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169 comments
Deborah Hartmann Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦

@RustyBertrand I always assumed the author got some of that, so I should pay and support them.

But that arrangement - it's shameful :-(

JillL

@deborahh @RustyBertrand I always feel reluctant to bother the author directly. But, $35 per paper gets expensive very quickly if you are doing any sort of serious research.

Rusty Bertrand

@jillL @deborahh
I contacted scientists and documentarians on Twitter all the time. They let me pick their brains and always seemed happy to talk.

I would contact heads of research and libraries at fancy universities for information I couldnt find. They would point me in the right direction and sometimes even get all excited about it too.

People like to talk about their specialties.

JillL

@RustyBertrand Yes, you're probably right. And, I guess the worst thing they can do is say "no".

Orion (he/him)

@RustyBertrand @jillL I already posted this elsewhere, but we love when people ask us about our research. We got into academia to spread knowledge, and we fucking adore explaining things at length. The thought that someone cares about what we have to say is intoxicating.

Tiota Sram

@RustyBertrand @jillL can confirm as a published researcher that I'd be happy to share copies of my papers. I've been lucky enough to have been able to use grant money or other institutional funds to pay "open access fees" so that the publisher will make copies available for free (typically ~$2000 or so). In at least one case I later checked the publisher's official page only to see a "buy this article link" on top (that was IEEE for the curious). As mentioned elsewhere, the reviewing work is uncompensated and even members of the program committee which manages the review process typically aren't compensated or are barely paid anything.

Plus, in scientific circles the norm is that the authors will do their own editing & typesetting, so it's not like the publishers are providing any of the editorial services they do in other genres. Sometimes if the primary author is not a native English speaker they'll require the author to pay an editor to review the language.

Academic publishing enrages me almost every time I think about it.

Please do pirate any and all academic material with an absolutely crystal-clear conscience, and/or send us emails asking for copies.

#AcademicChatter

@RustyBertrand @jillL can confirm as a published researcher that I'd be happy to share copies of my papers. I've been lucky enough to have been able to use grant money or other institutional funds to pay "open access fees" so that the publisher will make copies available for free (typically ~$2000 or so). In at least one case I later checked the publisher's official page only to see a "buy this article link" on top (that was IEEE for the curious). As mentioned elsewhere, the reviewing work is uncompensated...

Shiri Bailem

@RustyBertrand @deborahh @jillL statistically odds are they're autistic and you just asked them to infodump...

You're not bothering them, you're bothering anyone who may be supervising them lol

Sofia ☭🇧🇷☭

@jillL @deborahh @RustyBertrand they generally get excited that someone outside their field cares enough to want to read their paper. But there are also pirate sites like sci-hub that you can use without feeling guilty, now you know where the journal fees are really going

r҉ustic cy͠be̸rpu̵nk🤠🤖

@sofiav @jillL @deborahh @RustyBertrand 100% Of my interactions with researchers went like that. They're absolutely delighted to share their work whenever possible

sidereal

@cypnk @sofiav @jillL @deborahh @RustyBertrand I’ve had academics print up and internationally mail me copies of rare unpublished manuscripts for free. They get SO stoked when the general public asks them questions y’all like don’t even know if you haven’t done it. They got into the profession to share knowledge! Most of them would actually way rather talk to random folks who are highly interested in the subject than lecture to bored 18 year olds.

Orion (he/him)

@deborahh @sidereal @cypnk @sofiav @jillL @RustyBertrand I can't speak for them, but a lot of humanities profs are not super technical, especially the over-sixty crowd.

There's no rule against sharing our work. It's not worth enough money for anyone to care. I mean, it's only the most advanced knowledge we've come up with this far. It's not an episode of the Frasier reboot or something. :)

Claus Aranha

@jillL @deborahh @RustyBertrand Don't feel reluctant. I agree that it is always a nice day when someone sends me an email asking about my papers.

