Comments on: It Is Not Evil To Get Paid For Work You Do

By: Ray

Ray — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 09:10:20 +0000

The old ‘Information Want To Be Free’ garbage surfaces again. Fail!

When it comes down to it, if your toilet is plugged up, wouldn’t you value a plumber more than a rock star? Bottom line – if you don’t want to pay, nobody’s making you play. Just stop bitching unless you’re willing to work for nothing.

By: Pellet Mill squidoo

Pellet Mill squidoo — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 05:53:57 +0000

thanks for your sharing

First, I was addressing the general idea of “not paying for knowledge”, not this particular instance. Second, the authors have pointed out that one can read about their academic research free of charge, elsewhere. Third, there have certainly been times and places where the private sector funded academic research.

By: Sleeth

Sleeth — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:21:27 +0000

For years I heard how farmers faced great financial struggles for all the hard work they did in providing food for our tables. It was costing more to raise a cow then what a cow sold for. I wondered why farmers didn’t get together and just hold back the food from our tables. We would all go hungry while they continued to eat and end up with a much stronger negotiation position. But then I realized it is next to impossible to get farmers around the world to unify so that they could better their lot. Competition between individuals always trumps good of the community.

Now imagine if scientists united and held back their work, the contents of their brains only passing in secret among themselves. What if the rest of the world went without the benefits of scientific endeavor? What if there were no new articles to publish, no new textbooks, no teaching younger generations, no advancements in medicine and computer technology, no nanoscience, no new discoveries… that is, except for scientists who were the only one to enjoy the benefits of their own hard work.

Wait, this might make a good novel… nevermind…

By: Joey

Joey — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 19:02:13 +0000

ICTP (the Abdus Salam International Centre of Theoretical Physics, in Trieste, Italy) gives folks in poor countries reduced/free access to top journals. I wish this was more generalized. While for you 20 dollars for access to some article is nothing, for some of us is a fortune. I’m sure you don’t advocate knowledge-access for the rich only, do you?

By: Timon of Athens

Timon of Athens — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 01:45:14 +0000

Obvious but necessary comment: the *really* sad thing here is that nobody is discussing the *physics* content of the original article. Just a load of boring predictable bullshit, including [especially] blog posts about the morality of whatever. This blog increasingly resembles the fabled oozlum bird:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oozlum_bird

By: spyder

spyder — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:57:40 +0000

I think part of this “debate” stems from the substantive difference between different points of access to stored digital media. When i was still teaching i had free access to all of the Jstor system paid for through the university. Now that i am retired, i simply cannot afford it, but do have a library down the street with limited access. Jstor charges very high premiums to universities and colleges (in the $30k+ range and higher), lesser ones to community colleges (with some reduction in services), and so forth down to secondary students who pay $250 per year for highly limited service. When a professor has completely unlimited access at work, and finds highly restricted access at home (unless s/he uses his university server system from home), those sorts of frustrations become irritants.

By: Alan in Upstate NY

Alan in Upstate NY — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 17:00:18 +0000

Nothing wrong with charging for good content, properly edited for clarity and correctness.

Clear skies, Alan

By: bob

bob — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:52:43 +0000

Two points that don’t seem to have been mentioned:
1) Yes, as Robert said, SciAm once upon a time was a great magazine. But the quality has decreased substantially over the years, and the recent acquisition of SciAm by Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has, if anything, pushed the quality down by quite a bit.
2) NPG is evil. NPG has been launching new, unneeded and overpriced journals at an alarming rate over the past several years, with no sign of slowing down despite the major worldwide recession. (Alas scientists are only human, and are quite susceptible to the “prestige” of publishing in a journal with “Nature” on the cover). NPG also dramatically increased the library subscription prices of SciAm in both print and online versions, with the result that many academic libraries no longer subscribe to SciAm online and get only one print copy.

By: Phillip Helbig

Phillip Helbig — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:13:54 +0000

It seems that if one writes a textbook on time one is otherwise paid for, then the money should go to whoever pays the salary. On the other hand, some people are not paid to work certain times, or a certain number of hours, but to do a certain amount of work. In that case, as long as the “real” work is not neglected, the employer might even like textbooks to be written, since they often include the author’s affiliation. At least if they are good, they are essentially free advertising.

Some academic work might suffer, but not all. I remember once reading the “Reports from the Observatories” in the sadly defunct and sorely missed Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. When checking out Sussex, there were something like a dozen single-author papers by John D. Barrow in one year, all in prestigious journals (and he was author on other papers as well). In the same year, he wrote a couple of popular books. I asked someone who worked in Sussex at the time what his hours were, and he replied “pretty much 9 to 5″. I don’t know if he wrote the popular books during working hours or not.

By: olderwithmoreinsurance

olderwithmoreinsurance — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:06:30 +0000

@Robert As someone who has had several different colleagues equal or even double their academic salaries by writing textbooks, I have to disagree with that part of your argument. Other than for graduate textbooks, I think the reverse is true: I’ve never known anyone who has written a textbook who was NOT in it for the money. It’s also true that most everyone’s academic duties suffer from this. I remember one colleague who scheduled his office hours at 7 a.m. because he knew no students would bother him then and he could work on the next minimal (2% level) new edition of his book(s). This same individual argues that second hand textbooks should be illegal! (try applying that argument to automobiles….)
Note I’m NOT arguing that people should not be paid for writing textbooks. I’m arguing that everyone I know who has done so has blatantly ripped off the colleges and universities who paid them while they did so.