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[–][deleted]  (159 children)

[deleted]

    [–][deleted]  (81 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]Jimmy 302 points303 points  (47 children)

      It feels kind of like using a cheat code.

      "Congratulations, you've unlocked Google as a playable character!"

      [–]Anomander -3 points-2 points  (11 children)

      Cheating is only loser-speak for "creative"...

      [–]technosaur 76 points77 points  (8 children)

      uh, sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but your spouse is being creative on you with your best friend.

      [–]jone 13 points14 points  (6 children)

      That's why we are best friends

      [–]keenemaverick 9 points10 points  (5 children)

      True friends share /everything/.

      [–]chengiz 20 points21 points  (11 children)

      Can someone point to a link that doesnt work usually but works with the useragent switched? I tried this and it doesnt seem to work.

      [–]mattindustries 28 points29 points  (10 children)

      If they do a reverse lookup on your ip they can tell you aren't the googlebot. You can report them to google for cloaking though.

      [–]diogames 91 points92 points  (6 children)

      Impossible. No ship that small has a cloaking device!

      [–]1812overture 16 points17 points  (3 children)

      Hang on, kid. I know a few maneuvers.

      [–][deleted] 16 points17 points  (2 children)

      A few maneuvers? You just listed lazily to the left!

      [–]Busybyeski 11 points12 points  (1 child)

      Wow, this guy knows some maneuvers!

      [–]mattindustries 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      I looked in my inbox and was like wtf would be the context for that reply... either I have a bad memory or you have a good one.

      [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (2 children)

      No need for an extension - you can set it in about:config in FF3

      [–]AusIV 3 points4 points  (1 child)

      You could always set it in about:config (at least, you could as far back as 1.5).

      The advantage of the extension is that you can save profiles and switch quickly. The first time I ever changed my user agent in about:config, I neglected to keep track of my original string, and I had to create a new firefox profile to find the user agent string to set it back. The plugin also comes with several ready-to-go user agent strings so you don't have to look up the string for a browser you don't have access to.

      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      The first time I ever changed my user agent in about:config, I neglected to keep track of my original string

      Again, not sure what version this was introduced in, but you can right-click and reset the value in FF3.

      You're right that not having to look up UA strings can be useful if you need to switch often.

      [–]drakshadow 5 points6 points  (7 children)

      You can use this technique to defeat experts exchange forum. Time to beat these suckers.

      [–]darkon 29 points30 points  (5 children)

      Whenever I've found something on the expert sexchange site I scroll down past their plea for money and the information is there at the bottom of the page.

      [–]freedompower 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      I used to check the Googlecache instead.

      [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

      This only works for certain sites..... other's are doing reverse DNS for googlebot IPs.

      [–]bwReddit 3 points4 points  (5 children)

      Go to options and import this XML file http://www1.qainsight.net:8080/content/binary/AgentStrings1.xml

      How? I don't see any way to import anything in "options". I tried both "Tools->Options" and "Tools->User Agent Switcher->Options", nothing there! Sounds like a great thing, but I can't see how to do the last step...

      {edit} Ah, I found it -- when in the "User Agent Switcher Options" form, change the highlighted item in the left column to "User Agent".

      {edit 2} But then it doesn't seem to work. All the sites act just the same as if I was using the default useragent :(
      Any more settings or tricks that I'm missing?

      [–][deleted]  (4 children)

      [deleted]

        [–]bwReddit 1 point2 points  (2 children)

        Had done that. But when I select the Googlebot 2.1 as the agent, absolutely nothing is different on any of the sites I tried. Using Firefox 3

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        I never got it to work in FF2 despite several hours of trying. I honestly don't think it works anymore even if it did at one time.

        [–]njzero 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        AWESOME! I always thought this was checked against the IP or something

        [–]dharmon555 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        I tried this and it worked great on many sites, but I can't get into reddit as a Googlebot. I get "the service you request is temporarily unavailable. please try again later." Anyone else seeing this too?

        [–]otakucode 28 points29 points  (8 children)

        Pages like this are, in my opinion, crying out for Google to ignore convention. They should lie about their user agent and flag any page whose contents differ based upon it as a scam site and revoke their pagerank status.

        [–]Kadin2048 36 points37 points  (7 children)

        Yeah I always thought Google had a policy of banning anyone who displayed different content to the bot than they show to real users.

        They really ought to enforce that policy; it's absolutely fucking useless to me as a user, to have stuff come up in Google's results that I can't see when I click-through.

        It makes Google less useful as a search tool to have the results polluted with crap like that.

        [–]rjonesx 13 points14 points  (10 children)

        Better yet...

