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Unfortunately I can’t access my papers freely even if I want to thanks to the damn paywall. So as an author I offer condolences. I have to give the society copyright if I want to be published so thems the rules. Ugh. Fail
This is interesting. I'm sure it varies by publisher. Let's look at three.
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Thanks for the nice summary. However, as a practical matter, I have never known there to be an issue with authors posting preprints of their IEEE papers on personal web sites. If everyone did that, we'd be some distance toward solving this problem. Personally, as primary author of a couple of Transactions papers and a handful of conference papers, I consider it my moral duty to make those papers available outside the IEEE paywall. I don't think most researchers in academia really think about this because their experience of accessing papers online is pretty frictionless---no login required, you're automatically in based on your IP address.
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Pre-prints generally yes. The problem is that it's academically irresponsible to not use the paper as accepted (ie. accepted manuscripts) for reference.
That battle has been won too for homepages as far as Elsevier is concerned, but homepages come and go. The final line in the sand of publishers is to keep the accepted manuscripts out of trustworthy repositories for as long and as much as possible. In some areas they have been less than successful (arXiv or RePEc in the case of Elsevier, but those do not cover all fields as I said before).
Really rather than depend on authors to remember all this we need universities to simply mandate submission of papers working for them to their own library, including accepted manuscripts ... and then automatically publish them after embargo ... but that costs money. -
Really rather than depend on authors to remember all this we need universities to simply mandate submission of papers working for them to their own library, including accepted manuscripts ... and then automatically publish them after embargo ... but that costs money.
I agree. I think this is happening, and momentum is building, but perhaps not fast enough.
My institution, a US DOE lab, consistent with US DOE policy, is dead serious about making sure all the academic work from this institution is in public repositories. I know, because it's part of my day job. :-) A nearby university campus has a similar policy, perhaps minus the will to push/enforce it. But things seem to be heating up all around this area these days.
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Well, if you're an academic doing "real" research then you probably have access to the real paper for free. If you're not an academic, I think a preprint should be fine. If the review process found any mistakes I definitely folded those back into my posted "preprint" version.
Otherwise I mostly agree. I think change will be slow unless/until the incumbents get pulled kicking and screaming into the 21st century. This why I support "civil disobedience" efforts like sci-hub. A useful analogy can be made with the music industry. The key players would never have agreed to $1 tracks on iTunes, were it not for rampant piracy convincing them that they had two options: (1) continue watching their profits erode, or (2) embrace the new reality. Academic publishers need to be forced up against the wall in the same way. Except of course there is a strong argument that [publically funded] research papers should be free, an argument which does not obtain for the creative industries like music and film.
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The access at my former university was broad, but it certainly wasn't universal. Not all unis have that much money to spend.
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"There are already too many people with knowledge and skills and expectations of a better life."
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Well, if you're an academic doing "real" research then you probably have access to the real paper for free. If you're not an academic, I think a preprint should be fine. If the review process found any mistakes I definitely folded those back into my posted "preprint" version.
Otherwise I mostly agree. I think change will be slow unless/until the incumbents get pulled kicking and screaming into the 21st century. This why I support "civil disobedience" efforts like sci-hub. A useful analogy can be made with the music industry. The key players would never have agreed to $1 tracks on iTunes, were it not for rampant piracy convincing them that they had two options: (1) continue watching their profits erode, or (2) embrace the new reality. Academic publishers need to be forced up against the wall in the same way. Except of course there is a strong argument that [publically funded] research papers should be free, an argument which does not obtain for the creative industries like music and film.
The problem is that "public services" are defined very narrowly internationally by default, the official definition is basically so narrow its just the government itself and any totally free services like politicians. Since 1995 a ratchet (actually its called a standstill) has been in effect and countries like the US, UK and EU have been gradually reforming their state owned enterprises and turning them to profitable use. lYou'll notice that the EU now calls them "services of general interest" not public services.
The G20 countries by and large have formally declared their intent to gradually privatize big sections of what once were public services. The US, Europe and the UK are doing likewise, despite protests by organizations such as the EUA.
This is illustrated by the refusal of the US government to forgive the student loans of thousands of students who went into what they thought was public service but which is now on the fast track to privatization, like higher education. Words are important!
Since higher education is now a huge international industry and universities are the gateway to facts and so who becomes empowered to annoint facts is important.
Eventually, the ever widening net of progressive liberalization will ensnare public information providers too. I am surprised they still are there. I am certain their days are numbered. Government can't help non-commercial publishing because thats a 'taking' from commercial publishers.
Poor people can use Wikipedia. Academic journals are for profit services so for the government to compete with them breaks the rules.
Allowing it to continue indefinitely would be like suddenly having public health insurance when healthcare insurance is already a multitrillion dollar industry we are exporting to the Americans, England, Europe and the Asia-Pacific-Australia region. It just isn't consistent with todays ascendant ideology, buy or die.