
Nature makes all articles free to view - nikhilpandit
http://www.nature.com/news/nature-makes-all-articles-free-to-view-1.16460
======
therzathegza
For those not in the know, Nature is THE journal to be in if you want to be
successful in bioscience. It is peer reviewed, fairly exclusive, and they
generally only publish game changer style science. If you are in science, and
you get a first author Nature paper, your ticket is punched and you are about
to have a moderately successful career.

For all the nitpicking going on about the delivery method, searching, and it
not being "enough", this will largely not matter to scientists. Articles are
generally shared by DOI or PMID, indexing is very specific. If not, relevant
papers in the field are nearly known by heart and new info from competing labs
is checked on daily. Problems 1 and 2 are not as underserved as HN thinks.

This is a monster announcement for institutions that may not have the money
for a Nature sub, and the public at large to have better access to such a
powerful archive of historically hidden info. The fact that it's not delivered
in a DRM-free format for every device ever all the way back to the oldest
article is nothing compared to how incredibly huge this is. I am spamming this
to all my old lab buddies as we speak.

TL;DR: The output system for academic publishing sucks at the high end, but it
just got a lot less sucky.

~~~
p4bl0
First, I would like to point out that Nature is indeed _considered_ "THE
journal" by those who give importance to bibliometrics criteria (which imho is
foolish), but it's really not clear that its quality is that good. For
instance take this study which finds that Nature has one of the most important
retractation rate:
[http://iai.asm.org/content/79/10/3855.full.pdf+html](http://iai.asm.org/content/79/10/3855.full.pdf+html).

> (…) will largely not matter to scientists.

Please speak only for yourself. It matters to me and I'm not the only one.

> This is a monster announcement for institutions that may not have the money
> for a Nature sub.

No it's not. In his answer to your comment, silencio already explained that,
but let me just present it in another way:

Before the announcement: when you want a Nature paper, you have to know
someone with access to a subscription who can download the PDF for you and
then send it to you.

After the announcement: when you want a Nature paper, you have to know someone
with access to a subscription who can download the PDF for you and then send
it to you, or who can also send you a link to some shitty read-only version of
the paper on the condition that you register an account with Nature and that
you use DRM-bloated proprietary software.

This is pure marketing, it's only PR, it has nothing to do with open access
and it changes nothing in a good way, and it introduces DRMs where they were
not.

~~~
Retric
While this sounds bad it's probably a sign of the amount of scrutiny Nature
articles are under not the Quality of what's published. Basically, the rate of
detection is higher in Nature so even if the underlying problem is the same or
even less it’s going to look worse.

~~~
p4bl0
Indeed. I don't think anyone is saying that the high retractation rate implies
that Nature paper are worse than other papers. However it is a sign that they
may not be that much better either.

~~~
dchichkov
I would expect that the resulting quality of _not-retracted_ and proven-by-
time papers in Nature is _a lot_ higher than in any other journal. Simply
because of higher exposure, more attempts to reproduce or use studies and more
scrutiny.

------
thinkling
Key quote: "All research papers from Nature will be made free to read in a
proprietary screen-view format that can be annotated but not copied, printed
or downloaded."

It sounds like:

* you may have to install the ReadCube reader to view the protected PDFs, unclear if you can view them in a regular PDF viewer. ("ReadCube (...) will be used to host and display read-only versions of the articles' PDFs")

* only subscribers can initiate access sharing of specific articles, going back only to 1997 for individual subscribers. It sounds like the general public will not be able to search for articles and view them through the Nature website.

Well, it's a step forward.

~~~
cfitz
I just checked this out, you do not have to install anything. From their
website: "ReadCube Connect is an HTML5-powered interactive PDF viewer." I
presume this update will please many people, because they can now see whether
or not an article they're contemplating purchasing actually touches on desired
areas or not. Good thinking on their part!

~~~
silencio
I just signed up for ReadCube, thinking this meant I could at least browse
articles as a member of the general public. You have to install an app on your
computer and log in to view articles and use it. ReadCube Connect seems to be
a Scribd-esque way to embed articles on existing pages (like a news story),
not a standalone app.

