Owen, There was a lot of interesting back and forth on one of the history of psychology lists a few weeks ago regarding JSTOR. They have (and they claim they generously have) recently made all papers pre-1923 open access. This is clearly a boon to anyone interested in the history of any academic field. However, there was a question over whether it was significant, as anything pre-1923 is public domain. I insisted that it was at least a little generous, because their scans are not public domain, and, at any rate, JSTOR is under no obligation to let Joe Schmo access such articles through their search system.
The case of current articles, and articles produced as a result of government grants, is a little different, but I'm still not convinced JSTOR is in any wrong. Why aren't people blaming the journals, and demanding that the journals publishing these articles be free? That is, why are we bothered that the electronic version is not free, but we tacitly accept that the print version should cost money? For that matter, why not just blame the authors? Why not pressure the authors themselves to simply post the results publicly on a webpages for all to see? Frankly, that would be easy for all government funded research to be available for free. JSTOR is just a distributor, why blame the distributor? Just some thoughts, Eric On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 06:02 PM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]> wrote: >>Interesting sum-up of the JSTOR battle, and paid-by-taxpayer academic papers being sold. ><http://www.badscience.net/2011/09/academic-papers-are-hidden-from-the-public-heres-some-direct-action/>> > > > >>The article admits that there are reasons for pay-walls when the site "adds >>value" by scanning old papers for example. But they, like most of us I >>think, believe there are other ways to make papers available and allow JSTOR >>and their like flourish. >> > >>I think its simple: if the papers are pay-walled for long enough, pressure >>will develop, and either a Wiki-Leaks stunt will occur, or China and/or India >>will just hack the sites so that their students have free access. >> > >> -- Owen ============================================================ >FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
