“But researchers have the access they need”, redux
June 29, 2012
Just a link this time. Richard Smith was the editor of the British Medical Journal until 2004, and at one point he was chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group. He is currently director of the United Health Group’s chronic disease initiative, and an unpaid professor at both Warwick University and Imperial College London. He’s a pretty big hitter by any standards.
Does he have the access to research that he needs?
Read his story on the BMJ blog.
This. Is. Stupid.
In their desperate scramble to retain the 32%-42% profit margins they’ve grown used to, academic publishers have told us a lot of different lies (e.g. that they provide peer-review), and repeated them so often that we’re in danger of believing them by sheer repetition.
Can we please put an end to this one? Researchers do not have the access they need.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
June 29, 2012 at 12:30 pm
Apparently the database JSTOR turns away 150 million attempts to access its journal articles a year.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/jstor-tests-free-read-only-access-to-some-articles/34908
I believe it contains only a fraction of all the peer-reviewed literature and many of its journals are nonprofit which means much of their back content is free on journal websites. The scale of inaccess to research articles is truly scary with consequences best not thought about.
June 29, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Thanks, Diane. Yes, it’s frightening. But I have do disagree with “The scale of inaccess to research articles is truly scary with consequences best not thought about.” Not thinking about it for the last twenty years is what got us into this mess. We need to be scared, outraged, horrified, scandalised. That’s the only way we’ll get up out of the comfortable status quo.
June 29, 2012 at 6:17 pm
That’s the only way we’ll get up out of the comfortable status quo.
Or rather, for most of us, the uncomfortable status quo.
June 29, 2012 at 8:52 pm
Would that it were so. If it were uncomfortable for most academics, it would never have persisted this long. The problem is that for too many people, the access problem is hidden by expensive institutional subscriptions — so they have no personal reason to object to the way things are.
March 4, 2016 at 10:41 am
[…] say “Well, screw you then” and go straight to Sci-Hub. I find it literally incredible that the Everyone Who Needs Access Has It myth still lives on in some minds. If all the people on Who Needs Access? and the millions like them […]