There should be the equivalent of wikileaks for scientific papers- a site where you can anonymously post them and their abstract. While I understand someone has to pay for hosting, archiving, validation- people should be allowed to view things like this freely. Otherwise, what is the point of research you wish to share with the public? Even viewing the paper as images with watermarks would be better than nothing.

Great young men have thought alike:

http://ia600808.us.archive.org/17/items/GuerillaOpenAccessMa...

sigh

My understanding is that many journals embed metadata about you when you download the full text of an article. If that's true, it would be crucial to make sure that it got stripped automatically when uploaded to such a site.

I don't know about anonymously -- why not just the centuries-old library model? We pay for an organization; the organization licenses the works; the organization lends out the works for free.

The current problem being that subscribed to an institution which has a library with the funds to pay for these things is currently either expensive or hard to get oneself affiliated with without lots of requirements and quirks. :/

I have access through my home institution, but I'm already dreading being suddenly cut-off from all of this information when I leave :/ - the idea that upon leaving the institution my ability or willingness to read existing content and contribute back should disappear is bothersome, to say the least.

Many authors in physics, mathematics and others post a pre-print version of their papers to http://arxiv.org/.

http://libgen.org/scimag5/10.1021/jp406274e.pdf http://libgen.org/scimag5/10.1021/jp406273p.pdf

only NIH has open access requirements, and they only kick in one year after publication. Could ask Ilya to authorchoice it, which is ACS's open-access option (costs $800 a pop).

It's just a bunch of text and diagrams. Can't they stick it on a $5 DO VM or even Dropbox?

Why do people bother with these crappy hosting services that require people to pay to see your content?

I am honestly asking what these people actually offer other than hosting. I'm totally up for setting up a little web app for hosting scientific papers, but what would be preventing me from competing with these people?

This "hosting service" is an academic journal. They do not only host the document but also organize review of submitted papers, edit the document for publication, and ensure long-term archival of published works. And - most important for academic researchers - publishing in a respected journal improves your reputation. Once your paper gets published, you essentially sign away most rights to the publisher (see also the comment on Open Access in this discussion thread).

Whether these publishers contribute enough to warrant the high price of their publications is debatable.

Scientific publishing isn't just about putting stuff somewhere for people to read it. Publishers, through their parasitic relationship with academia, have kept themselves relevant through the critical mass of people continuing to use them.

The purpose served by publishers isn't really the hosting of articles, it's the names of journals the publishers own which carries an implication that top-tier journals get better reviewers and therefore higher quality articles. As long as academia values impact factor and journal rankings, the parasite can subsist.

Most academics tend to self-host preprints, or stick them on arXiv so the publisher as a hosting service isn't really the "value-add" offered.

>Most academics tend to self-host preprints, or stick them on arXiv so the publisher as a hosting service isn't really the "value-add" offered.

That is not true for chemistry or biology. Tell them what arXiv is and they will say, huh?

>Fortunately, I am now a university student so I will see if the library can help me with this.

Many universities have a proxy site you can use to access journal articles without having to physically be on campus. You should find out if yours does this. I wish I had looked into it when I was a student. I had no idea the privilege I was letting slip away.