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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 :-(

51 comments
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.

Thanasis Kinias

@orionkidder
I know there are a few ‘celebrity’ scholars who are different, but this totally describes almost all the academics I know...
@RustyBertrand @jillL

undead enby of the apocalypse

@jillL @tkinias @RustyBertrand @orionkidder I feel like there’s two archetypes of scientists, nerds who are motivated by a deep love for their field and nothing else, and are just really excited to talk about it, and weird elitists who are obsessed with status, their reputation, other people’s reputation, ect

Orion (he/him)

@RustyBertrand @enby_of_the_apocalypse @jillL @tkinias I've known more than a few old white men who are also excited nerds, and I've known a couple of white women in academia who were awful. I'm just saying.

Edit: I should have phrased that much more carefully! Let me say: you are not wrong, as a generalization, but there are significant exceptions.

undead enby of the apocalypse replied to Orion

@orionkidder @tkinias @jillL @RustyBertrand old white people in general. Tho I feel like the women tend to be at least slightly more likely to not be awful. I guess the more privileged someone is, the more they tend to be obsessed with prestige

Orion (he/him) replied to undead enby of the apocalypse

@enby_of_the_apocalypse @tkinias @jillL @RustyBertrand That's it exactly. Nobody is inherently good or bad based on their like demographic.

Proximity to systemic power, however, has a strong tendency to make people *terrible*.

Rusty Bertrand replied to Orion

@orionkidder @enby_of_the_apocalypse @tkinias @jillL

Yep. The thought stayed on my mind. It's the way they were brought up. Some are amazing.

Not all old white men are the absolute worst. But the absolute worst are all old white men.

Alex McLean

@orionkidder @RustyBertrand @jillL Then why do academics prop up these hyper-profitable publishers? So many people in this thread pretending that this is all an external evil, but it is completely in the gift of academics to get together and stop throwing public money in the black hole of these publishers' astonishingly high profit margins.
And no, emailing authors directly asking for copies usually does not work.

Alex McLean

@RustyBertrand @orionkidder @jillL It's possible for academics to get together and change the system they're working in - some fields are a lot better than others.

Rusty Bertrand

@yaxu @orionkidder @jillL
One guy in the thread said his team had to pay $11k to publish without the paywall.

Alex McLean replied to Rusty

@RustyBertrand @orionkidder @jillL Yes, it's a scam, academics know this, but still choose to support it, rather than join those organising against it.

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

🇯🇴 Severian 🔬🔭📡📚

@RustyBertrand @jillL @deborahh

The Internet made the scientific publication system pointless.

Now it survives because evaluation of the scientific activity requires publication in peer reviewed international journals, and the editorial companies own the most prestigious journals.

It is parasitic: the govenements and universities pay the scientists and the grants, they write the articles which are then handled by generically unpaid editors (which are scientist working for governments and universities) to unpaid referees (which are again working for governments and universities). The articles are published and then sold to the same governments and universities which paid the whole process. Governments and universities require to their scientists to participate in this exploitation chain in order to contract and promote them.

I am not making this up. It is as ridiculous as it sounds, and it is not even working quite well in some areas, in which we are living a "retraction crisis", like behavioral science for example.

@RustyBertrand @jillL @deborahh

The Internet made the scientific publication system pointless.

Now it survives because evaluation of the scientific activity requires publication in peer reviewed international journals, and the editorial companies own the most prestigious journals.

It is parasitic: the govenements and universities pay the scientists and the grants, they write the articles which are then handled by generically unpaid editors (which are scientist working for governments and universities)...

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. :)

sidereal

@deborahh @cypnk @sofiav @jillL @RustyBertrand They sent me an electronic copy too, this is just the kind of great/free customer service you get from radical labor academics when you actually care about their work.

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.)

Dustin D. Wind

@orionkidder @caranha @jillL @deborahh @RustyBertrand Glad to hear you were able to get to a place where you feel safe. 🤝

I guess it kinda shows that even tho I'm happy with where I am, I'm sick to death of a system where Mr. Creosote* tells the restaurant staff "What's wrong with you? You should be grateful you get paid." Which 'trickles down' until it's eventually "What's wrong with you? You should be grateful you get the crumbs of my plate scraps."

* - Monty Python skit, but TW: nauseating

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 😉

Matthew Murray 🦇

@leighms @jillL @deborahh @RustyBertrand
I believe some journals give "freebie codes" to authors to distribute to whoever.

Tobias

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

Tobias

@fuzztech @RustyBertrand @deborahh "Different academic publishers have widely varying levels of fees, from under $100 to over $5000, and even sometimes as high as €9500 ($10851) for the journal *Nature*." says en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_

Tobias

@stuvx @deborahh @RustyBertrand Most, yes.
For open access (such that the reader doen *not* pay) lots of journals request fees of $200 to a few thousand $ *from the author*.
So, safe for some diamond open access ones, either reader or author pays

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

The Doctor

@davad @deborahh @RustyBertrand Sometimes part of the job description. When I worked at GSFC I sometimes had to PR pre-pubs or pre-conf.

Michael Busch

@deborahh @RustyBertrand I was on a paper published in Nature last year.

For making the PDF open-access on its website rather than charging people to read it, Nature asked the lead author to write a check for $11,000.

This is why astronomers have the arXiv open preprint server instead.

Rusty Bertrand

@michael_w_busch @deborahh
11k? That's unconscionable. Nature? I'm baffled.

I wish I could do a Harlan Ellison rant on command "Pay the writer"

undead enby of the apocalypse

@michael_w_busch @RustyBertrand @deborahh I mean it’s springer, so of course they squeeze as much money out of scientists as they can.

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