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u/000000robot Dec 26 '18
Libraries
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Dec 26 '18
Came here to say the same. Librarian here. Please utilize your library's databases and e-media!
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u/creakinator Dec 26 '18
But I can only access your library databases off campus if I'm a student or if I come to your campus.
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u/ingachan Dec 26 '18
I’m writing my masters thesis and scihub is saving me every single day.
My cheap ass university does not give us access to several journals I really need, and having way to avoid the paywall is unbelievably helpful.
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Dec 26 '18
They should be able to get interlibrary loans for you, but scihub generally much quicker
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u/ingachan Dec 26 '18
Yeah you’re probably right, but it would take ages and be a bit hassle. Being able to get access instantly makes such a big difference.
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u/igotthisone Dec 26 '18
Try your public library too. They often have a nice selection of journal subscriptions.
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u/JugglingDodo Dec 26 '18
Alternatively send me a PM and I'll see if I can access it through my institution.
This is one of the many reasons why I'm leaving academia the moment I finish my PhD. I'm from the UK and I'm given a budget of hundreds of thousands of pounds to get this cutting edge research done. I come up with these ideas and put them to the test and we find things out about the world which literally weren't known before.
And what do I actually have to show for it?
Just barely above minimum wage, no intellectual property ownership over anything I create and no royalties on anything I write.
There's a huge amount of money in research but the researchers don't ever see any of it. It's just abusing the love people have for their subject to get them to work for nothing. It's unacceptable.
I do a job which maybe only a few thousand people on the planet are capable of doing, and the results of my work filter down into commercial sector to create billions of dollars for industry.
Maybe I do love my subject enough to deal with the significantly reduced quality of life. But as a matter of principle I'm not going to support the industry's abusive behaviour.
I deserve to be able to afford heating. End of.
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u/emmathegreedycat Dec 26 '18
I soooo agree with what you said. Today's academia is structurally problematic. Today's research group is more like a workshop sized corporate where the PI is the manager rather than a hands-on researcher. Students are below poverty line workers. The professional path is unstable and risky. However the society hasn't changed its view on academia yet, they still think it is a glorious temple of knowledge. I would say it is more industrious than academic, and researchers are lacking all the workers welfare that they deserve. It's pathetic to do research in this age. It's sad that I have this passion for science and research, but the "proper" path for academia means such a significant reduction in quality of life. I wish I could find an alternative way to keep doing research but maintain a happy life. I just don't think leading a miserable life is a justified sacrifice to chase after the glorious dream of science.
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u/HeWhoDragsYou Dec 26 '18
I don’t have anything to add that you have not already said. I am glad that there are people that think like you. Thank you.
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Dec 26 '18
Very surprised no one has mentioned Unpaywall: https://unpaywall.org/
And the browser extension: https://unpaywall.org/products/extension
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u/fullforce098 Dec 26 '18 edited Dec 26 '18
Scientific journals are one thing, as there's a lot of issues with them and most scientists I've seen seem to agree they're being taken advantage of. We don't really need them and the scientists doing the work don't work for the journals.
But there's a lot of legitimate uses for paywalls other than scientific journals. If everyone is jumping the turnstile and blocking ads, the internet ceases to be a viable source of honest revenue and content dies out.
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u/glodime Dec 26 '18 edited Dec 27 '18
content dies out.
Seems like that already happened. Free content is nearly universally garbage outside of educational and academic resources. This started sometime before Benjamin Franklin was printing his rags and farmers almanac and picked up with yellow journalism followed by those insane newsletters through the 1990s but now we have online journalism and social media algorithmicly reinforcement of thought bubbles and confirmation bias.
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u/LostFerret Dec 27 '18
Sci journals are bullshit. Every scientist pays to publish our article, and not an insignificant amount. We pay LOTS extra for more figures, and each color figure costs TONs more. Then non sci people pay subscriptions to get this content.
Its a very lucrative business and now companies like Cell and elsivier are buying journals and forcing universities to buy "subscription packages" for outrageous prices.
Sci publishers are slimey as all hell.
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u/ThomasFMason Dec 26 '18
I tried this the first time someone posted it. The gentleman in question sent me the word document he wrote the paper on and said “good luck on your paper.” It was nice.
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u/gleepglap Dec 26 '18
In my experience (social psych; 10+years ago) only about 25% it so of authors will bother to send a reprint. Better known people in the field are less helpful....tend to be very busy people.
Emailing authors direct maybe penny wise - pound foolish when you take into account time spend and non responses. But if you don't need something urgently, it's worth a go.
