I think yes - the older articles must be permitted to be downloaded free keeping in mind the service to the society. The authors have been uploading their articles in journals for services to the society by paying the publication charges. After many years if this is useful to some one he should be permitted to do so without any hassle. After all this activity is going to be beneficial to the society in a long way .

Since after 70 years, it enters the public domain, it should be free. But the services like JSTOR are not morally obligated to do it. What we need is a community willing to upload those old articles on a platform like Research Gate or Academia.

I hear such suggestions constantly but I wonder why people do not get together here and do it?Each give their free time and skills to create a free site for papers. Whoever has the skills to create an internet site.......?

In my case, getting free articles from Lancet can be difficult even though these are essential for my research.

thank you, dear colleagues, for your suggestions and opinions. In my own case there exists sometimes the double problem, that publisher who publish my own contributions partly in print journals, partly online, have their own rules of protection and its expiry, this is a barrier for colleagues, who are interested to quote it from the published version (not from my own untrimmed size), and the price to buy a single issue is inappropriately high mostly; this is also the case if I am interested in a single paper which offers a publisher to an unreasonable price. In the current situation I don't see a sufficient solution of may claim. It would be better, in my view, to have a higher-level organization of all publishers of scientific writings which regulate all problems and different reguluations, for instance Wikipedia do this for information; here I feel it is right if all user pay a certain amount, regularly or as donation.

I think yes - the older articles must be permitted to be downloaded free keeping in mind the service to the society. The authors have been uploading their articles in journals for services to the society by paying the publication charges. After many years if this is useful to some one he should be permitted to do so without any hassle. After all this activity is going to be beneficial to the society in a long way .

Copyright = life time of author + 50 years after death .... then public domain. In the case where the copyright is claimed by a corporation, then the life time issue may become potentially in perpetuity.

There is always hope for free access.

All classical works are filed in more than one place. The journal where the article appear may be one of many archives that keeps the article. Try the Gutenberg project at www.gutenberg.org

Many of the classical works are digitized by Gutenberg.

Dear Paul, thank you for your quick reaction. Yes, of course, there are many good signs of hope for free access, but that part of the scientific paper-market which is closed yet is tremendous, and Gutenberg project which opens such opportunities for classical texts is a good thing, often used and well-known. Perhaps I am somewhat impatient, but it would be interesting to get some more experiences of other users. Thank you! Hein

nice question , yes it should be free

you can benefit from sci-hub.la , just copy JSTORE link to sci-hub and it'll download the file with no charges.

Greetings

Researchers without ant institutional access to costly journals and not having sufficient fund to pay the amount for each related article are always dependent on open access articles.

For this reason, it is better for any author to publish articles in open access journals with low IF than publication in closed access journal with high IF. But if s/he can afford money for open access publication in hybrid access high IF journal, it will be far better.

yes it should be free for researchers exclusively

regards

thank you - Hassan Nima, Shibabrata Pattanayak, Alaa Brick Hnaide, Bushra Praveen - for support and good ideas, which surly are valuable for other interested readers. Kind regards,

Yes of course!

I think all resrchers must have full access to all published papers. It is good for author(s), for journal and the researcher also.

totally agree with your suggestions, researchers must have access to a large number of publisher and especially researchers without institutional access ,but the problem of copyright must be solved in order to statisfy the both sides '' authors and readers ''.....good luck

Thank you, dear colleague for your message, I agree with you.

I do agree

thank you for your reaction!

It should be free access because researchers will be having free access then it will be good to be aware of the research globally for the refinement of research and existing literature. We teachers face lots of problem when specific research studies are not available to prepare for upcoming projects.

I think the same, thank you!

I'd like to add something to this topic. Obviously it have to be free and not only for researchers. Knowledge can't be restricted. This is against open society idea with is of course close to all of us. This is also against the openness of science itself. Each of us should care for a critical evaluation of his work. This is the essence of the scientific approach. How to achieve this without the freedom of access? It is also interesting that the author has to pay for the possibility of publication (reviews) in many publications. So we pay for the possibility of publication and the publisher continues to charge for access. I do not think it's about commercial use of science we expect?

Dear Radosław Gaca, yes, I also see this contradiction that principles of freedom in our scientific work come into conflict with principles of the free economic market. How to manage this? I think we have only approximations to a solution of the problem. The one advantage researchers should use is the offer of multivariant possibilties to find access on the one hand to sources, on the other hand to get access to publicate writings our results of research, including to use competing portals like RG or Acedemic Edu. Also the process for understanding such problems lead to a nearer merger of researchers. It is a remaining task to manage such problems. Thank you for your comment, Hein Retter

Yes, but it is strange and interesting that researchers are paying the cost.

There is a need to develop a mechanism for paying to the journal from other sources.