You also need a link shared to you via a paid subscriber (or one of a bunch of
news sites etc.) to view articles. It's "free" in a very misleading way.

~~~
silencio
D'oh, can't edit to add a new observation: now that there are links shared in
the comments here, it appears the webapp is in fact a thing and you're not
required to install anything or log in to view the "enhanced" PDFs. But you
need the webapp or the standalone app to view them.

Still requires those links in the first place though. I just get prompted to
buy access if I use any of the pubmed/google scholar search functionality in
the app. Blergh.

------
chbrown
My institution subscribes to Nature, and using my library's proxy to access
the Nature website, I can use the "Share/bookmark" menu to generate links like
[http://rdcu.be/bKk4](http://rdcu.be/bKk4),
[http://rdcu.be/bKlc](http://rdcu.be/bKlc),
[http://rdcu.be/bKld](http://rdcu.be/bKld), and
[http://rdcu.be/bKli](http://rdcu.be/bKli), which can be viewed in the browser
(or maybe only because I also just installed the ReadCube app?).

The articles linked to above span several months, but it's generating serial
links, so I can only assume that it's able to track visits back to the
subscriber and/or my university account.

The ReadCube HTML5 reader looks nice, but does not work with JavaScript
disabled (no surprise there). It uses JavaScript to override text selection
(disabling copy&paste), but after a little meddling with the developer tools
and element inspector, you can find a decently near ancestor to the text and
copy the DOM as html. Stick that into a new file and you can select (and copy)
the text without too much further hassle.

The DOM is awkward and split up kind of like a PDF (selecting a range of text
goes haywire in unpredictable cases), but in comparing the HTML DOM hierarchy
to the text object structure in the original PDF (which, as a subscriber, I
can download), I found no obvious similarities, so I'm guessing they aren't
translating the PDF to HTML directly.

~~~
gergles
It is awful awful awful to show the "PDF download" button then go "Ha ha, no!"
when you click it. Such a shitty UX.

~~~
lomnakkus
Indeed. My options were

    
    
       1: "$3.99 rent,  $9.99 buy" (the was called the "ReadCube access" option)
       2: Purchase article full text and PDF: $8 (had no annotations, so presumably the "Nature" option)
    

In either case this is NOT "free". Nature, try again.

------
morninj
Their definition of "free" is interesting. Only paid subscribers can search
for articles, and apparently others can view articles only if subscribers
share links with them. For many purposes, articles might be "free" but still
hidden from the public.

~~~
stephentmcm
So how long until someone writes a web crawler that dumps all the links into a
searchable public db?

~~~
skosuri
This has already been done many times with regular pdfs [1-3]. There are
mostly hosted illegally in places like Russia. I'm sure you can find more on
TPB or similar.

[1] [http://sci-hub.org/](http://sci-hub.org/) [2]
[http://booksc.org/](http://booksc.org/) [3]
[http://www.freefullpdf.com/](http://www.freefullpdf.com/)

~~~
lqdc13
Unfortunately, these don't host many of the articles I would love to have
access to. If I didn't know anyone still in uni, I would probably have no way
of doing good research. Looks like one of them is proxying through a
university that has access though.

~~~
skosuri
You can also try /r/scholar; you usually get responses within a day or so [1].

[1]. [http://www.reddit.com/r/scholar](http://www.reddit.com/r/scholar)

------
jmount
Incorrect title. "Nature places all article in flakey peephole viewer."

~~~
boie0025
My thoughts exactly. I was incredibly excited until I read the first line or
so. One day perhaps.

~~~
krick
"One day" will come when free and open-for-everyone platforms will occupy that
domain, not when "Nature" or some other sly organization will do that. Like
archive.org, but with peer review by people who use it.

I'm sure that in principle it is possible. I mean, if you are interested in
some domain you surely know few people who's opinion you'd trust. They might
not even be Ph.Ds, but they somehow got this good reputation, probably not by
accident. So if somebody like this presses "Like" button under some article
and leaves comment about what is trustworthy here and what isn't, it probably
will be as good (better, actually) for you, as opinion of Nature's staff. And
as these people by definition are interested in this domain as well, chances
are they also will be interested to read this article and thus will be able to
press "Like" button and leave a comment.

So, yeah, _in principle_ it it possible, but I imagine it is really hard to do
it _right_. Because essentially it is the same as any "karma" or "rating"
system on some forum, and inventing proper rating system is really hard — it's
not the most knowledgeable people who usually have the highest rank on any
thematic forum. But on forums and other existing social platforms it works,
because rating isn't that important. And in our case it's all about rating and
trust.

------
yupthatsit
I paid for the research with my tax payer money. Give me full access to the
articles. Anything less is unacceptable (unless Nature wants to pay me back
the taxes they owe me).

