
AAAS Blocking Access to the Scientific Literature When They Say It Is “Free” - pavel_lishin
http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2014/08/aaas-blocking-access-to-scientific.html?spref=tw
======
CamperBob2
This problem has to be solved on the supply side. As long as researchers keep
voluntarily publishing in journals that jealously guard knowledge from the
people who (often) paid for it via their taxes in the first place, nothing
will change.

~~~
pdonis
_> journals that jealously guard knowledge from the people who (often) paid
for it via their taxes in the first place_

The only reason the journals can do this is that the governments that fund the
research allow them to. A simple change in the rules for government funded
research would fix that.

~~~
JadeNB
> The only reason the journals can do this is that the governments that fund
> the research allow them to. A simple change in the rules for government
> funded research would fix that.

I think that this excellent point is what's missing from most of these
discussions: a realisation that most academics, who are under intense
pressures to publish, simply don't have the freedom to "vote with their feet"
("vote with their papers", I suppose), and that the change must come from an
institutional body. That's why I love open-access policies like the NIH's
([http://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm](http://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm)):

> The Director of the National Institutes of Health ("NIH") shall require in
> the current fiscal year and thereafter that all investigators funded by the
> NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine's
> PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed
> manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available
> no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided,
> that the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent
> with copyright law.

(Actually, this seems to be weaker than what I remember; is there another law
that says that NIH-funded works _must_ appear in some open-access forum, or am
I misremembering the import of the law?)

~~~
jonathaneisen
The NIH open access policy is not enough. First, it only applies to NIH funded
work. Work funded by other agencies does not fall under these rules. Also - I
don't think posting papers to Pubmed Central 1 year after publication is quick
enough to advance science. And furthermore, the papers are only made freely
available in Pubmed Central. The NIH policy does not require papers to be
"open" (as in, free to use and reuse in any way one wants).

Oh - and Science is one of, if the the, only journal that does not do
deposition to Pubmed Central for the authors. The authors have to do it
themselves and many do not.

~~~
JadeNB
> The NIH open access policy is not enough.

To be sure!—I agree with all of your points. However, we have to start
somewhere, and it is _something_ —I'd rather have an imperfect solution, as
long as it stimulates a search for the perfect one, than no solution. For
example, as far as I know, no common grants in mathematics carry this
stipulation. (I am thinking here of the situation where it is (relatively)
easy now to obtain non-DRM'd music; the initial solutions were far from
perfect, but they showed that the world didn't end when they were
implemented.)

~~~
jonathaneisen
Yes, agreed. I support the NIH policy. I just want more openness than it
provides.

------
jahewson
IAt least the author is free to post the article (ok, manuscript) to his own
website for free:

"Authors also retain the right and are encouraged to post the accepted version
of their manuscript to their personal Web site or institutional repository,
immediately following publication by AAAS."

[http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/lic_...](http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/lic_info.pdf)

~~~
jonathaneisen
Well, that is the current policy. But that was not the policy when the paper
was published. I have asked them previously about this and never gotten an
answer as to whether they applu this policy retroactively.

~~~
aftbit
At the very least, you have the moral right to do so. If you're concerned
about the legalities, contact your institutions' legal department - this is
what they're paid for.

~~~
SEMW
Institutions' legal departments are in the business of minimising legal risk
to their employers. There's no upside to them to give the go-ahead to an
academic asking 'can I do X' for X dubiously compliant even if probably low-
risk, since if they do and then a journal does get up-in-arms about it, they
assumed responsibility. Their saying 'no' has no such risk to them. So they're
incentivised to err on the conservative side.

~~~
jonathaneisen
Agreed. I can't imagine UC Davis' legal department being much help here other
than to say "Don't do that."

------
dredmorbius
First: I agree with everything the author's written about the pain of
accessing published research. While it's worlds better than the situation was
when I was in school (a quarter century ago, before the World Wide Web and
long before Google), where you had to _actually go to a library_ and
_photocopy articles_ , far too often the experience is (1) find something cool
and relevant, then (2) get stymied by a paywall or registration requirement.

There are a few ways through this, of varying levels of conformance with
statutes.

Using Mailinator.com's free disposable mail (there are a number of other
domains it uses as well -- the primary one is frequently blocked at
registrations sites) is great. I'll generally use a password generator to
create a random mailbox name. This does still require going through
registration processes. [http://mailinator.com](http://mailinator.com)

LibraryGenesis is another option. It offers an index of books and articles,
largely scientific, with a pretty good success rate.
[http://libgen.org](http://libgen.org)

The subreddit /r/scholar can be used for requesting specific articles, again
aimed at research. I've found it quite helpful.
[http://reddit.com/r/scholar](http://reddit.com/r/scholar)

Google Scholar and Google Search are pretty good at turning up articles,
though the format in which they're made available is often miserable. In
particular, Google's online article reader is pants -- a tremendous
disappointment considering the source. And frequently full text _isn 't_
available.

The Internet Archive / Archive.org is another site which frequently has full
text of documents available, including, ironically, many sourced by Google and
the result of its wholesale scanning projects. And unlike Google's reader, the
Internet Archive's BookReader is _wonderful_ (I've gushed over it before on
HN). Frequently PDF and ASCII text are also available.

For _older_ works, there may be a Project Gutenberg copy, though its archive
is generally markedly smaller than TIA's.

And there are a slew of other resources, though being decentralized, you need
to match up your specific needs with the resource in question. One good
listing:
[https://plus.google.com/112064652966583500522/posts/87ez27zE...](https://plus.google.com/112064652966583500522/posts/87ez27zEhqM)

There are a few tools for reporting instances in which you've found access to
information denied. I don't have references offhand, but recall a Chrome
browser plugin which was publicized a few months back for this purpose.

