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Ross Mounce knows that when he shares his research papers online, he may be doing something illegal — if he uploads the final version of a paper that has appeared in a subscription-based journal. Publishers who own copyright on such papers frown on their unauthorized appearance online. Yet when Mounce has uploaded his paywalled articles to ResearchGate, a scholarly social network likened to Facebook for scientists, publishers haven't asked him to take them down. "I'm aware that I might be breaching copyright," says Mounce, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Cambridge, UK. "But I don't really care."
Mounce isn't alone in his insouciance. The unauthorized sharing of copyrighted research papers is on the rise, say analysts who track the publishing industry. Faced with this problem, science publishers seem to be changing tack in their approach to researchers who breach copyright. Instead of demanding that scientists or network operators take their papers down, some publishers are clubbing together to create systems for legal sharing of articles — called fair sharing — which could also help them to track the extent to which scientists share paywalled articles online.
Sharing information is antithetical to scientific progress.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12 2017, @05:08PM
The "Scientific Method" involving sharing of research results has been a going concern for 1000+ years, though it really only got going strong in the last 200 or so. All of that time, up until the last 20, scientific publications were providing a valuable service, and actually increasing the distribution of knowledge rather than hindering it. Their "review editorial purview" may be questionable at times, but it was part and parcel of the system up through the 1990s.
Now, of course, this 1000 year old snake is slow in turning with the times, and the overhead of review, publication, distribution, etc. has been disrupted. The journals could continue to provide their valuable services by providing an online index of articles which they have reviewed and accepted, the problem is that this costs more than people are willing to pay for anymore. Used to be, people accepted the cost of paper as being higher than it really is and relished the added value. Now, the cost of that added value must be exposed and traditional payment channels balk at the idea of paying for it when they don't have to in order to receive the end product. Extend this to world markets where scientists don't have large amounts of western currency at their disposal and the situation becomes even thornier.
Who pays for the peer review process in the future? Who is the administrator of the web of trust that ultimately sorts out the good papers from the less valuable? Which authors will be willing to serve as peer reviewers when it is no longer necessary for them to get their own papers elevated standing when being considered for publication?
Many solutions are possible, but I think it may take another 30 to 100 years for the system to settle out to a "good" process that isn't bought and paid for by commercial interests.
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