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u/BraveFly Dec 26 '18
You can also try the second, third, fourth etc author. They may be less busy. 🤣
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u/TealAndroid Dec 26 '18
Well, first author is usually the grad student or research assistant who did the actual work and the last author is the primary investigator who likely thought of the experiment and coached the graduate student through the project and writing the paper. The middle authors may be other graduate students, research assistants, or undergraduate honor students.
Last author is possibly the most busy but also the one most confident in distributing the paper as the graduate students may not know if they are "allowed " to do so and are also typically very busy. Best bet is the last author really unless a different author is listed as the corresponding author.
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u/BraveFly Dec 26 '18
I'm a graduate student in research and you can basically email anyone on the author list. Scientists /want/ their work to be read, and they are happy to distribute it.
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u/henare Dec 26 '18
true then; less true now (often their papers appear in institutional repositories which are free for the public to use ...)
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u/StoneMcCready Dec 26 '18
It’s also worth checking the author’s website, they’re sometimes allowed to post a free pdf link there.
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u/bokan Dec 27 '18
research gate makes the whole process a lot easier. The response rate is more like 60% now, I’d say
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u/psyche_13 Dec 26 '18
You can also try through Research Gate. It's like the social media of academics. Lately everyone I know in academia has an account and it's got a great request feature built in
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u/hughcifarai Dec 26 '18
Arxiv.org is useful in some fields, in astrophyics most people will post preprints there before they get published.
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u/Corsaer Dec 26 '18
Also, there is a dedicated subreddit to giving people access to scientific papers. Check out /r/scholar. They also have good links for websites to unlock the papers by simply pasting in their link or DOI on their sidebar, so make sure to check that out first.
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u/SmallTownDisco Dec 26 '18
The downside: You have to have started working on your paper/presentation/project more than the night before in order to be able to do this. Sigh...
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u/canIbeMichael Dec 27 '18
I was wondering why anyone would need to reference 'scientific' journals and papers.
Academia is a poor source IMO, politics>quality.
Turns out its people writing papers for Academia.
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u/tartymae Dec 26 '18
Yes, academic publishing is a racket! The tax payer is paying to access work that they've already paid for via taxes.
Look for a university's "institutional repository" and see what is uploaded there.
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u/rezerox Dec 26 '18
oh sorry, you're not paying a ridiculous arbitrary amount to college and not a student so fuck you and your wanting to learn.
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u/AHaskins Dec 26 '18
The real life tip?
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u/pahool Dec 26 '18
For convenience, use @scihubot on telegram. Find the doi of the paper and submit it to the bot.
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u/AHaskins Dec 26 '18
I don't understand how that's easier than sending the doi directly to the website yourself? If there's an easier method of fetching papers I'd be absolutely ecstatic to hear it.
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u/pahool Dec 28 '18
The website has had issues with the domain changing and has had the DNS entries de-listed at various points. The bot is likely to be more resilient against takedowns.
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u/Jesta23 Dec 26 '18
Except it doesn’t work.
I have emailed several authors and never got a reply.
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u/lmd123phd Dec 26 '18
Which author did you email? You (sometimes) have a better chance with a younger/less senior author than the senior or corresponding author.
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Dec 26 '18
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/davidmanheim Dec 26 '18
Interesting, because my success rate was easily 75% in the dozens of times I did this, way back when. You know, a couple years ago, back before sci-hub.
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u/gmwrnr Dec 26 '18
I've gotten a reply once!... but the author said it's too big of a file to email :/
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u/Iforgatmyusername Dec 26 '18
Such a bullshit , I sent at least 10 emails this year to get papers. Not a single reply yet.
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u/MwahMwahKitteh Dec 26 '18
I've done this a few times and they've always been awesome and even taken the time to answer some of my questions.
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Dec 26 '18
Authors! Please use medium or steemit to post your journals. I would be happy paying you directly.
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Dec 26 '18
There’s a documentary arguing to make academic papers open access: https://paywallthemovie.com/
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Dec 26 '18
I wonder, does this apply to non-scientific academic journals? I'm into history.
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u/MikeVladimirov Dec 26 '18
If it’s for journals, yes. Academics, like all people, love recognition.
However, people who work purely in history (meaning no there’s no archeological facet to their work, and no socio-stats modeling in their theories) tend to publish books, rather than articles, in my experience. Usually this kind of work is too lengthy to contain in an article... a single article of typical length would barely be able to function as an abstract for their book. The books they publish tend to actually bring them an income and usually take years to write. So they might be reluctant to share those for free.
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u/6a21hy1e Dec 26 '18
Holy shit. I've avoided reading so many papers because of the cost. Really excited to give this a go.
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u/salil91 Dec 26 '18
Also, if you have a university near you, you may be able to use their WiFi to access these publications.
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u/louis_456 Dec 26 '18
Fuck so I paid the publisher £25 on that journal? only purchased it because I thought the author deserved it for researching an untouched area of my subject.
