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Universities that bust paywalls?

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kanzure

Wed Jul 25 2007, 04:07AM

Registered Member #647 Joined: Mon Apr 16 2007, 02:43AM
Location:
Posts: 10

So, I have done my research on the sorts of schools that I would like to apply to since it is just about time for me. Originally, I started with the list of 50 schools that had MD/PhD programs as sponsored by NIH, and then narrowed it down to those schools that had good chemical and computer engineering programs, or maybe experimental physics, etc.

However, recently I have found that I would much rather find those universities that bust paywalls. The importance of universities is not only the social environment wherein professors and other experts and peers can be contacted, but the library. These libraries with thousands of journals and tens of thousands of archived subscriptions are really awesomely important. Not to mention the online databases.

What schools are focused on busting these paywalls, like EBSCO, Science Direct, ACS, JSTOR, and all of the many other databases that Google Scholar crawls? What university libraries are the most well funded? Which schools are focused on providing information to their students, rather than enforcing nasty copyright violation policies? Not everything can be accessed through the Interlibrary Exchange after all, right?

BTW, this is a massive cross post, so check out my pub/portal for this thread on all of the other forums.

- Bryan

Carbon_Rod

Wed Jul 25 2007, 05:18AM

Registered Member #65 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155

Yawn, What country do you live in? Your problems sound like they are 1/6000000000 of the worlds problems.

Someone please move this to the chatting area....

In some places they have scholarship search engines.

In other places University is free if you are fluent in the language (Germany.)

Where I attended it was expensive, but the board made it very clear at the front door no student would be denied access to higher education for financial reasons (in fact I believe they even offer additional support bursaries if you are a parent etc.)

year 1 & 2 studies can be anyplace,
year 3 & 4 is usually at the same institution for the first degree.
Depending "IF" you make it into the Masters program, your study location could be anyplace (like France for honors physics.)

It is naive to think planning someone's life 5 years in advance will yield anything but a surprise.

Cheers,

Steve Conner

Wed Jul 25 2007, 11:25AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Every college I've ever worked or studied at gave me free access to journals behind what you called "Paywalls", through the Athens system. This may be unique to the UK, though. I wouldn't worry about it anyway. I certainly wouldn't worry enough to cross-post it to 100 forums

GreySoul

Wed Jul 25 2007, 01:47PM

Registered Member #546 Joined: Fri Feb 23 2007, 11:43PM
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Posts: 239

...*shrug* as a Fine Arts student I had access to essentially every journal ever published online on any subject through our school library system called LIBROS.

I went to a typical local public university (University of New Mexico) and they offered everything to their students in the way of journals.

If I managed to find one they didn't have access to I could put in a request for access and 9/10 times it would go through.

there were a few they wouldn't pay for - like one-time viewing of ebooks, and such....but any real scholarly journal that was online I could access.

T
As for printed matter... between all the libary systems on campus there was too much - 30-40 years of back issues of important journals, and 5-10 years of less important things. Unfortunetly a fire destroyed a large collection of very old (1800's) sci journals last year.... but they've still got plenty.

...

Ultimately I think it would be a rather silly thing to base a decision on. There are much more important considerations when looking at schools - Location, cost, quality, teach to student ratio - are all far more important than what it, pretty much, universal academic access to back issues of journals.

And if you think you're gonna spend your days reading back issues in leisure ... heh.... you're gonna be waaay too busy to read things on your own :P

-Doug

kanzure

Wed Jul 25 2007, 03:06PM

Registered Member #647 Joined: Mon Apr 16 2007, 02:43AM
Location:
Posts: 10

wrote ...
Every college I've ever worked or studied at gave me free access to journals behind what you called "Paywalls", through the Athens system. This may be unique to the UK, though.

I have heard of Athens ... but only briefly. Do they really allow access to most any journal? It sounds like an awesome system. Can you tell me more about it?

wrote ...
...*shrug* as a Fine Arts student I had access to essentially every journal ever published online on any subject through our school library system called LIBROS. If I managed to find one they didn't have access to I could put in a request for access and 9/10 times it would go through.

That is also interesting. When they did not have the article in LIBROS, would they buy the article from the publisher / database? What was going on there? That must have taken some big funds, right?

wrote ...
Ultimately I think it would be a rather silly thing to base a decision on. There are much more important considerations when looking at schools - Location, cost, quality, teach to student ratio - are all far more important than what it, pretty much, universal academic access to back issues of journals.

