[X] My Assistant

[Antdoghalo]

Why does almost every science journals publicatons have to be purchased.
This includes Elsevier, Linkinghub, AAS, and a few others others.
Whats the point of science journals not allowing access to their published articles.
Is this anti access problem a protocol of theirs.

Only LPI is being nice and allowing access.

[djellison]

Two points I'll throw in here. Firstly, not ALL journals charge for access. Just the other day, MC posted a link to an awesome paper about MOC, that's available at marsjournal.org - and all their papers are free to download.

Second point - if you see a paper and you really really want to read it but don't want to pay the $8 or $10 or $15 or $30 for an individual to 'order' it - hunt for the authors homepage - they may have a preprint of either the exact paper, or a similar paper from a different journal for download there, and if not email one of the authors. If you explain that you're just an interested amateur you will probably find they'll be happy to send you a copy.

Last resort- if you have a friend or relative who works in a university etc. - drop THEM an email and they may well be able to grab the PDF for you.

So yeah - most journals do charge - but if you really want to read a paper, chances are if you ask around a bit and do some leg-work - you'll be able to get a copy for nothing, and maybe that's the way it SHOULD be.