How to
get on your colleagues' nerves
Papers,
papers, papers… I could read all day long, and still it would be physically
impossible to read all that should be read to stay informed and au courant in
my field of research. When I moved into my new office 9 years ago, I made a
big pile of all those articles, that I (at least to my impression) was in the
process of reading at that time. That pile, measuring about 20 cm, still sits
on the cupboard behind me, unread. A few months ago, in a flurry of desperation,
I made another pile of papers “I was in the process of reading”, measuring
almost as high as the former, sitting now at the right edge of my bureau. Like
Damokles’ Sword, the box for waste paper is waiting behind this edge.
During
an active scientific life, interests broaden continuously (at least in my
experience). In addition, technical developments facilitate production and
distribution of publications. Each week I’m flooded by dozens of new issue
alerts, and hundreds of new articles are just a mouse click away. Very often I
can’t resist to print at least the first 2 pages, but mostly I’ve only time to
read the abstract. As a member of the Medical University Vienna I have access
to the online versions of most scientific journals relevant to my field. Nevertheless,
a few journals resist my impudent approach and confront me with “options for
accessing this content” or inform me that “This article is not included in your
organization's subscription”. Purchasing such extra articles is possible, but horribly
expensive ($ 30 per article, at least).
Saving $
30 is always a good reason for creativity. Each article is signed by one or
several authors, and correspondence is invited to be addressed to one of them. Many
years ago, I misunderstood this invitation and occasionally took the liberty to
comment on some aspect of the published study – with mostly disappointing
results. But soon I realized that this invitation is expected to provoke only
sentences as “I would greatly appreciate receiving a pdf file of your recent
article”, and usually such requests are granted within short time, accompanied
by either no comment at all, or even by such a comment as I received 4 months
ago: “It is very nice to hear such sentences. Comments like yours, make us pick
courage. Thank you very much for your polite and couraging mail”.
The
online service of scientific journals is an active business. At the
moment, the most visible player in this field is ScienceDirect®. Of course, the
main interest of ScienceDirect is to earn money with online versions of
articles (including pdf files). They are not extremely amazed if readers obtain
pdf files directly from the authors without paying anything. Therefore, I was
not extremely surprised when, some months ago, all of a sudden all corresponding
author information had disappeared from the ScienceDirect journal content
pages. They do what they can to protect their business, I thought by myself,
and they don’t want to make it too easy for the reader to get around the $ 30
extra-payment.
For
several months, I still managed to get around it, until I failed last week for
the first time. Far from giving up, I wrote to ScienceDirect: “Since
several months, articles published online by Science Direct no longer indicate
author(s) for correspondence (neither their e-mail address). The Medical
University Vienna has access to a great number of journals published online via
Science Direct. However, a few journals are not on this list, and we have only
access to titles and abstracts of these articles. In most cases, it is
nevertheless easy to find out the e-mail address of the responsible author. Today
I failed for the first time. I couldn't find out who was the responsible author
of a short, but interesting letter in a journal that is not so often cited,
because this paper was from Turkey, and it was impossible for me to find my way
in academic Turkish internet sites. Science from Turkey has no excellent
international reputation, but getting published in an international journal
should be of help to improve the reputation. Unfortunately, the recent change
in Science Direct publication policy is not of great help in that respect.”
To my
great surprise, on the same afternoon corresponding author informations had
miraculously reappeared on ScienceDirect journal pages. Since this was good
news for all of us, I informed by e-mail all colleagues at the Vienna Brain
Research Center of this remarkable event. Yesterday I received 2 messages. The
1st was from ScienceDirect and went like this: “Thank you for your email. This
is a known error which our content team are working on and was not intended. Our
apologies for the inconvenience. It will be possible to see the contact details
as a Guest user in the near future“; the 2nd was from a colleague and went like
this: “Please remove me from your mailing list”.
There
was no other reaction from any of the addressed colleagues.