Yeah, this is just one factor to consider when looking for universities, I agree. But the library really is an important place, even with the internet today there is still some content "hidden" from the eyes of web crawlers (Google, Yahoo, the Internet Archive's Heritrix etc.). When I look at universities from time to time, I see that they do not all have the same subscriptions to databases. One might subscribe to American Chemical Society while another does not. One might subscribe to the publications of an important medical group, while the next does not. Definitely not 'universal'.

Maybe Athens or LIBROS is the solution. :)

- Bryan

WaveRider

Wed Jul 25 2007, 03:33PM

Registered Member #29 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 09:00AM
Location: Hasselt, Belgium
Posts: 500

Dare I say it???

Important things to consider in applying for a university.

1. Easy access to beer.
2. Good pizza place nearby.
3. Comfy (but cheap) place to crash nearby.
4. Comfy chairs in lecture halls (especially for early morning lectures).
5. Pretty girls/good looking guys on campus?
6. Pretty girls/good looking guys in EE dept.?
7. Beer.
8. Music.
9. Computer lab for downloadable music, and dirty movies?
10. Free beer at IEEE, etc. events?
11. Good music venue nearby.
12. Good library with quiet reading room (not for reading, but for sleeping!)
13. Wide selection of other drugs for personal pharmacological experiments...(if that's your cup of tea).
14. Far away from parents.
15. Access to a good curry restaurant nearby (for annoying roomates with the gaseous consequences afterwards).

Can anyone think of more??

Not that I encourage you to fritter away your university years in a drunken, sex-crazed stupor... Although even Chaucer wrote fondly of the student life 600 years ago....and it's not all that different today!

Steve Ward

Wed Jul 25 2007, 03:46PM

Registered Member #146 Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 04:21AM
Location: Austin Tx
Posts: 1055

Haha, you nailed it WaveRider!

I have to second what GreySoul said... after all your classes and work, you probably wont be reading much on your own in "free time".

I have free access to a whole bunch of article databases, but i hardly ever use it

.

You still never said what country you are in, or thinking of going to school in.

kanzure

Wed Jul 25 2007, 03:50PM

Registered Member #647 Joined: Mon Apr 16 2007, 02:43AM
Location:
Posts: 10

wrote ...
You still never said what country you are in, or thinking of going to school in.

My apologies. I am in the United States, and am willing to travel if I must, but I bet that there might be some good options here at home somewhere. Just have to look. :)

- Bryan

GreySoul

Wed Jul 25 2007, 05:34PM

Registered Member #546 Joined: Fri Feb 23 2007, 11:43PM
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Posts: 239

At UNM they would consider any journal purchase if requested. Most library systems also participate in inter-library loan programs where you can request material from other schools.

Most publishers, especially those that deal with academic journals, tend to offer very favorable rates to Universities and non-profit organizations, so it's really not as big a deal as you'd think. As for budgets, UNM has a multi-million dollar library budget for them to subscribe to journals and purchase new books.... most large schools do. if your school has over 10,000 students it will probably be able to get any journal you actually need.

At UNM, requests for stuff the library didn't already have usually had to be accompanied by a professors signature that the request was for class.... but once you get in with a prof, they'll sign any request you bring them :P

I suspect they probably spent around a million a year on journals and access to research databases - if not more. that's why you pay tuition (and taxes).

... also, I have to agree with WaveRider - those concerns influenced me more than what journals the school had. :)

-Doug

WaveRider

Wed Jul 25 2007, 08:22PM

Registered Member #29 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 09:00AM
Location: Hasselt, Belgium
Posts: 500

I went to U of MD for undergrad.. Was a good school for EE (especially EM theory)... When I was there, they had labs where they built tokamaks and gyratrons...really cool (220GHz at 50MW with highly relativistic electron beams).. All those military and spy agencies around Wash. DC/MD/Virginia meant radio engineers were always in demand. (If you like doing that kind of stuff, of course..)

Did a PhD at Purdue... Great school... West Lafayette IN is a bit boring and the weather sucks, but that is an inducement to study..

All unis spend millions on periodical subscriptions.. (Interestingly, institutional subscriptions to ALL the IEEE journals are relatively cheap, at USD35.000 or so a year...)

While you should give thought to where you are going, there is no point..in my opinion...in being overly picky. Best to keep an eye on the budget and what interesting courses they have which may help you along your "life-path"...the rest is up to you. Never forget that having fun is also part of university life. Those that forget this either become incredible lifetime bores or end up committing suicide after their first exam failure..

Good luck!

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