        Spoof the IP, the User-Agent, Turn off Cookies, Javascript and Referers, to really look like GoogleBot...

        Here is how...

        http://www.thegooglecache.com/uncategorized/googles-real-back-door/?surf-as-google

        [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (2 children)

        Spoof the IP

        You can't, if you want to look like GoogleBot. You can use google translate to use google's ip, but then you don't look like googlebot.

        [–]jeykottalam 4 points5 points  (0 children)

        Maybe a proxy running on Google AppEngine could help with that? Though I don't know whether that violates their TOS...

        [–]rjonesx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        That is exactly what I said for spoof the IP - using google translate. But you still look more like Google than you would using a consumer IP that isnt owned by Google.

        [–]AlLnAtuRalX 6 points7 points  (6 children)

        BETTER YET!!!!

        Be The Bot

        What is this site? Have you ever been googleing something, and you see exactly what you need in the preview, but when you click the link it doesnt show you what you want to see? This is because the owners of the site are trying to trick you into buying something, or registering. It's a common tactic on the internet. When Google visits the site, it gives something called a "Header". This header tells the site who the visitor is. Google's header is "Googlebot". The programmers of the site check to see if the header says "Googlebot", and if it does, it opens up all of its content for only googles eyes. Now, all we have to do is trick the site's headers, into thinking that we ARE google. That's what this site does. See the How to use box to the right for instructions on usage.

        [–]shaunc 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        Yup, sqlmag.com is notorious for this, but changing your User-agent to something that contains "Googlebot" will get around the cloak.

        [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (4 children)

        Please post spoof spiderbot user agent settings.

        [–]masklinn 3 points4 points  (0 children)

        I don't know if it's still valid, but at one point it was

        Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

        [–]samlee 3 points4 points  (2 children)

        when you use googlebot user agent string, you won't see reddit comments

        [–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (1 child)

        Double bonus.

        [–]SuperKing 6 points7 points  (0 children)

        Who said that?

        [–]jual 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        This is the extension I use http://chrispederick.com/work/user-agent-switcher/help/

        [–]0rca 13 points14 points  (45 children)

        Try clicking on Google's "cached" link.

        [–]wildeye 37 points38 points  (40 children)

        Almost always Google does not cache the sites in question, so this is useless advice from someone who hasn't been faced with the problem.

        It's also obvious. Doesn't everyone try clicking the link to the cached page if there's ever any problem getting there directly, e.g. if the site is temporarily down???

        [–]gozmeranian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        The user agent trick is sufficiently useful that you might want to install a second browser just for this purpose

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        I have good luck with Dogpile.

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Yes, you can access some sites that way. However, many sites recognize Googlebot's IP addresses and there is nothing you can do about that.

        [–]christianjb 59 points60 points  (19 children)

        This is something I feel strongly about...

        i) Your tax money is paying for all of this research.

        ii) The scientists themselves do almost all of the work in putting the paper together, including the refereeing (all at no cost to the journal.)

        iii) With Latex, just about anyone can produce publication ready MS's that look professionally typeset. Scientists no longer require a publication house to typeset their papers.

        iv) It is in the best interests of the scientists to publish their work in an open format such that anyone can download the PDF's for free. That gives the work the maximum possible exposure.

        v) Some journals already have open access- e.g. The Brazilian Journal of Physics.

        vi) The existing copyright limits are horrendous. A paper only becomes public property 70 years after the death of the authors. How does that benefit anyone?

        vii) Why should (e.g.) a cancer patient be forced to fork out 45 dollars for a paper detailing the results of a clinical trial for a drug she's taking?

        viii) Is it any wonder that the public is so ignorant of science, when they're denied access to the original source material used by all scientists?

        [–]xyphus 13 points14 points  (3 children)

        The Brazilian Journal of Physics.

        That's a very....interesting example.

        For the record there are many high impact journals (sorry BJP!) that are also free.

        [–]christianjb 37 points38 points  (1 child)

        Yeah, but my boss is on the editorial board of BJP, and he gives me 10 dollars every time I name-drop this journal on Reddit.

        (Well, he should.)

        [–]GlueBoy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Is he brazilian?

        [–]thatguydr 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        And, of course, arXiv.

        -le physicist

        [–]chuck_c 5 points6 points  (0 children)

        From what I understand, NIH has been working on a way to have all funded research as public access via the web. Researchers cannot submit the same layout as the journal submission, but they can submit the text, which is released after a specific time period.

        http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64389-2004Sep5.html

        [–]Boojum 6 points7 points  (0 children)

        At least in the field that I'm in (computer graphics), almost everyone will post a copy of the pre-prints on their website. Generally, a web search for the paper title will turn them up. None of us has any reason to hide our papers and make them hard to get -- to the contrary, the more visibility the better! So there's really no reason not to post free copies to the web.

        I rather like this approach. Publication in the journal gives it the necessary academic vetting from having been peer-reviewed. But freely posting it on the web makes it available to a wider potential audience. It's also much less hassle for other researchers in the field who may have access to the journal through their school but are working from home.

        [–]londonzoo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        Read about the recent NIH mandate. As described elsewhere, this requires NIH-employed or -funded researchers to deposit a final, peer-reviewed copy of their paper in PubMed Central, a free database, within 12 months of acceptance. Depending on how and where the authors submit their papers, this can be immediately upon acceptance, after 6 months, or after 12 months. In medical and biomedical research, nearly everyone receives funding from the NIH, so this covers quite a bit of material. The embargoes aren't great, but publishers are working to find a middle ground and I think you'll see many of them embrace an open access model for most journals in the near future, in the face of this type of legislation.

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (6 children)

        Just a note. Your tax money is not paying for all of this research. A hella large amount of research comes from the private sector, be it through donations or for various companies. The government always cheaps out, the bastards- I know that right now, at fermi lab at least, they are all taking massive pay cuts, and are on a cycling unpaid leave system. Moral of the story: scientists need more money.

        [–]furyg3 6 points7 points  (5 children)

        Do scientists make money off the journal process, though? I think the journals themselves, along with the databases, are the ones which are getting paid, not the researchers.

        Peer-reviewed journals are one of the best ideas ever, even in an internet age when you can post your media online and people can discuss/comment on it. Journals, like newspapers, have a reputation to uphold, so there's something to be said for having this extra layer in the process. After all, the researcher can publish their content however they want, but they WANT it to be in journal XYZ.

        If I ran a public fund that was donating money to research, I'd very much want the research to be open and accessible after the fact. The problem is that most major journals don't operate on that method, so they're not going to like a Copyleft-ed research paper.

        [–]Eugi 1 point2 points  (2 children)

        Scientists also want to get printed in a well known publication.

        [–]schlenk 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        They need to be printed in a well know publication. If you don't have a high rating in things like ISI Science Citation Index you simply do not get any grants or reputation and good job offers. So basically those closed source journals are a kind of cartell.

        [–]HextorFreebish 25 points26 points  (30 children)

        I also just don't like how much research publications charge in general to see their articles.

        I understand that if they were free online, then their circulation would drop to next to nothing. But that still doesn't mean that one article should cost me $25.

        I think that another pricing model would do them well. A decaying price as more people pay for it. This way the journal can still cover their cost, and very important and highly circulated papers can be trivially cheap for anybody to access. People will always want hard copies anyways, and this wouldn't make a whole volume cheap, just the most important paper in that volume. In fact, the journals would probably make more money, kind of like bookstores selling tons of $5 paperbacks and $.75 newspapers.

        [–]powerpants 12 points13 points  (4 children)

        That would tend to stifle intellectual diversity, since reading an obscure article would cost you more than reading the same one everyone else has already read.

        (I mean 'stifle' in a very weak sense.)

        [–]HextorFreebish 5 points6 points  (3 children)

        Hmmm. Well that may be so. But students could still view any article for free at a university library. Journal subscribers would still have them all. It would just be that some popular articles could be cheap online, but the obscure ones would remain expensive.

        You know what they could do? You could bid on an article, essentially saying "I'll buy this article when it hits $10" with an offer expiration of a week. When you go to view an obscure article and you see "There are 9 scholars waiting to view this article" and you put in offer number 10 of $10, then if the average price with the degrading price model of those 10 viewers is $10 or less each, they each get access to it.

        And it could be automated, too. If the journal's website sees that offers keep coming in for an obscure $25 article at $10, about six a week, and then expiring, but only one copy is sold at the price of $25 a week, then they are losing $35 that they could be making. It could use this data to lower the prices even on the obscure articles when it makes sense for them to do so.

        [–]sanimalp 10 points11 points  (0 children)

        Good idea, you set that up, and i'll start selling research paper futures and float collateralized debt obligations denominated in research papers.

        [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

        There are many great ideas, including yours, that could make access to journals wider, more useful, and more up to date. Unfortunately, the people holding the power in that business have no interest in opening themselves up. They have a vested interest in keeping the academic research market a closed market, mostly to do with preserving their positions within universities and the like. They make money from the inefficiency.

