Excellent. It's a crime that we fund these universities with our tax dollars and then the research results get put behind paywalls.
-mouser
Yep. Thank the greed of universities and institutions and the cleverness of the Dutch company Elsevier in convincing them "there's gold in that there paper" and starting the "hostage research" thing which others have since gotten in on.
Funny part is it's in direct violation of a lot of funding organizations rules to do that. But the universities and Elsevier have been clever in stonewalling and only backing down where somebody knew the rules and was pushing the issue hard. But they only comply on a case by case basis rather than stop the practice.
Pretty sad. But don't expect any legal relief. They get off the hook by releasing whatever they're required to release prior to going to court, so any lawsuit over them not releasing something becomes moot. There's no rule that says they have to make the process easy as long as they ultimately comply. And most times they don't.
Maybe someday the funding people will get a little more involved with the issue. But they have close ties with the universities and institutes, so they're not looking to rock the boat just because a few scholars know their legal rights.
