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from the someone-should-create-an-internet-archive dept.
While the immediacy of publishing information on the Internet dramatically speeds the dissemination of scholarly knowledge, the transition from a paper-based to a web-based scholarly communication system has introduced challenges that Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists are seeking to address.
"For more than 70 percent of papers that link to web pages, revisiting the originally referenced web content proved impossible," said Herbert Van de Sompel, of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library. "These results are alarming because vanishing references undermine the long-term integrity of the scholarly record."
http://phys.org/news/2015-01-online-scholarly-articles-affected.html
[Article]: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115253
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Thursday January 29 2015, @09:16AM
Don't worry, I'm not just a sarcastic bastard - I have the solution!
Start pulling down the current copyright laws - expand Fair Use rights. Make anything which wishes to call itself educational freely archivable and disseminable in an educational context - in full. Uploads to ArXiv may then be accompanied by all the reference material needed (and ArXiv can deduplicate, obviously to stop exponential growth). Augment ArXiv with multiple independent mirrors to remove any single point of funding and single point of failure.
This will fuck Elsevier's business model. Noone with a soul will shed a tear.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Wootery on Thursday January 29 2015, @10:59AM
It's called open access.
There's no need to rework copyright law. Instead, tax-funded publications should be required to be made freely available.
I believe this is the way things are going in the UK, but a quick search didn't turn up a source.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday January 29 2015, @03:00PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Thursday January 29 2015, @03:38PM
The distinction is fair, but I don't like the idea. You're saying that Fair Use should be extended to essentially remove all copyrights over academic publications, even from non-tax-funded sources?
If research is privately-funded, and published behind a paywall, I don't see that it's reasonable for the government to essentially strike-down the paywall... and thus kill the publisher, too.
Or did you mean something else by you propagating others' work?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday January 29 2015, @04:33PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday February 02 2015, @12:43PM
I oppose any change which would forcibly crush the academic publishing industry... despite that I dislike the industry.
Property rights are a cornerstone of Western society. It does not do for the government to step in and decree that We don't like this use of copyright. Game over.
I see no reason not to require tax-funded work to be freely available though. That should be required by law.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Nuke on Thursday January 29 2015, @01:35PM
Merely sorting copyright does not solve the problem as I see it.
I am currently creating a web site, which is not scholarly and is more to do with economics and history. I have numerous references, some of which are to complete books, and some others are to YouTube videos. Even without copyright issues, it is unreasonable to upload that lot to ArXiv, just for my little website. Something like the Wayback machine is more appropriate, but I don't know how that can be practical in the long term. Wikipedia reckons that it is growing at 20 terabytes each week.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday January 29 2015, @02:46PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 29 2015, @06:35PM
Start pulling down the current copyright laws - expand Fair Use rights. Make anything which wishes to call itself educational freely archivable and disseminable in an educational context - in full.
Man, I wish the purpose of copyright was to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. We might have a chance if that were the case.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday January 29 2015, @09:01PM
Non-alphanumeric parts of this post are Public Domain. The rest may not be reproduced at all, e.g. mixed with other characters. If viewers are quizical, it's not a joke.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves