Hahahaha... funny story! - Egon Willighagen

Don't feed the trolls. - Noel O'Boyle

I was going to make a sarky comment given I can't access it but I did wonder whether there was more to article than just a disingenous claim that publishing with them was "free" or whether there was a joke buried in there somewhere? - Cameron Neylon

blog post here: http://bjoern.brembs.net/comment... - Björn Brembs

Good quote: "It seems doubtful that lack of access to their articles represents a sufficiently widespread concern to motivate authors publishing in OA journals" - Jason Snyder

What happens when everyone has gone open access but there's still all that good, old research published in subscription journals? Can libraries download entire digital archives prior to ending their subscriptions and make them available once they no longer pay the bill? Or might for-profit publishers continue to attract subscriptions long after they've become unpopular, just because people want/need access to the classic papers? - Jason Snyder

Email the author and ask for a reprint? - Egon Willighagen

wow... - Kubke

I'd love to see libraries get together and collaboratively write an application that downloads every single article each library has access to and build a large database of the scientific literature. - Björn Brembs

+100 Björn - Graham Steel

Jason - it depends on the subscription. Some licenses allow us to keep locally owned copies of content. Also anything that's in the public domain can be digitized and hosted. Bjorn - I doubt we (libraries) could write an application like you decribe for collecting journal article content. LOCKSS is a network that allows people to share (sort of) and Hathitrust has collected digital content (though not much journal article content, as this is mostly owned by the commercial publishers.) I'm afraid as soon as it started there would be cease and desist order. - Elizabeth Brown

@Elizabeth: I think starting with the content where local copies are allowed by the license would be a good start. That should include all print subscriptions, be definition. One may successively widen the scope of such a database using fair-use and trying to create precedent as well as by support from science funders and eventually legislation. Creating awareness of the problem and initiating action would already go a long way, as far as I'm concerned. - Björn Brembs

Bjorn, thanks for responding. The problem is that the print content is part of the electronic license, so it can't be treated separately. Most, if not all of those articles are owned by the publishers. We can lend a print copy by ILL (using the first sale doctrine) but we don't have the same first-sale rights for electronic materials. I'm refering to US copyright law which is different from other countries. I also wrote a post on this as it raises a lot of interesting issues: http://www.science3point0.com/sociald... - Elizabeth Brown

Am halfway through with your post but need to run. Real quick: I was trying to say that libraries which have a print copy, already have a local copy. It will be hard to argue against local digital copies. - Björn Brembs

Ontario has done more-or-less what Bjorn is suggesting with our Scholars Portal Journals database. It has 20+ million article and is very easy to use. We've essentially negotiated our licenses with publishers to allow us to own and locally host the database. The good news is that it's an amazing resource, particularly for ugrads looking for "good enough." The bad news is that it leaves out an awful lot of publishers we haven't negotiated deals with as well as most OA publishers. We're also building a Scholars Portal eBooks database along the same lines. It's worth noting that the resources to do this well and sustainably are non-trivial. - John Dupuis

Thanks for mentioning initiatives in Canada. In the US most licenses are negotiated at the campus (sometimes system level), and it seems to be harder to negotiate the access you describe. Another major licensing issue that comes up is ILL use - some of the ebook and e-journal licenses don't allow for ILL lending. Once this use is prohibited it's hard to negotiate back into a contract. - Elizabeth Brown

That's excellent, John! Now other libraries would have to do similar things and (as much as legally possible) get the databases interoperable. The proof of concept would already be enough to push for next steps, IMHO. - Björn Brembs

I agree with you Bjorn that the database interoperabilty should come soon. The biggest roadblock is getting standards in place and persuading publishers it's OK to do this. I still see the silo mentality in full force. - Elizabeth Brown

Bjoern Have quoted you in my blog http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr... . Do you have a formal reference about publishers negotiating impact factors? - peter murray-rust

@brembs Fantastic dissection, give us more of the same plz. - 'Mummi' Thorisson

@peter: the PLoS Medicine reference in the talk is as formal as it gets. The Current Biology example is just pulled from the ISI website. - Björn Brembs

speaking of downloading every single article a library has a subscription to, check out what can go wrong: http://kottke.org/11... - Jason Snyder