Re: Academic papers are hidden from the public. Here’s some direct action. ? Bad Science

Posted by Sarbajit Roy (testing) on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Academic-papers-are-hidden-from-the-public-Here-s-some-direct-action-Bad-Science-tp6802424p6804274.html

Thanks for saying this.

As a non-academic without access to JSTOR, its so frustrating when a google search throws up relevant academic papers in JSTOR or similar databases, and I can't read them.

Hmmmm.. as an "Indian (forrmer) hacker" lets see what can be done to strike a blow for hactivism.

Sarbajit

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 9:21 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Rather than focus on the particular case of JSTOR, let us lift the discussion up to the military-industrial complex level .. here being the academic-publishing complex.

Fundamentally we have painted ourselves into the corner; our universities and research institutions have colluded with the publishing industry to create an inequality: the ordinary citizen cannot read the papers that are so important to the progress of knowledge.

When looked at in this context, we have created an underclass, and worse, harmed the overall advance of knowledge by eliminating potentially astute participants -- the "civilians" who cannot access the publisher's knowledge base.

Yes, we do need to recompense those performing the publishing task.  But at this point, most of the paper writers are "self publishing" anyway, using the internet and digital media.

Our system is nearly feudal: our academic journals attempt to be so selective as to provide a (useful) need: referees of the worth of the papers.  A (generally) welcome filtering function.  They in turn are aggregated into large collections like JSTOR so that universities can access them with lower cost.  This too is reasonable.  Feudal but reasonable.

But this intertwined matrix has evolved to be both obsolete due to the web an harmful do to moving from protecting knowledge to making it available only to the select.

Like buggy whip makers, publishing has to evolve.  Clearly they do provide useful service. But now they need to get on with it, letting "the rest of us" have access.

        -- Owen 

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 6:56 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES <[hidden email]> wrote:

Owen,
There was a lot of interesting back and forth on one of the history of psychology lists a few weeks ago regarding JSTOR. They have (and they claim they generously have) recently made all papers pre-1923 open access. This is clearly a boon to anyone interested in the history of any academic field. However, there was a question over whether it was significant, as anything pre-1923 is public domain. I insisted that it was at least a little generous, because their scans are not public domain, and, at any rate, JSTOR is under no obligation to let Joe Schmo access such articles through their search system. 

The case of current articles, and articles produced as a result of government grants, is a little different, but I'm still not convinced JSTOR is in any wrong. Why aren't people blaming the journals, and demanding that the journals publishing these articles be free? That is, why are we bothered that the electronic version is not free, but we tacitly accept that the print version should cost money? For that matter, why not just blame the authors? Why not pressure the authors themselves to simply post the results publicly on a webpages for all to see? Frankly, that would be easy for all government funded research to be available for free.

JSTOR is just a distributor, why blame the distributor?

Just some thoughts,
Eric

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 06:02 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting sum-up of the JSTOR battle, and paid-by-taxpayer academic papers being sold.

http://www.badscience.net/2011/09/academic-papers-are-hidden-from-the-public-heres-some-direct-action/

The article admits that there are reasons for pay-walls when the site "adds value" by scanning old papers for example.  But they, like most of us I think, believe there are other ways to make papers available and allow JSTOR and their like flourish.

I think its simple: if the papers are pay-walled for long enough, pressure will develop, and either a Wiki-Leaks stunt will occur, or China and/or India will just hack the sites so that their students have free access.

        -- Owen

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Eric Charles

Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org