~~~
timtadh
Not all research is funded by tax payers.

~~~
jaskerr
Be prepared to name research projects that do not receive government funding
in the first or second degree. (That is: receive funding directly, or from
grant-making organizations that themselves receive substantial government
funding.)

~~~
refurb
Any research funded by non-governmental organizations like the Howard Hughes
Foundation, Michael J Fox foundation, etc, etc.

~~~
tjradcliffe
A great deal of research funded by such organizations is done in combination
with taxpayer funding, particularly with regard to infrastructure. As a cancer
researcher I had funding from companies and foundations, but depended on my
position in a tax-payer funded research lab to actually do the work.

~~~
eru
Also, as charities they probably get tax advantages.

~~~
refurb
By that measure, everything is gov't funded. Thankfully the courts don't see
it that way.

------
iandanforth
I like the idea of shared annotations. Or more specifically I like the idea of
Science as a conversation. It has always frustrated me that papers are
formatted for print and don't include hyperlinks, and it's difficult to add
comments or corrections to a paper.

Like others though I am not sure I believe that publishers should continue to
exist in anything like their current form.

~~~
Cogito
I would really enjoy an annotation system like genius.com

How that might work in a scholarly setting I'm not sure. The melting pot of
commentary and feedback that can surround a paper is something that individual
reviews will always struggle to capture, but is easily achieved with an
annotated copy.

Whilst background and detailed investigation may be left out of sections of a
paper, or are assumed knowledge for the target audience, annotations allow
casual readers to engage with the content and the author beyond what is
appropriate in the published form.

It would be interesting to see genius.com introduce a science section, or
perhaps just _more_ science sections (they have law, history, literature etc
already), but the format doesn't immediately gel with how papers are currently
published. A pdf annotation system might be the best bet for now.

------
JohnHammersley
Still a long way to go, but this is a huge step forward.

It's also not the first time Macmillan have tried something new - their whole
Digital Science arm (which includes ReadCube) is focused on innovation and
disruptive publishing tech: [http://www.digital-
science.com/](http://www.digital-science.com/)

------
andrewparker
Does this BS marketing PR stunt qualify Nature-published research papers for
Gates Foundation-backed research now? Meaning: does this announcement qualify
Nature as "open" enough for the Gates Foundation?

~~~
takluyver
No, I don't think this counts. The Gates foundation policy is going to require
CC-BY, and it doesn't sound like Nature is going that way.

------
31reasons
" Nature's internal costs of publishing run at £20,000–30,000
(US$31,000–47,000) per paper, an extremely high charge to load onto authors or
funders rather than spread over subscribers."

What in the digital world would make it so expensive to publish content ?

~~~
peteretep
Paid editorial and peer review? Also, if a print-copy is being produced,
someone has to type-set it, even if there's also a digital copy.

~~~
s0rce
Peer review is not paid. I assume costs are for the staff editors (PhDs), copy
editors, type setters, print and distribution costs, etc.

Source: I have published in nature

~~~
001sky
Sounds like the NFL without paying the players or coaches.

~~~
jrockway
So if you want to get rich and you chose academia as your field, I have bad
news for you.

I like to think that people write and review papers because they care about
their field and its future. I could be wrong.

~~~
gpvos
Still no reason for the journals to rip them off though.

------
untilHellbanned
When you are feeling all touchy feely about this move, keep in mind the profit
margins at academic publishers are higher than Apple. Yes, THAT Apple.

