On 26 June 2011 21:12, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://chronicle.com/article/Academic-Publisher-Steps-Up/128031/
People are exchanging and selling access to the databases to get the damn science.
This is why we need to keep pushing the free content and open access message.
While back channel paper exchange is pretty common I doubt that the people stealing passwords are actually doing much in the way of science. Things are so specialised these days that people doing much in the way of serious science probably know the dozen or so other people in their field well enough for them be to emailed their papers directly.
While there are many many things wrong with the current scientific publishing model (start with it's a parasite with lower ethical standards than Microsoft and then work your way up) I don't think a trade in passwords in indicative of much.
I don't know much about the situation in the humanities though.
You cannot do science in a system with these effects.
In fairness you demonstrably can. Of course it's an open question how many people really are.