Friday, May 8, 2009

What's bad about this habit


Wanted to blog or twitter about a nice article by David Mermin "What's bad about this habit" in Physics Today, but all I can find online which does not require subscription to Physics Today is "abstract not available". Exactly, what's bad about this habit?!

This is almost a general public interest article. Why restrict it to the paying members of American Physical Society? Physics Today wouldn't've survived without the whole racket of scientific magazines. Newspapers are dying, the scientific publishing is probably next. There is the same dilemma, the offline material is as good as dead to the world. But the online material is almost impossible to monetize. On the other hand Physics Today is subsidized anyway, why not put it completely online?

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