When I was a PHD working on a book coauthored with my supervisor, I remember asking about the royalties arrangement, saying that they seemed unfair towards us, and being admonished that "I should not be thinking about money"... lol, that's our culture... :(

Dustin D. Wind

@caranha @jillL @deborahh @RustyBertrand Hooray for neo-feudalism, i.e. "You will own nothing and be happy*." 😏

* - because by some sort of hard-to-define Divine Right, we always have 'owned' the storehouses that the fruits of your labor are deposited into and always will

Orion (he/him)

@MySideIsHumanity @caranha @jillL @deborahh @RustyBertrand In theory, we do it as part of our workload and we get paid via promotion, but of course, that only ever really applies to the mostly white men who were promoted, and today, adjunct exploitation has made made it fifty times worse.

All the more reason to talk to us. If you're not getting paid, showing an interest in our work is the second best thing.

(I do have a permanent position now, to be clear.)

Leigh Silvester

@jillL @deborahh @RustyBertrand
In the old days authors would get a load of paper copies of the paper and would send them out to anyone who requested it.
Not sure what the practice is now as I haven't published for a while.

The benefit to the author is that it increases the possibility of their work being cited.

Absolutely do ask the author for a copy.

I occasionally get asked for copies of papers and am happy to send out if I have any copies of a particular one left.

@jillL @deborahh @RustyBertrand
In the old days authors would get a load of paper copies of the paper and would send them out to anyone who requested it.
Not sure what the practice is now as I haven't published for a while.

The benefit to the author is that it increases the possibility of their work being cited.

Berk

@jillL @deborahh @leighms @RustyBertrand some journals provide the author with a shareable link. Otherwise there’s always scihub 😉

Tobias

@deborahh @RustyBertrand To the contrary, often authors *also* have to pay to actually be able to publish…

Gold gab ich für Eisen

@deborahh @RustyBertrand nope. Moreover, reviewers (who actually make the scientific paper something different from a blog post) are also not paid. Scienitific journals are probably the most prominent and unknown example of a modern monopoly.

Suzanne she/her

@deborahh @RustyBertrand we get no money from publishing or conference presentations, and we often have to pay publishers and always have to pay for conferences. ☹️ yes, please. Ask us for copies of our articles.

David L

@deborahh @RustyBertrand reviewers for scientific papers are also unpaid

Wandering Hermit

@RustyBertrand

And if you have friends in academia, they can usually get the papers for free from the university library.

Jake

@RustyBertrand spend that shit on weeeeeeed

OddMinus1

@RustyBertrand are the authors not allowed to host the paper on a secondary free site? Something like GitHub, only for scientific papers?

Carola Rodrigues

@OddMinus1 @RustyBertrand I'm starting at this path but it's unethical to publish or even propose an article at 2 places.

Tiota Sram

@ACarolaRodrigues @OddMinus1 @RustyBertrand depending on the place, hosting on a pre-print site like arxive.org may be allowed or even encouraged. And *after* publication many standard contracts allow you to retain the right to host your own copies for free. Varies by field probably though.

Joe

@OddMinus1 @RustyBertrand For many of the more prestigious journals they are not allowed, they give up the copyright to the journal so they can't publish it on their own. But they can send out individual copies to other researchers, and in effect that means anyone who asks. Grad students in well funded universities can usually get the paper from their university library which will subscribe to the journal, but researchers in poorer countries often won't have access, but they can ask the authors to send a copy.

Zeborah

@not2b They do give up copyright yes, but part of the publishing agreement usually allows authors to deposit an unbranded version in a university repository, which is then indexed by places like Google Scholar. (Often there's an embargo of a year or two because publishers are jerks, but it's still worth doing for the sake of the people who still want to read it after that time's up.)

I highly encourage all authors to check in with their uni library about this option.

@OddMinus1 @RustyBertrand

AndyDearden

@OddMinus1 @RustyBertrand academia.edu and researchgate.net are good places to look. Also, if you look up the university that the author is based at, many have 'institutional repositories' where the author is expected to put a 'pre-publication' version of their paper - but that often comes with limits (e.g. not available for the first 12months). Best option for brand new research is to email the authors.

Porter

@RustyBertrand I've tried this on two separate occasions and never got a response.

Amber Griffiths

@plym @RustyBertrand there's some research into this and it only works something like 1 in 10 times, authors move institutions regularly which makes addresses on papers obsolete, leave academia, and more often than not, don't bother replying, sadly. It's a poor substitute for academics behaving ethically and publishing gold/diamond open access in the first place (which is *always* possible, despite the inevitable moaning from a few extraordinarily out of date folks).

