this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 79 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yes. However, if you find a paper or study you’re interested in reading, reach out to the researcher directly. More often than not, they’re happy to provide you with a copy for free, in my experience.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I did this once. They wouldn't give me a copy, I didn't push it because they were retired and did try to give me advice about contacting librarians to add the journal to their subscription.

I do imagine younger people publishing more recent work would be more open to sharing their work.

For anyone else seeing this the university of the author often also publishes their papers free access. Even when the journal the paper is published in is paywalled. So it's worth checking that. This is especially the case if the work was funded by bodies that require open access.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That’s wild. I’ve always sent people copies when they reach out. It’s especially easy to do so with ResearchGate, but that does require the requester make an account there.

Another option is to ask a librarian to find that specific article, rather than getting them to subscribe to the journal. I had to do this once in grad school for an article in a discontinued journal from the 70s. The librarian found another library that had it and they faxed a copy.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

This, surely it's more usual? The first time I ever reached out the person sent me three recent articles and an invitation to let them know when/where my research was published, even though it wasn't relevant to their discipline.

I was a lowly grad student and he was a senior academic with his own lab. I'd heard of his research because it was mentioned in a science documentary on tv, and the whole experience really gave me a happy feeling.

I can see why [email protected] only did it the one time after the experience they had, though.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

That’s good advice. Have you found that there’s peer-review included when it’s university published? I’ve only received original research from contacting the researcher directly.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Have you found that there’s peer-review included when it’s university published?

Not comment-OP, but there are different levels:

  • "pre-print" means that it hasn't been submitted yet, hasn't been peer-reviewed yet, and hasn't been accepted yet.
  • "post-print" means that it's been peer-reviewed, revised, and the content is ready to publish, but it hasn't been formatted to be in the journal.
  • "version of record" is the published version. this is called "camera-ready" if it's waiting to be published.

Depending on the contract signed, the academic ~~scammers~~ publishers will usually let the researcher publish the paper on their own web site or university site or repository like arxiv.org. If it's the pre-print, it may be available before publication, but if it's the post-print or version of record, this may be only after a certain period of time has passed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

That’s very helpful. Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The articles published to the journal. That's where the peer review happens. The university will then host a copy of the published paper with open access. The university doesn't peer review this, it just provides the hosting. Often the motivation for doing this is compliance with open access. Many areas have well regarded journals that authors want to publish in that are closed, but the research is funded on the condition of open access.

These papers hosted by the university may have different formatting, but will have the same content. They are often harder to find as the references will be to the same paper published in the journal. Some paper search engines will include links to the university's free access page, but you often have to search separately on a general purpose search engine to find that copy.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

In my time looking for published papers, I have only very rarely seen papers which are also hosted by the university of the author. I suspect in your case it was hosted because of something specific to the school or the author, rather than a general thing.

What I am seeing more often in my field is people posting a version of the paper on "arxiv". This is a similar open-access approach, but you do have to be careful with arxiv papers as you can post anything on it, including work that never was or will be peer-reviewed.