Re:Science’s Pirate Queen
by jdietrich on Friday February 09, 2018 @09:52AM
(#16340546)
>The thing is most research papers are simply not accessible to neophytes
That very much depends on how you define "neophyte" and what field you're talking about. You don't need to be a doctor to make sense of most clinical trials, you just need a reasonable education in statistics. A mechanical engineer can usefully learn from a lot of materials science or fluid dynamics research. Our society is increasingly well-educated, which creates a huge number of people who can make use of sci-hub in one way or another.
If you're writing papers that are of no use whatsoever to anyone outside of a tiny coterie of specialists in your field, then either you're doing absolutely cutting-edge theoretical work or you're just really bad at writing papers.
That very much depends on how you define "neophyte" and what field you're talking about. You don't need to be a doctor to make sense of most clinical trials, you just need a reasonable education in statistics. A mechanical engineer can usefully learn from a lot of materials science or fluid dynamics research. Our society is increasingly well-educated, which creates a huge number of people who can make use of sci-hub in one way or another.
If you're writing papers that are of no use whatsoever to anyone outside of a tiny coterie of specialists in your field, then either you're doing absolutely cutting-edge theoretical work or you're just really bad at writing papers.