[Closed] Favour needed - Article from Science Direct - My Uni are stingy with their subs.

Anyone able to help?

Can you not get a physical copy of the journal from the library? I take it its not on your Athens account?

Unfortunately not.

Bloody hell, I hadn't heard science direct in a while! Brings back memories.

If you are paying your uni tuition fees then they really should be allowing you full access.

Journal subscription are stupidly expensive, and there are so many a line has to be drawn somewhere. I resent the fact articles i have written, effectively paid for by my uni (time etc), can't be accessed by our students. However, if it is from a reading list the lecturer should have checked its availability.

I've had a look and we subscribe to that journal, but only as far back as 1995, sorry. How quick is your inter-library loan system?

The best part is that you spend yor time writing it, send it to the publishers who then get someone else to review it, all for free. When they are happy with it, they then sell it back to you and the reviewers!

Have you seen our free online model?

I've had a look and we subscribe to that journal, but only as far back as 1995, sorry.

I'm surprised it goes back that far, weren't you a 6th form college back then?

Similarly to Capt John neither Uni of Liverpool or Bristol appear to subscribe to that issue. You'll have to try an interlibrary loan through the British Library. Usually takes 1-3 weeks (IME).

Loddrik, as Capt John says subscriptions are extremely expensive, so Uni libraries will only subscribe to journals (and dates) which are considered 'useful'. Most articles can be obtained from the British Library for a small fee otherwise.

Charliemungus - I know exactly what you mean. The publishers make millions each year from individual journals.

Can anyone access this one for me?

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pri.474/full

On it's way to you now. I think! 😉

1995 for us too. Email the author (with a flattering sentence or two) and s/he'll send it out to you.

I'm sure if you search for wiley libraries the web will provide an abundance.

Beagleboy - thank you very much.

Sorry, no online access here either. We have a physical copy of the first article in the library at Ninewells; not sure if that's really any use to you!

I have the first article now thanks to Beagleboy.

My athens wanted money too. Beagleboy must be at a proper uni 🙂

SBZ - I can get access to that 2nd article for you. Give me a while as I've got to be somewhere else, but I'll get back to you.

Cheers.

University of Glasgow 😉

trailofdestruction - that'd be great thanks.

SBZ - just emailed you the other article.

Martyn

I now have both articles. Thanks to everyone who has sent me them.

*in a rush*
You all sorted yeah?
*Zoooooooom*

Now my interest is piqued SBZ, why do you need to read in that area?

Am writing a systematic review essay about motor relearning therapy versus bobath for regaining function in stroke patients.

SBZ,

I'm not sure I would have asked people openly on a totally unrelated internet forum to breach copyright, break the terms of their own license agreements with ScienceDirect etc., and risk disciplinary action from their institution. I assume people aren't so blatant about asking for free copies of music, games etc here?

You should be able to access journals with a legitimate study related need through the "Inter Library Loan" system. By having circumvented that system your institution's library now thinks there is no demand for that particular journal. Using the ILL approach, whilst slow and probably inconvenient, shows libraries (or if Journal acquisition is controlled by Departments, the Department budget holder) where the demand is.

Journals are expensive - but then they are also rather niche publications which whilst authored and reviewed "FoC" need Editors and Assistants to pull together the work and manage the distribution and collation of results from reviewers. They also need marketing people who help promote the journal, not only to "subscribers" but to potential authors so gaining higher quality work helping to lift the whole publication etc.

With most journals there is scope for the author to provide free access to their own work via an institutional repository, which Google Scholar will help find. This is "self serving" since research shows freely available articles are more likely to be cited and therefore raises the author/works profile and "importance". It amazes me that more academics aren't actively pushing the Open Access Repository side of things.

However at least you are trying to source a pre-1995 article, the trend seems to be to assume that anything you can't get whilst sitting in front of your computer screen doesn't exist or is so old to not bother about.

Journals are expensive - but then they are also rather niche publications which whilst authored and reviewed "FoC" need Editors and Assistants to pull together the work and manage the distribution and collation of results from reviewers.

Absolute bollox! Typical horseshit we hear from publishers who realise that their day is over. This can be achieved by a simple automated process.

I'm not sure where you are coming from on this, especially as you follow up with a para on Open Access.

I worked for an academic publisher for a while. One year their profits, purely from scientific journals, was £330m, the societies typically take 2/3s of money raised from subscriptions. I have no qualms about asking people to pass on a paper.

CharlieMungus - Member
The best part is that you spend yor time writing it, send it to the publishers who then get someone else to review it, all for free. When they are happy with it, they then sell it back to you and the reviewers!

Have you seen our free online model?

I've had a look and we subscribe to that journal, but only as far back as 1995, sorry.
I'm surprised it goes back that far, weren't you a 6th form college back then?

'95? I was in year 9... Doesn't that make you old!?

I also have no qualms about emailing them around. It happens regularly on jiscmail lists. I think someone calculated the cost of free academic labour gifted to publishers and it was in the $billions each year. Some don't even proof read for you, let alone help sort out graphics and charts.

Absolute bollox! Typical horseshit we hear from publishers who realise that their day is over. This can be achieved by a simple automated process.

Simple automated process? Be real Charlie, a high quality journal takes far, far more than that.
Open access varies substantially by field, and in mine (chemistry) it has not even got started. All the o/a journals are of very low quality. It would need massive improvement just to get something you wouldn't mind publishing your worst stuff in. Having a genuinely good o/a journal is a distant dream.
It's good that the publisher are getting their chain yanked, as some of the commercial houses have taken the pish to usurious levels. But the alternative is not yet clear.