Nick Selby :donor:

@RustyBertrand @mckra1g I cannot believe how stupid I have been for years, and that the only people I ask for papers are academics I actually know. Of course this is better. As I count the check I’ve received from my academic publishers over the years and find that …. Wait, I never got anything but the advance.

Ariaflame

@fuzztech @RustyBertrand @mckra1g You mean they paid you? They didn't charge you for them to publish you?

McTwist

@RustyBertrand I find it more difficult to locate a way to contact them at all. Either they have left the academia, or there is no email available.

I've also found one article that the author uploaded for free on their personal space, but as I forgot to download it, the whole domain became inaccessible after a couple of weeks. I found it interesting that this was a couple of months ago, and the university he belongs to was a popular one from Israel. One could speculate what happened.

Rusty Bertrand

@mctwist
Also my post was old, 2018 or something. Before the great enshittification.

Everyone has changed their emails.

Ariaflame

@mctwist @RustyBertrand One place that's a possibility is researchgate. Or I heard a rumour about a place called scihub

aiquez

@RustyBertrand
Yes, i als requested over researchgate the authors directly.

Besides The use of #OpenAccess journals for publicly financed research should be compulsory

AndyDearden

@aiquez @RustyBertrand Fortunately it is compulsory for publicly funded research in the UK.

رہگزر

@xyhhx @RustyBertrand these day (for some fields) you can likely find the per-print on arXiv and it likely has better formatting.

But if the paper is not on arXiv, scihub is definitely the moral (if not legal) choice.

the_halmaturus (test account)

@RustyBertrand@kolektiva.social

#Alt4You
!B

There is a Screenshot of a statement, the following text is visible:

Dr. Holly Witteman PRLS @hwittemar:

That $35 that scientific journals charge you to read a paper goes 100% to the publisher, 0% to the authors. If you just email us to ask for our papers, we are allowed to send them to you for free, and we will be genuinely delighted to do SO.

"Dr. Holly Witteman
@hwittemar:

That $35 that scientific journals charge you to read a paper goes 100% to the publisher, 0% to the authors. If you just email us to ask for our papers, we are allowed to send them to you for free, and we will be genuinely delighted to do so."

There is shown a second post below with following text:

"Louie
@Mantia

What's something that seems obvious within your profession, but the general public seems to misunderstand?"

@RustyBertrand@kolektiva.social

#Alt4You
!B

There is a Screenshot of a statement, the following text is visible:

Dr. Holly Witteman PRLS @hwittemar:

That $35 that scientific journals charge you to read a paper goes 100% to the publisher, 0% to the authors. If you just email us to ask for our papers, we are allowed to send them to you for free, and we will be genuinely delighted to do SO.

"Dr. Holly Witteman
@hwittemar:

That $35 that scientific journals charge you to read a paper goes 100% to the...

jesterchen42

@RustyBertrand Again: why didn't scientists invent a publication website long ago with per review and all, where the journals are simply left out?

It seems so easy to deal with this problem. Just take a few universities that won't support Nature, Springer et al, and let things take its course.

Oh, oh, and to prevent building a new monopoly, why not make it federated?

Seriously, I didn't get it why journals are still a thing when I was still active, I don't get it now. 🤷‍♀️

Dr Benoît Jones

@jesterchen @RustyBertrand
I agree with the sentiment. The problem is that managing the review process, and then copy editing and producing the proofs, and then providing the platform or printing the journal is a job of work that needs to be paid for. So money is needed for that, unless you are happy for papers to be full of spelling and grammar errors, have poor quality images and be laid out in a basic way. Academic reviewers and editors will not do this, it's too time-consuming.

Dr Benoît Jones

@jesterchen @RustyBertrand

I am totally in favour of journals being 100% open access, but we need to acknowledge that there is a cost someone has to pay.

Rusty Bertrand

@huxley @jesterchen
Pay who? No one gets paid. Publishers? Middlemen?
Fuck that!
Billionaires can pay.

DELETED

@huxley @jesterchen @RustyBertrand You say that, but I've never heard of paid review work. I've never had a journal's copy editors not ruin my papers and have to have my advisor yell at them to stop breaking everything. Spelling and grammar errors are rife in published works regardless. So I disagree, no money is needed for their crap services.

