Scientific Publishing Is A Rip-Off

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This is very true, how did we get to the crazy situation where publically funded research is hidden by a paywall? For once I agree totally with George Monbiot.

Never underestimate the power of one determined person. What Carole Cadwalladr has done to Facebook and big data, and Edward Snowden has done to the state security complex, the young Kazakhstani scientist Alexandra Elbakyan has done to the multibillion-dollar industry that traps knowledge behind paywalls.

Sci-Hub, her pirate web scraper service, has done more than any government to tackle one of the biggest rip-offs of the modern era: the capture of publicly funded research that should belong to us all. Everyone should be free to learn; knowledge should be disseminated as widely as possible. No one would publicly disagree with these sentiments.

Yet governments and universities have allowed the big academic publishers to deny these rights. Academic publishing might sound like an obscure and fusty affair, but it uses one of the most ruthless and profitable business models of any industry.

The model was pioneered by the notorious conman Robert Maxwell. He realised that, because scientists need to be informed about all significant developments in their field, every journal that publishes academic papers can establish a monopoly and charge outrageous fees for the transmission of knowledge. He called his discovery “a perpetual financing machine”.

He also realised that he could capture other people’s labour and resources for nothing. Governments funded the research published by his company, Pergamon, while scientists wrote the articles, reviewed them and edited the journals for free. His business model relied on the enclosure of common and public resources. Or, to use the technical term, daylight robbery.

Read more: https://principia-scientific.org/sci...-is-a-rip-off/

[FUCK THE POLICE]

This is very true, how did we get to the crazy situation where publically funded research is hidden by a paywall? For once I agree totally with George Monbiot.



Read more: https://principia-scientific.org/sci...-is-a-rip-off/

Does the public funding source pay the publishing fee for the scientific journal?

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Does the public funding source pay the publishing fee for the scientific journal?

So you are in favour of public intellectual property being used to make massive profits for the likes of Elsevier and Springer, is that correct?

[kudzu]

So you are in favour of public intellectual property being used to make massive profits for the likes of Elsevier and Springer, is that correct?

Why don't you simply subscribe to the scientific journals that interest you?

What do you mean "public intellectual property"?

[FUCK THE POLICE]

So you are in favour of public intellectual property being used to make massive profits for the likes of Elsevier and Springer, is that correct?

I'm just saying, currently their business model is mostly to convince universities that they are prestigious a crucial enough source of new scientific knowledge that the university should purchase licenses to provide unlimited access to their researchers and students. If journals were all available for free online? Universities would not purchase these, the journals would lose their funding, and most would shut down. The journals that remained might just begin refusing to consider articles that were publicly funded, as the business model would have been changed and it would no longer be profitable.

Tbh I doubt the journals even care that much about piracy by individuals. Public institutions like universities are not going to implement a policy of telling their researchers to "just pirate it", so licenses still get sold. And a paywall to individuals is more about preventing universities from getting around licensing costs, it's not a huge source of actual revenue for these journals. But if they did suddenly cease having the copyright it would be a problem.

I'm just pointing out that this issue probably requires a more complex solution than unilaterally revoking all copyrights to publicly funded research. Society funded them in order to advance scientific knowledge, so that other researchers could make it advances. If it also wanted the full article to be publicly available even to non-researchers, it could have included as part of its contract a clause to purchase the copyright for the final article. Instead you want to change the law to just specially invalidate the copyright of articles if the research was in part publicly funded, because that sounds nice to you. You should realize that that will have consequences.

It's not a matter of what I personally find desirable. It's a matter of economic reality, that decisions have consequences.

[cancel2 2022]

Why don't you simply subscribe to the scientific journals that interest you?

What do you mean "public intellectual property"?

Read the article by George Monbiot first, before asking stupid questions. You do that all the time!!

[cancel2 2022]

I'm just saying, currently their business model is mostly to convince universities that they are prestigious a crucial enough source of new scientific knowledge that the university should purchase licenses to provide unlimited access to their researchers and students. If journals were all available for free online? Universities would not purchase these, the journals would lose their funding, and most would shut down. The journals that remained might just begin refusing to consider articles that were publicly funded, as the business model would have been changed and it would no longer be profitable.

