#academic-publishing

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[zzkt]

A spiritual successor to Aaron Swartz is angering publishers all over again

I started the website because it was a great demand for such service in research community. In 2011, I was an active participant in various online communities for scientists (i.e. forums, the technology preceding social networks and still surviving to the present day). What all students and researchers were doing there is helping each other to download literature behind paywalls. I became interested and very involved. Two years before, I already had to pirated many paywalled papers while working on my final university project (which was dedicated to brain-machine interfaces). So I knew well how to do this and had necessary tools. After sending tens or hundreds of research papers manually, I wanted to develop a script that will automate my work. That's how Sci-Hub started.

via http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/a-spiritual-successor-to-aaron-swartz-is-angering-publishers-all-over-again/

[fanhackers]

Open Access Explained! (by phdcomics)

Transformative Works and Cultures, the open access fan studies journal that Fanhackers is affiliated with, will be publishing a new issue on boys' love fandom very soon. Expect shiny. By way of celebration, we'll be posting a few things on open access and why it's such a big deal, both in general and for TWC and fan studies in particular.

First of all, what is open access and why should anyone care? Basically, the traditional system of distributing academic works has become very costly and very inefficient. It shuts many people out of conversations and prevents them from putting the important information that's produced in academia to good use. Open access is a first step towards making academic research truly accessible and useful for everyone in a variety of ways.

This video is a great and fun introduction to very many sides of the issue. By Nick Shockey, Jonathan Eisen, and PhD Comics creator Jorge Cham.