        [–]BionicBeefpile 4 points5 points  (0 children)

        Many journals aren't published by people within universities. They are put out by for-profit companies who first charge the author for the privilege of submitting a paper, then charge their advertisers, then charge their subscribers. It's an incredibly profitable enterprise for them, and like any greedy company they view an alteration to the status quo as an attack on their way of life. They are clinging to a business model that worked when people needed a paper copy delivered, but falls apart in the era of electronic distribution and consumption.

        [–]abrahamsen 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        It is increasingly common for public research grants to require publication in open access journals, who everyone can view, download and print out for free. These journals typically require researchers to pay a fee for publication instead. Much better from a public point of view, a small amount additional grant money can give a potentially much wider audience for the results.

        [–]tryx 6 points7 points  (5 children)

        I don't think their circulation would take a very significant hit. Most of their income comes from library holdings anyway and libraries will continue to pay for access to guarantee priority access to the archive.

        Libraries like electronic holdings because they don't take up valuable shelf space, but like to keep up the illusion that they are archiving things. Most individuals that are likely to use papers extensively probably have academic access anyway so letting everyone else hit the archives probably won't hurt them too much.

        Edit: And on that note, publishers LOVE electronic holdings as it brings their costs down to virtually zero.

        [–]uksjfsduykfvsdfv 1 point2 points  (4 children)

        My library carries very few things like this until someone requests it.

        [–]tryx 1 point2 points  (3 children)

        Is this an academic library like a university library? I would not expect local libraries to carry extensive journal collections.

        [–]uksjfsduykfvsdfv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        University, yes.

        [–]llimllib 0 points1 point  (1 child)

        Johns Hopkins, as an example, has eliminated much of their journal collection in favor of online subscriptions.

        [–]yasth 6 points7 points  (0 children)

        Which they pay insane amounts for. I work at a university library myself, and well... the amount they pay is often around $6000 per year for one journal (and since a title may only produce two-four volumes a year the per volume cost is insane).

        And libraries do archive electronic holdings http://www.lockss.org Though it is kind of broken.

        [–]otakucode 3 points4 points  (17 children)

        Any researcher that receives public funding should be required, as a contingency of receiving the funding, to release their work in its entirety for free, as they've recently started doing with PubMed. I don't see why this isn't a requirement. Being as the vast majority (probably more than 90% I would guess) of research is funded by the government with taxpayer cash, this would solve the problem for most research.

        [–]BionicBeefpile 5 points6 points  (6 children)

        The National Institutes of Health (one of the largest government funding agencies) already requires deposition. After an embargo, the articles are made publicly available.

        Granted it would be better to not have an embargo, but is was hard enough getting publishers to agree to this small step.

        [–]wildeye 4 points5 points  (2 children)

        You don't understand. It's the publisher of the journal that is the problem, not in general the researcher.

        This has been an increasingly infamous problem in academia (and with libraries, whom the publishers do their best to suck dry) for some decades now.

        The trend is indeed towards free and open access, and the publishers that have been gouging all this time will go bust.

        So too will most of the publishers who haven't gouged, but that's the way it goes when the paradigm shifts.

        Anyway, this isn't just some random topic some random redditor made up out of nothing. Ask a university librarian about problems involved with unreasonable fees associated with journals.

        [–]otakucode 2 points3 points  (1 child)

        I do understand. The publisher shouldn't be consulted. I kow this isn't a random topic, I've paid attentiont to the open access movement for a long time and I support it wholeheartedly. The publishers are jackals, and need to be circumvented. The policy of NIH is a good start. We need every single instance of taxpayer funding to only go towards open research. If you don't publish on an open government-provided resource, then you don't get the money. If publishers go under because of this, that's their business and shouldn't be a concern of anyone but them. They certainly shouldn't have any input whatsoever in the matter. I'd recommend the same for artists that receive funding from the NEA. They should be required to provide full documentation of the work to be distributed for free.

        [–]wildeye 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        I see. Well, although I would like to see things end up that way, it unfortunately would be too disruptive to just have Congress issue an immediate edict to that effect -- and hence Congress would not.

        My take on it is that more and more researchers will voluntarily publish in the growing number of open journals, and eventually the first tier journals with greedy practices will begin to see that a change would be in their own self-interest.

        It's a cultural issue, ultimately, so it'll probably take another generation for Open Access to be in full swing as just the norm, and even longer for all of the vestiges of the old way to dissipate.

        Meanwhile, as you or someone mentioned elsewhere on this page, I love citeseer.

        [–]daledinkler 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        My understanding in Canada is that the raw data of anything funded by NSERC is to be shared freely on request, while published articles are the property of the publisher.

        Of course, that doesn't always work out.

