Whilst I am certainly supportive of open access science in general, and in the case of my own writing am glad to see it reach a wider audience, I'm surprised by the brazenness of linking to a pirated article whilst in discussion with its author. I don't know whether to be offended or impressed
Do you see a reason that, as an author, you wouldn't want your article to be pirated as widely as possible? You get no actual benefit from IEEE making money off of your article, right?
This is speculation, but perhaps there's a game-theory issue here. If IEEE loses money by people pirating (and you can apply the usual counter-arguments about whether the pirateer would have gone on to purchase it anyway) rather than paying then publishing costs increase to cover that loss, and therefore hurting the authors who must cover that increase in future if they want to publish in the journal again.
A better situation is where the preprint or open access version is available.
> then publishing costs increase to cover that loss, and therefore hurting the authors who must cover that increase in future
WHAT?! Does that mean it's the authors who pay publishers to get their work published? Is that really true? And then publishers also charge readers for what they were paid to publish in the first place?
I think the university insulates the author from the costs you mention. This also assumes that the market for articles is fair and rational, when it's anything but.
I think that science should be your ultimate goal as a scientist. Science is an inclusive goal, not an exclusive clique. You can certainly argue that your article was meant only for students and viewers who have access to IEEE's walled garden. But then you must also admit that your work isn't meant to benefit anyone else, except indirectly.
It also fosters discussion, since we can view your work and see whether it stands on its own merits, or whether it's related to the discussion past the title and the abstract.
The IEEE site also shows that your article has been viewed 238 times. My comment linking to the unimprisoned version was upvoted 5 times, and a good rule of thumb is that 4*upvotes = view count on a clickable link. (I've measured this in the past.) So your readership probably increased by at least 10%.
Lastly, I'm hopeful that IEEE and other institutions will eventually yield to the forces of technology, as the RIAA did. Attempting to stop technology by force doesn't have a good track record of success. It will be an unpleasant ride until then, but the world will be better off.
I think my manner of speaking was too wry. To be clear: I'm perfectly happy for people to read my research by whatever means they need to take. I too hope that scientific publishing gets its act together and moves away from hoarding knowledge behind paid subscriptions, and guerilla efforts to bring that closer to reality are appreciated. It was a tongue in cheek way of saying "I'm right here, you could have asked :)" (I would have said 'go for it')
To answer some of the sibling comments:
rspeer > You get no actual benefit from IEEE making money off of your article, right?
I'm well aware, although as an IEEE member I don't think it's fair to say no benefit, although it is very hard to quantify.
klibertp > what difference it makes for you personally, as an author and researcher, whether people access your work via a paywall or not?
None. As said above, I think my tenor wasn't communicated well enough. I was more just surprised that, given that sillysaurus3 and I have never communicated before, someone would take an action that could have potentially been quite upsetting (I know a few researchers where that would have definitely been the case).
klibertp > Does that mean it's the authors who pay publishers to get their work published? Is that really true? And then publishers also charge readers for what they were paid to publish in the first place?
Absolutely not in our field. As I understand it, in some fields there is a charge for very long form writing to cover the work required in reviewing and editing (though perversely the actual person who does that work is often unpaid), but generally pay-to-publish would indicate a low quality journal and would be an outlet of last resort.
I know next to nothing about the process of writing and publishing scientific papers, so forgive me if the question is stupid, but: what difference it makes for you personally, as an author and researcher, whether people access your work via a paywall or not?