Captain Jack Sparrow

@RustyBertrand

Why not start a website hub for academic papers?

Mathias Micheel

@Captain_Jack_Sparrow @RustyBertrand copyright. But there are some ways around it, like posting a preprint (before peer review) or posting an authors version of sorts.
Most journals transition to open access nowadays anyway, which has its own share of challenges.

akiran_n

@RustyBertrand what that said for everything now? Oh, yes, they pay in visibility 😅😠

Koen Hufkens, PhD

@RustyBertrand Not to well actually.... but in Belgium if you sign up as an author with the copyright agency they will actually pay you something (pennies probably, but still).

I would argue that to undercut the system, all scientists should sign up for this (or similar). The overhead would be immense and a huge pain for the publishers involved (having to run the stats etc).

Zeborah

@koen_hufkens Does that guarantee that authors specifically get paid, or only copyright holders?

The copyright licensing scheme in New Zealand pays the copyright holder - so if the publishing agreement the author signed transferred copyright to the publisher (common in academia for books, and near universal for journal articles without a Creative Commons licence) then the payment goes to the publisher.

@RustyBertrand

Koen Hufkens, PhD

@zeborah @RustyBertrand Haven't bothered with the details (but I should). From a colleague I know they got like a 200 EURO pay day (on their academic work), from where and how this is calculated remains opaque (what fraction was open access etc). The whole shindig is a scam anyway IMO, but at least you can be annoying.

digfish

@RustyBertrand you can publish your papers on social media for knowledge like academia.edu or researchersgate

Zeborah

@digfish Not always legally and not always even technically as publishers have sued ResearchGate for hosting that material and ResearchGate has developed tech to check the copyright when you upload it. cen.acs.org/policy/publishing/

Posting on a university repository is usually allowed, with various annoying limits; emailing when requested is always allowed, because it's inherently limited, and also they can't stop you and would look bad if they tried.

@RustyBertrand

@digfish Not always legally and not always even technically as publishers have sued ResearchGate for hosting that material and ResearchGate has developed tech to check the copyright when you upload it. cen.acs.org/policy/publishing/

digfish

@zeborah @RustyBertrand does academia.edu also faced attempts of being sued by publishers? Who owns the copyright of scientific papers, after all?

Urix Turing

@RustyBertrand I don't recall being able to distribute my papers, the publisher gets the exclusive rights. What many researchers do is publishing the final draft in their website, that is almost exactly the same as the published version... Same thing goes for ISO standards.

Bonus: not only they get 100% of the profit, you also have to pay them for the honor of being accepted and published.

Leigh Silvester

@RustyBertrand
I currently get free access via the University's subscriptions.

That's one thing I am going to miss when I leave.

TechNomad

@RustyBertrand Those journals are a scam. $1000+ to publish, a fee to read it, and half of what they publish ends up being false. Do they actually "peer review" anything? How many of those experiments are repeated fully prior to publication?

artisanrox

@RustyBertrand

the authors should have cashapps or something set up where we can pay/donate to THEM directly

[̲̅$̲̅(̲̅ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°̲̅)̲̅$̲̅]

Jess👾

@RustyBertrand
I've really made some paper author's days by telling them what I'm interested in their research for. For so many papers, it kinda just disappears into the ether, and they don't know if anyone has ever read it. It's a good day when you can get someone interested enough in your research you spent years on to ask for it and tell them what cool thing they're trying to figure out.

Orion (he/him)

@JessTheUnstill @RustyBertrand I am an academic. This is 1000% true. We *love* when people actually read and use our stuff. You will be brightening our day if you do this. I still remember the handful of times this has happened to me. Please!

رہگزر

@RustyBertrand does anyone actually pays that $35? I feel that the extortion is aimed squarely at institutional libraries.

nm0i

@RustyBertrand Moreover, at times we have to pay ourselves to have our articles published...

Mikołaj Hołysz

@RustyBertrand Are you also allowed to send the LaTeX source?

As a screen reader user, those are far more readable to me than the PDFs. Fortunately most papers in my field are on arxiv now, and that site lets you download LaTeX with no questions asked.

EaterOfSnacks

@RustyBertrand Does this hold for other disciplines too? There are some interesting history and archaeology papers that, as a non-academic and non-salaried person, I'll otherwise probably never get to read.

