newscientist.com — Scientists who want to describe their work on Wikipedia should not be forced to give up the kudos of a respected journal. So says a group of physicists who are going head-to-head with a publisher because it will not allow them to post parts of their work to the online encyclopaedia, blogs and other forums.
Mar 17, 2008 View in Crawl 4
mostlyharmlessMar 18, 2008
This is a pretty complicated issue - there was a fantastic blog post about it a few months ago that can be found at: <a class="user" href="http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/02/06/openaccess_is_t.html.">http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/02/ ...</a> It's tough - sure, open access is great, but so is advancing one's career. Cool new open access publications like PLoS or PLoS One can't gain real traction and be truly competitive with Nature, Science, etc until established, tenured researchers are willing to submit their work. Until then, rising scientists with any hope of ever getting tenure will probably just publish in the big, locked journals.
Closed AccountMar 18, 2008
The reason they want to change it is because right now it's wrong. Comprehension skills you cannot buy at Wall-mart, sorry.
locojonesMar 18, 2008
The scientist is completely free to share his own work with others. The consequence he suffers for doing so is having to forgo publishing his work in a respected journal. I don't know what the big deal is, or why this implicates a copyright system out of control? What I can say is this, if I found a scientific study published on Wikipedia, it would instantly lose all credibility for me.
visargaMar 18, 2008
This is like RIAA to the power N, where N>=2.Copyright is used against the creators themselves.The journals don't create the papers. They don't review the papers themselves (they use "slave labor") - free work by other scientists. Then they send them to the press and they let the post office ship it. In fact THEY DO NOTHING. And for this great nothing, all they ask in return is full transfer of copyright. What's not to like about this deal? Ah. They pay nothing from their profits they make back to the scientists who authored the papers.
Closed AccountMar 19, 2008
Science journal: "Mmmm, money. Nom nom nom."
diggeonMar 19, 2008
And cursing makes you look like one. If you can't follow the logic I am not going to bother spelling it out for you after swearing at me.