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Generating new knowledge typically starts with a study. Now, libraries struggle to afford them (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The rising costs university libraries are paying to access journals have implications far beyond the ivory tower. From new cancer treatments to debates about foreign policy, new information enters the public domain through academic studies. Now libraries are having trouble affording the subscriptions.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ya, but it really seems like there ought to be a nonprofit organization that will peer review and publish articles.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It should be an unconditional requirement that the day your university receives a penny of public funding your papers must be public domain.

The issue isn't that no free options exist. It's that using them doesn't get you the reputation needed to be funded.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It should be an unconditional requirement that the day your university receives a penny of public funding your papers must be public domain.

Some grants do have this requirement. So publishers just charge you extra to make your article "open source".

Truly, academic publishers are vile people who make the world a worse place.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Because it's some. It's not a universal requirement.

You obviously can't just take away IP rights for academic research, but you can make all federal funding conditional on literally every academic paper written by any employee of the university being public domain. Schools can preserve their ownership by completely funding themselves, or they can recognize that most of them couldn't exist without massive federal funding and that they're not entitled to privatize the proceeds of that investment. The journals would have no capability to abuse their position because there would be no content left eligible for them to prey on.

[–] GlowHuddy 3 points 1 year ago

Agree completely. Tbh I was very surprised that YOU need to pay to get published. I think it should be the other way around, as publishers should care about publishing the most quality content possible and not reaping researchers off just because they are considered 'prestigious'.

SciHub is nice (and unsurprising in this ecosystem), but there should be a legal/not copyright infringing way to provide access to scientific papers.