With the acceleration of research pace, and highly increased open access outlets, I recommend that all published articles be released for public free of charge after 5 years from the date of its publications. This will make it is easier for third world counties' researcher to access such documents and help promote their research activities.
Open access has been widely discussed during the last years. The main problem is to bring the wish for open access in accordance with the financial models of the publishers and to find funds for compensating losses of publishers' income from open access.
Dear Saif Alzahir
This is a good suggestion, but it is unlikely that all publishers will make their content free even after 5 years.
However, those in search of free full text should consider exploring PubMed Central® (PMC) ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/) which is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).
There are thousands of Journals in PMC that offer immediate or full access after 12-24 months of publication. Details available here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/intro/
In addition, The DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) is an independent database that contains over 16 500 peer-reviewed open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities
https://www.doaj.org/
So till the time the publishers change their policies, these 2 databases are an excellent resource to access the full text of scientific articles
Dear Saif Alzahir
These are the best ways to download a article for free, have a look:
1. https://www.bestsevenreviews.com/7-ways-download-research-papers/
2. https://citationsy.com/blog/download-research-papers-scientific-articles-free-scihub-library-genesis/
3. https://www.journals.elsevier.com/diabetes-research-and-clinical-practice/free-most-downloaded-articles
Best Regards
Dr. Fatemeh Khozaei
There is a general tendency to open access. Here is an announcement of today by the American Astronomical Society which publishes important journals: AAS Journals Transition to Open Access (https://journals.aas.org/oa/).
Here are links to some larger open access initiatives and projects:
https://oa2020.org/ (World)
https://esac-initiative.org/ (World)
https://libereurope.eu/article/open-access-five-principles-for-negotiations-with-publishers/ (Europe)
https://www.projekt-deal.de/about-deal/ (Germany)
See also these older, but still ongoing discussions:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Should_all_scientific_research_be_made_open_access
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Open_access_free_of_charge_should_we_change_the_roles_of_publishing
Yes the Access should be given to Everyone. This will help the young researchers to do an effective research
I agree with your idea. But if the articles have a great value the authors and editors of journals might be reluctant to have them free to download.
Anyhow ResearchGate has provided this opportunity to a great extent by allowing researchers to upload their findings so that anybody can download them with free of charge
In that case, ResearchGate is the savior and you can easily ask for any article you require. Otherwise, Sci-hub is always there for you.
Yes, that would be interesting and the articles would be available to all researchers, free of charge.
I totally agree with your proposal. For copyrighted articles, the periodicity of selling the article papers should not exceed five (5) years after which such papers should be available for free pdf download. This tends to benefit budding researchers in accessing and referencing the work, while the author's citation (h-index) may increase exponentially. Thanks!!!
Dear Dr Saif Alzahir . Good idea why not . But how to apply on the ground ?
In essence, the suggestion sounds logical to researchers all over the world but it would certainly displease the staggering business profit of publishing houses which are making billions ever year.
The main principle of limited access is that a researcher has to pay in order to download any paper of interest. These houses don't care the least if university libraries of poor countries cannot afford subscription even when it involves downloading 5-year old manuscripts for free! It is the same mentality reported practicing "destroying agricultural commodities in order to control the price".