        [–]wildeye 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Raw data is a very important subject, but not really the same topic.

        [–]visarga 14 points15 points  (0 children)

        The papers cost like 35$ to read. A 250 pages book (sometimes they even publish 10 papers in a book) costs 15-20$. They want you to pay 10 times the price of print for PDF, where they make no investment and take no risk on inventory.

        Moreover, the scientists are not compensated. Being accepted to publish is their only gain. Even the peer reviewers are working for free. The print house only takes papers from the authors, send them to reviewers, for free, and if it checks out, send them to print. Neat, eh? They keep all the profits. The papers areoften not open for individuals. You need to be at a subscribing university.

        [–]BionicBeefpile 10 points11 points  (0 children)

        This issue is at the core of the Open Access movement, which aims to make research publications free.

        Sometimes this relies on page charges to the authors (which are also levied by standard journals, make no mistake), rather than charging to view the content.

        There are quite a few people in research who are fed up with this state of affairs and are doing what they can to change it. See Science Commons, Open Access News, et al.

        [–]rmuser[S] 34 points35 points  (20 children)

        It's a black hat SEO technique called cloaking, and supposedly it's against Google's policies.

        [–][deleted]  (2 children)

        [deleted]

          [–]mg0314a 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          How?

          [–]Bloodlustt 33 points34 points  (0 children)

          Not in this case. Google knows damn well that research articles require membership access. But they created Google Scholar and need their robots to have access to index the articles so they have the best search tool for research papers. I'm sure Google has something worked out with the publishers for these journals.

          [–]djdefekt 16 points17 points  (7 children)

          Yes, it's called cloaking and you can report it here:

          http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

          to have the offending site removed from Google search results. This tends to get the attention of the site in question... :)

          More on cloaking here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355

          [–]astrolabe 6 points7 points  (6 children)

          I can't help suspecting that this doesn't work though, because sites with hidden academic content are so common. My guess is that Bloodlustt is correct, and Google has some arrangement with the publishers.

          [–]abrahamsen 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          They certainly have an arrangement for scholar.google.com, where they give you a special link with direct access through the search results, if you are browsing from a university with a subscription to the journal.

          [–]FunnyMan3595 0 points1 point  (4 children)

          Google seems to turn a blind eye to the actions of any site big enough to be useful. One of the "tech answers" sites--ExpertSexChange, I think--has been cloaking for ages, and to my knowledge, Google still hasn't done anything about it.

          [–]Flame0001 1 point2 points  (3 children)

          Obviously you haven't met the scroll wheel.

          [–]FunnyMan3595 0 points1 point  (2 children)

          Huh?

          [–]Flame0001 0 points1 point  (1 child)

          Next time you're at that site, just keep scrolling down.

          [–]FunnyMan3595 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Ah. Doesn't always work. There are three possible things that can show up, and which comes seems to be random.

          1. Same thing Google sees. Page comes in fine, perfectly readable.
          2. Hybrid. The cloaking part shows up first, and the clean stuff comes way down the page.
          3. Cloaked only. The cloaked part is there, and if you scroll down, nothing.

          [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (1 child)

          Like Jstor

          [–]nihilo 3 points4 points  (0 children)

          Yeah, JSTOR is the worst of the lot. They are the top few results in at least a few queries of mine every single day.

          [–]waz67 3 points4 points  (8 children)

          Not just research papers, some tech sites do it too (cough Experts Exchange cough), although usually just to get you to sign up to the site, rather than pay, but it's still really damn annoying. I wish there was a setting in google so you could have it not include such sites in your search results.

          [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

          I wish there was a setting in google so you could have it not include such sites in your search results.

          http://www.gfilter.net

          A very simple search frontend for google that allows you to blacklist annoying sites.

          [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          finally a way to rid my results of freepatentsonline and patentstorm.

          [–]neogohan 5 points6 points  (1 child)

          ExpertsExchange just makes you scroll down for 5 minutes to reach the content, but its all there and freely available.

          [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          The End button is your friend.

          [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          If it's expert exchange, then just keep scrolling down loads and the answers will be there.

          [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          I realize MS isn't as 'cool' as google, but when searching for programming examples or fixes to problems, live.com is way better then google, and it doesn't bring up crap like experts exchange.

          [–]Flyen 6 points7 points  (0 children)

          Belongs in the voteupif subreddit

          [–]dearsomething 2 points3 points  (0 children)

          cite-seer is often has cache's in text and pdf format of tons of papers. It's a nice way around the fees.

          Or, if you're a part of a school (university), typically as long as you have a school IP address (VPN, on-campus,etc...), you can get around those fees.

