Monday, October 15, 2012

mildly relevant: live free or .. well ..

~ from "a plan to open up science journals" @bostonglobe
Hrvatin and his college roommate, Robert McGrath, think they can solve the problem by incorporating an iTunes model of ­single sales. Reducing the cost of individual articles — with some restrictions to protect the publishing business — will help scientists keep up with research and help libraries hold down costs, say the pair, who have named their product ReadCube Access.
i wonder at the wisdom of this. already there are a lot of pirated mathematics books in djvu and pdf out there. it wouldn't be that hard to develop a decentralised network to cache illegal copies of pirated research articles ..

.. and yes, it sounds ridiculous: who would pirate a research article?
i asked myself the same thing about textbooks once.

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