Is science stupidly exclusive?

[Sean Hayden]

This happens all the time: I'd like to read a paper that's probably only a few pages long from some obscure journal, but I don't want to pay 50.00 dollars for it. First, it may not have what I'm looking for, and second it's likely to be just one of many I should read. Who benefits from making already obscure research even less visible? What's the point? I get that nothing's free and people should be compensated for their efforts in gathering, reviewing, and compiling the best research. But these high fees aren't about making money, at least not obviously anyway. You aren't going to get rich hiding already obscure research behind expensive fees. So what's the point --some petty arsed gatekeeping?

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah. It's pretty annoying. Emailing the researcher directly will usually get you the pdf though.

[pErvinalia]

Every now and then I think of joining my old university library as an alumni and you get access to basically everything - journals, newspapers, ebooks, everything.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Agreed, it's tiresome and frustrating. Brian Peacock's suggestion is the bottom line, but there are other hoops you can try jumping through to get papers. With time and patience using the title of the paper and lead author's name I've occasionally had luck finding a preprint or alternate source much lower down in the search results. The local library membership can be useful but may be limited to JSTOR, which is fine for some older items but not comprehensive and no good for recent publications.

I expect you are already familiar with ERIC. I haven't used it so don't know whether it gives access to items not readily available elsewhere. Haven't tried FreeFullPDF yet either, but it may be useful. Never had much luck with Sci-Hub despite it being recommended by at least one working scientist.

As to the general complaint, yeah, Elsevier and their ilk are obnoxious, and undoubtedly stifle access to knowledge.

[macdoc]

I think there is a strong open source effort afoot to address it.

[Tero]

Journals have staffs and printed copies, still. I used to have instant access to all American Chemical Society journals from my desk at work. What cost was the access, and searchability of articles, that ACS itself holds in the form of electronic abstacts. To search it you need Scifinder.
https://www.cas.org/solutions/cas-scifi ... cifinder-n

all institutions and businesses have that for their chemists. They pay a monthly fee.

[JimC]

I try to keep up (to the extent I can) by reading the New Scientist magazine every week...

[Sean Hayden]

Yeah. It's pretty annoying. Emailing the researcher directly will usually get you the pdf though.

You mean I can just ask nicely!?

Thanks L’Emmerdeur, I’m always happy to find more resources.

[Sean Hayden]

I try to keep up (to the extent I can) by reading the New Scientist magazine every week...

That might be fun. But I’m not really keeping up with science. I just tend to have a lot of interests, and eventually end up looking into what science has to say about various aspects of what I’m into e.g. is there evidence that therapeutic gardens work?

[pErvinalia]

Poly tunnels work.

[laklak]

Dutch polytunnels are the best polytunnels.

[Sean Hayden]

the Dutch are the best farmers.

[JimC]

I try to keep up (to the extent I can) by reading the New Scientist magazine every week...

That might be fun. But I’m not really keeping up with science. I just tend to have a lot of interests, and eventually end up looking into what science has to say about various aspects of what I’m into e.g. is there evidence that therapeutic gardens work?

There is a section in the New Scientist where readers ask questions such as yours, and are answered by (sometimes several) experts in that field...

[Brian Peacock]

There's always pirate sites hosted under .ru that have a lot of research papers, but they also have a fuckton of scripts, or worse, want you to install a browser extension. Don't go there. Don't do it.

[Sean Hayden]

--cried the br'er rabbit