Gregory's Server
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@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. @jillL @deborahh 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. @RustyBertrand Yes, you're probably right. And, I guess the worst thing they can do is say "no".  @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.  @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  @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 @sofiav @jillL @deborahh @RustyBertrand 100% Of my interactions with researchers went like that. They're absolutely delighted to share their work whenever possible  @cypnk @sofiav @jillL @deborahh @RustyBertrand I’ve had academics print up and internationally mail me copies of rare unpublished manuscripts for free.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.  @sidereal @cypnk @sofiav @jillL @RustyBertrand why mail? Are they not allowed to share an electronic copy? @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. :) @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... :( @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 @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.) @jillL @deborahh @leighms @RustyBertrand some journals provide the author with a shareable link. Otherwise there’s always scihub 😉  @deborahh @RustyBertrand To the contrary, often authors *also* have to pay to actually be able to publish…  @krono @RustyBertrand @deborahh I’ve never come across THAT outside vanity press.  @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. @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. And if you have friends in academia, they can usually get the papers for free from the university library. @RustyBertrand are the authors not allowed to host the paper on a secondary free site? Something like GitHub, only for scientific papers? @OddMinus1 @RustyBertrand I'm starting at this path but it's unethical to publish or even propose an article at 2 places. @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.  @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. @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 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. @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). @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.  @fuzztech @RustyBertrand @mckra1g You mean they paid you? They didn't charge you for them to publish you? @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. @mctwist Everyone has changed their emails. @mctwist @RustyBertrand One place that's a possibility is researchgate. Or I heard a rumour about a place called scihub @RustyBertrand Besides The use of #OpenAccess journals for publicly financed research should be compulsory @aiquez @RustyBertrand Fortunately it is compulsory for publicly funded research in the UK.  @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. @RustyBertrand That's why Plan U is such a good idea https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000273  @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. 🤷♀️ @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. @huxley @jesterchen @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 copyright. But there are some ways around it, like posting a preprint (before peer review) or posting an authors version of sorts. @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). @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. @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. @RustyBertrand you can publish your papers on social media for knowledge like academia.edu or researchersgate @zeborah @RustyBertrand does academia.edu also faced attempts of being sued by publishers? Who owns the copyright of scientific papers, after all? @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.  @RustyBertrand That's one thing I am going to miss when I leave. @RustyBertrand Those journals are a scam. $1000+ to publish, a fee to read it, and half of what they publish ends up being false. Do they actually "peer review" anything? How many of those experiments are repeated fully prior to publication?  the authors should have cashapps or something set up where we can pay/donate to THEM directly [̲̅$̲̅(̲̅ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°̲̅)̲̅$̲̅]  @RustyBertrand @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! @RustyBertrand does anyone actually pays that $35? I feel that the extortion is aimed squarely at institutional libraries.  @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.  @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.  @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. @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 @RustyBertrand or the friendly scientists could 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 😊 @RustyBertrand And we all believe that we have collectively paid enough to publishers to publish and read our own work.  @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. 🥰 @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.  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! 😌 @RustyBertrand this is incorrect. authors do get royalties. in the uk we have ALCS.  @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? |
@RustyBertrand I always assumed the author got some of that, so I should pay and support them.
But that arrangement - it's shameful :-(