Open Access
2 Jun, 09 | by Iain Brassington
Keith Taylor Tayler (sorry!), in a reply to the Purdy post below, raises the question of why journals are so expensive and inaccessible to those who don’t have institutional access. It’s a very good question - and one that Brian Leiter’s recently been mulling, too. (UPDATE: This is a point that applies equally well to those who the non-academic and the would-be academic. There’re plenty of members of the public who would like access to journals… and there’s no shortage of people like me, either. Five years ago, I was on the dole with a PhD that wasn’t going to generate any papers; I really could have done with online access to journals to keep up with the field and to be able to do some research in my ample spare time. No job, no access; no access, no new papers; no new papers, no job; no job, no access… I got lucky enough to be able to break the cycle, but I didn’t like having to rely on luck. Nor did the person in the dole office understand my predicament.)
Not that I’m complaining about anything published by the gods of the BMJ. Oh, no. They’re all beyond reproach, obviously.
The answer? - Money.
Anonymule
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
As an aside there is also a problem of academic affiliation in journals.
That is to say that it is often the case that when you fill out the info form that subsequently allows you to register/create an author account with a journal (and thus submit a paper to that journal) an academic affiliation is a required field on the form.
This of course can make things tricky for the aspiring academic if you happen to be out of work.
Stu
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:06 pm
@Stu -
Are there many that require academic affiliation? I have to admit that I’d not noticed - but if you’re right, that does seem to be problematic.
Can’t you just put “unaffiliated” in the box, though? Or even just a space? Most automatic systems will register that as an entry, even though nothing shows.
Iain Brassington
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:12 pm