Karoo Birds Survey hosted by Blue Hill Escape: Of open access, pay walls and sci-hub: a defence of the pay-wall perspective
lterrat's bookmarks 2017-07-15
Summary:
"While open access journals cry their amazing download statistics, lets face it: those of you who have accumulated vast pdf libraries, how many of those articles were downloaded with you thinking ‘I’ll read that later’ and you never did. Certainly, at a conservative estimate, I’ve never read more than the abstract of >50% of my pdf library. And abstracts are free anyway…
I’ll even go so far as to say that recently I’ve even felt angry with fellow South African’s who have published open access. Maybe they managed to get their fee reductions, but if not then not only are we exporting our science to foreign journals (a tirade for another day), but we’re paying for that privilege in a climate of #FeesMustFall! Certainly, there I must agree that the money set aside for academics to publish open access could be better used elsewhere (e.g. supporting the university libraries, student support etc)."