How might you improve access to scientific research? Write an editorial calling for greater access…and then put it behind a paywall.
Hat tip goes to Michelle Dawson on Twitter.
Addendum: Registration suffices, you don't need to pay, my apologies!
What is not right in this picture?
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Don Boudreaux quickly found what was not right in a NYT column. Don says:
“Lamenting that Democratic politicians up and down Pennsylvania Avenue have lost their enthusiasm for radical health-care ‘reform,’ Paul Krugman today maintains that “politics is supposed to be about achieving something more than your own re-election.†
“This notion of politics is absurdly unrealistic. Public-choice economics – pioneered by my colleagues Jim Buchanan (who boasts his own Nobel Prize) and Gordon Tullock – uncovers overwhelming evidence that politics, in fact, almost exclusively is about achieving election and re-election. So to insist that politics should be about something other than what it is really about makes as much sense as insisting, say, that snow should be hot or that donkeys should be bipedal.”
behind a paywall.
Available with free registration in a year!
All publicity is good publicity. Excellent stunt.
Heh. This reminds me of Microsoft’s interview with an Internet Explorer developer promoting web standards and interoperability. You have to install their proprietary Silverlight plugin to watch the video.
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/IE-9-Standards-and-Interoperability/
Accessibility fail.
Steve, it’s only free one year after its been published. For 12 months Science (and the AAAS) make some income charging subscriptions to the site. Some, few, articles and special features are made freely available right away. Much older, archival articles are also only available to subscribers.
I pay for access because I find the mass of content there valuable. I know I will never pay for NY Times material (they are moving to a metered ‘pay after some free access’ system). I don’t find the access to the article ironic, but that’s just me.
Well, the issue is that research that is funded by taxpayers should be made freely available. Not really applicable to private content, funny as their paywall is.
Free registration should be distinguished from a paywall. AAAS’s Science has both. This particular article only demands registration (and perhaps an apology from Michelle Dawson).
“Well, the issue is that research that is funded by taxpayers should be made freely available.”
Not entirely sure about this, although it is aggravating to be at an institution that doesn’t have full access to journals while I still have to compete with other researchers that do.
It’s just another issue that appears simply but is quite complicated. For example, I make 1/3 what I made my last job. I haven’t lost 2/3 my productivity. Are taxpayers really footing the whole bill for my work? Only by the most visible of accounting. The journals themselves are not government institutions. Just because you receive a pittance of tax money doesn’t make you a ward of the state.
The taxpayers get the benefits of my research when other researchers (who presumably have access to the journal) use my results to forward their knowledge. Taxpayers don’t really need to know the details, and God help them if they do.
I’d back up and question why we have researchers communicating and in effect collaborating by journal articles.
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