[jonknee]

> Do you think it is fine too if I start distributing freely an application for which you have worked for years and decided to charge for?

Sure, as long as I developed the application with taxpayer money I think it would be fair game to have it freely distributed. From the article:

> The study was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

I wish the NIH and others would require free distribution for papers originating out of publicly funded research.

[joeyo]

They do. The catch is there is (up to) a 12 month lag.

http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

[Ardit20]

I think there is a difference between the substance of the content and its distribution. The way that the article can have any validity and authority is for the current time through a peer reviewed system which requires plenty of money to be upheld.

I like the system, with all its flaws. Why should you be free to cheat it? If you are poor and can not afford it, then fine, but if you do not value the knowledge sufficiently for a fiver or tenner, then maybe you should not gain it.

The thing is that this goes beyond a random user like you or me. It is not hard at all to see vast distribution of such articles on free websites. You only need to buy a subscription to the distributor, and then copy and paste and upload each and everyone of them. Then, the people who actually find it necessary to read such articles, which is quite different from a random viewer, and who are the actual people who support the system, would simply not need to provide the funding for the system, and thus the system either collapses, or it evolves stupendously fast.

I would rather give them their time. This is not music or film. This is knowledge. I would thus rather be conservative and give them the freedom to adapt and adopt to the new technology and innovate within their own space and time.

[jonknee]

Then there should be grant money set aside to cover peer review. I'd bet most of the subscribers are already doing so with public money in some form, it doesn't make sense to lock up all that information behind a pay wall.

[Ardit20]

Why should there be grant money set aside to cover peer review? Just ask yourself honestly and try to be unbiased, is that not a very selfish proposition?

This is only one article, amongst thousands of which we do not care of. We do not care of them because they have nothing to do with the field we have chosen to focus on, be that computer science, medicine, history, physics, law, or artificial intelligence. I would rather the money goes into research, than to provide some randomer with the pleasure of reading something they hardly can understand anyway.

I did not read the peer reviewed journal, I do not care to read it, I know little about medicine besides what I was taught in school. The terminology used is different, one word contains entire concepts, there is an entirely different way of thinking in that field, and frankly, it adds no value to me personally. If it did and I could afford it, I would buy it. £30 is what one spends on a Saturday night!

Now if we wished to live in a paranoid world where we do not trust the experts in their field and wish to validate everything our self, then that is a personal choice of perspective.

One can well choose to spend his entire life to learn of every field in this earth. Most people, if not the vast majority of people, if not 99% of people, sooner or later, focus on one field, and perhaps focus further on that field, especially if such field is medicine, or computer science, or law. That is how we work, that is the best system we have found of operating.

I personally do not see anything wrong with the way the system currently works, not wrong in such a way as to justify throwing it out entirely. If you are a doctor, you subscribe, if you are not, then buy the one article you want to read, if you do not want to buy it, then you do not need it.

[jonknee]

> Why should there be grant money set aside to cover peer review? Just ask yourself honestly and try to be unbiased, is that not a very selfish proposition?

Why should there be grant money set aside to cover research?

I don't think I'm alone in finding that it's frustrating to have tax payer funded research be hidden behind paywalls that other tax payer funded institutions can access but the general public cannot. We're paying for both sides and not getting the goods.

[Ardit20]

Those who are interested in the goods however, subsidise those goods. You, or the tax paying public is not interested in those goods, but only the results. Just bare in mind this is only one article. There are thousands of other articles which you personally, let alone the tax paying public cares nothing of.

Knowledge is useful only to those who know how to make use of it.

But my opinion is not wanted, thus, you have your opinion and hold it dearly beside any questions of reason or logics because perhaps I should say if you had such understanding then you would have the liberty to suggest a better system.

[b-man]

because perhaps I should say if you had such understanding then you would have the liberty to suggest a better system.

Ask, and Ye Shall Receive

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/534

[aphyr]

Why should there be grant money set aside to cover peer review?

Because we're already paying for it in journal subscriptions , memberships, and publication fees paid by public institutions. We might as well pay something other than a for-profit organization. Elsevier, for example, does something like $600 million in pre-tax profit per year.

That profit comes, in part, from your tax dollars via research grants and public education funding.