Alec Conroy wrote:
On 12/21/08, Thomas Larsen wrote:
I doubt many receivers (of journals, etc.) would
be able to
understand them well enough. Academic papers aren't always easy to
understand, especially for a non-expert, and they could be, God
forbid, _misunderstood_.
My experience is 100% to the contrary. By and large, we're not
exclusively laypeople-- often we ARE the experts. Our math articles
are written by math experts, our chemistry articles are written by
chemists, our physics articles are written by physicists.
Plus, however difficult it is to understand articles, it's all the
more difficult to try to write without any access to them, going
exclusively by popular press accounts or abstracts. The results of
having access are almost guaranteed to be better than the current
situation, where some editors do have access, some editors don't have
access, and so it's hard to double-check each other's work.
Thomas's position smacks of traditional elitism: Why inform the public
when the public can't understand what you say? You can't expect informed
consent for medical procedures if the public doesn't understand what the
doctor is saying, so why say it in the first place?
It may be extremely difficult to understand technical articles that are
available; it's absolutely impossible to understand them if they aren't
available. At one time the dissemination of detailed technical
information was difficult and necessarily expensive. Electronic means
have made these difficulties and expenses trivial. We can now present
the information to outlying individuals on the long tail of
accessibility, without needing to identify who those outlying
individuals might be. We can, at no extra cost, make the information
available to those who have no use for it at all; making it available
does not impose upon them the obligation of availing themselves.
Intellectual property law, at least as envisioned by the framers of the
US Constitution, has become counterproductive. The means granted no
longer "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," and in a
manner unimaginable in the late 18th century. Rather, they impede that
progress. Without free access we are condemning our contributors to
enforced obsolescence.
2) Service
providers would, I think, be unwilling to catch on to this
idea, given the low image of Wikipedia in many areas of academia.
I'm skeptical the service providers will think much beyond whether its
in their own self-interest (be that purely financial, charitable, or
PR).
Yes. A threat to a competitor's own self-interests can be a great
motivator to promote Wikipedia's low image. It's comparable to the oil
industry's perception of global warming.
Ec