[ChrisRowland]

Obviously Genghis is well behind how I feel about this subject - no huge surprise really..

I can't think of one good reason, other than vested interests, why research should be behind a pay wall.

One explanation is that the funding for the researchers who collected the data depends on their results - publications. They want to hang on to it until they have extracted all the grant generating published papers they can.

I'm not saying this is a good reason but it's understandable.

[OCB]

I have to admit that male v female connectors/receptors is something I always found odd.

The basic premise is sound. If it’s pointy and goes into something it’s male. If it receives said pointy things, it’s female.

It’s not a value judgement, just a lazy nomenclature.

I’ve yet to meet a connector that is self aware. When I do I will of course ask about it’s gender assignment and preferences.

[OCB]

Obviously Genghis is well behind how I feel about this subject - no huge surprise really..

I can't think of one good reason, other than vested interests, why research should be behind a pay wall.

One explanation is that the funding for the researchers who collected the data depends on their results - publications. They want to hang on to it until they have extracted all the grant generating published papers they can.

I'm not saying this is a good reason but it's understandable.

Tenure depends on publication, it’s a basic fact of academia. Long may it live, it’s the closest we have to meritocracy. However- I’ve yet to be convinced that fully or partially public funded research should be behind a pay-wall.

[johnm]

Tenure depends on publication, it’s a basic fact of academia. Long may it live, it’s the closest we have to meritocracy. However- I’ve yet to be convinced that fully or partially public funded research should be behind a pay-wall.

Agree, but academic prestige is about articles in specific journals and the fact that they could publish more effectively open access and still properly peer reviewed on their institution website cuts no ice as yet.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Tenure hasn't existed in the UK since the early 80s when Mrs.T abolished it.

Grants help promotion, but so do publications. And publications get grants. The quality of publications is above all else based upon citations, and to be cited, people need to read it. So actually open access is in most academics interests.

But many "research managers" at universities are in the dark ages, and continuously pushing to see papers submitted to the "high impact journals", thus giving those journals a stranglehold on a lot of revenue. A rather invidious circle.

G