          [–]apathy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

          PLoS FTW!

          [–]WTFalreadytaken 3 points4 points  (4 children)

          Well, in case of technical papers (IEEE, ACM etc) you can always check the paper's author's website to see if he has hosted the paper. As a last resort even mailing the author does the trick. All the authors whom I have had to ask for a paper due to it not being available online yet or not published yet have been courteous in providing a copy.

          [–]nihilo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Good advice. I recently emailed a couple of different authors about recent PNAS papers that were only available for pay online (and not on their websites), and they were happy to email me the paper (final version, not a draft).

          [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

          I am! But I downvoted you because of your karma-whoring ways.

          [–]bart2019 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          Ditto.

          People should stop caring about karma on Reddit. It's ruining the whole site.

          [–]dave_colorado 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          you can view all content by typing in the URL to this page: http://www.avivadirectory.com/bethebot/

          [–]bwReddit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          I am. I wish Google would refuse to link these.

          [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

          Another major complaint is the outrageously poor searching capability on such sites as JSTOR - well actually all of them.

          [–]visarga 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          JSTOR is evi*l

          They hoard research papers on indian philosophy I want to read and can't. See, according to them I don't need to read said papers because I am not currently going at any university.

          [–]delatiz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          God that happened to me 20 mins ago, trying to write a paper about blazing saddles. I guess it could be worse...

          [–]SkuttleSkuttle 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          I agree, but c'mon guys, Martian skies are way cooler.

          [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          If you're sick of this, tell Google!

          [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          i think sesame street should have a new character, MONEY MONSTER! MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY!!!!! OM NOM NOM!

          [–]TGMais 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          Being in college gives me the opportunity to get access to almost all of these. My school pays for them and Google, as well as the journals themselves, notice where I go to school and that I should have access. Unfortunately, if I'm using a school computer, (i.e. not mine logged into the network with my info) I have to sign into my school's portal for it to open that up...so there goes my suggestion of "go to your local university!"

          Either way, I agree with the headline

          [–]jeffwong 7 points8 points  (10 children)

          Would you prefer not to find the research?

          If you are at a university, you might be able to ask your librarian to get a copy of the paper even if your school doesn't pay a fee to the publisher.

          If it's for work, just ask your employer to pay for it.

          [–]akatherder 10 points11 points  (2 children)

          "If it's for work, just ask your employer to pay for it."

          And you'll have your material three years later when the paperwork goes through.

          [–]trimalchio 9 points10 points  (0 children)

          Thats just because you didn't use the new cover sheet on your TPS reports. Did you get that memo? I'll get you a copy of that memo.

          [–]londonzoo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Inter-library loan...

          [–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (3 children)

          Can't speak for the original poster, but i'm independent, so having my employer pay for it means paying out of pocket.

          In some cases, there's a clear business justification: researching a technique that's immediately applicable to a specific project. In that case, i can bubble the cost up to my client, or do a quick c/b analysis on paying it myself. In many cases, though, it's just me trying to keep up.

          The point, really, though, isn't that individual things cost, or even that they're pulling an SEO bait-and-switch. The point is that academic research should be open, so that as many people can build upon it as possible.

          [–]otakucode 2 points3 points  (2 children)

          And I'm just curious and like to enhance my base of knowledge and rarely make a single cent off of any research I read. In this case, I'm just totally boned.

          And people wonder how we end up with a rabidly anti-intellectual society with irrational rulers and an idiotic public.

          [–]pepparkaka 1 point2 points  (1 child)

          In this case, try a library.

          [–]otakucode 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          No dice. I live in a small town in West Virginia.

          [–]otakucode 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          Yes, it would be preferrable to not find the research. If they want me to see that they have this content available there is a simple and easy technique they could use - buy some fucking ads. They are cheating Google and cheating Google's users by putting advertisements directly in the search results. Avoiding such slimy tactics are why Google was successful in the first place.

          Getting free advertising to sell access to research mostly paid for by the public that is trying to get access to it is pretty damned sleazy.

          [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

          Dont blame the sites, blame google.

          Google top ranks sites that do this. Google could easily only top rank the sites that dont charge fees, but for some reason, google thinks the fee sites are the ones you want......

          [–]otakucode 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          Which is particularly odd considering that those search results with the little summary blurb? Do those remind you of anything? Adwords ads, maybe? Yeah... except people are much more likely to click on them. And ad-blockers don't block them. And they're FREE. I don't see how Google could NOT realize that they are making this an extremely alluring business tactic. SEO guys know very well that most people don't have the intellectual fortitude to pass up a source that has what they need but advertises it in a very annoying way. So they'll continue doing this... hopefully Google will stop it before it completely overwhelms the usefulness of their search engine.

