Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
A rather frustrating reality for those not lucky enough to have access via a University account are the barriers that exist around many scientific papers. You might perhaps be looking into some topic and would be interested in reading a peer-reviewed paper, but then when you search, you find that it sits behind a paywall put up by … Read more
Now here is an interesting twist on things, and yet if you think about it, not really a surprise. There now exist websites that provides free access to scientific articles that normally reside behind paywalls, and so the official publisher, Elsevier, has responded by filing a complaint at a New York district court against Library Genesis (LibGen) and Sci-Hub.org(currently at this URL http://www.sci-hub.club, but … Read more
The academic rebellion initiated by Cambridge mathematician Tim Gowers is growing in strength. First a bit of context. The Victorian model of academic publishing has become obsolete because of the Internet and so historical momentum is the only reason these publishers continue to own and profit from researchers’ copyrights, review work and editorial efforts. If … Read more
There comes a time when enough is quite frankly enough. Elsevier’s business practices demand a response … why? They charge exorbitantly high prices for their journals. They sell journals in very large “bundles,” so libraries must buy a large set with many unwanted journals, or none at all. Elsevier thus makes huge profits by exploiting … Read more