Tbh I doubt the journals even care that much about piracy by individuals. Public institutions like universities are not going to implement a policy of telling their researchers to "just pirate it", so licenses still get sold. And a paywall to individuals is more about preventing universities from getting around licensing costs, it's not a huge source of actual revenue for these journals. But if they did suddenly cease having the copyright it would be a problem.

I'm just pointing out that this issue probably requires a more complex solution than unilaterally revoking all copyrights to publicly funded research. Society funded them in order to advance scientific knowledge, so that other researchers could make it advances. If it also wanted the full article to be publicly available even to non-researchers, it could have included as part of its contract a clause to purchase the copyright for the final article. Instead you want to change the law to just specially invalidate the copyright of articles if the research was in part publicly funded, because that sounds nice to you. You should realize that that will have consequences.

It's not a matter of what I personally find desirable. It's a matter of economic reality, that decisions have consequences.

So why do these journals have to be businesses? They should be non profit organisations it was that arch crook Robert Maxwell that changed the business model.

[kudzu]

So why do these journals have to be businesses? They should be non profit organisations it was that arch crook Robert Maxwell that changed the business model.

Non-profit doesn't mean free.

[cancel2 2022]

Non-profit doesn't mean free.

Yeh, £5 or £10 but many of these companies charges hundreds ffs. That is daylight robbery and cannot be justified.

[Micawber]

Most people in the industry have jobs whose employers pay for their relevant journals as an ordinary and necessary expense. It's a non issue for real scientists.
Poor Tom is an unemployed old man who wants to use his jailhouse learned skills to critique the work of real productive humans and not have to pay anything.
Go to the public libarary and get a card, poor Tom. They probably have the required licenses.

Havana Poon is simply mad because he never published anything to peer review in any scientific journal, never was invited to work in any study group reviewing papers
etc. He's not even in the game because his skills are lame and his powers of analysis of the work of real scientists cannot be trusted, so he was always excluded.

Poor Tom

[cancel2 2022]

Most people in the industry have jobs whose employers pay for their relevant journals as an ordinary and necessary expense. It's a non issue for real scientists.
Poor Tom is an unemployed old man who wants to use his jailhouse learned skills to critique the work of real productive humans and not have to pay anything.
Go to the public libarary and get a card, poor Tom. They probably have the required licenses.

Havana Poon is simply mad because he never published anything to peer review in any scientific journal, never was invited to work in any study group reviewing papers
etc. He's not even in the game because his skills are lame and his powers of analysis of the work of real scientists cannot be trusted, so he was always excluded.

Poor Tom

Says the arsehole that writes this crap!

https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...65#post2667565

[Micawber]

Poor Tom.

[cancel2 2022]

Most people in the industry have jobs whose employers pay for their relevant journals as an ordinary and necessary expense. It's a non issue for real scientists.
Poor Tom is an unemployed old man who wants to use his jailhouse learned skills to critique the work of real productive humans and not have to pay anything.
Go to the public libarary and get a card, poor Tom. They probably have the required licenses.

Havana Poon is simply mad because he never published anything to peer review in any scientific journal, never was invited to work in any study group reviewing papers
etc. He's not even in the game because his skills are lame and his powers of analysis of the work of real scientists cannot be trusted, so he was always excluded.

Poor Tom

The practice was started by mega crook Robert Maxwell, although I doubt you've even heard of him! Fortunately Alexandra Elbakyan has found a way to beat them. She started Science Hub, the Napster of the scientific world.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/8/16...papers-lawsuit

[Cypress]

Here is a solution:


Rather than spending time whining about this on an obscure message board, just email the researcher (who's contact into is publically available) and ask them for a PDF of their paper.

It takes ten seconds to do that.

I have done it literally dozens, if not hundreds of times, and have never had a researcher tell me to piss off. They are more than happy to share their papers.

[cancel2 2022]

Here is a solution:


Rather than spending time whining about this on an obscure message board, just email the researcher (who's contact into is publically available) and ask them for a PDF of their paper.

It takes ten seconds to do that.

I have done it literally dozens, if not hundreds of times, and have never had a researcher tell me to piss off. They are more than happy to share their papers.

Tell that to George Monbiot!

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-fund-research