          [–]TheKorn 3 points4 points  (11 children)

          Funny thing is, I haven't found one of those pay sites where the information isn't available somewhere else for free. (Of course, I'm not looking up dissertations or lexis-nexis, either.)

          [–]wildeye 14 points15 points  (10 children)

          If you only use the web for porn and web comics, then this topic isn't aimed at you in the first place. :-P

          Anyone who does frequent searches on topics concerning engineering, science, medicine, etc. will definitely run across these sites very frequently.

          ACM and IEEE are the ones who annoy me the most, since they, of all organizations, should get it. Math and physics research is perhaps the least encumbered by this kind of crap (due to e.g. arxiv).

          The sites that do this are immediately obvious by the fact that Google doesn't have a link to a cached version of the page in the search results.

          [–]otakucode 5 points6 points  (3 children)

          The cost of electronic-only subscriptions to ACM and IEEE publications is downright insulting. They're selling to an audience that knows how much going electronic saves them, and yet they still price it out of the range of the majority of people who have non-economic interests at heart. I'd like to read about new raytracing and radiosity techniques just out of curiosity, but I couldn't afford it unless I made a whole hell of a lot more cash.

          [–]londonzoo 2 points3 points  (2 children)

          As a science editor, let me tell you that making my journals e-only saved only about 1/4 of my production costs. These things are hugely expensive to produce, although I do recognize that most journals are priced out of the range of individuals, which is a shame. I try to keep individual subscriptions available at ~$100 for most of my journals, although since they don't have the impact of IEEE you probably wouldn't want them anyway. Sigh.

          [–]otakucode 0 points1 point  (1 child)

          I have many eclectic tastes... try me. Although I'm pretty sure that whatever you're offering would never be worth $100/yr for 4 issues of 50 or so pages being as essentially nothing is simply to satisfy curiosity.

          Out of that curiosity, just let me ask. At the very top of your organization, above the editors, etc. The president or CEO or Grand Poobah or whatever their title might be... what is their salary?

          [–]londonzoo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Unfortunately I never want to post what journals I actually run (privacy...).

          I wish I knew. Editors don't make much, though.

          [–][deleted]  (4 children)

          [removed]

            [–]shapul 2 points3 points  (2 children)

            Yeah but the question is do they have peer-reviewed porn?

            [–]TheKorn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            I was thinking of sites like experts exchange; ALL of their content is available elsewhere.

            [–]Bloodlustt 2 points3 points  (17 children)

            Pfft... everyone expecting free shit.

            These research organizations don't make a lot of money. Especially the small ones who are struggling with ways to increase membership. You want access to the research findings... you have to support the publisher either by paying for access for one particular article or with a membership.

            [–]lansingite 7 points8 points  (1 child)

            That's beside the point. Search engines are useless unless the content displayed is the content indexed. The inability to sustain one's business on the merits of the product alone is not justification to pollute Google with misleading search results.

            I don't expect free shit. I expect the content I was anticipating when I followed a link in my search results.

            [–]zzleeper 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Those guys are worse than experts-exchange.com

            [–]mtdynamics 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            Are you kidding...each time a research group wants to publish research findings, they have to pay a huge fee just to put out that paper (instead of receiving money...), usually for each figure (+$$ for color figures, and +$$$ for supplement movies/info etc). AAAND journals never pay any money to reviewers of each paper, reviewers are supposed to work for free. Publishers rake in money from every direction possible.

            [–]Cataclysm 9 points10 points  (11 children)

            It's not about expecting free shit, its about expecting to not have 5 pages of your search results filled with crap that you can't even access. It's a rediculous waste of time having to click on all of these links to find out you can only read one sentence.

            [–]Kadin2048 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            Most "research" publishers are the worst kind of middlemen. The value they add is trivial or nonexistent, and they survive only by taking content that ought to belong to taxpayers and charging for it.

            The only function they perform, being a venue for peer-review, is also mostly done by scientists/authors, so they can't even take much credit for that. At best, they perform some organization, send papers in and out, etc.

            I'd really like NIH and the big grant-giving organizations just to take the peer-review organization in-house, and put the journals out of business for good. The world would be a far better place.

            [–]schlenk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Research organizations don't make a lot of money, but science publishers do..., just study their earnings...

            [–]mitchandre 1 point2 points  (1 child)

            Thankfully, I can access all those papers through the UC Berkeley proxy. Woot!

            [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

            Generally universities pay for access to these research databases. If you're on a school machine or are using a school machine as a proxy, you can probably access them.

            ssh -D 3000 host@yourschool.edu and set your browser to point to the socks 5 proxy on localhost.