Source: [https://alexholcombe.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/scholarly-
publ...](https://alexholcombe.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/scholarly-publishers-
and-their-high-profits/)

~~~
skosuri
I've looked into these numbers and it's really hard to parse what revenues and
expenses are coming from their journal publishing. The publishers listed are
also have huge amounts of revenue in textbooks and other book markets (to be
fair, another awful scam). It might be better to look at non-profit publishers
such as ACS and AAAS, which are also mainly closed-access. For example, AAAS
which has Science magazine and a few other journals brought in 48M w/ 42M in
expenses [1]. That said, they bring in 11M as well in member dues, which more
than anything else gets you subscription to AAAS journals. It's harder to tell
with ACS, because it also includes revenues for CAS and other services [2].
PLoS, an open access publisher, seems to generally have lower costs based on
an author pays model FWIW.

[1] pg 50 of [http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/AAAS_2013-Annual-
Rep...](http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/AAAS_2013-Annual-Report.pdf)

[2]
[https://acswebcontent.acs.org/annualreport/financials_financ...](https://acswebcontent.acs.org/annualreport/financials_financialsummary.html)

[3] [http://www.plos.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/2013-2014-Pro...](http://www.plos.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/2013-2014-Progress-Update-financial-page.gif)

------
georgemcbay
For half a second after I clicked through to ReadCube's site I thought it must
be associated with Google because their website's design is the Googleist
thing I've ever seen not actually associated with Google.

[https://www.readcube.com/](https://www.readcube.com/)

~~~
lotyrin
The typography and layout, colors all seem pretty generic or even slightly
unlike google, but I agree.

It must just be the Open Sans. I didn't realize how much I had it associated
with Google's usage.

------
passepartout
"Everything is free to read* they say. But there’s an asterisk, pesky and
persistent, next to read. And it’s a big one.The asterisk is that you can’t do
anything but read the document, and you have to download use their proprietary
reader software in order to read the document, and you have to hope that
someone who has a subscription or is a journalist is kind enough to share a
link to the document that you want to read, and if you try to do anything
other than look at the document passively on a screen you’re basically gonna
get sued for copyright infringement." [http://del-
fi.org/post/104125242971/natures-shareware-moment](http://del-
fi.org/post/104125242971/natures-shareware-moment)

But by all means, let's celebrate a step forward taken by Nature.

------
r0h1n
Better headline: Nature will allow subscribers and media to decide who else
can view articles for free

------
s0rce
Well here is the link to my paper in Nature
[http://rdcu.be/bKB9](http://rdcu.be/bKB9)

------
Animats
Nature did _not_ make all articles free to view. That's a misleading
announcement. What they did is far more limited. If you have a paid Nature
subscription, you can get a link which you can send to someone else. They can
then read a DRM-protected PDF-like file through a proprietary on-line viewer.

If you want to read an article right now, it's $18 and up. Or you can now
"rent" the article for $3.99 and up and view it in their proprietary viewer
for a short period.

This is decidedly not "open access publication".

------
kappaloris
Schools should really start teaching the concept of Turing completeness to
kids, otherwise we'll get to the heat death of the universe with non technical
people still thinking that this kind of crap is an acceptable solution.

------
morninj
_free to read in a proprietary screen-view format_

Free, under our control.

------
nemoniac
To take advantage of this you need a piece of software called Readcube which
is available only for Windows and Mac.

Users of Linux and Android cannot avail of it.

------
kruk
I would love to get my hands on some of the articles from 1869. Hopefully
someone will share a few of these articles publicly.

~~~
geographomics
They're available here (as well as all the articles that are still
copyrighted):
[http://libgen.org/scimag/?journalid=nature&v=1869&s=](http://libgen.org/scimag/?journalid=nature&v=1869&s=)

------
c0ur7n3y
Does the in-browser viewer use the new W3C-blessed DRM extensions?

------
gpvos
Limited is the new free.

------
dimitrideag
One step more towards the Democratization of knowledge!

------
c0ur7n3y
Does the browser viewer use the new W3C DRM extensions?

------
angrydev
This is a lame half assed solution.

------
hawleyal
Not free at all.

------
tempodox
I never paid anything to view birds and snakes and lice and dogs and cats
and...

Did someone hijack nature to extort money from unsuspecting passers-by?

------
Nicholas_C
Off topic: Why is this article dated December 2nd? It is still December 1st
everywhere in the United States. Perhaps it was published after normal
business hours on the 1st, thus defaulting to the 2nd as the official date?
Just curious.

~~~
mkonecny
The internet doesn't exist solely in the US. It spans GMT -5 through GMT -8.
There are countries that are up to 16 hours ahead in time..

~~~
eru
> It spans GMT -5 through GMT -8.

Please explain.

~~~
sanxiyn
US mainland does span from GMT-5 to GMT-8.

~~~
eru
Oh, for some reason I assumed `it' meant the world.

