org

The “Robin Hood of Science” continues to provide more than 60 million scientific papers to anyone in the world for free at https://sci-hub.st The first

nutritionfacts.org

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights​

Article 27

1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

 

[BelemNole]

The good news is that any paper that you're interested in the author will likely send you for free if you contact them.

 

[red/green hawk]

For the last 15+ years I've worked at facilities that already pay for access to peer reviewed databases and being an employee of said facility have access. No doubt currators of these databases rake it in.

 

[SSG T]

I can say that when I was working on my last degree, that trying to access reports/papers so that I could use then to assist in my writing of papers was a pain. My uni had access to a lot of them, but there were times I would have to pay out of pocket to get something I needed. Luckily it didn't happen often, paying $35-70 for access to a report sucked.

 

[thewop]

I can say that when I was working on my last degree, that trying to access reports/papers so that I could use then to assist in my writing of papers was a pain. My uni had access to a lot of them, but there were times I would have to pay out of pocket to get something I needed. Luckily it didn't happen often, paying $35-70 for access to a report sucked.

When I did my masters I remember some articles could only be accessed from within the library. You could look up abstracts for anything you wanted but if you wanted the full article, it had to be from a computer within the library. I always thought that was nuts.

 

[GOHOX69]

Most scientific articles these days are "paid" garbage with very little to no peer review. That being said, if you are at a large university, most journals are still free and if there is a missing journal or book, you can get it for free through an interlibrary loan. In that sense, the US is still the gold standard for accessibility of information.

 

[St. Louis Hawk]

The good news is that any paper that you're interested in the author will likely send you for free if you contact them.

Yep. Go straight to the author and ask. I've never had a request turned down. Some took longer than instant download from a journal, but eventually got them.

 

[seminole97]

Subject reminds me of this story:

Link

Despite the many hundreds of thousands of words that have been written about Aaron Swartz since his suicide last month, there remain a number of unanswered questions about the life of the computer-prodigy-turned-political-activist. Many have wondered about the seriousness of the crime alleged in his massive download of JSTOR, the online archive of academic articles, for which federal prosecutors obtained a 13-count indictment and could have sent him to prison for decades. Others have speculated about Swartz's mental health (he had written about his own struggle with depression), and the role it may have played in his death. But perhaps the most mystifying question is why Swartz was so preoccupied with JSTOR in the first place.