NO!!!!

if it is for free, no one will publish, Journals will change business.

Dear Hein Retter. First I’m sorry for the late answer. Yes, there may be a problem between openness and scientific freedom and the free market. But surely it's always about that. Does this concern the utilization of research results or the interest of publishers? Jorge Costa-de-Moura wrote that publishers will have to change business with open access. But today, as I wrote earlier, most publications are paid by the authors (reviews, etc.). Maybe you employed at universities do not pay for it because the institute pays for yours? For people like me, independent scientists, it's a big cost. Anyway, the topic is interesting, however you need a large lobby to change anything. Thank you Radoslaw Gaca

I think all articles could be free after some years, similar a new product/technology with a patent.

Dear Radosław Gaca, thank you for your comment, late answers are the most appreciated. I am thankful for your answer because my intention is, to reflect the limits of a positive answer to that question. In former times, I remember the seventienth, publishers paid for accepted contributions in journals - also with textbooks and scientific work authors could expect many, I can see this in my old contracts with publishers in that time. But the new IT community in the world has conditions changed.

Also the offers of competing journals in the net on the one side and the mass of texts brought a new situation of lacking transparency - yet worse the phernomen fake. In my active time it was not usual that institutes payed contributions for journals of members of the instute, but conference reports sometimes could be payed from the university.

I am shocked to hear from colleagues that some online-journals today expect high summs of money from authors. I suppose that reviewers (or members of the board with famous image) get some expense allowance, and the main editors open up the market for lucrative (or modest) extra income. Because in some countries also unversitiy professors get a very small salary. But such doing I don't support.

Promotion criteria, impact factor, Citation etc have put university professors & researchers in extra difficulties. Every researchers want to promote his/her research by making it more visible to everyone. For this researchers are paying extra to various journals. If an author has paid the changes, paper must be accessible to other researchers.

I am not agree to charge the author(s) for accessibility. If someone need a paper, must pay some nominal charges.

Similarly, the journals must give some concession to the author(s).

If researchers do research and pay for the new researchers, I am not in support of this facility of open access.

Research is going towards open data where most of academic publications online are open access and freely downloadable.

Thank you for your valuable comment, dear Olutosin, I support this idea but I have also some thoughts which let me hesitate: What is about the value of our / your / my own scientific work, valuable research results, if other people at once can use all - applying such results and making money - without giving you any chance to get shared as the owner of such results?

To Nafees Mohammad:

Yes, I think, you are absolutey right with two issues: First, we can't change the current situation that in many cases authors are forced to pay something for online-publication; but we have to discuss this - and its not desirable that a new market flowers on the cost of authors.

Second: The free access is not only an economical problem, of course there are internationally existing laws which have to protect the rights of authors. The dynamic situation today on this field leads to many copyright infringements. I have often to do with the problem that I need a certain photo from persons who died but to get exact information if there is a copyright by children, publisher, photographer is very difficult. Of course I am willing to respect every claim of an existing copyrithgt. What to do?

I believe that each of the universities and public research institutions should have an online magazine on which all professors and researchers publish their works for free. The referees, as it currently happens, should be colleagues of the other structures. Universities and research institutions should bear all the expenses for the site's managment and upload all the previous publications of their professors and researchers. Professors and researchers of public institutions are paid by public funds through the taxes of all citizens. Professors and researchers work for the cultural and scientific growth of all. Therefore their scientific works must be accessible to all for free. The industry is generally not interested in scientific publications but rather in patents. So for the patents the stakeholders will have to pay as tey does today. But all scientists must be able to publish for free and all citizens must have access to these publications freely and for free. Because they are the citizens who pay the salaries of the scientists.

I think this should be as per choice of a researcher....bcoz they have a patent of their own research and free access to those part of populations should be allowed only to needy people...

Dear Shibani, thank you very much for your contribution to our long discussion. All researchers need free access to information. There are nevertheless some problems. High ranked yournals and publishers should like to protect their value offer which is money for them. I don't know how things will delevlop in the near future but RG is a god platform for further discussion of this topic. Kind regarads, Hein

agree with @Dr K N Sheth

regards

Agree with Shihani Dash

regards

Dear Leonardo, sorry that I detected so late your important remarks. I have similar ideas. But it concerns our own publications. Often I would send a file of an article to a friend after his request, but I have no allowance to do so, the publisher will sell his prints, handbooks etc. You are right that we are paid by taxes, but sometimes is so much additional work to do that sometimes you have a feeling of devaluatiing your - it has become so obvious that we should write essays in our spare time without any fee, working for the moneymaking of others, that is not motivating. But no matter. Best regards, Hein

I think that after 10 years, academic articles should be available for free. Personally I think free access to all papers for everyone is unnecessary. Ultimately someone has to pay for the production and platform.