Contemplating breaking the law, maybe, not sure
Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:30:27 +0200
Strange old world we live in. Over a non-trivial number of years I have authored around 80 research papers in peer-reviewed journals. Lately, I have taken to only publishing in open access journals that allow me to use a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. This has been great, and a lot more people have read and given feedback on those articles than on the articles I published in printed, proprietary journals.
As a scientist, previously, I never gave much thought to the impact of the system of academic publication in which I participated. Lately, however, I have come to take easy access for granted.
But today, I wanted to go back and access some older work, such as
Our library has subscription to various databases, but tracking down individual journals in it is a nightmare. Its easy to find the title, but not so easy to find the version that you can access. Imagine my surprise when, despite spending a fortune on this access, logging in via EZproxy, and following the link only to be told that I had to BUY the article before I could download it. What exactly have we bought already? Hm..and its my article to which I do not have access.
So, it is easier to drive into the University, get the paper copy of the journal (to which I used to subscribe), scan the article and make my own PDF. Unless they have a PhD in modern copywrong law, even the gods probably don't know if I am breaking the law or not, but I will be damned if I am going to buy my own article to have an electronic version of it when I have paid for a subscription to the journal that it is in, and so has my library, and my library has paid for access to the journal via an online system.
Vive open access, vive! Pamberi ne open access, pamberi!
scholarly publishing
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Anonymous user (not logged in) - Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:02:10 +0200
I know that I am responding to a very old post on your blog, but...
I have often wondered if most researchers who submit research articles understand or have even read (if not done via a research department) agreements for the submission of articles. Herein I believe lies a huge problem. I am all for open access within a sustainable economic environment.
My place of employment supports/hosts open access journals and we have investigated numerous economic models - as have so many publishers, authors and service providers across the world have. I am still of the opinion that one can only really have a fully functional peer-reviewed publication system in a country, if the government has commtted to supporting research output, by changing the funding process. Rather fund publishers/service providers for managing the process (and lets face it - it is a costly system and process), rather than the institutions/authors.
But I have lost track of the original concept: what was the agreement signed between the then institution or you as the author, and the publisher?
It is a problem that a lot of researchers and authors sign away their very own 'intellectual property'
W