~~~
dredmorbius
The open access tool I had in mind:

[https://www.openaccessbutton.org/](https://www.openaccessbutton.org/)

"What is this about?

"People are denied access to research hidden behind paywalls every day. This
problem is invisible, but it slows innovation, kills curiosity and harms
patients. This is an indictment of the current system. Open Access has given
us the solution to this problem by allowing everyone to read and re-use
research. We created the Open Access Button to track the impact of paywalls
and help you get access to the research you need. By using the button you’ll
help show the impact of this problem, drive awareness of the issue, and help
change the system. Furthermore, the Open Access Button has several ways of
helping you get access to the research you need right now."

------
reconbot
I'm starting to get involved with The Winnower (thewinnower.com) their goal is
to provide an open peer reviewed processes for publication while providing all
the services of a large journal (DOI, help finding reviewers, etc). A lot of
people seem to be self publishing on blogs but that lacks authority (and the
review processes). We're trying to change that because the current system
sucks and there was ever a case for "information wants to be free" this is it.

~~~
jonathaneisen
Yes - I really like the Winnower

------
zo1
I'm confused, as I've never delved much into the nature of journals short of
what we had to in college. No, I never published a paper. Hopefully someone
can explain/answer my question.

Do the publishers (somehow) force the authors to give them exclusive
publishing rights or something? If not, why are these authors simply not
putting their papers on multiple journal/platforms?

~~~
laymil
Yes. Generally, when you publish you transfer the copyright of the article to
the publisher.

~~~
auxbuss
Why are authors allowing this?

Whenever I've been published, I've asked to retain copyright and that has been
granted -- I'm not sure it's a grant, though, since it's mine to start with.
The usual negotiating starting point is a contact from a publisher that
automatically claims copyright. I simply delete that clause (and possibly
insert "The author retains copyright", so that there's no doubt).

Clearly, that's not happening here and I don't understand why, unless
publishers are refusing to publish without being given copyright. In which
case, alarm bells should be ringing very loudly.

~~~
coriny
It's not about handing over copyright but it's generally agreed that
publishing multiple copies of the same work is a _bad_ thing. This is
typically done by researchers to boost their paper count (+ a bit of self-
citation), and can make a hypothesis seem better supported than it is.

So only dodgy journals will re-publish work that has been published elsewhere.

------
michaelmachine
I fully agree with the author. The hoops that AAAS makes you jump through are
ridiculous and make me kind of sad. It is worth noting that this particular
manuscript is easy to access with a google scholar search:
[http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=Deinococcus+radiodurans+o...](http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=Deinococcus+radiodurans+owen+et.+al&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5)

------
jmnicholson
Readers may also be interested in reading the "Open Letter to The American
Association for the Advancement of Science"
([https://thewinnower.com/papers/open-letter-to-the-
american-a...](https://thewinnower.com/papers/open-letter-to-the-american-
association-for-the-advancement-of-science))

------
fiatjaf
The real funny thing is the extensive use of the word "SCIENCE", meaning that
is something precious, that's why it costs you so much to gain access to.

------
userbinator
This is what throwaway accounts and BugMeNot are for... there are probably
millions of sites if not more out there where you have to register free-of-
charge to be able to download content; whenever I find one I check the usual
account-sharing sites and if it's not there, then I create one and usually end
up submitting it. FakeNameGenerator+AutoFill makes this really easy.

If you want to do it "100% legally", then this is probably not an option, but
I see giving in to these unreasonable demands as a reason for them to impose
even more draconian restrictions and data collection policies.

~~~
jonathaneisen
Yes I can see your point here. I had never heard of BugMeNot - looks very
useful. However, as someone with offical roles in various open science
organizations, I do not feel like I can use such options. Also - I want to
highlight the sillyness of some groups like AAAS and trying to follow their
rules makes that easier.

------
bobertoroberts
It's even freer here: [http://libgen.org/scimag/](http://libgen.org/scimag/)

~~~
jonathaneisen
just tried this and got an error saying too many people on the Science
Magazine page.

~~~
kanzure
> got an error saying too many people on the Science Magazine page.

Grab and seed the torrents instead: ftp://libgen.org/repository_torrent/

or donate to 1ENFY4h7ntGZbqwcwpQtXVFJrPnfXRHQLe

~~~
dekhn
Jonathan is looking for legal ways to access the information.

His main point is that Science made it hard to access the data (but they did
make it possible!) and his secondary point is the terms under which they made
it possible were pretty silly (basically, opt-in to spam with no way to easily
opt-out until you get the first spam and unsubscribe).

I dunno. Actually I think this is what victory feels like for open access
publishing, as implemented by the incumbents (who have kicked and dragged
their heels on this). It's not clear this is a battle worth fighting;
scientists are used to working hard to get data, and if they really want to
read a paper in Science (that is available for free), well, you just walked
them through the process. It's onerous, but I suspect other battles (like
being able to store and process _all_ the documents on the science website via
high-throughput means) are more important for the progress of science.

~~~
jonathaneisen
Sure - this is a small fight. I wrote the post not to get AAAS to provide
access to such papers really. I wrote it to point out just how hard AAAS works
to make stuff inaccessible. They are generally anti-sharing. And there is no
way in hell they would let everyone access the full text of all papers. So it
would be better for everyone if nobody published there.

