Also, aren’t a majority of studies like this, funded with public money ?
Yes. However, if you find a paper or study you’re interested in reading, reach out to the researcher directly. More often than not, they’re happy to provide you with a copy for free, in my experience.
I did this once. They wouldn’t give me a copy, I didn’t push it because they were retired and did try to give me advice about contacting librarians to add the journal to their subscription.
I do imagine younger people publishing more recent work would be more open to sharing their work.
For anyone else seeing this the university of the author often also publishes their papers free access. Even when the journal the paper is published in is paywalled. So it’s worth checking that. This is especially the case if the work was funded by bodies that require open access.
That’s good advice. Have you found that there’s peer-review included when it’s university published? I’ve only received original research from contacting the researcher directly.
That’s wild. I’ve always sent people copies when they reach out. It’s especially easy to do so with ResearchGate, but that does require the requester make an account there.
Another option is to ask a librarian to find that specific article, rather than getting them to subscribe to the journal. I had to do this once in grad school for an article in a discontinued journal from the 70s. The librarian found another library that had it and they faxed a copy.
So what exactly is their argument for the service they provide that ‘justifies’ the cost?
The most important aspect is peer review. At least in physics, journals assign your paper to an Editor (a scientist), that may reject it directly if it is not scientific. If it is, they will send it to another scientist to read the work and (a) suggest rejection, (b) suggest accepting the work directly or © in the most common scenario accept the paper for publication after some revisions. The editor reads the review and the informs the author of the paper accordingly, and the story iterates until the work is fine for the reviewer. There can be more than one reviewer (a.k.a. referee). The editor is what the journal offers, together with some spell checking service before publication. Editors are payed, and referees only sometimes.
There are notable, noble exceptions known as diamond open access journals, like my favourite: the Open Journal of Astrophysics
They can do that without a publisher though. My partner reviews papers all the time, and she would continue to do so even if this ridiculous ponzi scheme didn’t exist.
it’s not as if peer review is some exclusive thing for scientific papers anyways, any open source technology has it as a matter of course (provided it’s reasonably popular).
Just look at 3d printers, that technology is almost entirely created by hobbyists who just looked at each others’ work, shared what they think works and doesn’t work, and make improvements based on that.
The editor is what the journal offers,
In my (perhaps more limited) experience, the editor isn’t an expert in the field, they’re just the person who finds the volunteer reviewers who are the experts. Sometimes they find expert “guest editors” who are volunteers. Also, the final formatting / line-editing was outsourced to India.
Academic publishing is a scam. Don’t volunteer for scams – only review for open access journals / conferences.
Sci Hub and Library Genesis for those who don’t want to feed the leeches
Also, if you’re not in a rush, just email the authors!
A vast majority of professors and researchers hate the publishing industry as much as anyone, and will be happy to shoot you a pdf if you’re interested in their work!
The worst that happens is they say no
this is often poor dating advice, but this time it’s good advice :)
When I need it, I know how to pirate, but I am privileged enough in terms of my institution that I can get most of anything I want (I mostly pirate for family needing niche things in engineering, and I am in the humanities). BUT, I had this one occasion that both validated my feelings about the system and fucking infuriated me. A professor from an institution that did not have the right subscriptions emailed me asking for an article I published, because they wanted to assign it for a seminar, but could not legitimately access it. That made me lose my shit. I didn’t get paid, neither did the editors or peer reviewers, but you know, god forbid someone read it for free. Which is when I realized I didn’t even have final copy myself, so I had to go to JS**, download it, spend some time cleaning the “downloaded from XYZ.XYZ.XYZ.XYZ address at XYZ institution” footers on the PDF, sent It to them and encourage them to further pirate that shit
Fuck elsevier.
Not to argue on behalf of publishers, but the papers aren’t written for free. It’s part of the job of being a researcher, it’s a significant KPI for which you’re hired and receive a wage.
Reviewing for free is pretty much bullshit though. As is paying to read them afterwards, if your research institution doesn’t pay to publish in an open access journal
It’s not the publishers paying the researcher’s salaries, they’re mostly paid by public institutions and receive funding from government grants. If anything, bl researcher pay structure should result in open access publication.
I didn’t say it was the publisher’s paying the salaries. My point is that researcher are paid to research, and publishing results is part of that.
Yes, but this really does just mean we should have a government provided publisher for government funded research. I paid for this research every 4/15 and i shouldn’t have to pay again if I want to see it
I was hired to teach at a non-research college… except admin are trying to finnegal us into doing off-contract studies and publishing, moving forward. So yes, in the worst cases, it’s done even off-wage.