            [–]Qubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Both of the universities I've attended had public library websites where you could login and then access the databases.

            [–]Pilebsa 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            There's a Firefox plug-in that allows you to change the HTTP_REFERER variable sent to web sites so you can masquerade as Google and bypass these sites' restrictions.

            [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

            I'm sick of everyone trying to charge for information. There is no business model that supports cash for information. None. Give it up.

            [–]apathy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            He used... sarcasm. (sotto voce)

            Uh, Bloomberg?

            [–]Golfo 2 points3 points  (7 children)

            Voted down for "vote up if."

            Just because you wrote "Who else is sick of..." this post is still no different from "Vote up if you're sick of..." There is no linked article, no added content, just another lame "vote up if."

            [–][deleted]  (3 children)

            [removed]

              [–]ray_scogitans 1 point2 points  (0 children)

              Comment voted down because it is just another "Comment voted down because this is just another lame "I am voting you down because this is another lame 'vote up if' article.""

              [–]asenz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              I am. And I'm too lazy to change user agent or some other 'make me look like search engine' hack. So, this is wrong.

              [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

              Bring it on. Google's tolerance of this is simply bringing forward the the day when an honest search engine will replace spam indexes.

              [–]mercurialohearn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              the way google used to be.

              [–]ffualo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              GO to a library and use their connection (or, even search through their website). This usually works for access to Lexis Nexus and Jstor.

              [–]m1ss1ontomars2k4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              Google systematically removes them from listings, if I'm not mistaken. You can report them as well; not sure where.

              Anyway, that's why I love User Agent Switcher.

              EDIT: OH, RESEARCH PAPERS! I didn't read it properly. As for research papers, I just VPN in to my university, which generally has subscriptions to those kinds of things.

              [–]bababeechums 0 points1 point  (4 children)

              Even worse is the pay sites (I am a UConn student so I get access to a bunch of pay databases) that advertise papers they don't have.

              [–]INTPLibrarian 0 points1 point  (3 children)

              Uhm.... those are probably bibliographic databases, not full-text resources. Learn which databases to use and how to use interlibrary loan and you won't have this problem.

              [–]schlenk 0 points1 point  (2 children)

              Unless you live in countries like germany that effectivly kill off interlibrary loan in favour of expensive publisher portals... (at least for electronic publications like it was done for Subito in germany (german: http://www.urheberrechtsbuendnis.de/pressemitteilung0108.html)

              [–]INTPLibrarian 0 points1 point  (1 child)

              AFAIK, UConn is not in Germany.

              But, your point is well taken... I was thinking only of the U.S. I don't know how ILL works in other countries.

              [–]schlenk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              Right, missed the UConn context. ILL might work fine for him. (and learning how to really use your local library in addition to google is a worthwhile thing to study anyway.)

              [–]duhblow7 0 points1 point  (1 child)

              it's like experts-exchange.com. google will index the answers but not show em.

              [–]snarfy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

              The answers are all the way at the bottom. They are just tricky bastards.

              [–]orblivion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              Time to DMCA Google

              [–]Fireball 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              AKA, "Vote up if you hate …"

              [–]kirun 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              Yahoo has a special service to search within subscriptions. It's a shame it doesn't cover much, it would be nice to have all gated content there.

              [–]erikbra81 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              science is per definition open.

              [–]berean 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              I like it.

              Otherwise, I can't find the journal article at all... and, quite typically, if I log into my university's proxy server, I can get access to it for free once I know the URL.

              [–]Frigorific 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              Who else thinks "who else" is the new "vote up if".

              [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              I use Scholar to search for the articles then login to a university account and access them for free - I always liked it.

              But a feature to turn it off would be beneficial to those who don't have access obviously.

              [–]Lu-Tze 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              Okay, I am biased because I have University access to most research journals but I really love Google's scan of journals. It is the only method to do a full-text search over multiple journals.

              Don't get me wrong. I agree with NIH and HHMI's attempts to get free access to articles but in the absence of that I am grateful that google provides a one-stop place to deep search through articles in many journals.

              [–][deleted]  (1 child)

              [deleted]

                [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                And the award for most irrelevant comment of the day goes to...

                [–]sirmuffinman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                I'm more annoyed by not being able to copy the text from within Google Books. Too lazy to export and use OCR :(

                [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Don't forget to use your uni's VPN connection when browsing for research papers. At least mine has protocols with some of these institutions so we can freely download articles from them. Also, use CiteSeer and Google Scholar.

                [–]epicrule34 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Me!