[url] http://www.badscience.net/2011/09/academic-papers-are-hidden-from-the-public-heres-some-direct-action/ [/url]

Gary,

I agree in general about Open Access Journals being at the lower end of the quality scale (in various regards). However I was really referring to Open Access Repositories as used by many institutions to host their own work (often at final draft/pre-print stage) at the point the same article is published by the journal. If you use Google Scholar, you will see (on maybe 1:10) articles a pdf link to the right of the article description - this is a link direct to one of those repositories. These seem to coexist with the 'official' route to the journal quite happily (and it seems legally). Without publication in a respected peer-reviewed journal the article itself is nothing more than the warblings of some academics.

Charlie, my point is if the academic wants to give away free 'copies' of the article the mechanism already exists; assuming they care enough to find out how. If they can't be "bothered" to do this (which in most institutions will be easy to do now) suggests to me that they are either out of touch or actually quite happy with the status quo, and supporting the publisher. If the authors stop submitting high quality work the specialist journals will dry up and become unsustainable. I agree the processes could be slicker, certainly the articles I get asked to review are not in the 'finished format'; but what do you want the author (and reviewer) to spend their time on, the content and scientific accuracy or the position of the graph within the page?

SbZ - should publishers not make profits? The "learned societies" would have to charge more for their membership - to you the professional - without such income. The commercial publishers would either stop publishing or look to other sources of income, perhaps more reliance on advertising or commercial sponsorship: influencing impartiality? Or perhaps the "pay to publish" model is better, except for the fact that it encourages space to go to those with the biggest budget not the best science to report.

CaptJon - Do you do the same with MP3 files? After all Sony, Apple etc are making "obscene" amounts of money from it. File sharing like this in the music world was of course (and might still be?) very trendy 5-10 yrs ago. I think you would still get "shot down" if you came on here asking someone to email you a copy of a song from 1982 because you didn't want to pay for it.

Rupert Murdoch made a ton of money out of academic publishing (Elsevier i think) prior to or in the early days of News International.

Simple automated process? Be real Charlie, a high quality journal takes far, far more than that.

Not really, why should the quality of the journal have any effect on the process. It's fairly straightforward to select reviewers based on keywords, especially since the process of peer review is increasingly called into question

Open access varies substantially by field, and in mine (chemistry) it has not even got started. All the o/a journals are of very low quality.

But that is not a characteristic of o/a. Merely a legacy of publishers influence on academia

It would need massive improvement just to get something you wouldn't mind publishing your worst stuff in. Having a genuinely good o/a journal is a distant dream.

What are you saying needs to improve?
The problem is that currently o/a has no impact factor, though in some fields neither do many journals. But impact factor is a legacy. The problem is not in quality, but in breaking away from the conventional approach. What we have here is a (disruptive) technology adoption curve.

It's good that the publisher are getting their chain yanked, as some of the commercial houses have taken the pish to usurious levels. But the alternative is not yet clear.

The alternative is free open access peer-reviewed journals run by academics for academics and the wider population

'95? I was in year 9... Doesn't that make you old!?

'95?? I think i was still an engineer then! and yes, it does.
🙁

SBZ, you weren't in glasgow last week were you?

CM - not last week. Think it's 3 weeks since I've been there.

poly - Member
Do you do the same with MP3 files? After all Sony, Apple etc are making "obscene" amounts of money from it. File sharing like this in the music world was of course (and might still be?) very trendy 5-10 yrs ago. I think you would still get "shot down" if you came on here asking someone to email you a copy of a song from 1982 because you didn't want to pay for it.

Are you seriously comparing the music industry with academia?

Production of knowledge, advancement of society, technology and science vs artists and record companies selling music

Yep, it is exactly the same sharing academic papers to help people learn as downloading the latest song from Little Mix.

It's fairly straightforward to select reviewers based on keywords, especially since the process of peer review is increasingly called into question

I presume this already happens and this is why I get sent stuff that I know very little about to review (it gets sent back with an explanation to that effect, or sometimes with a "I am not a subject expert but even I can see this is rubbish (more tactfully put), type response.")

The alternative is free open access peer-reviewed journals run by academics for academics and the wider population

The only academics I have ever seen run anything effectively and efficiently (including the institutions they work in) has been when it served their own personal interests not those of wider society! Why would a good researcher want to spend their time messing about in the publishing industry for little or no reward?

Rupert Murdoch made a ton of money out of academic publishing (Elsevier i think) prior to or in the early days of News International.

Entrepreneur makes money by providing customers with a product they want to pay for - shock. Its easy to blame the man at the top - but if the punters pay the cash (whether that is accademics who want to know the latest, greatest science or Joe Public who wants to know which footballer was snorting cocaine off some hookers tits then is it the supply or the demand side of the equation which is so wrong?).

Are you seriously comparing the music industry with academia?

Production of knowledge, advancement of society, technology and science vs artists and record companies selling music

copyright theft is copyright theft whether it is in the arts or science. Of course the arts have never had a positive effect on society so it would be wrong to justify theft of music as being for the greater good 😉

[i]Entrepreneur makes money by providing customers with a product they want to pay for - shock. Its easy to blame the man at the top - but if the punters pay the cash (whether that is accademics who want to know the latest, greatest science or Joe Public who wants to know which footballer was snorting cocaine off some hookers tits then is it the supply or the demand side of the equation which is so wrong?).[/i]

I think it depends on who funds the research in the first place. The results of say publicly funded research should be available free to the public imo.