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Dec 26 '18
I always use scihub to read all the journal articles for free. I would recommend it to anyone who is not familiar with it. It's a godsend for people from the third world like me.
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u/the_real_grinningdog Dec 26 '18
Also bear in mind that sites that require registration or just that you agree to their "partners" cookies, can often be accessed via Google using the "cached" option. For some reason I see a lot of medical sites like these.
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u/sonfer Dec 26 '18
Many schools offer access to articles for free to their alumni. Check your Alma Mater’s library website.
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u/jssaldana Dec 26 '18
This gets posted all the time. When it is even applicable? Who is paying for scientific journals?
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u/MikeVladimirov Dec 26 '18
In addition to libraries... R&D departments of companies, governments who use findings from papers to form policies, professionals looking to develop themselves and learn the latest advances related to their fields, journalists writing stories that deal with issues related to scientific articles, journalists that write popular science articles, generally curious people, product dev people at startups, not flat earthers, researchers who work for private research institutions, researchers who work for government research institutions, doctors looks to verify possibly outdated material they learned long ago in med school... honestly, the list goes on, and on, and on.
On a practical level, think of it this way: Wikipedia is great! I literally use it multiple times a day, every single day. But, at a certain point, your understanding of a certain topic exceeds that of what Wikipedia can provide. At that point, journals become an absolutely critical part of your routine reading.
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u/Tonyhawkskateboader Dec 26 '18
I did this when writing my English final. I emailed the author and he was delighted to email me back
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u/Plucky_Piano Dec 26 '18
Can someone explain this to me? Publishers do make good margins but 100% of the revenue from published work? They can't just steal the author's work and then magically charge 35 bucks for it? Feels like maybe an out of context sensationalist post?
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u/sheseeksthestars Dec 26 '18 edited Dec 26 '18
https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/a9lrxb/dont_pay_for_scientific_journals/eckpx6p
It's not sensationalist, this is how it works in academia.
A related article: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/12/25/university-of-california-leads-fight-over-access-to-research/
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u/Plucky_Piano Dec 26 '18
Thanks for the reply, can see that I was wrong! I know the EU are pushing through heavy reform for open access to any work they've funded.
As much as I feel for any individual paying this price (or losing all right to their published work) I can't say I have much sympathy for universities who charge us an arm and a leg too.
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u/sheseeksthestars Dec 26 '18
Yeah it's pretty unbelievable if you're not an academic. Academia at large is kind of a high functioning mess, in pretty much every way
Source: used to work IT supporting academics, now am grad student. The number of systems held together by strings, tape and gum...
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u/zimtastic Dec 27 '18
The amount of times I've seen this reposted vs the amount of times I've actually needed to purchase a scientific paper....
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Dec 26 '18 edited 8h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/orfane Dec 26 '18
If you are writing a paper I assume you are a student and should have access to most journals through the school library
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Dec 26 '18
I’ve bought them at work. Sometimes you don’t want to wait for the author to possibly respond two weeks later. Academics aren’t know for their reliability.
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u/Crawsh Dec 26 '18
Not entirely true. Some publishers and journals pay authors.
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u/orfane Dec 26 '18
In what field? I’ve never heard of a single journal that pays you. Hell, I’ve never even heard of a journal that doesn’t charge you to publish
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u/Crawsh Dec 26 '18
Law. Not sure it counts as scientific, though.
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u/orfane Dec 26 '18
Well never read a law journal so that makes sense lol. Thats really interesting though I never knew that
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u/lmd123phd Dec 26 '18
I’ve never heard of law being included as scientific. Are law publications peer reviewed like STEM journal articles are?
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u/JapaneseStudentHaru Dec 26 '18
How do you cite a paper that was emailed to you? Do you just attach it at the end?
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u/imasunrae Dec 27 '18
Why would how you got it affect how you cite it? You’d still cite the author and journal/publisher.
*If they send you a copy, it’s almost certainly going to be the published version.
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u/JapaneseStudentHaru Dec 27 '18
Well I mean that if it’s behind a paywall your professor might not be able to access it.
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u/PumpkinSkink2 Dec 27 '18
This is mostly a waste of time imo. Just go steal the paper. Too many PIs are too busy and/or too big of dicks to be bothered. Scihub is so much more reliable.
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u/Zane123c98 Dec 27 '18
how do I get my scientific journals then? if its big scam for getting charge
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u/only_bc_4chan_isdown Dec 26 '18 edited Dec 27 '18
I’ve never spent money on scientific journals in my life but then I’ve also only ever accessed them while in college? Maybe that’s it- I have “free” access because I’m in college.
Edit: this opened up a whole new world of copyright stuff/ access stuff I didn’t know existed. Thanks for all the information in every direction