[Discuss] Access to Academic Articles

Sun Jan 5 11:04:40 UTC 2014

Hi Alicia

I can say from experience that launching a journal is hard, and running one is harder! We've been running the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (ifosslr.org<http://ifosslr.org>) for a few years now, and were not for the efforts of a very few dedicated and hardworking individuals, it would have folded some time ago. That's not to say it's a bad idea, but it's a non-trivial task, and even if you can rely on volunteer labour and electronic distribution, there are still costs involved which will require sponsorship or some other form of revenue (for example, crossref membership and hosting fees).

On the legal side of things, IFOSSLR is happy to consider articles on open hardware from a legal perspective (even though we have software in the title), so this is a good way for the open hardware community to gain access to a respected, peer-reviewed open-access journal.

I'm assuming that the remit of an open hardware journal would be to look at the hardware itself, its development and production, and community development as well as legal issues surrounding patenting, licensing and liability. We're happy to cover the legal side of open hardware, but not the wider issues (unless they have some legal impact).

All the best

Andrew

On 3 Jan 2014, at 19:10, alicia <amgibb at gmail.com<mailto:amgibb at gmail.com>> wrote:

Thanks for posting this thread. It is indeed frustrating that research (including publicly funded research) is so hard to access.
There's the Open Research Network soon to be publishing journals:
http://www.openresearchnetwork.org/

A few of us at OSHWA have been wondering if OSHWA should attempt to create an open access journal on open hardware, or if our time would be better spent submitting to one of the other open access journals. Would love to hear the community's thoughts on that.

Cheers,
Alicia

On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 8:30 PM, malcolm stanley <a.malcolm.stanley at gmail.com<mailto:a.malcolm.stanley at gmail.com>> wrote:
Harris, thanks for that... I'm still in discovery phase and gathering citations, so I don't have a good list I could give you... and  that is part of the challenge, right, that research is an iterative process until you understand its boundary with development?

but good feedback, thanks!

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On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Harris Kyriakou <ckyriako at stevens.edu<mailto:ckyriako at stevens.edu>> wrote:
Another idea is to search at the websites of the authors. Many of them unofficially share their published papers.
As a more temporary solution and if you have have a specific list of papers you are interested in, I will be more than glad to help you get access.

Best,
Harris

On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 11:39 AM, Tiberius Brastaviceanu <tiberius.brastaviceanu at gmail.com<mailto:tiberius.brastaviceanu at gmail.com>> wrote:

Option 3 is very effective if you are part of a network containing individuals affiliated with academic institutions. We use it a lot in SENSORICA.

On Dec 31, 2013 9:01 AM, "Joshua Pearce" <professor.pearce at gmail.com<mailto:professor.pearce at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Malcom,

You have hit on a major problem in academia  - lack of basic access to past research. Even publicly funded research is often behind absurd pay walls. You are not alone -- even relatively good academic libraries rarely carry all of the titles. I can't get access to some of my own work without paying $50/paper. Many academics share your frustration and the open access movement in academia is growing strong. I am confident that in the near future everything will be freely available - all federal funded research in the US is about to go that way following the NIH model....and OSH will be next :)

That doesn't help you with your project today - so I have a few recommendations:
1. Look in the open access repositories where we post our preprints such as
https://www.academia.edu/
https://www.researchgate.net/
http://arxiv.org/
even a simple  http://scholar.google.com/ searches for the articles that you are interested in sometimes turn up free versions
2. If you can at least get to the abstract page on the paid page - you should be able to get the email of the contact author. If you email the author, ask for a copy while saying something nice and that you "want to read it in order to cite it"....that should work 90% of the time.
3. Make an academic friend in the field that would be willing to share their personal database with you (e.g. Zotero, Mendeley etc) so that you can get you most everything else.

Best of luck
Joshua

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