Jimmy Havok

@RustyBertrand I enrolled in grad school during the summer term and discovered it didn't include access to the databases. So just as a desperation move, I emailed the author of the first paper I was assigned and learned this.

The for-profit journals are parasites on academia's culture of sharing, and need to be destroyed.

Berk

@RustyBertrand just want to point out that although academics don’t get paid by the journals for their papers, their papers are used to secure research grant funding

Kate Nyhan

@RustyBertrand or the friendly scientists could
- choose to publish in diamond journals (neither reader nor author pays)
- choose journals that allow self-archiving, and then do it
- use rights retention language and self-archive
- get their faculty senate to create an institutional OA policy
Nota bene none of those pathways require APCs (well, maybe some publishers have weird contracts intended to negate rights retention?)

Jax UK

@RustyBertrand

This is wonderful to know! My youngest is home educated and really wants to do archeology when she goes to uni. I may do a lesson on research and get her to find 3 archeology based researchers to email. Thank you for the inspiration 😊

__jan

@RustyBertrand
This. And most of us want the paper to be free on the internet. That's why we support #OpenAccess and upload everything to arxiv or similar depending on the field.

And we all believe that we have collectively paid enough to publishers to publish and read our own work.

Ángela Stella Matutina

@RustyBertrand

#AltTextForYou #AltText4You

In answer to a tweet by Louie Mantia, Jr. (@Mantia) that asks "What‘s something that seems obvious within your profession, but the general public seems to misunderstand?", quote tweet by Dr. Holly Witteman (@hwitteman): "That $35 that scientific journals charge you to read a paper goes 100% to the publisher, 0% to the authors. If you just email us to ask for our papers, we are allowed to send them to you for free, and we will be genuinely delighted to do so."

Not part of alt text:

The conversation is from six years ago and it has not aged a bit except for some numbers and URLs, go read it: twitter.com/hwitteman/status/1

And a toast to Alexandra Elbakyan, as always! Donate to Sci-Hub if you can.

@RustyBertrand

#AltTextForYou #AltText4You

In answer to a tweet by Louie Mantia, Jr. (@Mantia) that asks "What‘s something that seems obvious within your profession, but the general public seems to misunderstand?", quote tweet by Dr. Holly Witteman (@hwitteman): "That $35 that scientific journals charge you to read a paper goes 100% to the publisher, 0% to the authors. If you just email us to ask for our papers, we are allowed to send them to you for free, and we will be genuinely delighted to do so."

MissConstrue

@RustyBertrand in all the years I’ve asked for white papers, I have never had a researcher say no, and I’ve often opened up dialogues with some of the most intelligent humans on the planet. 🥰

the_wiggler

@RustyBertrand it's hard enough finding out a paper exists, let alone tracking down a complete stranger and emailing them out of the blue in the age of ubiquitous scams to try give you something for free.

I get it works, but it's not really an effective communication route.

Also backwards: not paying your writers. More scientists should just read their papers in monitized youtube videos. At least they'd get a small return.

petersuber

@RustyBertrand
Yes but...

If a reader asks for an email copy of one of your paywalled articles, by all means send one. But at the same time, deposit a copy in an #OpenAccess #repository (#GreenOA). That will help all who need access, not just the tiny subset willing to hunt you down, write, and ask.

Not all authors have the rights to do this. But many authors have them without realizing it, and in principle all authors could have them going forward.
bit.ly/how-oa

@RustyBertrand
Yes but...

If a reader asks for an email copy of one of your paywalled articles, by all means send one. But at the same time, deposit a copy in an #OpenAccess #repository (#GreenOA). That will help all who need access, not just the tiny subset willing to hunt you down, write, and ask.

teledyn 𓂀

@RustyBertrand

Plus you can often make new friends who actually know stuff about stuff you like to know about. Having mailed back more than a few papers in my time, I can also attest the feeling goes both ways! 😌

Dr Mircea Zloteanu 🌻

@RustyBertrand this is incorrect. authors do get royalties. in the uk we have ALCS.

iwein

@RustyBertrand what's missing in this thread is a url of a well indexed collection of free scientific papers we can donate to. Is it wikipedia, or is there something better?

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