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New York Times Opinion Piece on Open Access Publishing

posted by CoolHand on Monday March 14 2016, @11:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the rip-it-open dept.

canopic jug writes:

The New York Times has an opinion piece about Open Access publishing. It starts with the case of Alexandra Elbakyan a guerilla open access activist who is on the lam from the US government acting on behalf of the copyright cartel. Pricing and other restrictions put many journals out of reach of all but the few researchers at major, well-funded universities in developed nations. The large publishing companies usually have profit margins over 30% and subscription prices have been rising twice as fast as the price of health care, which itself is priced insanely, over the past two decades, so there appears to be a real scandal there. Several options are available including pre-print repositories and various open access journals. The latter require the author to pay up front for publishing. However, the real onus lies on the communities' leaders, like heads of institutions and presidents of universities, who are in a position to change which journals are perceived as high-impact.

Edit: Alexandra Elbakyan founded Sci-Hub in 2011.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:23AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:23AM (#318274) Journal

    Oh, wow! That's informative...

    One can only wish there'd be someone to tell the sci-hub story and contextualize it... perhaps it would even worth submitting that to Soylentnews [soylentnews.org]. Something like the following would be great:

    That is the argument Elsevier made, supported by a raft of industry amicus briefs, when it filed suit against Ms. Elbakyan, resulting in an injunction last fall against her file-sharing website, Sci-Hub [sci-hub.io].

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 1) by devlux on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:32AM

    by devlux (6151) on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:32AM (#318279)

    I see, so what you're really saying is that I should have read the article before posting?
    In retrospect, I agree but reading the article is a really kind of going against the spirit and tradition of the site.

    Also I think it speaks volumes when someone posts a link to the site in question completely blind, not having read the article, based solely on gut reaction.
    To my mind that means that Ms. Elbakyan has at least in part achieved her mission. "open access to paywalled research" sci-hub, check!

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:37AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:37AM (#318283) Journal

      In retrospect, I agree but reading the article is a really kind of going against the spirit and tradition of the site.

      Someone said it better [soylentnews.org]

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford